by Sam Coulson
“I know stone like this,” the Draugari took it and turned it over in his hand. “I will carry them as symbols of honor.”
The memory was ripped from me as my body was pummeled to the ground, I gasped, trying to breathe as Dex’s knee pressed against my chest. It fit. My head spun with the revelation. It all fit together. As I struggled to regain my sense of self, I opened my eyes to see what was left of Taro’s Charon lying a few feet away, shattered. The memories gone forever. I heard faint voices rising up in the air as the whisper of his memories dissolved into nothing.
“What did you say?” Growd’s howling voice cut through the haze. I turned my head to see that, this time, he wasn’t looking at me.
“Sir, I said the escorts pulled off,” the copilot said breathlessly, still panting from the run down to the chamber. “They said the Draugari are defeated, and the Skins were approaching the planet, and that they were ordered to leave us here and return to defend the colony.”
“I didn’t order that!” Growd’s face was red with fury. “The fools have left us defenseless!”
“I reiterated your command,” the co-pilot responded. “They said that they took their orders from Commander Teigan, sir. And that Teigan called them back to defend the colonists.”
Growd’s face reddened even further.
“The escorts are gone?” Lars broke in. “The Skins will find us, we’ll be dust! We need to get out of here!”
“Don’t panic,” Growd snapped. “Piter, it looks like we will do it your way. All of you, empty your packs, grab as many of the artifacts as you can, we will take them back with us and get to a lab. Now!”
Piter didn’t need any more urging. She immediately turned her bag upside down, sending an assortment of electronic devices clattering to the ground. She took off her sweatshirt and began grabbing Charons, using the sweatshirt to securely pack them in.
“Dex, let him up and grab as many as you can carry,” Growd instruction as he drew his pistol and leveled it at me. “You. Keep your hands behind your head and start walking, you’re not touching a thing. I don’t know how you were able to do that, and I really don’t care. You may be unusual, but you cannot be the only one who can access those things. Someone, somewhere, or some piece of equipment will be able to read and decode the data, and I will find it.”
“Then why not kill me?”
“Leverage,” Growd sneered as he picked Filian’s Charon off the ground. “I may still need a gun to your head to get Lee and his bitch daughter to cooperate.”
“So he didn’t just abdicate his position as Governor to you after all?”
Growd scoffed in reply as he turned to the co-pilot, “Once we are onboard the shuttle, fill this cave with plasma drones. Wipe it off the face of the world.”
“Yes, sir.”
My heart sank.
Piter glanced over at me, and then reached down to retrieve her camera. She held it up, and snapped two more pictures. One of the great stone in the center of the chamber, and another at the ceiling. She slipped the camera into her pocket and gave me a curt nod before turning to leave.
With Growd’s gun to my back, we left the chamber and began walking back up the passage at an urgent pace. Piter and Dex were in front of me, I could see her backpack was bulging with Charons and she held two in each hand. Likewise, I saw Dex had several jammed into the pockets of his cargo-pants as he held two in his left hand, and the flashlight in his right. Behind me, I knew, Lars, the co-pilot, and Growd were all carrying more.
I eyed the Charons they carried. What else was locked away inside? They would be more than just stories, I knew. The technology would also be there somewhere, buried in the recesses of those minds. They would tell the story of how the Thar’esh knew the Draugari, they may even contain the knowledge of where the Draugari came from. All of their memories of dozens of lives were locked within those containers. Not just their memories, but all of the minds of those they killed, all of the minds and memories that that they took. The thought made me shiver. While in Filian’s Charon, I had seen into the mind of the slaver alien she had killed. Cold and reptilian. She had taken it all in a brief moment. All of his knowledge, his skills, his life and history, all of it was there.
It wasn’t just the knowledge of the Thar’esh: it was also the collected knowledge of every being they had come in contact with, every alien they had fought and killed.
Though Growd did not understand what he had, I knew that he was right: Though it may take years, MineWorks would find a way to access the memories and swim in the vastness of the knowledge. My teacher’s voice once again echoed in my head, and, finally I understood his lessons. Walking in my second life, with a gun to my head and surrounded by the last remaining whispers of a great and powerful race, I learned the lesson that the elders had tried to teach me in those weeks I’d spent lying as my leg mended and I was stuck watching my wife toil in the field: the Celestrials had brought us—them—the Thar’esh—to the brink of extinction at Vasudeva because the Thar’esh had stolen on the knowledge of others and taken the short path to power. They lived by fear, and taken power wherever they could. As a result, their unearned might had corrupted them, and others had paid the price. What had it cost? Tens of thousands of Thar’esh, and billions of Celestrials—gone in an instant.
I looked greedily at the Charons that the others were carrying, I thirsted for the knowledge, the truth, the history, the power. But as we neared the light at the end of the passage, I fought back my hunger. And as I did, I could feel my teacher’s presence next to me, and felt the strength of Lor’ten’s cold discipline. The Charons held the keys to power. Too much power. The knowledge had destroyed the Thar’esh, as surely it would destroy humanity. One cannot wield strength that one did not earn. The words echoed through my mind. Was that something my teacher had said? Or was it Lor’ten’s master? Did it make a difference?
I am not a schizophrenic collage of minds, I told myself. I am the sum of my parts. I am Thar’esh, I am Draugari, and I am human. The Charons contained centuries of knowledge, untapped technologies, and the keys to countless secrets lying hidden in the depth of the black. Though I wanted them, hungered for them, the memories were not mine to take. Likewise, they were not humanity’s to devour. Alume was right. Some books needed to be burned.
As I stepped back into the light and was ushered onto the shuttle with a laser pistol to my back, I knew what must be done.
Chapter 34.
“We should have stayed with the Slires instead of going down to grab those two surface rats!” Tren howled.
“The two fighters are coming in,” Kel called as he fired the thrusters.
“Gain altitude, get into orbit,” I ordered as I tracked the lead ship. “Our weapon guidance systems can’t compensate for the gravity.”
“You mean you can't!” Tren growled as he rerouted our shields to the rear to meet the coming assault.
“I see no sign of our Slires,” Jen’tek noted. “The Skins must have destroyed them.”
“I knew the chieftain should have given us more than inexperienced children as escorts,” I growled.
“Or maybe given us a leader with half a brain in his head!” Tren countered.
I would have to face his challenges this time. A leader does not allow such insolence. But first, we had to survive.
The ship shook as the Celestrials came into range. As they strafed around, I adjusted the missile guidance. We were high enough now for them to track, or so I hoped. I locked on and fired. The Skin saw it coming, engaged his engines, and dove into a spiral, using the planet’s gravitational pull to outrun the missile. Twenty, thirty seconds passed. The missile was closing, but not fast enough. I watched with clenched fists. I knew his plan: he would soon pull up and bank sharply, a maneuver that the missile could not duplicate. The warhead would fall uselessly to the surface.
Unless-
I entered the override code for the missile and waited. I waited until I saw him begin to bank up
ward. The instant he did, I self-destructed the missile. At range, the ordinance was not nearly powerful enough to damage the ship directly, but the shockwave had enough force to send the already diving fighter hopelessly into a tailspin toward the planet.
I watched, satisfied, as the Celestrial ship lost control, and tumbled end-over-end down to the surface of the world.
At last Tren was silent.
I turned my attention to my last remaining enemy.
The return flight to the Downs was short, but tense. As soon as we boarded the shuttle, Growd turned me over to his guards and shoved me into the back of the cabin while he and the others furtively discussed their plans in hushed tones. Aside from Piter, who occasionally glanced my way as she cataloged and stored the Charons into secure storage crates, nobody but the mouth-breathing guard who was keeping his pistol leveled at my chest paid attention to me.
As we lifted off, I watched out the narrow viewport as the plasma drones exploded, burning out what was left in the chamber and melting the carvings into slag. All that was left of the Thar’esh was here in the shuttle. I wiped dried blood from my face and let myself sit back into the comfort of the luxury padded seat as I tried to come up with some way to escape, or at least crash the shuttle: destroying myself and the Charons with me. But without my blade, or without help, I couldn’t see any way to manage it. And still, even if I could, Piter and others on-board were innocent. There had to be another way. So, as we returned to the Downs, I watched for an opportunity that never presented itself.
As we set down on the landing pad my spirits sank further. On the ground I would be surrounded by Growd’s thugs with the shadow of the Collegiate’s fleet coming in from above. There would be no escape.
I can at least take comfort in knowing that the Charons die with me, I thought. Alume would see to that. Though everyone would die. The colonists, Lee, Ju-lin. My stomach sunk under the shadow of hopelessness as the shuttle’s doors opened and the afternoon light flooded the cabin.
With his gun at the ready, Lars and the mouth-breather ordered me down the ramp as they followed close behind. Maybe it was my eyes adjusting to the brightness as I stepped out into the sun, but I didn’t realize that anything was wrong until I was about twenty paces from the shuttle. The air was still, the colony was quiet. From what I had overheard on the ship, the Celestrials were regrouping and due to break atmo within the hour. It was the calm before the storm, but still, it was too calm.
I felt the shots before I heard them. It was a sudden burst of scorching heat just to my left. I turned and looked over my shoulder to see Lars crumpling to the ground, his chest smoldering. A second shot came from somewhere low on the ground, near one of the storage containers to my left, it would have burnt down the mouth-breather where he stood had he been a half-second slower. The shots went wide as he sprinted for cover.
Behind me, back in the shuttle, I heard Growd shout, and the heard the blaze of return fire. I turned my head and squinted to see that the storage container where the first shots had come from was now scarred and black from Growd’s men returning fire.
“Eli! Hit the ground!” I heard a man’s voice, deep and familiar.
I obeyed without a second thought, and as soon as I did, all hell broke loose.
The landing pad was hot with laser fire and the air popped with the forceful bite of conventional weapons as Growd and his MineWorks crew exchanged fire with their invisible assailants. There were more shouts to my right. I raised my head to see about a dozen armed men spilling out of the command center, joining the fight to protect Growd and his men, who were seeking cover inside the shuttle and behind several nearby shipping crates.
The MineWorks security team never knew what hit them. As soon as they were in the open, bullets and lasers rained down from all directions. Four dropped in the first salvo and the rest broke for cover and began to haphazardly return fire. The assailants had the element of surprise, but the MineWorks forces were well trained. They quickly regrouped to counterattack with deadly accuracy.
I was lying prone in the dust with the battle raging above me for several minutes before, at last, the exchange of fire began to wane.
“Growd!” a deep voice bellowed from somewhere unseen. “Growd! Answer me coward!”
“Is this what it comes to, Lee?” Growd boomed back from behind the crate where he was crouched for cover. “Attacking your own kind so we are all forced to all sit here as the Skins close in for the kill? All of our blood on your hands!”
“You wanna talk blood?” Lee retorted. “What did you do to the fighters? Have a kill switch installed? Reactivate the fighters so that Teigan and his men can get up there!”
“Commander Teigan was in breach of contract,” Growd’s voice cracked as he called back. “He is paid to do as I say. He undermined my orders, so I disabled his ships. It’s perfectly legal.”
Grounded the fighters? I looked around and saw a long row of tail fins in the distance. The Falcons were still on the ground. We were defenseless. Growd was going to let the Celestrials do his dirty work by leaving us to die. To Growd, I realized, the colony was just a loose end.
“Legal?!” Lee’s voice was thick with rage. “You want to leave 8,000 people down here to die?”
“The risks of colonization,” Growd responded. “It’s not my preference, believe me. But, as you can see, we have a limited number of vessels. There is no way to evacuate the entire planet.”
“So allow me and my men to defend it!” Teigan’s voice echoed across the airfield.
“Ah, now Commander Teigan,” Growd replied. “Now you have to choose. There are what? Well over 100 Celestrial ships closing in? What do you expect to achieve by going up against them outnumbered almost 10-1?”
“Ten to one my ass!” Another voice broke in. “The Tons counts for at least twelve herself!”
I smiled, relieved. Loid was here, and he was alive.
“Teigan,” Growd continued. “You owe your men more than a glorious and pointless death. Come with me, escort my shuttle clear. The Skins aren’t here for us. They want this world. Let them have it.”
“And leave the colonists to burn?” Teigan scoffed back.
“That’s life on the frontier,” Growd snapped back. “This is your last chance Teigan. Drop your arms, and come with us, or I will have no choice.”
“No choice but to what?” Lee called back.
Growd slowly stood up and stepped around the crate where he had been crouching, stepping clearly into the open.
“Or what?” Growd responded. “Why not shoot me now, Lee McCullough? If you shoot me the activation codes to re-initialize those Falcons are lost, aren’t they?”
His words were met with silence.
“Ah, yes,” Growd continued. “Now you understand. The Celestrials, no doubt, have located your fighters and are at this moment homing in on this position. So I will tell you what I will do: my people and I are going to board my shuttle, unharmed. We are going to lift off, unharmed. Once we are clear, I will transmit the unlock signal so you can re-initialize the Falcons and make what fight of it you can.”
“What bullshit! He won’t send the signal, we don’t have to listen to this!” I heard Ju-lin seethe. “Can’t we just beat it out of him?”
“Lin, quiet,” Lee said.
“Yes, little girl,” Growd spat back. “Listen to daddy.”
“I say trust him,” it was another voice, Loid’s. I turned to see him stepping out from around the edge of a building not far from where I was laying, pistols in their holsters. His left jaw was bruised and swollen and he was walking with a limp. “What do we have to lose? If we stay here with our guns pointed at each other, the Skins will disintegrate us. If we start shooting, most of us will die, and then the Celestrials bombs will disintegrate us. If we take him at his word we at least have a chance.”
“You can’t be serious?” Ju-lin howled again. “After everything he did to you, you want to trust him?”
“Do th
e math Twiggy,” Loid responded flippantly. As he turned and caught my eye I thought I saw him wink.
Again there was silence.
“Lee, you have no choice, and you know it,” Growd holstered his own weapon and turned toward the MineWorks security forces. “Load up, now, we’re leaving. I will transmit the signal once we are a safe distance; you have my word of honor.”
Lee and the others remained silent as Growd and his people shuffled into the shuttle. Within a minute the door was sealed and the engines began to whirl. Only then did the colonists and Teigan’s pilots emerge from their cover. I caught sight of Lee and Ju-lin on the far side of the field walking towards us. Lee’s shoulder was still bound in a sling, but he held a rifle in his good hand and was standing straight and walking with purpose. Ju-lin was on his left.
“Ho there Eli,” Loid greeted me jovially as he approached, he offered his hand to help me up, but I ignored it, pulling myself roughly to my feet.
“He won’t send the signal, he’d just as soon have us all dead so he won’t have anyone to answer to. And now he has the, well, he has what he was looking for.”
“He has it all there in the shuttle?” Loid’s eyes widened fractionally. “So you ignored my advice yet again, and led him to the spot? Can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing. What did you find?”
“Truth and power,” I replied bitterly as I watched the shuttle rise off the ground. “He now holds a millennia of history, and secrets that were supposed to remain hidden. And we’re about to be, how did you say it, disintegrated?”
“Oh, yeah. About that,” Loid’s grin returned as he smacked me on the back. “Lee! Where are you? Get your best mechanics together and have them bring about forty feet of fiber cabling, quick. Teigan, have your men wheel one of your fighters over near the Tons.”
“What are you playing at?” Lee barked back as he and Ju-lin approached. “You’ve left us stranded, and now that bastard is going to get away!”