The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  “Let's leave the savage. He'll return to his own and forget about us. He's just going to be a burden.”

  “Wasn't it him that saved you when you were stuck under the circular corridor?”

  “I think he took me for one of his own.”

  “When him and Ahmed got you out of the camera, was that by mistake as well?”

  “I don't know. I fear these people. I don't trust him.”

  “I'm not talking about trust. He can be useful to us.”

  “He can kill us. These savages from the lower sectors are merciless and devious. They have no concept of mercy.”

  “But they are strong and hardy. We could use that.”

  “If he knew the lower levels, then yes. But he never left his box in his life!”

  “Oh, yes. And you did that just a year ago. They are like that, because they were made to be that way. They are the same species as us biologically, and no worse than us. I did not see anyone who was mutated, infected or deformed among them. They're normal people—it's just that they are hungry, angry and stupid.”

  “Do what you think is right, Reiner, but I am against this.”

  Silence. A minute later, there was a rustling sound and Reiner said, “All right. Let's go.”

  Something creaked, metal hammered on metal and some sort of mechanisms that the Machine God filled the surrounding Expanse with started moving. The howl of the wind grew louder and streams of cold air touched Rick's face. Rick understood that he was alone and abandoned. Alone with the Expanse. Unable to fight off his lethargic condition, he lay there, helpless in the bosom of Mother Darkness. He wanted to wake up, but also wanted to sweetly drift away. This dichotomous feeling was familiar to him. Like a fish taken by a net from an aquarium farm, he lay prone on the floor, now unable to turn back and go home. A pathetic, pathetic whelp, that had ruined his life in the space of an hour. May he be consumed by the Expanse for all eternity.

  “And what about your sister?” his inner voice whispered. “Aurora will be left all alone. You must fight for her sake. If they come for her, the old man will be unable to protect her. And when they take her and drag her above...”

  Rick woke up with a start using an effort of will. The surrounding darkness started to clear, giving way to twilight, but he could have been mistaken and this could just be an illusion. However, once he concentrated, he understood that he could see the walls well without the help of a touch. Rick spent a while rubbing away the numbness in his body before he got up. The cold had sunk deep under his skin and thoroughly chilled his body, immobilizing his muscles. Rick knew the dangers of cold drafts—a third of the population of Omicron constantly blew their noses. In the worst cases, people became feverish and coughed pus for a long time, until they died from suffocation.

  Rick pushed the fear away. Once he finally warmed up, he stood up in front of the door, examining it again as if it was the first time he saw it. What if it was sealed with an incantation in the Machine tongue? Then he would never be able to open it. Rick was overcome with terror. He reached out towards the massive handle as calmly as possible. At first, it seemed like any attempt would be pointless. But no, the handle gave way and the door opened, releasing gusts of cold air. Without tarrying for even a second, Rick slipped inside.

  The space was gigantic, around twenty living levels height and as wide as half a sector. Squares, rectangles and abstract multilateral shapes could be seen on the walls, floor and ceiling. Their surfaces were covered with various protuberances, complex devices and mechanism created by the Machine God. The walls and ceiling glinted with a dull, phosphorescent light. Rick stood upon a bridge under the very ceiling and could see how whole arteries of cables, pipes and chains extended into the distance. But the thing that surprised him was not just the Expanse itself, which was full of technical wonders—it was the even layer of hoarfrost that rimed every surface, evening out the many bumps and depressions.

  Yes, it was cold here. Every breath steamed up in the air. The space looked abandoned, an empty and forgotten place. A man could never survive here for long. It was true that the deserts of the Expanse were abandoned and unsuitable for habitation.

  Rick noticed a chain of tracks leading down along the bridge and running into the distance in the blue twilight of the Expanse, where the glitter of strange yellowish lights could be seen by the Chorda. The floor and ceiling of the hall was also bisected by a fat black line extending from the Chorda that could be made out as being a chasm. Here and there, there were small bridges across the chasm extending from the edges. Rick began to descend the stairs, carefully looking around himself. Predators make sudden attacks, so he had to be vigilant. As soon as he was down below, he understood that the lines dividing the floor into geometric shapes were cavities similar to furrows, half a man's height deep.

  Rick jumped down into one of these. The tracks of the barbarians were clearly imprinted in the snow. Three pairs of feet. After a hundred paces, Rick noticed some other tracks by the side—they looked human, but the toes were extended. At first, he only saw one chain of tracks, then it became two and more and more appeared as he moved forward. Here and there, thick poles were stuck in the floor, garlanded by hanging bones, patches of fur and tufts of hair, with the very surface of the metal covered with drawings and scrawled symbols. Rick stood in front of one for a long while, trying to make out what was written on it. The symbols were nothing like anything he had seen before.

  Praise be to the Machine God that Rick had his patrolman's blade with him. He thought for a while before he continued on his way. What could he do? Basically, the barbarians had abandoned him. That meant that their conversation was no dream.

  He moved on. The lights ahead started to grow in size, and Rick understood that this was real fire. A jumble of large boxes and the dead machines that had lived in the Expanse once upon a time was chaotically stacked by the Chorda. He could hear ululating calls, laughter and shouts. When he managed to stealthily move closer to the fires, he hid behind a container and carefully glanced around the side.

  His former companions were chained to the wheels of a huge and dead machine. All the demons of hell seemed to be communing around them. With a mixture of terror and curiosity, Rick could make out a collection of strange, manlike creatures in the glint of the fires, that randomly sat, lay, and walked around their camps. They were monsters, humans twisted by the Expanse and the reflections of its crooked mirror. Rick saw hypertrophied body parts decorated with stumps protuberating out of the flesh. Even those that looked normal had unhealthy skin, lumps growing along their spines, disgusting blotches, constellations of hairy warts and large pustules. There were dwarves, people with two heads, three arms, single legs, one eye, no ears, no hair or those with doughy, distended bodies. Disgusting, contorted creatures dressed in rags. All of them were gathered around the barbarians, poking them with spears, throwing stones and making noise. They howled with laughter when Ahmed swore after being hit by the latest stone. They danced by their prey, shaking their weapons—sharpened hooks and simple pieces of metal.

  Rick was worried to notice that only Ahmed and Maya were chained. Around a dozen monsters sat further away by a big fire. They were happily consuming meat that had been roasted in the flames, that had a long spit suspended above it with the remains of their prey. Rick had to clamp his mouth shut so that he would not scream—the bearded barbarian was looking at him with glassy eyes, his head the only thing remaining on the spit.

  There was another explosion of laughter. Some monster had poked Ahmed in the groin with a stick. Ahmed howled with pain.

  “The birdie tweets!” a hairy one-eyed hulking beast shouted, pointing at the prisoners with his finger.

  Someone tried to irritate Maya, buy the girl lowered her head and did not react to the pokes. A hunchbacked crone ambled over to her and began to touch her red locks, cheeks and stroking her fingers over Maya's lips, neck, breasts and stomach, smacking her lips with pleasure. A bald and ugly horror covered in wart
s jumped up and gave the crone a kick that made her roll away like tumble-weed. The bald one hit his chest with his fist.

  “Mine!” he raised a club above his head, “anyone who touches, I kill! She'll be my wife. Yarg needs good wives from above.”

  “Good prey must be shared!” the shouts came from all sides.

  “If not for me, you would eat rats today!” he growled, swooshing his club through the air, “Away with you, vermin!”

  The grumbling crowd stepped back. The bald one was obviously considered to be their chief. He bent down towards Maya and gripped her by the chin with his four- fingered hand, critically examining her.

  “Get your hands off her!” Ahmed angrily shouted.

  Yarg laughed hoarsely, shouted an order and a bandy-legged, fat and bearded creature ran up to Maya, took a ring of keys from his belt and opened the lock on the chain. As soon as the fetters fell, Yarg put Maya on his shoulders and loudly declared, “I am going to go and love my wife!”

  “Let her go, you scum! Can you hear me?” Ahmed screamed at him, making a futile attempt at reaching the bald one with his foot. The chief proudly marched towards one of the larger containers. An ugly creature with his hands reaching his knees ran up to him.

  “Check the nets on the eastern ray,” Yarg ordered him.

  Rick turned away, unable to keep watching. He felt very cold. The dead light coming from the walls and ceiling could not warm him and the fires were far away. Rick guessed at the distance to the leader and to Ahmed. Too far again. He had to get closer. He started to work out how to get to the container without being noticed, but suddenly felt someone's intense stare. He quickly turned around.

  A dwarf dressed in rags stood only two steps away. He could be taken for a child, if it wasn't for the age obvious from his wrinkled face. They spent a minute looking each other over.

  “Throw down your weapon,” the dwarf said.

  “No,” Rick hissed. He started shaking.

  “Don't be afraid. Where are you from? From above?”

  Rick nodded, lowering his knife but nor releasing it from his hand.

  “Why did you come below?”

  “To seek the holy fire.”

  The dwarf seemed to take an interest in that. He slowly and carefully lowered himself to the floor, pulling his legs under him.

  “Why did you think it might be here? Take a look around.”

  “I don't know... Let's part ways peacefully. Let me leave.”

  “No.”

  “I will fight.”

  “I have no doubt. But I want to talk to you first. Tell me of the world above.”

  The dwarf seemed to have no interest in the feast nearby. His eyes reflected an internal strength, intelligence and cruelty.

  “My friends are over there...”

  “I am sorry, but that is the price of recklessness. What they did was stupid. That is a sign of weakness. And the weak do not survive here for long.”

  Rick had a disgusting feeling that something had made its way inside his head and started to dig around inside for unknown reasons, going through memories like tools in a box. He felt weak and could not move, unable to resist an alien will that had taken charge of his reason. Everything around him went dark, while the face of the dwarf, became closer and brighter, as if someone had shone a torch on him. This creature had unbelievable power.

  “Let me go...” Rick mumbled, gathering the remains of his willpower.

  “Wait. You are afraid of me. I am a monster to you. You chose to risk yourself by leaving your home. For her and everyone that you call barbarians and for the residents of the Commune pursuing you. You are also driven by a hunger, a terrible hunger to find out the truth and understand this world. That is a brave deed. Wonderful. Your life has great value. I always looked for ones such as you. But you are all mistaken. Your ideas are wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You will understand, with time,” the dwarf pointed towards the camp with a crooked finger. Over there, on the other side, there are other villages, and that is where I came from. They don't touch me because I can do this inside anyone's head. On the first day, Yarg wanted to use me for cooking soup. Now he is afraid to even glance in my direction. His clan lives here since the times that the monsters came from the depths and started to hunt people. People used to live below before, many people. That was a very long time ago. Then the great Boom happened, and many people died from the fire and even more died slowly afterwards. Some hid in their homes, some ran away, and others remained. They knew that Death awaited below, but still stayed. Many died, and those who survived became like me and them over there. There were very few people. They did not understand who they were and what they were doing anymore. Then the monsters came and our tribes ran above, to this place. It is warm but dangerous below. It is cold here, but you can live. The monsters do not climb up here. Yarg's people catch anything that falls from above into their nets. The braves go down below to hunt in the jungles. This is the way we have been living for many days.”

  The dwarf closed his eyes and Rick felt his mind clear and there was no more alien presence and will in his consciousness. He was prepared to run without looking back so he would never be under such alien influence, but his mind hinted to him that this would not be a good idea.

  “Do you want me to take you with me?” Rick asked, overcoming his fear.

  “No. Because you won't. And because my place is here.”

  “Then why did you tell me all of this?”

  “Because you will keep going and you must know what is there below. No human has ever done this. You say that you are looking for the holy fire. Possibly that was what actually made the big Boom. Do you know how to use this fire? Of course you don't, as I've been inside your head and know everything. But you want to learn, and that is the main thing. Wait for the morning. They sleep in the morning.”

  The dwarf rose and headed to the camp. He moved with great difficulty, as if his joints were affected by a strange illness and every movement caused torturous pain. The dwarf suddenly stood still half-way—a small, black figure outlined with the red bursts of flame, and said, “The Omega is not the end, but a beginning.”

  And then he disappeared in the shadow of a container.

  Rick waited a little and then sneaked ahead following the dwarf's tracks and crawled into a hollow under a container, drawing himself into a ball. His heart beat weakly in his chest, as if his blood had cooled and barely moved along his veins. For the rest of the night, he was in a drowsy reverie, shuddering every time that he woke up from his uneasy sleep from the screams nearby.

  He had no watch, because every Omicron sector level always had a clock from which it was easy to find out the time of day. Now, he had to depend on his feelings. Once the screams calmed at last, the camp descended into silence. Someone would pass by the container occasionally, so Rick was wary of getting to the surface. He came out when the fires when out. The freaks of Yarg's clan had gone to their sleeping places.

  Rick crawled over to Ahmed on all fours. Ahmed almost screamed, but Rick whispered just in time, “Quiet! It's me.”

  Ahmed was looking at him, but could not recognize him in the dark. Rick got up to be face to face with Ahmed, and then recognition dawned in the eyes of the prisoner.

  “Get out of here!” he hissed, “Save yourself. They'll kill you!”

  “Be quiet. Who chained you? Where are the keys?”

  Ahmed started crying. Rick cuffed him around the head.

  “Get yourself together! Where are the keys to the lock?”

  The dark skinned barbarian pointed at one of the tents. Rick crawled towards it—the bearded fat man snored inside. Rick took out his knife and searched the rags, cutting down the ring of keys once he found it on the belt and returned to free Ahmed. They climbed underneath the dead ancient machine, and Rick demanded that Ahmed tell him all that happened to the escapees when they left him. At first, Ahmed kept quiet and made whining noises, w
iping away tears as he could not get himself together, but then told haltingly related everything that happened.

  It turned out that once they entered this great hall, Maya started to argue with Reiner that they should turn back. However, Reiner completely refused to return as that would mean the failure of the exhibition. They were walking towards the Chorda and arguing amongst themselves and did not notice how they got surrounded by mutants. It was too late to run and too stupid to fight as the mutants outnumbered them. Reiner tried to negotiate, but Chief Yarg ordered for everyone to be captured and dragged here without any talking. Reiner tried to appeal to their reason, but no one listened to him. And then they did that to him...

  At this point, Ahmed's lips started to shake and he started to make whining noises like a scared child again.

  “Wait here,” Rick said, getting outside.

  He had noticed some fuel barrels by the container where the leader lived—anyway, they stank of fuel, like those that were in the Omicron sector warehouse. Kyoto had explained that fuel was very dangerous, pointing at a picture of fire on the barrel and some sort of writing. Rick got closer to the barrels and started to unscrew the lids on the bungholes. The smell became a lot stronger, and Rick even started to feel dizzy. He was unscrewing the lids and then slowly putting the barrels on the side, so that a viscous, strong smelling liquid poured out, making glugging noises.

  An ugly creature got out of the sleeping space nearby, who was about Rick's height, but had a small and flat head with the eyes of a child, and started to curiously observe what was going on. Rick thought for a while that he should maybe kill the mutant, but then understood that he was harmless and started to quietly roll the barrels in different directions, leaving oily puddles on the floor.