by Dan Worth
They were fully aware that such an artefact represented a great prize to more than just academics such as themselves. The K’Soth and the Commonwealth would both want to get their hands on the portal. They might even be prepared to fight for it.
There was something else too, a matter of extreme coincidence that had not escaped any of them. They now knew that the log that they had found aboard the wreck of the Arkari vessel Khostun included a reference to this place, to the device they had found within the planet. The odds that by sheer chance they should discover the log and also discover the portal that it mentioned seemed long at best. Did someone with prior knowledge of Maranos’s secrets as well as knowledge of what they had found aboard the wreck of the Khostun orchestrate their being sent here? Had they influenced Ekrino when he had asked for the assistance of the two archaeologists?
The log had not only intrigued them in itself, it had spurred them on to investigate and to pry until they had uncovered the underground complex that controlled the portal. It was as though they had been led to it. Was the portal the real reason why repeated attempts had been made to stop them? What had the Arkari found on the other side ten thousand years ago, and what had been so terrible about it that they had made every effort to seal the device against intruders and prevent them from re-activating it? Were the Dendratha legends true and was this fact more terrible still than the prospect of war between the Commonwealth and K’Soth if one side or another sought to gain sole control over the device?
Katherine for one, felt foolish. They had failed to heed the warnings that they had been given time and time again. Wrapped up in their world of academia and study she and Rekkid had stumbled blindly onwards, led like children by their enthusiasm, without ever stopping to consider the consequences of their actions. Varish too was hardly blameless, the ancient machine seemed so hell bent on returning home now that he seemed unaware or unwilling to consider what he was meddling with. Were they about to provide the Commonwealth with the catalyst for war, or were they about to unleash something far worse? Those armoured silver mechanoids that they had found in the subterranean corridor: would they return to wreak their revenge? They could only watch and wait.
Steven’s face was grim. He too was contemplating the events ahead. He knew that the K’Soth would come, that the Empire would be unable to resist a prize such as this. He would be ready for them. If he could protect Katherine and Rekkid, and produce one good thing out of this entire shitty mess he would be satisfied. He knew what the K’Soth were capable of, what they would do to the two archaeologists to extract information from them about the device. He wasn’t going to let that happen.
Chapter 25
Varish stood on the barren cliff edge above an old shoreline that now lacked an ocean. The water had long since been boiled away by the swollen red star that dominated the sky, filling half of it, and which would eventually engulf the planet in a few thousand years. It was all a simulation of course. Varish’s physical form was currently hanging inside the cone shaped energy field that projected into space from the north-pole of Maranos, but this was the environment that the Bajenteri personality that called itself Maran had chosen to communicate with him.
It seemed a strange choice. The landscape was grim and desolate, bathed in the ruddy light from the dying star. Varish was sure that had this been real, no living thing could possibly survive here. The surface was almost molten, baked and cracked and littered with a few biological remains, charcoal remnants of trees and animals. A few bones lay here and there amongst the rocks.
Varish’s body image was his own, that of Maran was a flitting luminous figure similar to the one he had projected into the chamber when he had shown himself to Rekkid and the others.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ asked Varish. ‘What is this place?’
‘This place?’ said Maran. ‘It’s where I was born, a planet called Irkil Shi that lies on the other side of galaxy.’
‘You were born here? But it’s…’
‘Inhospitable? Dead? Yes… it is now. Once of course, it was a verdant paradise like so many worlds under our stewardship. Such is the way of things.’
‘Maran, you have to realise that our time in this galaxy was billions of years ago. This,’ he gestured at the bloated sun, ‘is just what happens to stars over such a long period of time.’
‘Of course I realise,’ said Maran. ‘But I had to watch it, all of it. The worlds that we had nurtured and loved and made our own: first they were taken by other races then incinerated by the very stars that gave them life.’
‘How did you see? Weren’t you deactivated for all that time like Tyrunin and Icthasa?’
‘No. No I was not. My systems, my links to the outside were turned off but I remained awake and trapped inside, sustained by what energy reserves were left. Many times I tried to turn myself off. I tried to sabotage the systems that kept me alive but I couldn’t access the zero point energy sinks designed to sustain my personality. I could only watch. I had to remain here in my prison for all of that time and watch the universe around me. It was the only way I could remain sane.’
‘Are you sure about that? Tyrunin said your name was Chiriya, not Maran. Maran is the name the Dendratha gave you isn’t it?’
‘I can call myself what I want! I like the name my people gave me, it means ‘light being’ you know… I think it’s beautiful,’ said Maran wistfully.
‘Your people? You aren’t a god, despite what you may have deluded the Dendratha into thinking.’
‘Can you think of a better way to describe me? The others have been asleep all this time. Subjectively they have lived little longer than a normal mortal life. I, on the other hand, have lived for over a third of the age of the universe. I have seen empires rise and fall, watched races emerge from prehistoric beginnings to conquer the stars only to falter and die. The Humans, the Arkari and the others: I saw them in their infancy as they grubbed around in the dirt like animals. I saw them reach out into the stars as we once did, and I will outlive them.’
‘Are you so sure of that?’
‘Yes. They do not realise what darkness lies at the heart of this galaxy. Those who plotted our downfall will reach out once again. If we, at the height of our glory, could not stand against their machinations then what chance do these pathetic creatures have?’ he said coldly.
‘The Shapers are still here? You sound like you would welcome them, why?’
‘The Arkari lied to me, used me. They reactivated my systems on the condition that I willingly collaborated in their scheme to exile their own rebellious population. In return for my participation in that crime they promised me that they would free me once and for all, and then they shut me away again! They lied!’ There was a rumble of thunder. Varish felt the ground quake slightly beneath him.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You do? Then you know that some of the Arkari still know of their misdeeds yet hide the truth from others. They deserve retribution.’
‘But it was such a long time ago, Maran.’
‘No! No, they came again: to interfere, to torment me!’
‘What…?’
‘Be silent! Listen to me. It was shortly after I had been cruelly re-incarcerated that I first noticed the glimmerings of intelligence upon this planet, my planet. I began to regard the Dendratha as my people, I watched them for many years as they grew and multiplied upon the surface, but it was millennia before they became aware of me. Then one day one of them stumbled into the primary control bunker and managed to awaken me. He was such an inquisitive soul and he had such an understanding of my ways… we talked and talked...’
‘And then what?’
‘I decided to use the opportunity to make good, to atone for my participation in the crimes of the Arkari. I reactivated the portal and directed its terminus so that the exiled Arkari might return, and they did so. They sent an emissary vessel through the portal and they thanked me for releasing them. They promised me my freedom, they promised me
a body such as they themselves now inhabited, but the others, the Arkari in this galaxy, they came and they killed them all!’
‘Well why do you suppose…?’
‘I don’t know! It’s not fair! I hate the Arkari. I hate them for denying me the chance to escape this prison, for their lies, for their deceit, for everything that they have done to me!’
‘Maran, I have direct experience of the Arkari, they don’t strike me as being inherently evil. Maybe they had good reason for what they did, but I still don’t understand why you dislike the other races.’
‘The Humans and their Commonwealth, they come here and they interfere, they build their machines on my surface and spoil the culture of my people with their ways. They embroil this world in their own petty disputes and rivalries. They have no right!’
‘They think that they are doing good.’
‘Pah! What do they know? And what now… now that they know I am here? They will come and try to study me, try to understand me, they will pry and poke and pick me apart, try to use my secrets for their own ends. The K’Soth too, they would do the same, those savages. I won’t let them harm my people, I won’t let them!’ the sky grew darker with turbulent clouds and strobed with lightning.
‘Look,’ said Varish hurriedly. ‘I have an idea about how we could return home for good.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Maran please direct the portal to the point in space and time that our people originally fled to.’
‘No! You’ll leave me! You’ll go through and that will be it and I’ll be stuck here and…’
‘No. Listen, I intend to locate our people then come back here for you three to extract your personalities and leave AI constructs in your place. I’ve done some work and I’ve already written functional AIs based on Esacir research that could replace the three of you at least for long enough for us to get back through the portal. You must remember where our people went, surely?’
‘Yes, I do. Very well Varish, you are Bajenteri after all. I will trust you.’
‘Thank you.’ Varish noticed that the boiling sky appeared to have calmed.
‘Now pass through, and hurry back.’
The hellish landscape disappeared and Varish found himself in front of the black shifting disk of the wormhole’s terminus. He powered forward, monitoring the circular wall that rippled like an oil slick. Down the funnel of light he went, down inside the planet between walls of seamless metal towards the great black gate. He braced himself as he approached its shifting surface, and then passed through to the other side in an eye blink.
There was nothing but darkness. No visible light whatsoever. Varish could detect nothing but faintest emissions towards the infrared end of the spectrum and a background whisper of exotic radiation. Scanning the immediate vicinity he picked up nothing but two burnt out cinders of stars, black dwarfs, five AUs to either side of the wormhole terminus. They were the remains of stars that had swollen to red giant size, had dwindled to become white dwarfs and then eventually had been extinguished entirely. Now they were little more than dead balls of ash.
But there were no stars whatsoever. Varish scanned the heavens, there were literally hundreds of black holes instead, voracious monsters brooding in the sea of exotic radiation. He checked their positions against the star charts he possessed of the Milky Way. They did not correspond to any on record. Perhaps he was now in another galaxy? But if such a number of celestial monsters existed in one place they would surely be on record, no matter where there were, and why couldn’t he see any other galaxies? There was nothing but faint Hawking radiation in all directions.
It was then that a horrible realisation struck him, the two dead stars nearby corresponded exactly to the positions of Fulan A and B had he still been on the other side of the wormhole. The distance between the two bodies was, accounting for their reduced sizes, the same. There was no Maranos, but wouldn’t any planet have been swallowed by the stars as they entered the red giant phase of their life cycle?
He checked the positions of some of the black holes, many of them corresponded to the positions of known super giant stars that already existed in the galaxy he had just left, but only if he adjusted their positions to account for the drift of stars around the galaxy and their movements relative to one another. The positions of the galaxies, now little more than dim radiation sources, was all wrong too. They were too far apart; much, much too far apart. The most distant radiation source was over a hundred billion light years distant, the wavelengths of its emissions stretched out like an uncoiled spring by the cumulative effects of cosmic expansion.
He had moved in time, but not in space. Maran had somehow calculated or observed the position of the galaxy and this system billions of years into the future and deposited him here. Here he was witnessing the heat death of the universe, the final cold ignominious end to all that had ever existed, when all light, heat and life had flickered and died. Surely the Bajenteri hadn’t come here had they?
‘Maran,’ he queried, directing a tight beam transmission back through the wormhole. ‘Why have you transported me here? There’s nothing here but… darkness.’
‘You’re like all the others,’ came the spiteful reply. ‘You lied to me. You were just trying to distract me whilst your friends arrived.’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘Commonwealth warships are approaching. They will try to take the planet, mark my words. Well I won’t allow it, my friends will see to that and they will deal with you too.’
With that, the wormhole closed, a single transmission emerging from the closing aperture before it winked out of existence. Varish decoded it. It was a wideband hypercom message in ancient Arkari that contained a simple program. When Varish ran it, it displayed a clock counting down towards zero and a single word: prepare. Varish was trapped. There was no way back and unless Maran chose to reactivate the portal, he would remain alone in the universe’s graveyard forever.
But he was not alone. There were eyes in the darkness, mechanical things that peered out of the stygian gloom. They were watching him, thousands of them. Suddenly very afraid, Varish reconfigured his shield profile to maximise his stealth potential and hide himself. Shapes began to move in the eternal night, occluding the radiation sources as they moved. Space faring predatory forms the size of cities and larger, much larger, who were now jumping towards the dead Maranos system. They were converging on this point from the direction of the nearest black holes, which Varish now saw were girdled with great engines that sucked power from just beyond the event horizons of their devouring maws. They were engines that fuelled a civilisation that still clung to life in the darkness and which was now, in its entirety, swarming towards him. Varish looked at the clock that Maran had sent through the wormhole as it steadily counted down. There wasn’t a lot of time left.
Space above Maranos’s equator was torn apart by the arrival of the Commonwealth ships. The Mark Antony’s group jumped in first, the four destroyers and sole frigate arranged in a vertical cross formation, flanked by the four anti-fighter cruisers and trailed by the two tactical missile frigates.
Chen ordered her group to assume a high orbit above the planet. Sensor sweeps of the system revealed no other ships apart from the science vessel Darwin, but they could not ignore the astounding whirlpools of energy joining the stars to the planet and projecting out from the poles.
‘Mr Singh, report,’ ordered Chen. ‘What are we seeing here? This is the device Command briefed us about I assume.’
‘I, I’m not sure what it is,’ replied Singh as he scrutinised his instruments. ‘The two equatorial phenomena appear to be large plasma flux tubes of a hitherto unforeseen magnitude flowing from the stars to the surface of the planet. At the poles there are two tubular energy fields that project far out into space. I’m afraid I’m unable to determine their exact nature or method of generation.’
‘Very well. Helm, locate the city of Marantis on the planet’s surface and assume
a geo-stationary orbit above it. Plot a course that will take us well clear of those flux tubes. We get too close and they’ll fry us.’
‘Aye Captain,’ said Goldstein and plotted gently looping trajectory that would avoid the nearest whirlpool of plasma and bring the ship to a relative stop fifteen hundred kilometres above the city
‘Comms, inform Admiral Kojima that we have secured Maranos orbit, he may begin his landing and then get me the Darwin. I’d like to know what the hell happened here. Thoughts, Mr Ramirez?’ Chen looked at her first officer.
‘I understand it has been long suspected that other races inhabited this part of the galaxy long ago,’ he replied. ‘But to the best of my knowledge we’ve never encountered anything like this. I’d say that whoever built it possessed technology so far advanced beyond our own that we’d seem like cavemen by comparison.’
As he spoke the face of Captain Spiers appeared in the comms window of Chen’s HUD. He looked somewhat flustered.
‘Good morning Captain,’ said Chen brightly. ‘I am Captain Chen of the Navy vessel Mark Antony. We have arrived to secure the system. Would you care to explain the situation to us? We received only the scantest of briefings from Command.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so Captain Chen, your presence here is liable to cause intense provocation.’
‘I have my orders Captain Spiers.’
‘So you do. Very well, approximately twenty-three hours ago the archaeological team on the planet led by Professor Rekkid Cor and Doctor Katherine O’Reilly located and re-activated the alien device you see in operation now.’
Cor and O’Reilly: Chen started to wonder where she had heard those names before.
Spiers continued. ‘They had received some help from us. We used our instruments to locate the underground structures that form part of the machine, but we now believe it makes up much of the core of the planet below us.’