T&T groaned. Slapped his hands to his suit helmet.
“Fuck. That’s not gonna work,” he said, “Can’t you talk some sense into that thing? Do you control it, or does it control you?”
I wasn’t going to give him the honest answer. Which was: Both. The Dendon device couldn’t take away my free will. It couldn’t take control of my motor functions–make me scratch my nose if I didn’t want to. But it basically controlled my body otherwise.
And it had to follow my commands.
Up to a point.
And that point was where it was locked so that only a king of Dendon could access it.
There hadn’t been a king of Dendon for thousands of years. But the Dendon had dropped the hint that there could be one.
If I could find and beat the challenges.
If I wanted to.
Ten
Chris
There was a door behind the big, blocky throne. And a set of Dendon-sized stairs. Leading down into spooky, creepy darkness.
Yay.
At first we didn’t think we’d get in. Not without Liz blasting a giant hole in it. But my little buddy gave me a nudge.
The king’s bodyguard always went first.
Said just as Liz was raising the plasma blaster on her arm to cut the throne open.
“Wait!” I said.
Liz turned her armored head my way. The light moved like liquid over her smooth, golden skin.
I glanced back at T&T. Who was giving me a narrowed eyed look. He’d popped into spy mode, dropping (for the moment) his pretense of being a helpful mechanic.
“Umm…” I said. Lamely. “Maybe there’s a hidden latch or something. Maybe something your armor could activate.”
She stared at me for another moment. Or her head was pointed my direction, at least. I tried beaming my thoughts to her. Maybe it worked, because she turned back to the door. Which was only a vague outline on the back of the throne.
“Where should I look?” She said.
“The normal place a seven foot tall, skinny alien would touch, I guess.”
“That’s not helpful, dear,” she said.
T&T waved his hands at the throne. “Use enhanced vision to look for wear marks,” he said, “You can do that, can’t you?”
We both looked at him.
He shrugged and took a step back. “Just a suggestion.”
A pretty good one, surprisingly.
Liz scanned the area and found a spot near the center of the door. She put her armor covered hand flat on it.
An instant later, air hissed and dust puffed from around the door’s outline. We all stepped back as the door slid aside. Beyond was inky darkness. Liz stepped up and shone her flashlight hand into the opening.
“Ugh. More stairs,” she said, “No wonder these people were so skinny. Running up and down stairs all day and all night.”
I couldn’t disagree with her.
But, it wasn’t like we had a choice, either. We’d found what might have been elevator shafts–smooth, perfectly circular tubes that seemed to run the length of the building. They looked more like the pneumatic tubes at bank drive-up windows than elevators. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any power running to them. Or any obvious controls, even if there was.
“Let’s go already,” T&T said, “There’s gotta be something good down there if it has a secret doorway.”
I almost suggested to Liz that we throw him down the stairs to gauge how deep they went. Almost. She probably would have done it if I said it out loud.
I gave Liz a nod. She moved into the doorway and shone the light down the stairs. They seemed to go down a long ways. Great. More exercise.
We started down, Liz leading the way with her flashlight hand and her plasma blaster hand.
I asked the Dendon device what we could expect to find down there.
But all I got in reply was silence.
Eleven
Chris
The king’s private chambers.
Not surprising, I guess.
It seemed the King of Dendon kept an office and a small apartment under the great hall of the throne room. The rooms were austere and simple. They certainly didn’t look like a place were a King would stay.
But then maybe the King wasn’t into the trappings of power.
We had reached the bottom of the stairs and found ourselves in a small antechamber. Another door led to the office and apartments. A wall of windows threw dusky red light into the area. We wandered through the rooms, finding nothing but simple–but elegant–furniture. A desk, some chairs, and comfortable looking sofas. A bedroom with a large bed. An empty closet. A surprisingly normal looking bathroom. Though with fixtures sized for tall and slender people.
All in all, it creeped me out. It was almost like a high-rise apartment, waiting for someone to rent it.
I stood there in the bedroom, standing on a floor that wasn’t stone or wood or carpet. It was some soft, but smooth substance. Almost like a giant gel pack. I stood in one place and looked around the room.
Where were all the personal things? Everything was bare and minimalistic. There wasn’t any artwork on the walls. No keys or loose change left on the nightstand. No slippers beside the bed.
I couldn’t get any sense of the being who had lived here.
This wasn’t the king’s primary residence.
The Dendon. Making another rare appearance.
And the king’s primary residence was probably classified information, right?
I am not at liberty to divulge that information.
Great. It couldn’t even tell me the information about the information.
I became aware of Liz facing me. She was like a shiny gold statue standing on the other side the bed. A bed that didn’t have any covers on it. It was just a smooth, almost square pedestal, sitting along one wall.
“Is there anything here?” She asked.
I shrugged. “No idea,” I said, “I’m feeling more and more like this whole thing is a bust. The Dendon won’t–or can’t–tell me anything. And I don’t know where to start looking.”
Liz looked toward the doorway. T&T was busy searching the office for secret panels. The moron had the idea they would have had a hidden safe or something there. It was a relief just to have him out of sight for a few minutes.
Liz came around the bed and sat down on it.
A sudden vision slammed me.
The same room. The same bed. Only this time the bed had silky covers on it, in a deep red color. Low light lit the room from hidden lamps near the ceiling. Heavy drapes covered the windows that ran the length of the room. White clothes were draped over a chair in the corner.
On the side of the bed–in the exact same place Liz sat–was a female Dendon. Her skin was ebony and her large eyes were silver, the pupils just pinpricks at the center. Long, cream-colored hair cascaded over her shoulders. She wore a thin, white robe that left nothing to the imagination.
She had a tablet in her hands, her head bent over it.
Then she lifted her head. Turn my way. A smile lit up her face.
A golden disk sat on her chest, below the hollow of her throat.
She opened her mouth to speak…
The vision disappeared. Just as suddenly as it had come.
“Chris?” Liz said.
I shook my head. “This was definitely the king’s bedroom. I just got a flashback of the king’s bodyguard sitting right where you are.
Liz bolted up. Gave the bed a look. A shudder rippled over her armor.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Just as we turned to go, T&T appeared in the doorway. Through the visor on his environmental suit, I saw a wicked grin on his face.
“Come check this shit out,” he said.
Now what?
He led us back to the office area. Over to the desk.
The desk was a slab of some gray material that might have been stone. It had rounded corners and e
dges. Apparently the king didn’t like getting his legs poked when he went to sit down. An office chair sat behind it. It looked like it might have had some sort of covering on it at one time, but it was bare metal now. Had the Don makers destroyed cloth as well as people?
T&T went around behind the desk and plopped his space-suited butt down on the chair. The desk and chair were way oversized for humans. Especially him, since he was a little on the short side.
“Check this out,” he said.
He ran his hand over the surface of the desk.
I noticed for the first time that there wasn’t any dust on it. That there wasn’t any dust anywhere in the king’s rooms. The place had been well sealed.
But my thoughts about dust quickly went away when I saw what happened to the desk.
Images came to life over it. Hovering in mid-air. It was a three-dimensional image of the city itself. For a few seconds, it was sharp and clear. Then it flickered and fuzzed.
T&T put his fingers into the image and it stabilized and sharpened. The colors brightened. Patches of vibrant green appeared between and on top of the buildings. Gardens and parks. All the buildings looked bright and clean.
My chest tightened with emotion. Mine and the Dendon’s. The city was beautiful. And alive. Shiny and sleek cars buzzed through the air. Tiny people moved on the streets and in the gardens and parks.
Behind me, Liz sucked in a sharp breath.
The Dendon had given me glimpses of the city before. But not like this. Not when the city had been vibrantly alive.
T&T twisted his fingers and the image zoomed in on a single building. The slender tower of the King's seat in the capital circle.
He twisted his fingers again and the image slowly rotated, moving up from the base of the building. I caught glimpses through the window of slender, ebony-skinned Dendons. Going about the everyday business of keeping a government going.
Not exactly exciting stuff.
But as the image ascended to the upper levels, the windows became opaque. No activity could be seen behind the windows.
Okay, no surprise there. The king and his top circle of advisors wanted some privacy as they conducted high-level business.
The image stopped at the rounded top of the building where the great hall was. The image flickered and fuzzed. It started to dim. T&T twisted his fingers in the image. It steadied and brightened. Then it slowly rotated. Moved down a level to what must have been the floor we were at now.
Windows, windows. More windows.
Then no windows. A large, smooth section with no windows at all. Glowing red lines appeared, superimposed over the image. The lines turned into triangles as the image rotated. Until they met a set of opposite pointing triangles.
T&T stopped the image. The triangles slowly brightened and dimmed over the section of blank wall. He looked up at us and grinned.
“What do you think?” He said.
Liz said it first.
“I think there’s a hanger on this floor,” she said, “And if there’s a hanger…maybe there’s a ship.”
And maybe a way off this dead world if our ship was dead.
Twelve
Chris
We explored a little further, but T&T’s air supply was running low. We returned to the stinky, rancid smelling ship for the night. Liz and I sat at the narrow table in the ship’s tiny galley and had dinner. Well, she had dinner, while I scarfed a box of rations. I’d asked for a variety, but some wit had slipped in a whole bunch of instant-heat cheeseburgers. Calling those dry, yet somehow doughy things cheeseburgers was an insult to cheeseburgers everywhere, but at the moment it was fuel.
Having the energy shield around me for hours on end drained me like I’d run several marathons in a day. By the time we got back to the ship, I was shaking with hunger. Before Liz could retract her armor and slip into a robe, I was in the galley, grabbing the foil burger packs and pulling the tab to heat them.
I downed three of them before she walked in.
As we sat at the table, I pulled the tabs on a dozen more, drumming my fingers on the table as they heated. Liz had found some instant heat lasagna and was picking at it.
“I miss real food,” she said.
“No kidding,” I said, “I wish I had some Guydoros burgers right now instead of this junk.”
“This place creeps me out.”
I stuffed another burger in my mouth and sent it hurtling down to the furnace of my gut. I nodded to her.
"Me too," I said, "It feels like the place is full of ghosts."
“Murdered ghosts,” she said, “An entire planet. Murdered. What kind of monsters do that?”
“The same kind of monsters that show up in every war,” I said, “Monsters who think the end justifies the means.”
“Just business, right?”
I squeezed the next burger pack so hard it nearly squirted out of the bag. Okay, so I hated that phrase with a passion. It’s not personal, it’s just business.
That was said by people who didn’t give a crap about hurting other people to get what they wanted. The ends justify the means.
So it was okay to kill an entire planet full of innocent beings just to get some hardware. To keep a potential enemy from getting in your way.
No. It wasn’t okay. Hurting people for fun and profit is never okay. Withholding help from people because they aren’t worthy in your eyes is not okay.
Liz put a hand on my arm. “Sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t do that.”
She gave me a mischievous smile. A look that said she’d make it up to me later. But she was also trying to get me to focus.
Focus on the real reason we were here.
Mattany and his bosses wanted us to find weapons. Weapons they could use to threaten the other races of SixUnion. It was the old argument of having overwhelming force to keep your enemy from attacking.
Yeah, how’d that work out for all those dust piles that used to be people here on Dendon?
An enemy who truly wants you gone will figure out a way.
Which meant the Don would find a way to wipe out Earth if they felt we were a big enough threat. Right now we were just some stupid jerkwater planet with some crappy ships and popguns. We weren’t a threat to their existence.
If we found some nifty military toys here on dead Dendon, then…
One part of the real reason I’d agreed on this mission to Dendon was to keep everyone from gaining access to whatever Dendon might have left. The Dendon people were the most technologically advanced race in the galaxy at the time. The oldest race of the seven that made up the union of alien races.
But they weren't the most warlike. Quite the opposite. They were as morally advanced as they were technologically advanced. At one point in their early existence, they had been brutally warlike. But they had found their way out that. They had figured out how to live in peace and harmony not only with themselves, but with the other races of the union.
At least until the Don decided to destroy them.
That was the other part of why I came to Dendon. I wanted to figure out how they managed to build a peaceful society that valued all members of society. Not just the upper classes.
To them, the transactions that made up society weren’t just business.
Everything was personal to them.
And everyone was treated with dignity and respect.
What I wanted to know was if that was real, or if it was just a veneer that had been pasted on the surface for show.
And if it was real…how could I harness it and spread it out to the other races? Without losing that warrior’s edge that protected us from outside threats.
It was the age-old question of how to be peaceful, but not weak.
Though, at the moment, my main concern was figuring out a way to get off the planet.
“I took a look at the engines before we headed out this morning,” Liz said, “One of them is totally fried. The other isn’t looking so good. It’s packed full of sand and dust.
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I nodded. I’d been doing some diagnostics in my spare time, too. I hadn’t wanted to bring it up, since we were already having such a lovely time here.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure this ship isn’t getting off the ground,” I said, “If it wasn’t for the power feed from the L-drive, we wouldn’t even have heat or air.”
Liz frowned down at her rehydrated lasagna. Stabbed a rubbery piece with her fork.
“How long do we have?” she said.
An excellent question. One, unfortunately, I had the answer to.
“The L-drive can go for centuries, probably,” I said, “And we have food for about a year. Assuming I don’t plow through all the rations by tomorrow. Water we can recycle for about six months. Maybe longer. Air…maybe indefinitely, maybe a few weeks. There’s enough oxygen left in the atmosphere the converter can manufacture air. As long as it keeps functioning. The filters will need to be replaced, but I think we can clean the backups and keep things going.”
Liz gave me one of her patented raised eyebrow looks.
“You’re not giving a warm fuzzy here,” she said, “Maybe I should go get help.”
I shook my head. Her armor was like a mini spaceship. But it had limitations, too.
“Your suit doesn’t have an L-drive,” I said, “And it’s months to the nearest outpost. Which happens to be Don controlled territory. Not exactly our best option.”
Liz stabbed the fake lasagna with her fork. Pushed it away from her. I almost protested that we couldn’t afford to waste food. But that wasn’t an argument worth having. Food was the least of our worries at the moment.
“So what’s the plan, chief?” She said.
I sighed and rubbed my hands down my face. “For now, keep searching. There’s got to be something here. Either a ship, or something we can use to fix this franken-ship.”
“And if there isn’t?”
I shrugged. Gave her a smile. “Something always comes up,” I said, “Stay positive. Good things will happen.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Not before a lot of bad things happen,” she said.
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