by Mick Fraser
Angela leaned in. “Is that where we’re going?”
“Indeed it is. That is Nix.” She pushed the image down and it vanished, appearing in a much larger form on Drenno’s console.
“Thanks, Shim,” he said. “Damn, this place is a rock. Looks like it has indigenous, though.”
“Affirmative. Minimal fauna, almost no flora, which would indicate that everything down there is a predator.”
“Circle of life,” Drenno said sourly.
“Speaking of which...” said Dizzy. “Our friends are back.”
Angela looked at her monitor. Dizzy was right: two rulaks, their huge scales under-lit by a neon luminance not dissimilar to Gage’s, were gliding towards the ship, slipping between gently turning asteroids and pouring across jagged chunks of metal debris.
“They’re getting riled up” warned Drenno.
Angela tapped Shimmer lightly on the shoulder. “Can they not see us?”
“Rulaks are simple creatures,” the Ri'in replied. “They see, but do not see. We are just another piece of flotsam in the belt, but our straight trajectory has piqued their interest.”
“I can’t fight them in here,” Dizzy admitted. “And they’re faster than we are.”
The starship jolted as one of the rulaks brushed by, its huge body slithering like a serpent. The other scraped across the opposite flank, and from the side porthole Angela could see it coiling around the Shadowstar’s wing. Dizzy hissed. “Two more,” he said. “From below.”
“How far is out?” asked Drenno.
“Two ticks. Fifteen, twenty turns at this speed. If I use the thrusters they’ll be all over us.”
“Alright.” Drenno stood up, signalling Gage to follow him. “Keep her steady, Diz. Fire up the engines when I say.”
He and the Auton quickly left the bridge through the double doors, and his voice crackled over Angela’s commlink. “I’m gonna give you a window, Diz, but it’s a narrow one. When you see the pretty lights, punch it.” He went silent, and the rulaks continued to slither across the Shadowstar. There was a powerful knock and the lights flickered. Angela looked up nervously as though she could see through the ceiling.
“They are testing us,” Shimmer explained. “They want to know what we are.”
The sound of grinding metal echoed through the ship, and a quiet alarm went up above the command console. Angela hit a flashing button on her own console, and the left hand monitor flashed with the strange alien writing. She signalled Shimmer, who leaned in to read it. “Hull damage,” she translated. “It says hull damage.”
Something slammed against the side of the Shadowstar, once, twice, three times, as though trying to get in. The fourth time it hit, the alarm grew louder.
“Get ready,” said Drenno from elsewhere on the ship. “Three, two...”
There was a sudden blinding flash that filled the viewscreen with pulsing white light, causing Angela and the crew to recoil or shield their eyes against the glare. At the same time an intense heat flooded the bridge, leaving Angela momentarily breathless.
“Punch it, Diz!” Drenno shouted, as a series of similar flashes rapidly burst around the Shadowstar. The rulaks sprang away as if stung, and through the belly-gun monitor Angela saw one shaking its head as if to dislodge something that clung to it. Dizzy slammed the stick forward in its cradle and the Shadowstar exploded into motion so fast that Angela was shaken in her chair. She clung on, grabbing the left-hand control stick to sweep the belly-gun’s camera across the underside of the ship, searching for the rulaks. Two followed them, but with noticeably less grace than before.
Drenno and Gage returned to the bridge. “The boss gave them quite an eyeful,” Gage spurred as she sat back down at her console.
“Mining flares!?” Dizzy snapped over his shoulder. “You could have fried us alive.”
Drenno plonked into his chair beside Dizzy. “I think it’s boiled, or maybe baked.”
“You think this is funny?”
“You wish you thought of it, right? You’re sore. I get it.” Drenno clapped the angry To’ecc on the shoulder. “You think of lots of good escape plans. Don’t feel bad.”
Dizzy shrugged him off, glaring at Gage. “Mining flares?”
“Are we currently being eaten?” she asked him.
“That’s not the point.”
Drenno pointed ahead. “That’s the marker. We’re clear. Cheer up, Diz. You can think of the plan next time.”
Angela couldn’t suppress her smile as Dizzy accelerated the Shadowstar, and piloted them out of the Blockade.
CHAPTER 24
~NIX~
FROM THE ANGLE of approach Nix looked like Mars, or at least the way Mars looked in illustrations Angela had seen all her life. Its dust-blown surface was coloured a deep rust brown and streaked with crimson, flecked here and there with glinting smatterings of what might have been quartz. What might have been pure gold, for all Angela knew.
It was a landscape rough-hewn from vicious crags, high jutting outcrops of red rock, deep dry canyons and towering stalagmites that speared the sky like pointing fingers. A powerful wind stirred dust devils and tornadoes, their twisting forms dragging blurred, cloudy lines through the dirt in all directions. The sky above mirrored the ground, painted in shades of coppery red and tarnished tin. Crimson and golden lightning scratched jagged scars across the clouds from which fell showers of burning hot rain that hissed and fizzled upon contact with the scorched earth.
The corpses of strange trees were dotted here and there in melancholy groups, deflowered and defeated, and as the Shadowstar descended Angela saw something else half-consumed by this dead moon: the remnants of civilisation. The picked bones of a once-powerful nation protruded from the sands as though desperately clawing their way to the sun. The starship passed over an eroded spire, the building it crowned buried under hundreds of tons of solid dirt. The husk of what had once been some kind of highway lay beyond the spire, where broken sections of a decrepit bridge stood like neglected teeth in a rough ring, with a shattered arm disappearing down into the sand.
With a crunch of smashed rock the Shadowstar touched down, and Dizzy flicked a dozen switches, spun several dials and secured at least five levers that looked like handbrakes. The lights came up and the engines began to slow. As the great ship settled, Shimmer’s slender fingers worked furiously on her touchpad. With a flick of her fingertip she transferred the data she was working on to the main viewscreen: it was a vertical slice of the terrain, featureless, with a handful of information box-outs that were currently empty. Drenno half-turned in his chair, pointing to Winston. “You’re up.”
The small mechanical cube spun in the air, three rings of light appearing and circling him like haloes. “Right you are, sir,” he said in his tinny voice, before disappearing off through the double doors. A moment later an alarm went off briefly, and Winston appeared outside the ship. Angela rose to her feet and moved to stand beside Dizzy. Gaelan’s console, visible from her new position, showed a 3D readout almost identical to the transparent one in the main screen, but a glowing orb spun slowly beside it, occasionally pulsing. It was searching for something.
Winston began to zip around the immediate area, projecting a cone of green light beneath him. As he moved, details began to appear on the terrain readout. His voice came over the commlink as he worked.
“Oxygen levels at 45%. Diamesium-rich atmosphere. Primary mineral, ignium. Soil contains minute amounts of moisture. The rain here is... toxic; contains rechnyne, edmium 1, elements of verinium. Trace surface residue suggests subterranean flora and fauna. Nearest water source... 112.7 sectets due sunwards.”
He buzzed around like a bluebottle for a moment, then froze, hovering in mid-air.
“Coordinates lead here. Directly below us. Natural cave system. One hundred and fifty five arms. Hold on. Calculating possible entry point.”
As he whizzed off, the image on the viewscreen filled with details, showing a 3D map of the area below the S
hadowstar’s position. Winston reappeared before the screen. “Found it. 1.3 sectets low-moonwise. There’s a cave-mouth, partially buried. Recommend a low-yield explosive.”
Drenno clapped his hands. “Right. Gaelan, Dizzy, Gage, keep her ticking over. Six-Tails, Shim and Illith are with Angela and me on the ground.” He clicked his commlink. “Tails, bring the plasma-pick, just in case and, ah, two borium charges.” He looked to Gaelan. “Anything moves within fifty arms of us, we need to know.”
She smiled at him sweetly, flushing blue. “I wouldn’t have known that, having never done this before.”
Drenno gave Angela a look. “She didn’t get that attitude from me.”
She raised her hands. “I’m saying nothing.”
He clapped Dizzy on the shoulder and led Angela and Shimmer towards the airlock, where Illith and Six-Tails were already waiting. He tapped his neck, reminding Angela to activate the breather on her hypersuit, and Illith handed her a dashbow. The airlock closed behind them, and cool vapour blasted them from all sides as the outer door began to descend, forming an exit ramp onto the dusty sand. The light from the system’s two suns, one a ruddy red, and the other, more distant, a pretty shade of yellow, melted together to paint Nix in an odd pre-dawn hue that messed with Angela’s vision. She held up one hand to shield her eyes and followed Drenno down the ramp. Illith and Six-Tails followed close behind, with Shimmer descending last. Winston was waiting for them outside.
A warm, dry heat enveloped them as they exited the ship, but the wind was lower than it had seemed from inside. Angela clutched the dashbow as though it would do her any good in a tight spot – but hadn’t Gaelan reported no signs of surface life anyway? The thought didn’t relax her much as they followed Winston away from the comparative safety of the Shadowstar. The hypersuit regulated her temperature, but the heat on her brow soon became irritating.
“Cease your fidgeting,” Illith told her. “You are like an infant in a coarse blanket.”
“Am I supposed to be at ease, right now?”
“You are supposed to suck it up, mystraal. This is your life now.”
“One question,” she replied.
“If you must.”
“What the hell does mystraal mean?”
Illith gave her an unreadable look and moved off ahead.
Angela sighed, looked down at her wrist-reader. There was a satellite map of the area that showed their position, represented by six blue arrows, in relation to both the Shadowstar and a glowing red waypoint that Winston had marked some way ahead. She tapped her databand and the smart-HUD appeared; the red waypoint was now visible before her, as though she could see through the terrain.
It wasn’t long before the ground began to rise towards a steep incline, and small clusters of rocks became piles of boulders, then craggy slopes, and finally the foot of a huge dark hill. Angela had to use her hands to help her climb it, and as she crested it she saw a vast valley that might once have been a river bed. The light from the larger sun was almost blinding. Winston appeared beside her. “This way, Angela.”
She looked across to the other side of the hill, which descended into a gulley where a great hole had been punched into the rocks to form a cave mouth. It was partly concealed by boulders that had tumbled long ago, so that it now looked like a half-closed mouth filled with jagged, broken teeth. Illith and Drenno picked their way down carefully, and Six-Tails slung his large satchel to the Captain, who caught it and knelt beside the rocks. Illith shone the flashlight of her shard-slinger up into the cavernous space above the rock-pile; nothing moved.
Drenno unpacked a pair of flat black devices and held one against the rock. It looked like a strip of obsidian glass. He pressed something at its centre and it seemed to latch to the rock with a series of loud clunks. A strip of red light appeared across its centre. Illith repeated the process with the other device, and the two of them quickly scrambled back up the hill. There was a muffled thunderclap, both devices flared with light, and the rock pile crumbled as though it had suddenly turned to salt. Drenno slid his right handcannon from his holster and led them down into the dark.
Angela instinctively ducked through the entrance, despite the fact that the upper cave mouth was several metres above them. Illith reached across and clicked a switch on Angela’s belt, and a flashlight burst to life. Their torches were no real match for the sepulchral darkness of the cave, but she felt better, even though the passageway seemed to stretch on forever. She became aware of a decline as she walked. Winston whizzed off ahead, shining his green light left and right; the HUD of Angela’s databand blinked as the little bot updated their maps as he went. A red waypoint appeared, followed by a snaking line that connected it to their position.
Drenno, stepping carefully on the crunching ground, tapped his ear-piece. “Anything down here, Gaelan?”
“Negative,” came the reply, tinny and slightly broken. “I’m reading heat blooms, though, way below you. Possible seismic activity. You may be over a dormant volcano. Other than that, it’s as still as a tomb.”
“Thanks for the imagery,” he said.
Illith raised an eyebrow at him. “You want me to hold your hand like I did on Thermios?” she offered dryly, which surprised Angela.
Drenno grunted. “I wasn’t scared, I was blind. There’s a difference.”
“You were clinging to me like a babe at the breast.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t love to mother me, Ill.”
The Silsir grunted.
Ahead of them the cave began to widen, and as they followed Winston’s line through a series of winding turns, the air became cooler. There was light ahead; not daylight, but ruddy, green luminescence that reminded Angela of something organic. They emerged into a vast cavern, and Angela realised they were on a wide ledge which ringed a huge pool of thick, muddy water. It bubbled here and there, giving off jets of murky steam. The light was coming from the green gas that hung in the air above it.
“Will o’ the wisp,” Angela said. Illith looked at her quizzically. “Ignus fatuus. Swamp gas. We have something like this on Earth. I saw it on the Discovery Channel once...”
Drenno contacted Gaelan. “There’s water here, mirrah. You getting anything?”
Her voice crackled. “...very clear... interference. Hold on... something. That better?”
“A little.”
“I boosted the signal. It won’t last. I’m registering toxins, several, including a high concentration of rechnyne, so don’t drink the water. Still no life signs though.”
Angela looked up, the ceiling was about two dozen metres above them. She hadn’t realised they had descended so far given the shallow decline. Stalactites poked down from the shadows like claws. Winston buzzed. “Through here. We’re almost there.”
Angela followed them around the raised edge of the pool, through a series of rough arches and into a wide anteroom with a smoother floor than she had seen anywhere else in here. Three of the walls were nondescript stone, cracked, weathered by wind and time, but the fourth was different: it was a great mural, a colossal collection of alien script and bizarre illustrations. Each line was deeply carved into the rock wall, but there was nothing primitive about it. It was no prehistoric etching, but had been precision cut by someone or something with a definite purpose. There was a flow to it, though Angela couldn’t identify what it was.
The glare from their flashlights could only illuminate small sections of the vast mural, throwing the carvings into a stark relief that made them trickier to make out. Shimmer produced a small globe from within her white robes and cracked it against the stone wall, and white light flooded the chamber. Drenno whistled between his teeth; the mural, fully revealed, was huge, seemingly depicting specific events as well as singular illustrations.
Shimmer moved off to the left suddenly, dusting at an old plinth now revealed by the light. It wasn’t stone, Angela realised, but some form of metal. She took a step towards Shimmer and something whirred within the mural, m
aking her jump back. The whirring stopped abruptly. Shimmer looked to Angela, the mural, then back again. She held out a hand. Tentatively, Angela stepped forward.
Whumwhumwhumwhumwhum…
“What is that?” she asked. “What’s making it do that?”
“You are,” Shimmer replied. “Here.”
She stepped back, allowing Angela access to the plinth. “It’s a palm-reader. Touch it, please.”
Shakily, Angela approached the device. She leaned down and blew off the clinging dust, then looked around to Drenno. He shrugged, but Six-Tails walked forward to stand beside her. “It’s either the Amp, or it’s you. Founder tech is rarely designed to do harm, Angela. Touch it.”
She swallowed, reaching out slowly, afraid to stretch her fingers lest something bite them off. A tingle went through her arms and her flesh began to heat up, emitting a cool yellow light. Suddenly uncomfortably self-aware, she said “Fuck it!” and pressed her palm against the plinth. It instantly responded, the whirring increasing in volume and tempo as a blue light rippled across the mural, highlighting and illuminating its every gorge and gulley. Shimmer smashed her orb, now redundant, on the cave floor.
The Ri'in stepped toward the mural, tracing her slender fingers across the glyphs. “The Iniir built it,” she confirmed. “But the language is... odd. It’s partly Iniiran, with splices of Orrenian dialects, some To’ecc. A smattering of Ri'in. It’s encoded, I think, but I can make some of it out.” She muttered under her breath, reading. Then she said, “It talks of the war with the Hexen. The key to the prison of Illumiel... Is that a place or a being? It mentions you, Angela. It calls you a Catalyst.”
“That’s what Bard said,” Drenno confirmed. “He said Evayne called her a Catalyst, not a weapon.”
Shimmer nodded, continuing. “Yes. There is a device. Part of it is here. They call this part the ‘Rumos El’Enia’, the Radiant Heart. It is a power source for something... great. The words are muddled. This is a Dashaan, a shrine to whatever gods the Iniir once worshipped.”