by Sam Coulson
“Whew,” Ju-lin pulled off her helmet and tossed it casually on a rack in the Tons’ main hold. “You good?”
“Yeah,” I pulled off my helmet, trying to sound much more relaxed than I felt. I sat down to hide my quivering legs. After being shot out of Cwaylyn’s fighter and repelling onto the bow of the Tons, scaling across the outside of the ship from the bow to the stern air-lock had more or less shot what was left of my nerves.
I pulled off the suit and tossed it into the corner. Aside from our breathing and the soft hum of the lights and the air scrubbers, the ship was silent.
“It’s eerie in here,” Ju-lin said as she stood in the middle of the empty hold.
“It’s quiet,” I stood up, rubbing my shoulder that had taken the brunt of our impact against the hull. I saw a cloud of my breath as I exhaled softly. “And it’s cold. Can we turn on the heat?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “Loid probably left her on standby mode with just critical power systems going. Let’s get to the cockpit.”
“I hope he’s alright,” I said as I followed Ju-lin across the empty hold.
“Well he did get us into that mess in the first place,” the harshness in her tone sounded forced. “Maybe he deserves to spend some time with his friend’s in the Collegiate.”
“I don’t think it was the Collegiate that got him,” I replied. “They couldn’t get past the pool of Jantar goop on the flight deck. I saw the guys who shot him, they were the same ones who were following us back at the Hub outside of Joof’s shop.”
“You’re sure?” Ju-lin turned around, her eyebrows raised.
“Pretty sure,” I said as we passed into the secondary hold. “One of them was Earthborn, well maybe from somewhere in the Collective, either way he had a beard so he wasn’t a Celestrial. I don’t get the impression that the Collegiate work closely with the other races.”
“Maybe they were hired?”
“Or maybe they work for MineWorks and were the ones who put the hit out on your life,” I suggested. “Who knows, maybe they were the ones who killed Joof too, to try to frame us for murder to get the Celestrials to lock us down and keep us quiet.”
“You’re full of theories today,” Ju-lin responded as she opened the hatch into the living quarters, I ducked through the doorway and followed her in.
“It was something that Alume said right before the Draugari, ’er I mean Loid, attacked the station. He sounded surprised that his pilots destroyed the cave. Maybe they didn’t, maybe it was—”
“It was nothing, really,” I jumped as I heard Loid’s voice behind me. “Nothing at all, don’t mention it.”
I spun around to see Loid’s torso hovering above the dining table.
“Clearly, something didn’t go as planned,” he continued. “If you are seeing this then for one reason or another, one or both of you made it off of that rock, but I didn’t.”
“A hologram,” Ju-lin’s voice was soft behind me. “He must have set it up to automatically trigger when we came through.”
“First, you should know that the Tons is on lockdown for another twelve hours,” the hologram continued. “Standard Celestrial protocol dictates that they will maintain a heightened security posture for 12 hours after a security breach. So, I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of hard-wiring the ship to keep you two locked down here for your own safety, so have a drink and get comfortable. Once the time is up you should be able to fire up and slip on out to the nearest flux point without a problem.
“Second, you should probably want to know why I went back for you in the first place. I didn’t know what the Matron had planned. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I’ve never known her to make a move like that. She would only do it if there was a gun to her head. Whoever these Collegiate guys are, they’re powerful and have a long reach. She must have felt as if she hadn’t had a choice. I’m going to guess that, because at least one of you was here to trigger this message, they didn’t kill you. So that’s the good news. The bad news is that if the Matron was scared of these bastards, they are more than capable of some serious violence, which brings me to my next point-”
Loid stepped out of view, the empty air above the table crackled. A moment later he reappeared.
“Eli, you did a pretty good job of stashing this thing on the ship, but, she’s my ship. I know every corner and crevice,” he held up the memory card from the survey scanner that we had used in the cave. “Really, I told you two you needed to stop keeping secrets from me. But, you never listened. Fair enough I suppose, I doubt I would have trusted me either in your shoes. However, you should have.”
He took the memory card and pushed it forward out of view, a moment later his image was replaced by the holographic image of the cave from the point of view of the camera I had setup. The scanner had done its job well, we were looking at a detailed three dimensional digital mockup of the entire cave.
“You see here,” Loid’s voice continued as the view zoomed in on the two symbols on the wall. “These are your mystery aren’t they? These are what your friends at MineWorks saw and what you two went to investigate in the first place, right?”
He paused long enough that both Ju-lin and I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
“Well I have news for ya kiddies,” Loid said. “This isn’t some cryptic code or ancient language. These things aren’t a big mystery at all. Any border pilot who has done a bit of smuggling will be able to read them. Yours truly included. See, I told you that you should have trusted me.”
The image faded, and Loid’s torso reappeared.
“It’s a star map,” he continued. “In the old days traders used diagrams like this to identify the locations of flux points within a system. See, watch this.”
His image faded again, replaced with two floating circles with symbols along the outside edge.
“The two rings combine at a ninety degree angle, like so, and then they would match up the symbols like this, so that the marker is aligned with the first orbiting planet. From there, this symbol means there is a flux point out that direction, this other symbol here, on the edge, indicates the distance from the sun.”
As we watched, the two shapes fit together and three bright points of light appeared in mid-air, scattered away from the central star.
“So it’s a navigational chart,” Ju-lin whispered.
“But wait a minute,” I said. “Those aren’t our symbols. The rings he just showed us had symbols along the outside edge of the circle, but the ones in the cave were all inside the circles.”
“Now here is where it gets interesting,” Loid’s face reappeared once again. “If you were paying attention at home, you noticed a subtle difference between the traditional nav rings, and yours, namely that the symbols you found were inverted into the ring. That’s because your maps don’t show the way to a flux point out in space, they point the way to something else, something on the planet itself. Take a look.”
The holographic screen shifted back to the image from the cave and the symbols on the wall. As we watched, the symbols separated from the wall, and slid together as the others had in the simulation that Loid had just played, except this time, instead of highlighting distant points in space, a bright point appeared at the surface of the planet near the northern pole.
“See there? Your symbols were a map pointing to internal coordinates. Pretty smooth actually. Too bad you two didn’t come to me with that in the first place, could have saved us all quite a trip and probably saved me from whatever happened to me back on that station. Not that you should feel guilty.”
“Hell,” I sighed.
“Oh, and there is one more thing,” the view shifted back toward the entrance to the cave. “You said something about the cave getting blown up, so I took a look, see that there, that blur, that’s your bomb. Now, if we enhance it like this, yeah, there. No more blur. A nice scanner you guys used there. See, now we can see that the little guy is a pretty nifty plasma drone. Now, zoom closer here
with me—”
We leaned forward as the image zoomed in toward the drone, filling up almost the entire display. The focus adjusted until we could make out the finest details and scratches on the stainless steel surface.
I peered at the small nameplate that was bolted onto the side of the drone: Mark II Strip-mining Plasma Drone, MineWorks Ltd.
“No way,” Ju-lin gasped.
“Hell,” I repeated.
“It looks like some of your friendly neighbors weren’t that friendly,” Loid broke in again. “It wasn’t the Celestrials, or even the Draugari who melted down the cave and almost killed you two.”
“But why?” Ju-lin asked.
We both stumbled backwards as Loid’s face reappeared.
“Why is the question,” Loid said as if responding to Ju-lin. “The MineWorks goons who blew it up must have some clue of what the symbols meant, or at least that there was something of value that they didn’t want the Celestrials to get ahold of. Why else would they use the drone to destroy the cave rather than, I don’t know, use it to defend the colony? What I do know is that there is something back on your little world that MineWorks, the Collegiate, and maybe even the Draugari will kill for. Now there’s a sober thought. Especially since I’m guessing they already killed me for it and I don’t even know what it is. Ain’t that a pisser?
“Anyway, well now you two kids are stuck here for a bit,” Loid’s tone sobered as he continued. “I know Twiggy is probably already clawing at the hull to get moving, but seriously, take this time to think through what you’re doing. You’re young. You have a ship. A fine ship at that. Don’t think that your only option is to run back over to your little world and get yourselves killed. I’ve seen a lot of worlds, and I haven’t found a single one I wanted to die on. So run in, get your family, and get out.”
His image moved out of range of the projector.
“Oh, and one more thing,” his head popped back into view, large enough that I was sure his head must have been inches from the camera. “Just in case I’m not dead, you keep this ship safe. I’ll be back for her.”
There was a flash of light and the projector went dark.
We were silent for several breaths, listening to the soft hum of the lights.
“At least the Collegiate doesn’t know that whatever it is, it’s on the planet,” Ju-lin broke the silence. “I mean, MineWorks may know, and Growd may have a scan of it, but he never sent out the images in the drones. At least that means dad, Marin, and the colonists are safe. Hopefully the Collegiate think that the cave is destroyed and there is nothing left to worry about.”
“They know,” I said slowly, my stomach churned as my conversation with Alume replayed in my head. “I told Alume about the circles. He asked about the symbols, if they were inside or outside the circle. I told him.”
“What?” Ju-lin’s face was white.
I slid into a chair, my arms and legs felt numb.
“I thought if I told him a little I could learn what they were after,” I breathed slowly. “I thought I was being clever, but I gave him everything. He knew that the symbols were a map, and now he knows that it pointed to a location on the planet itself. And he knows about the plasma drone. I thought that the Celestrials had fired it. When I mentioned it he sent a message immediately. He knew his pilots didn’t fire it, he must have known as soon as I said it.”
“If he knows there is something hidden on the planet, he will move to either retrieve it or destroy it,” Ju-lin said, the tenor of her voice was flat. “What it is doesn’t matter. He’s bombed the colony once, he may do it again.”
“He will do it again,” I said quietly. “And because of the drone, he knows that MineWorks may be there to defend it. He’s going to go in with force.”
“How do you know?” Ju-lin became animated again. “Maybe it’s some artifact or something. Now that he knows it’s on the world he may just go look for it, retrieve it, and leave.”
“That’s not his plan,” I said. “He said so. Whatever is on that world, he doesn’t want to see it retrieved or saved. He wants to see it burn.”
“They’re historians,” Ju-lin countered. “That can’t be right. They wouldn’t just destroy something like that.”
“They would if they know it’s the last remnant of the Thar’esh.”
“Thar’esh?” She echoed. “Now you’re worried about Loid’s boogie-man? You’re not making any sense.”
“I am Thar’esh,” the words slipped through my lips uneasily. The thought had been racing relentlessly through my mind, I finally turned to face it. “Or at least I think that’s what I was. Vasudeva, the four-pointed star, the Collegiate use it as their symbol because the Thar’esh destroyed the entire system. The Collegiate are sworn to take vengeance and destroy any surviving memory of the Thar’esh.”
“You are Thar’esh?” She asked, not believing. “That’s a stupid thing to say. It isn’t possible. Your world didn’t have any tech. None. That’s why the terraformers didn’t know the world was inhabited. We talked about it all before. Your memories are about farming, no starships, no electronics, nothing. How could those people who hadn’t even mastered metalworking have been the same race that the Celestrials have nightmares about, and once destroyed an entire star system? The Thar’esh are just stories. Nobody has that kind of technology. It’s all hokey. Fairy tales. How can you believe that? It’s absurd.”
“You may be right, but Alume believes it,” I responded. “That’s all that matters. He will act on it, he is acting on it. He will destroy everything.”
“What do you mean ‘destroy everything’?” Ju-lin said. “He clearly doesn’t know that you are, whatever it is you are. You’re the only one left, you’re safe. He will go, scan the world, see that it’s only inhabited by humans, and leave.”
“It’s not just that. The circles. The map. Even if he doesn’t know where it is, he knows there is something left on the planet. And maybe there is, maybe it’s a ship or a weapon,” I said. “Maybe that’s what MineWorks is after as well. You didn’t see how he was talking. Alume, the Collegiate; they don’t just want vengeance, they want to erase the last remnants of the Thar’esh from existence. He won’t just go scan the planet, I think he will—”
I didn’t finish the sentence.
“Dad,” Ju-lin said breathlessly as she turned and pushed her way into the cockpit.
Chapter 27
“Seven days of fluxes,” Jen’tak muttered as he sat across from me in the navigator’s seat.
We were resting comfortably in the cabin of the Carrack, looking out at the endless black of space. I sat in my gunnery seat, flipping through the long-range scans of the system.
“Seven days and nothing, nothing at all,” Jen’tak continued. “Are you sure this mission wasn’t a punishment? What did we do to deserve this?”
Kal grunted something from the pilot’s seat.
“What Kal?” Jen’tak leaned forward. “Bah, he’s asleep. We’re on a mission to nowhere to sit and watch nothing.”
I should wake Kal, I thought, but why bother? Jen’tak was right, there was nothing to see. I flipped through the ship’s internal diagnostics. The Slires were both docked securely, the pilots and Tren were taking their shift sleeping.
“How many more days of this?” Jen’tak asked. “Lor’ten?”
“In eleven days we will be relieved, but we stay until then,” I answered. “Our orders were clear. We wait.”
“Wait? Wait for what? We are warriors, it is not in our blood to wait.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blink of red on my display. I turned my head, squinting, there it was again. Now two, then three.
“The wait may be over, Jen’tak,” I answered as I activated the shipboard intercom. “Battle stations, three Celestrial fighters just entered the system.”
The wait for Loid’s 12-hour lockdown to expire passed with agonizing slowness. For the first two hours Ju-lin tried to override the controls and access the
engines, but Loid had done his job well, the ship wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually, she gave up and slipped back into the pilot’s seat to pour through the local system maps to plot out the fastest jump path back to the colony.
“We can do it in six jumps, but that will take us back through Shindar, not sure if that’s the best idea,” Ju-lin spoke quickly to herself. “There are some longer options that will avoid most of Celestrial space which would take 38 hours. Too long. What if we go back over through the Furies, we could run into a patrol that could stop us for an inspection, but then they would probably think we stole the ship. But then, Loid’s credentials seemed to work well enough, and it looks like he has a file here on what to transfer where to pay off the different Earthborn patrols, if we pay them off we should be able to slip past—”
Ju-lin continued for hours staring at the heads-up display and talking to herself as she plotted different paths. I could see the lines of concern on her face. She had already lost her mother, and now her father and brother were left sitting on the colony with no way to defend themselves from what we were certain was coming.
With Ju-lin focused on her task, I was left quietly to my own thoughts. Though I was afraid for the colony, and the faces I knew there, I was ashamed to find that my curiosity of what was hidden on the world outweighed my concern for the 8,000 human lives that hung in the balance. I found Loid’s simulation of the symbols from the cave on the ship’s computer and studied the coordinates. What could it be? I wracked my memories. I recalled being in caves with my teacher, for funerals, ceremonies. My first memories as a human were from a cave. The cave had saved my life. But in all of my memories the caves were empty. The walls were sheer. There were no alters, or books, or technology. The only images I could ever recall seeing on a cave wall were the symbols I saw with my human eyes.
Whatever was hidden, was hidden well. I didn’t know what it was.
“Get up,” Ju-lin smacked my cheek lightly, waking me up in my bunk. “We have five minutes.”