by Sam Coulson
“Perfect,” Growd said as he took a flashlight from his belt in his left hand and a laser pistol in his right. “Let’s go.”
Growd and Piter went first, running quickly over the first eight meters of recently melted and still-cooling stone. Once they were on the other side, he signaled me across. I went, with my two guards close behind. The stones were still hot. By the time I reached the other side the hard rubber on the sole of my shoes was soft and malleable.
As we crossed into the deeper cavern it was clear that this was the place. The walls had been cleanly carved through the bedrock and there were shapes carved along the wall.
“See now, look at that,” Growd, Piter, and the guards shone their flashlights over the image. It took up the entire wall from top to bottom.
The carving was an incredibly detailed relief of a battle near a ringed planet. There were ships of all sizes, fighting, exploding, or broken and drifting. As I leaned forward I could make out the tiny shapes of bodies floating out in space near one of the damaged ships. From my human perspective, the bodies looked ill-proportioned, with shorter torsos and elongated arms.
“I wonder how long ago the battle took place. Asymmetrical designs, heavy weaponry. I’ve never seen ships like these, but they are all same style,” Piter said breathlessly. “This isn’t a war between civilizations.”
“A civil war,” Growd commented and took a few steps down the tunnel, moving his flashlight to the other side of the wall. “Here is a damaged fleet passing through two sides of a flux point. Survivors.”
“Or refugees,” I said.
“A history,” Piter answered as she pulled out a scanner from her pocket and snapped a few pictures. “They carved their entire history on the cavern walls.”
Growd turned his light to shine deeper down the corridor. Both sides and the ceiling were all covered in etchings as far as we could see.
“Look here,” Piter leaned close, studying the small shape of a body floating out in space. “Look at the shape, the truncated torso. The extra joint there on the legs. They don’t look like any humans we’ve encountered.
“Are you saying these could be the Sowers?” Growd paused, narrowing his eyes.
“Sowers?” I asked.
“The Sowers of Life,” Piter sighed as she looked over at me. “Damn schools aren’t teaching you kids anything? Every known alien race we’ve encountered shares the human genome. Celestrials, Lasterian, Noonan, Earthborn, even Draugari, we’re all cousins. The human genome didn’t randomly evolve on a half dozen worlds. A few million years ago someone, or something, scattered the seeds of humanity across this corner of the universe. Scientists search for them, and some people worship them.”
“We’re not here for a history lesson,” Growd snapped. “Could it be them?”
“It’s unlikely,” Piter said as she ran her hand over the carvings. “Most scientists believe they would have been humans themselves. Sowing their own seeds. These people, they don’t look human at all. This could be proof that non-human intelligence can evolve on its own. Proof that humanity isn’t the only thing out there. It’s groundbreaking. It’s Incredible.”
“It’s not what we came for,” Growd said. “We don’t have time for this. Get moving. Piter, you and your historians can have their turn at all of this once we’re done. We’re here for the prize.”
Grudgingly, Piter pulled her hand away and followed Growd.
As Growd and Piter walked forward at a brisk pace, I found that I couldn’t take my eyes off the tiny etchings of the bodies drifting in space. I blinked my eyes and tried to recall the strange faces from my memories, grey skin, purple eyes, short torsos, long legs and arms. I worked to build the image in my mind of what they-what I-had once looked like.
One of the guards jabbed his rifle into my back, pushing me forward.
“Look bud, we don’t have time to stand around gawking,” the guard growled. “This place is creepy enough, let’s get moving so we can get the hell out of here.”
“I'm with you there Dex,” the other guard muttered as he turned his flashlight away from the etching. The carvings disappeared into the shadows. “Get moving kid,”
So, with a gun at my back, I walked through the halls that my ancestors carved. As we descended into the cavern, my eyes rarely strayed from the etchings on the walls. Though it was clear that Dex wanted to get in and out of here as quickly as possible, the other guard, who was called Lars, was curious. As we passed his flashlight would linger on some of the etchings, giving me a precious few seconds to study the stories that they told.
Many of them were pictures of star systems. Etchings of stars, planets, and moons were easy to recognize, as were asteroids, gas clouds, and comets. All of the star systems included at least two additional hexagonal shapes, but sometimes as many as nine. The interior of every hexagon was intricately carved with a series of twisting and turning lines. Maps to and through the flux points. The cave showed the locations of all the flux points they found, and the path they took. As we passed another I looked closely at the interior designs of one of the symbols. The twists and turns from one to another were unique, but the styles were different.
The first etchings had been the home world of the Thar’esh. The hallway was a vast catalog of their journey across the cosmos. System after system, flux after flux.
Maps to distant worlds, the entire collected astrological knowledge of an ancient civilization was scratched onto the walls was there; but Growd walked on, his pace quickening as we continued walking into the darkness.
“We’re almost there,” Growd’s voice echoed down the corridor. Not far ahead of us, the walls opened away into a vast darkness.
“I’ve lost contact with the surface,” Piter said, her voice sounded nervous.
“Of course you did,” Growd responded happily. “We’re too deep. The terraforming wouldn’t have affected anything this far underground. Whatever they buried down here is intact.”
Piter’s flashlight lingered on another image, fragments of a star, broken ships. Vasudeva. I blinked and tried to strain my vision to peer into the darkness for a better look, but all of the flashlights were aimed forward into the vast darkness ahead as we neared the end of the passage.
Chapter 33.
“They are nothing but children,” Tren argued. “I carried that one with one hand. They’re just boney sacks of meat. There wasn’t even any fight to them, they came to us as if they were seeking slaughter.”
“Pathetic,” Jen’tek agreed as he closed the cargo bay doors.
I looked down at the two shapes that Tren and Jen’tek had dropped onto the hull plating of the cargo deck. They did look weak. Their skin was soft and thin.
“Bind their hands and feet,” I ordered.
“You can’t be serious?” Tren laughed. “What are you afraid of? That the little starving dwellers will sneak up and eat all of the rations?”
“Maybe,” I answered. “Just do it.”
“I will,” Tren answered. “Cornered and frightened prey is dangerous. We should take no chances.”
“Then we should slit their throats now and be done with it,” Jen’tek countered, but as he said it he handed Tren a spool of loose cargo strapping to bound their hands.
Engines fired and the ship tilted upward as we lifted back off the surface.
“Make it quick,” I said as I turned to climb back up to the main deck. “And lock the hatches behind you. We still have the ships to deal with.”
I stopped beside Growd and Piter where they stood on the edge of the chamber. The air was thick and humid, creating a curtain of misty darkness that the flashlights struggled to penetrate. Around the edges of the room there were square and squat shapes in the shadows, and one, large, hulking mass in the center. As Growd waved his flashlight across the room, I saw dim bluish flecks of light in the darkness. The flickers were too faint and sporadic to be reflections, and only lasted a second or two before disappearing. They were fleeting enough that I
wasn’t even certain I had seen them before they faded.
“What is that, there in the middle,” Growd grunted greedily. “It’s here. Piter, lights?”
“Right,” Piter responded. She pulled the backpack off of her shoulders and rummaged through the various pieces of equipment until she pulled out five small round balls. I recognized them as the same lights that Ju-lin had used when we first saw the markings on the wall.
Piter activated the first orb and threw it out into the center of the room. Before the first orb stopped she threw two more, one to the left, and another to the right. After about ten seconds, they began to burn brightly, illuminating the chamber.
I squinted as my eyes struggled to adjust to the flood of light. The chamber was far larger than I had expected. It was shaped like a hexagon similar to those I had seen carved on the walls, with steep walls and a rounded dome-shaped roof. The vast ceiling was covered in more carvings: images of stars, planets, jump gates; except instead of being arranged as sequentially to show their journey as the hallway had been, the carvings were integrated into a whole: it was a sprawling map of the universe.
“My stars,” Piter said breathlessly. “Look at the map. There are flux points we don’t know, whole systems that we haven’t discovered.”
“That’s not a ship. It’s stone.” Growd blustered as he crossed the floor, focusing on the large stone in the center of the chamber. “What the hell is it? An altar? There’s nothing here.”
“That’s not nothing,” Piter said, still studying the map on the ceiling. “Don’t you see? This is a star map, a guide to new worlds we haven’t yet seen!”
“A star map,” Growd snorted. “Goodie. We have plenty of worlds already. We already have a two-hundred year corporate colonization and mining plan. Hell, we’ve even secured most of the mining rights. We can only breed so fast. More worlds just means more opportunities for our competitors. We don’t need more planets, what we need is technology. Stop fiddling with that, we have a fleet closing in on us as we speak. What we need is a weapon.”
“But the maps could lead us back to their home world,” Piter insisted. “Think of what lies there?”
“You’re daydreaming,” Growd grumbled. “Even if you could follow the scratches on the wall and find it, why do you think they left it in the first place? These aliens had the ability to obliterate stars. You saw those first etchings of their civil war. The world was scarred from war. Do you honestly believe there would be anything left of their home world? Besides, decoding their maps and backtracking that journey would take years. We would be fending off competing corporate agents for years, and the Celestrials would be floating behind us at every turn.”
Piter sighed quietly and resigned herself to silence.
“The question is what is this,” Growd looked back at Piter, pointing at the large stone formation in the center of the room. “And what are those little sparkly jars sitting on that center stone? Remains? They have to have some archeological significance. The big white stone doesn’t look like it belongs. Does it open? There has to be something here, plans, schematics. Another chamber? Scan the area, see if there is anything hidden.”
I lowered my eyes from the engravings on the ceiling to watch as Piter walked forward, taking out her sonic resonator as she approached the stone formation in the center of the room. Growd was right about one thing, compared to the clean, square lines of the passageway and the precise angles of the hexagonal room, the center-stone looked out of place.
The center stone shone pure white. It was so bright that it was hard to believe that it could ever be fully consumed by shadows in the dark. It was Tevarite.. Bladestones, as Lor’ten knew them. But unlike the others. Those had all been sheer and straight, the center-stone had an organic and twisting form. It reached about three meter’s high, halfway to the ceiling. It had smooth, rounded edges that created shadowed alcoves on all sides. I couldn’t tell if it was a naturally occurring formation, or if it had been shaped. But if it had somehow been carved or sculpted, I couldn’t see any symmetry to the shape.
Formed or not, there was purpose to the stone. In each of the dozens of alcoves housed small objects ranging from ten to twenty centimeters high. These were the flickering lights I had seen when we first entered the chamber.
“Any theories?” Growd asked as he casually reached out and picked one of them up and held it up against the light. Like the center stone, its shape was organic and random with soft, rounded edges. “If it’s a container or something I don’t see a lid, whatever is inside is moving around.”
Piter and I walked up and either side of Growd for a closer look. The object looked like it was made of glass. The substance inside had a faint blue-green tint, and scattered throughout were shimmering flecks of light.
“They absorb the ambient light,” Piter observed. “That was what caused the residual shimmering before. This must be some sort of ritual room. I wonder if these are biological remains. Maybe genetic time capsules? Or maybe they are biological, something to do with their breeding?”
“Biological?” Growd crinkled his nose as he handed the object to Piter dismissively as he turned to the two guards. “You two, check the perimeter, see if there is anything else in here that looks out of place.”
“Out of place,” I heard Lars mutter under his breath. “The damned place feels like a tomb. We’re the ones who are out of place.”
Dex grunted in agreement as they broke off and began to walk around the edge of the chamber.
“Piter, quit playing around with that, jar, thing, whatever it is. You can have it for your museum or whatever it is you do with things when we’re done. For now, get out the sonic resonator and help me find out what else is down here.”
“Fine,” Piter responded as she confided with me an annoyed look.
Piter set down her pack again as Growd walked around the center stone and out of sight.
“It feels warm,” Piter said quietly as she shifted the object in her hand. “Come here, hold this. Growd is a damned fool, surrounded by priceless artifacts and a map of the universe well beyond what we’ve charted, and he’s obsessed with finding a weapon. I want to do a quick bio-scan to see if there is anything biological in these; it won’t take but a second.”
As I reached out my left hand and took it from her, my head swirled. My peripheral vision was immediately clouded with same star-flecked blue-green light that filled the object. I felt as with my body was being flooded by another’s essence, and I had to struggle to remain in my own mind. I was buried under images, sounds, scents, and feelings that came in brief and forceful waves.
I wasn’t myself. I huddled in the dark, pressed between other bodies and the cold steel of a bulkhead. I heard the sharp crack of an explosion in the distance, and felt, more than heard, it reverberate through the bulkhead that I was pressed against. The lights flickered just long enough for me to see the shapes of dozens of quivering bodies hunkered down, fearful in the dark. One small voice screamed and then there was quiet except for a chorus of tense, uneven breaths.
There were two more explosions, both in quick succession. Somewhere below us the steel creaked under the strain of battle.
The scene shifted. The ground under my feet was scorched and dry and the sky above was thick with smoke and haze. I was standing behind someone. His name was Kand. I don’t know how I knew. His legs and arms were long and his torso thin. His hair was dark brown and grew in thick strands like grass.
Kand turned. His skin was grey, and his eyes were purple with flecks of gold. His mouth was wide and he separated his thin lips as if to speak, but no words came. I found myself walking forward. I met his eyes and was overcome with a wave of sorrowful agony. We both collapsed to the ground in each other’s arms and wept.
“We must leave,” he said as his body shook with a sob.
I was standing on the bridge of a ship. Out the viewport I saw another vessel, long, angular, and unfamiliar.
“See now, after all w
e have seen and left behind: there is peace and goodness to be found, our new friends will give us a home.” I looked down to my left to see Kand was speaking, older now. He sat comfortably in the captain’s seat with a restful smile as he spoke to the image on the screen in front of us. It was a strange face with large, glossy-black eyes, scaled green skin, and a long snout. Words filled the bottom of the screen as the computer translated the alien’s speech. They were words of peace, friendship, and welcoming.
My cheek burned, it was wet with blood. I was running as explosions shook the ground beneath my feet. Dirt, I was on a planet. In my left hand I held a knife, and in my right I held the severed end of a chain. The other end was affixed to the clamp-like shackle around my neck. I ran between two thick trees with yellow-green bark and saw a wall ahead of me. Two of the green-skinned reptilian aliens. My mind called them Slavers. They walked along the top of the wall, armed and on patrol. I crouched my long legs and leapt.
The force of my weight on his back sent the first of the two tumbling forward, his head crushed against stone with a sickening thud, I turned to the other. As he drew his weapon, I swung the loose end of my chain and his gun clattered to the ground. I thrust with my left hand, my blade passed into him, delving deep.
“Slave scum!” the alien hissed as he bled warm over my hands.
His empty black eyes stared back at me as the last of his life left his body. I swam in his memories and knowledge as his Charon passed and searched for what I wanted. In seconds I found it. I knew where they were holding my people and where the weapons were kept. I withdrew my knife and kicked his body off the wall.
There was a distant thud and a soft wheeze of air as below as his body struck the ground and the last breath left his corpse.
Kand lay on a bed before me, his chest rattling as he exhaled his breath, “I was wrong to trust them. You were brave, and fierce, and acted with dignity and justice. Do not regret it.”