Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1)

by Sam Coulson

  She shifted her grip on the controls.

  “You really don’t like it here, do you?” I asked. “It seems nice. It’s pretty.”

  “Pretty. Yeah, sure,” she responded. “It’s something to look at, but there is nothing to do. We’re stuck alone out here. We’re half-dozen fluxes from the nearest trading lanes, almost a dozen from Nexus, probably twice that from Earth. Nothing ever happens. I want to be out there. I want to fly. I was about to join the fleet when Dad decided to sign us up to be gardeners out here. Not that I really want to join the fleet. Marin cares about all that, politics, citizenship, expanding the Protectorate. What a load of crap. All I want is to be free. Not land-locked on a world that doesn’t even have a paved landing port. The fleet was the only way Dad would have let me go, but now that he’s moved us out here that’s not going to happen.”

  I looked up at the clouds in the sky. A shadow of memory passed over me, I felt a longing to leave the world and see the stars. I heard an echo of my old teacher’s voice telling calmly saying the “skies are no longer for us.”

  “I guess I sound a bit mad,” she admitted.

  “No,” I answered, pulling myself out of my memories. “Not at all. You’ve seen the larger world beyond this place. I can’t imagine having to bottle myself up and not reach for the edges of the sky after having seen what you have.”

  “Maybe you’ve got a bit of a poet in there somewhere?” Her thin lips curled into an amused half-smile. “Anyhow, at least this is something. A mysterious cave, sneaking around at night, it’s the first interesting thing to happen since we landed on this rock. It’ll probably be nothing. I’ll bet it’s some old fish fossils in the stone or something. But at least it gets us out of the colony for a bit.”

  “And gives you a chance to drive?” I smiled.

  “There is that,” she slammed the throttle down, once again pressing me into my seat.

  Our route took us in a broad loop around the other colonies, to bring us in on the far side of New Haven. As we traveled, I saw that Ju-lin had been right about the terraforming. Though it was late spring and we’d had a good amount of rain, everywhere I looked there were brown and dying trees. There was evidence of mudslides on the steeper hills. What had been a lush paradise just months before was beginning to look like a land cursed by drought and blight.

  Our destination was on the edge of a stand of aspen trees. Tucked away in a small valley, the aspens were tall and healthy. They quaked softly from side to side as their leaves clattered in the evening breeze. We sat on the hover and ate our dinner of dehydrated vegetables and dried meat. It was standard fare. It would still be a few weeks before we had the first harvest of vegetables from the fields.

  “The locator puts us about six kilometers out,” Ju-lin commented, looking down at her handheld. “From the SatMaps it looks like a bit of an uphill climb, so we shouldn’t waste too much time. I have some night-vision gear for the trip back, but I’d rather get up there before it gets dark so we can scope the place out and make sure nobody is there.”

  “I think I’m ready,” I packed up what was left of my dinner and stood up.

  “Have the scanner?”

  “Yeah,” I answered as I hefted the pack onto my back, I had to fight to keep my balance under its weight. “And the field scope, first aid kit, spare rations, water, and about two dozen gadgets I’ve never seen before.”

  She smiled sweetly and stepped behind me to reach into a side pocket of the backpack and pulled out a smooth device.

  “Like that one, what is it?” I asked.

  “This,” She held up a small cylinder, “is a modified plasma torch.” Like most of the tools, it was made of high-grade ceramics, about ten centimeters long. She pointed it at me. The end had a steel firing bore about the width of my thumb, and in front of the bore was a silver pin. She flipped her thumb and a yellow cartridge dropped out from the handle into her other hand. “The cartridge has a chemical cocktail that gets shot out the end. The little pin on the end sparks it up. It’s designed for metalworking and welding, but I decided to have some fun, so I super-pressurized this one. Instead of a small, controlled stream, this one spits out one big wad of superheated plasma.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Oh don’t look at me like that,” she jammed the cartridge back in the torch and slipped it in her belt. “A girl has to make her own fun around here. I brought it on the off chance we run into trouble, not that it’s likely. I can’t imagine they have someone guarding cave paintings in the middle of nowhere, and as far as I know MineWorks didn’t introduce any predators onto the world larger than a tree-fox.”

  “What’s a tree-fox?” I asked.

  “Oh lord,” she sighed and gestured to the west. “Let’s talk and walk.”

  Chapter 9.

  “When we came to this world, we became part of it.” An elder was speaking, standing above four still bodies, covered in shrouds. I sat on a stone floor. “We learned to build with fallen trees, we plant and gather rather than hunt, and so we return to the world, part of it—”

  It was a eulogy.

  “But why?” It was another voice somewhere in the darkness, filled with undefined passion.

  “Why?” The elder stopped.

  “Why do we live like this? They tell us that the ancient teachers keep Charons of the old times, memories of tools and technologies. They tell of technologies that could help us control the floods and the storms, to bring water in drought. Things that could have saved-” The voice broke off in a low and sorrowful wail.

  “Why indeed,” the elder spoke. “There is no evil in an honest end. These four souls lived on top of the dust and under the sun, and their Charons passed into the sky in peace. Anything that you wield as a tool may just as easily bring harm as it will help. Your desire to control the things you do not understand is noble, but ill placed. Seek to control your own body and mind. That is the way to answer the pains you feel.”

  Several others in the darkness tapped their fingers in approval.

  We reached the top of the ridge to the east of the cave just as the sun began to slip behind the mountains in the west. I found that, despite the difficulty of navigating the overgrown and difficult path, I enjoyed the rugged contrast of the mountains. On the rocky crags we were able to look out over the hills in all directions, the air was sharp and fragrant. It felt good to be away from the same familiar peaks, and the ghosts of my memories that haunted me in the Downs. All the while, Ju-lin talked and answered my questions. She told me about the Earth, where humanity had begun. Though she had never been there, she tried to recall all she knew. As we walked she pointed out which of the trees and plants around us were adapted from ancient samples from humanity’s native Earth.

  “I’d like to see it someday,” I said.

  “Even if you have the chance,” she responded. “It’s not like the stories. Not anymore. My father was born there and refuses to go back. He says it’s a used-up rock. Cities have been built upon cities. The current residents live within the bones of civilizations that have long since passed. Though they have worked to clean it, the air’s still close to poison and the skies are dark from millennia of waste and soot.”

  “Still,” I said, imagining the ancient history of the world. “I would like to see it.”

  “Shh,” suddenly, Ju-lin pulled me down next to her, and dropped her voice to a whisper. “If this thing is right, then the site is about forty meters ahead, somewhere in those rocks. Keep low.”

  She gestured for me to hold still while she stepped behind me and reached into my backpack. As she rummaged through the pack, I looked where she was pointing, down the slope below to a group of rocky outcroppings. There was a broad clearing; in the center was a towering stand of chalk-white stones sticking up out of the ground like jagged teeth. The slope down to the rocks looked easy going, but it was open and exposed.

  Crouching beside me, she held up the digital monocular that she had retrieved from the backpack an
d studied the area.

  “No heat signatures, no signs of tech,” she said. “That’s good. But don’t trust it. Something could still be out there. The scanner won’t be able to pick up much with all that Tevarite.”

  “Tevarite?” I asked.

  “The white stones,” she responded. “It’s pretty uncommon, and puts off a low level, but inconsistent, electromagnetic field. It’s interesting, but from what I hear the field is so weak that it’s generally worthless. No real technological applications, it just sits around and messes with scanners.”

  “It’s quiet,” I commented uneasily.

  “That’s just because we’re up on this ridge,” she said dismissively. “You got used to hearing the trees rustling and the birds singing. Don’t get jumpy.”

  She was right, of course. For most of the hike we had been in the trees or undergrowth. I tried unsuccessfully to shrug off my uneasiness.

  “Well,” she slipped the monocular back in the backpack and pulled out two flashlights. “Let’s find this thing, take some pictures, and get the hell out of here.”

  She stood up, but then froze stiff.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  She cocked her head to the side listening a moment, then shrugged.

  “No, just-eh, yeah. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

  I stood up and caught up with her in a few strides. Her forced confidence didn’t make me feel any better, but I wasn’t about to be left behind.

  Dusk was settling in as we stepped into the shadow of the first stone. What had looked jagged and forbidding from a distance was downright terrifying up close. The rocks surged up from the ground at all angles. With dusk fully upon us, the shadows cast by the stones had a deep and abyssal darkness to them.

  “Ah hell,” Ju-lin said as she flipped on her flashlight. “I let your nerves get to me.”

  I turned my light on as well. The shadows began to twist and turn as we swung our lights from side to side. I wasn’t sure which was more frightening, the stillness of the dark or the shapeless and twisting shadows.

  “From the report, it sounded as if the cave entrance was in the middle here, under a large white stone,” Ju-lin was speaking louder than necessary.

  “Right,” I said as I followed her, slowly sweeping my light from left to right. In the shadows I thought I saw flashes of shapes: hooded forms walking slowly between the stones. But when I turned my light toward them, they were gone.

  “Well I give Growd some credit,” Ju-lin commented. “He may have found the creepiest place in this side of the galaxy. I wonder what they expected to find.”

  She reached out and slapped one of the stones as she passed.

  “Don’t touch the stones,” the words slipped through my lips before I knew they were coming.

  “What?” Ju-lin spun and flashed her light in my eyes. “Why not?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “I just mean that we don’t want to leave any traces that we were here. You never know what all they will scan for.”

  “Hm, right,” she lowered her flashlight for a moment and then swung it back up at my face, blinding me.

  “What gives?” I held up my hand to shield it.

  “Something about your voice,” she lowered her light again and turned back forward. “It was like you knew something about this place. Do you?”

  “No,” I thought I saw the glint of a pair of purplish eyes to my right, I flipped my flashlight to the spot. Nothing but a clean white stone. “Only that I want to get out of here.”

  “Well, I won’t disagree there,” Ju-lin responded. “Look, there, one of the Tevarite stones.”

  I followed her light. The stone was distinct, where the others were leaning at angles, the pure white stone stood perfectly straight up from the ground, towering eight to ten meters above us and was at least four meters across. As I looked up toward the pinnacle I saw the sky had changed, thick cloud cover was moving in. I followed Ju-lin as we circled the stone. On the far side we found the entrance to the cave nestled into its base. The entrance looked tall enough for us to walk into, but the path was steep.

  We paused and both took a deep breath. Ju-lin shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

  “Well, why not?” Ju-lin flashed a forced smile as she took a few steps into the cave and started lowering herself into the passage.

  For a moment, I was left alone at the mouth of the cave. I flipped off my light and looked up at the stars. The air was clear, and aside from a small breeze, the night was calm and still. There was something familiar about this place. I was certain of that. And the familiarity made me uneasy.

  “Get a move on Berry-boy,” Ju-lin jeered from below.

  I ended up sliding more than climbing into the cave. Looking back up, I saw that the entrance was steep, but scalable. The dirt was dry, and there were plenty of good handholds, so at least getting out wouldn’t be too much of a chore. I looked around. The cavern was broad, much larger than I had expected. It was about ten meters wide with plenty of room to stand. The path inside was obscured by the sloped surfaces of the stone.

  “Looks like those surface rocks go deep,” Ju-lin commented. “Still, as far as caves go, it could be worse. At least it’s dry. There are footprints here, leading deeper into the cave there. This is the spot.”

  “Looks like quite few of them,” I said noting several different shapes and sizes of prints on the dusty floor.

  “Still, it’s odd,” her voice was quiet. “It’s peaceful in here. I wouldn’t think that, especially how it was up there with those damned stones. Almost like a church.”

  “Or a crypt,” I responded.

  Ju-lin shook her head, “you know, Eli, I’m beginning to think you are trying to make this as creepy as possible. I mean really, I was fine until you started getting spooked by the stones, and now you’re afraid of ghosts. Hm, yeah, Eli.” She glanced at me. “That’s better than Elicio. Elicio sounds so formal. Maybe if you loosen up a bit we can get that nickname to stick. Everyone’s got a nickname back on the colony. The Governor, Missy-T, Jager, it’s like nobody even has a real name anymore.”

  “And ‘Ju-lin’ isn’t?” I was pretty sure she was talking just to fill the silence, but I didn’t see any harm in it. “I notice nobody gives you a nickname.”

  “Ju-lin is my nickname,” she responded.

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, my full name is Juliette Linnaea McCullough, and if you ever use it I will burn you down.”

  “Juliett-”

  She spun around, flashlight in one hand, and plasma torch in the other. “Burn. You. Down. Not another syllable!”

  “Not a word,” I couldn’t help but smile.

  “God, why did I even say anything?” She turned back forward and kept walking. “Clearly that you’re so damnably pitiful, you got me feeling bad for the village outcast. I’m such a sucker sometimes.”

  Or maybe you have more in common with the village outcast than you want to admit, I thought to myself.

  “Ho-now,” she jogged a few paces forward and stopped. “What do we have here? Oh hell, look at that. That’s no fossil. Growd may be onto something, look at those-”

  As I approached, she pulled a pair of thumb-sized bulbs out of her pockets. She twisted them both, as she did, the little orbs began to glow brightly. She tossed them both to the rocky ceiling above us, they stuck to the stone, casting light all around us and illuminating the cavern.

  With the lights I could see that the cave had opened up into a large room, the walls, for the most part, were the same dark stone as the rest of the cavern, but the far wall was sheer and white like the stones on the surface.

  “More Tevarite, but look at it, it’s flawless.” Ju-lin was right. Though the stones on the surface were cracked and worn, this one was as smooth and flat as steel with a clean shine on the surface. “There, see in the middle, that must be it. I’ve never seen writing like that.”

  I stood next to Ju-lin, looking at the sha
pes etched onto the center of the Tevarite. There were two of them about a meter apart. The core of each of the shapes was a perfect circle, with a series of bisecting lines and small twisted shapes throughout. There were common shapes between them, but they were individually distinct and I did not see a pattern. Where one had blank space, the other had a patchwork of jagged lines, where the first had two parallel lines that twisted like snakes, and the other had a rough patchwork of chaotic shapes.

  “Does it make any sense to you?” I had expected her tone to be teasing, but instead it seemed hopeful.

  “No,” I paused. “Maybe it’s not even writing. It’s hard to tell, but they look too intricate to be pictures of something, maybe it’s a diagram, or a schematic?”

  “A schematic of what?” she asked glibly. “Maybe a super weapon? Or maybe it’s instructions on how to bake a cake.”

  “Or maybe they are stories,” I said absently.

  “A story?” Ju-lin questioned, looking at the pictures. “I don’t see how you would get that. Unless each is somehow telling a scene-”

  “They are both different from the other, maybe the message somehow tied to what is missing between the two rather than what they have in common,” I offered.

  “Well,” she looked over to me thoughtfully. “I have no idea if you really know what you’re talking about, but at least that sounded clever.”

  “Thanks,” I paused. “I think.”

  “Let’s unpack this gear, get some scans of this place and get out of here. If we hurry we can be back at the Downs in time for breakfast.”

  I slipped the heavy pack from my shoulder and started to assemble the tripod while Ju-lin configured the scanning sensors. As Ju-lin had explained to me on the hike up, the sonic resonance scanner would do more than take pictures. By using a combination of ultrasonic waves, and full spectrum visual scanning the scanner is able to take and store a full holographic image of the area, including subsurface features, Lee had figured that we would have one chance at getting in, so he wanted us to capture as much data as we could.