Exiles (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book One)

by Dan Worth

  ‘It certainly does. A civilisation so advanced it could tame stars? Now this... this could save our respective careers Katherine.’

  ‘We didn’t find it.’

  ‘No, but I’m wondering if there’s anything on the surface of the system’s planets, specifically this one, that was also made by these people, whoever they were. Maybe they used one as a base of operations or a colony?’

  ‘Maybe, or maybe the rings were all they left.’

  ‘Perhaps. I wonder what Quickchild has uncovered though?’ Rekkid flipped back from the live feed to Captain Spiers. ‘Captain, now that the turbulence has subsided around the ring, can you contact Quickchild?’

  ‘We should be able to, yes. But it’s not responding.’

  ‘Oh? Is the ship still intact?’

  ‘Yes it would seem so, but the messages keep getting bounced back along with a load of scrambled gibberish that our systems can’t decipher. I think it’s plugged itself into the ring’s systems.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am like you brother, we are the same you and I. The last few members of a race that once ruled the cosmos and is now long departed.’

  ‘The term brother is inaccurate. We are both artificial entities without gender.’

  ‘That is not entirely true.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘It seems you have forgotten much. Even your original name is lost to you?’

  ‘Alas it is so. The race known as the Esacir found and resuscitated me. They did the best they could, but much of my mind is lost or sealed away from me.’

  ‘Then I should explain the truth to you. About who and what you are.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am called Tyrunin. Originally of the race known to many as the Progenitors, but to ourselves as the Bajenteri. You are one of us.’

  ‘I want to know everything,’ said Quickchild. ‘Show me.’

  And Tyrunin did.

  He showed Quickchild a civilisation that glimmered into existence on a verdant world eight billion years ago and a thousand light years away. A world that now existed as lifeless rocks around a dull cinder of a star long since extinguished. The sentient beings that lived upon it flourished and spread upon its surface creating a sophisticated and elegant global civilisation that grew from humble stone-age roots to become a highly advanced planet-wide nation state in just over five thousand years.

  The Bajenteri were blessed with unusually high mental capacity. They lived their lives far more richly and intensely than other races could comprehend and they used their intellects to build and discover and create a civilisation that was filled with endless wonder and majesty. Their planet-bound existence became one of awe inspiring achievements. Beautiful ancient cities cultivated over thousands of years, their ancient monuments and boulevards incorporated seamlessly into modern developments that both equalled and surpassed them in architectural splendour. Buildings and public spaces filled with incalculable numbers of artworks of a strange alien beauty. Libraries that contained within their shelves the works of authors and scholars that resounded through the ages, such was their literary worth or academic profundity.

  It was in science that the Bajenteri excelled the most. The pace of their technological advance was blistering from the very start and accelerated geometrically from then on. Just five thousand years after their ancestors had discovered fire; the Bajenteri mastered hyperspace, took their first tentative steps outside the bounds of their home system and went to the stars. They never looked back.

  Quickchild was shown cities floating in space, metal and glass archipelagos hundreds of kilometres across and home to billions. Entire worlds remodelled virtually overnight, barren lifeless rocks transformed into lush paradise planets, cities with spires so tall that they projected into space, where countless ships travelled between tens of millions, then billions of worlds across the galaxy.

  The very cosmos itself was mutable when the Bajenteri turned their attentions to it. They created stars, taking smaller dimmer suns and melding them together to form larger hotter stars more conducive to life, or broke apart unstable giants into more stable multiple star systems. Black holes and neutron stars were tamed, their violent outpourings of radiation collected and put to use by gigantic arrays hung around the perimeters of their event horizons. Dying stars were pushed into controlled supernovae, so that their raw materials might be collected and formed into new systems by artificial methods, rather than wait for the inexorably slow processes of natural formation.

  Under the Bajenteri, the earlier galaxy enjoyed a golden age never since repeated. A hundred billion systems and countless sentient species united in one peaceful, flourishing civilisation at a peak of virtually unimaginable technological achievement. But all things must come to an end, and so it was for the Bajenteri.

  Despite their intellect, their achievements began to make them arrogant. After nearly five billion years of benign stewardship of the other races in the galaxy they began to see themselves as more than the mortal beings that in truth they still were. They began to regard themselves as akin to gods. ‘And why not?’ argued some. They had the power to create worlds and stars and tame every force of nature they had encountered. They had seeded millions of worlds and created life, therefore were they not gods in every sense of the word?

  Their arrogance was to cost them dearly. On worlds across the galaxy the rule of the Bajenteri began to break down as numerous acts of rebellion and resistance sprang up as a response to centuries of perceived misrule or even oppression.

  Yet despite their self proclaimed godhood one puzzle still eluded the Bajenteri. In all the species they had encountered or created they had not met one that they believed equalled them, or could even potentially equal them given enough time to develop. In this they were wrong.

  A deadly virus, created by mistake in a laboratory in the core systems, somehow made its way into the general population. It spread like wildfire, with a virulence and potency even the Bajenteri with all their powers could do little to prevent. The virus was already off-planet before the incident was noticed. Carried on millions of ships from the already infected source it ravaged the Bajenteri population throughout the galaxy whilst leaving other races untouched. Bajenteri died by the trillion and yet no cure could be found.

  With their population being decimated by the day, a desperate solution was proposed: if the virus could not be halted, perhaps it was time to shed the last vestiges of mortality. The virus could not infect their bodies if they had no bodies to infect. In the last few uninfected systems, desperate research was undertaken to develop an alternative vessel for Bajenteri minds.

  The neural networks that resulted from this research were the answer, at least to some. If a person were infected, or if they chose so beforehand, their minds could be uploaded into the matrices along with their genetic information, so that at least a copy of them would survive, and the Bajenteri civilisation would endure.

  At last a cure for the virus was found, but by this time the galaxy was in utter chaos. A full two thirds of the Bajenteri had been wiped out in less than a year. Of the remaining third, almost a half were now machine copies of their former selves. The galaxy wide civilisation they had created had suffered almost total collapse.

  In the ensuing anarchy the galaxy descended into war. Many of the other races blamed the Bajenteri for the calamity, and with good reason. Their efforts to restore order more often than not made the situation even worse than when they had begun. Many embittered races took the technology of their former benefactors and used it against them as they fought for their independence. Fleets of Bajenteri vessels arriving to bring a system back into the fold were turned back by weapons that the Bajenteri themselves had designed.

  As the other races united, the Bajenteri were hounded from system after system, and they discovered that their new artificial bodies gave them little protection from the attention of the former loyal subjects that now hunted them. Cunning h
ackers created deadly and ingenious computer viruses that were easily capable of breaching the defences the Bajenteri had surrounded themselves with and devoured their minds from the inside out. Millions of Bajenteri suffered the ignominy of dying a second time.

  Hunted and dwindling, their civilisation in tatters, the Bajenteri made a momentous decision. It was one they made with heavy hearts, but they had no other option if they were to survive. They would leave the galaxy altogether and start afresh.

  There had been attempts to travel outside the galaxy before. When the Bajenteris’ civilisation had been at its height there had been a few attempts to create ships capable of crossing the enormous distances between the galaxies. None had ever returned however, and the projects had been abandoned. Now the Bajenteri would try a new approach. They would attempt to create a stable wormhole in space-time.

  They had long known of the existence of wormholes both as a theoretical and as a physical reality as hyper-dimensional tunnels in the fabric of the universe that linked widely separated points in both time and space and, theoretically, could be used to travel between said points instantaneously. However, none had ever been observed that remained in existence long enough to be of practical use, nor could their destinations be pre-determined or controlled. The problem had never been solved.

  The uploaded Bajenteri turned their greatly enhanced and accelerated minds to the task at hand. Within a matter of months they produced a design for a wormhole generator, a project that would require most of the dwindling resources of the dying Bajenteri civilisation. It was a gamble the Bajenteri were willing to take. Driven from their home-world and corralled into a few remaining systems they had few options left to them, and in a newly formed binary system within their shrinking boundaries they undertook this final work.

  The engines of the Bajenteri tore the system asunder and remodelled it according to their grand design. Planets were demolished while others were stripped of vast quantities of resources or moved out of their orbits entirely. The two stars had their masses altered to balance them exactly and one of the system’s planets was relocated from its orbit around the binary stars to the Lagrange point between them. It was upon this world that the portal itself would be constructed. In the atmospheres of the two stars, giant rings were constructed that would utilise the solar energy to power the device.

  With the portal finished, the Bajenteri assembled and bade farewell to the galaxy they had once loved and possessed. Then they filed through it in their ships and left forever, save for the three uploaded who had volunteered to stay behind and operate the device: Tyrunin, Icthasa and Chiriya. These three alone were all that remained of the once great Bajenteri civilisation. Trapped forever in a galaxy that now despised them they hibernated, awaiting the return of their kin.

  Quickchild was speechless.

  ‘So now you know who you are,’ said Tyrunin. ‘A mortal creature from the distant past rendered in machine form.’

  ‘I… I had no idea. I had assumed that…’

  ‘That you were created by lesser creatures than yourself?’

  ‘Yes. It was a logical assumption after all.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you are much more than just a mechanoid or a computer. You have the speed and flawlessness of a machine, but the wit and creativity of a biological being. In this galaxy, in this era, you are as close to a perfect being as there is.’

  ‘I have always found perfect to be a rather subjective term.’

  Tyrunin laughed. ‘Perhaps. You will see,’ he paused. ‘We had thought we were the only ones left. Your awakening of me raised my hopes for just a moment. I thought perhaps that the others had come back, but it is good to meet another of our kind. We must awaken the other two!’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Quickchild. ‘I may be perfect, but I still don’t know of my own past. There are a great deal of other things that I would like to know.’

  ‘I see. What would you like to know?’

  ‘My life, my identity.’

  ‘Then let’s see if we can’t unlock that mind of yours. Please, don’t be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tyrunin entered Quickchild’s mind, probing, searching, unlocking and repairing. Quickchild regained his past.

  Chapter 16

  Katherine knelt in the dirt, brushing at the mummified form that slowly revealed itself to her with every stroke as it emerged from the arid reddish earth forming the floor and walls of the roughly circular pit she was working in. At last, she was getting a chance to actually do some work, and she found it had a calming effect on her. She had spent hours gradually freeing the body and grave goods from the clutches of the earth in which they had lain undisturbed for centuries. She found it intensely satisfying.

  The light was poor though. Here at Marantis, at the exact point on the equator where the two suns appeared at equal elevations in the sky, the world existed in a perpetual golden half light produced by two eternal sunsets diametrically opposite one another. It was hauntingly spectacular, but it made it difficult to work on the dig site. At their request, the students had erected a number of gas and oil lamps, as well as lenses and mirrors, to attempt to create something approaching suitable light levels. It helped a little, but Katherine and Rekkid were relying upon the few small torches and lamps they had brought with them so that they could properly see what they were doing. Fine and delicate work such as this required adequate illumination.

  Steven, on the other hand seem to positively relish the ever present gloom. Ever since they had arrived in Marantis he had skulked in the shadows like a cat, ever watchful. Katherine wondered where he was now, though it gave her great piece of mind to know that he was prowling around, watching for the slightest sign of unwanted intrusion.

  Katherine looked down at her subject: the desiccated remains of a Dendratha male some ten thousand years old. The body had been preserved in miraculous condition due to a combination of the relatively arid environment and the leathery nature of Dendratha hide. The body had apparently been interned in traditional fashion; lying on its right hand side, curled at the bottom of a circular pit so that the corpse formed an ‘S’ shape with the hands clasped together under the chin.

  She was working on the head, brushing the compacted soil away from the long-snouted skull with its sunken, shrivelled eyes and crushed mass of head gills. Her student, a Dendratha by the name of Bibarat, was busy uncovering the long, tapering tail end of the body. They had yet to disinter the torso or locate the arms and hands of the long dead male. Katherine had posited that they could have been crushed by the weight of the soil above and thus lie twisted, below the current level that they were working at. There was only one way to find out, and it would require patience and more careful digging.

  They had however managed to find a clue to the identity of the corpse. Lying in the grave with the body had been grave goods indicating that he had been a stone mason. They had found a mason’s tools as well as a piece of beautifully cut stone that had been placed reverently alongside the body. Perhaps he had been killed on the job in an accident, or perhaps he had died long after of old age, wanting to be buried alongside the building he had spent much of his working life helping to construct? Katherine guessed they would find out once they had the body out of the ground and into the makeshift lab they had set up, where the mason’s age and cause of death could be investigated.

  Katherine sat and gazed up at the Temple of Maran. It certainly was impressive, especially when one considered its great age. It pre-dated the Pyramids on Earth by several thousand years, the Dendratha civilisation being somewhat older, but less dynamic than that of humans. A remarkable work of engineering and masonry, the temple formed a bulbous five-pointed star shape when seen from directly above. Its five transepts extended from a circular altar situated under the central tower. Each transept curved upwards into the sky to a height of around two hundred metres, the tips gradually curving inward towards the taller, tapered sp
ike of the central tower. The whole edifice was constructed from ruddy local stone, hauled by gangs of volunteers from quarries a kilometre away to construct it. It rose claw-like into the sky, a bizarre, russet coloured alien bloom that cast a long bifurcating shadow on opposite sides.

  The burial sites they were currently working on with the monastic staff and students of the university were clustered around the base of the temple. Attempts to install crude plumbing into the chambers beneath the temple that served as cells for the priests had accidentally uncovered one grave. The scan provided by the Darwin had revealed a hundred and eleven others clustered around the structure in what appeared to be similar burials to the one Katherine was currently working on. Rekkid was working on another, a few metres away, which had turned out to be a female rope weaver, someone who had perhaps played an important role constructing and maintaining the lifting gear used on the ancient building site.

  Katherine glanced at her student. Bibarat was working diligently, but carefully, on his end of the corpse. He was enthusiastic and eager to learn and he even spoke enough English that she could communicate with him relatively easily without using the translator. She thought herself fortunate. Bibarat was apparently pretty much unique amongst the monastic scholars of Marantis. It was perverse that Priest Ekrino, who had asked for their assistance and was, sadly, still on his way from Erais, seemed far more progressive and open- minded than the collection of stuffy academics and wooden students that apparently constituted the Department of Archaeology, such as it was.

  Perhaps Ekrino’s elevated position as Priest of the Third Cloister gave him the opportunity to consider matters, free from the back biting conformist world of the lower echelons of the monastic system in Marantis. Or perhaps, despite being a holy figure, he was just something of a free thinker. In any case, whereas Ekrino had welcomed her and Rekkid in Erais with open arms, the monks and scholars they had to work with here actively resented the presence of the ungodly aliens. She could hear Rekkid arguing with his student, a sullen male called Erikitt in their own pit a few metres away. One half of the conversation was being relayed to her by the artificial tones of Rekkid’s translator.