by Stephen Hunt
‘If I tell you what I know,’ moaned the professor, ‘I’ll be breaking every level of classified clearance the Alliance possesses. If the government finds out, I’ll be executed. They’ll murder you merely for knowing . . . ’
‘There won’t be enough of you left for the Alliance to torture,’ threatened Steel-arm, ‘not after I’ve done cutting you. Tell me!’
‘That grid you can see in the atmosphere is a shield to protect the world,’ moaned Sebba. ‘Your carrier was caught inside the field when it activated after you started detonating nukes . . . ’
‘You’re talking impossible nonsense,’ spat Steel-arm. ‘An energy shield for an entire planet? There’s not enough juice in the galaxy to power such a thing!’
‘It’s possible. The Heezy knew how to tap dark flow,’ said Sebba.
Lana gawped. Dark flow. The weird, seemingly unlimited power driving the ever-speeding expansion of the universe until, so it was theorized by the Hunt-Ekotto effect, an impossibly distant cosmological future when dark energy overloaded all of existence and caused a fierce sequence of new big bangs . . . thousands of baby universes thrown out of the dying one like seeds. ‘You’re skegging kidding me!’
‘The planetary defence grid and that energy cable you see snaking through the sky,’ said Sebba, ‘are powered by a dark flow generator at the world’s core. The Alliance still doesn’t understand the physics of how the Heezy tap dark energy, but we know the species refashioned their worlds’ inner cores as vast spinning toroidal disks to achieve it.’
‘That cable of energy lashing about in the sky’s not part of the planetary shield, is it?’ said Lana.
Sebba shook her head, forlornly. ‘What you’re observing is an umbilical cord between us and the sun. It’s the same class of technology that the Alliance scavenged its sun-buster technology from when we ended the Skein War. Abracadabra is acting as a dark energy transformer and recharging its system’s dying sun. The Heezy didn’t believe in wasting planets they had occupied through anything as trivial as sun deaths.’
‘A star’s not a battery,’ said Lana. She was stunned by the level of science she was seeing here. A species with enough hubris that they wouldn’t permit their own sun to die. Immortality for an entire solar system.
‘And neither is this system’s,’ said Sebba. ‘There’s going to be an accelerated supernova and then the star will be restarted as good as new. The explosion won’t be as fierce as a naturally occurring supernova, but the radiation blast will still be strong enough to kill everything organic inside the system. It wouldn’t have bothered the Heezy, of course. They were non-corporeal towards the end. Our two best guesses about their extinction are that their species either killed itself in a war with a higher race from the Large Magellanic Cloud or went sublime . . . my money’s on the latter.’
Steel-arm seized the woman and dragged her up from her knees. ‘And where’s your damn money on dropping that shield and getting us out of this cursed system before we’re all fried?’
‘We would need to travel deep inside the Heezy complex to try to deactivate it,’ said Sebba. ‘That wouldn’t have posed much of a problem a few hours ago. But now we’ve been re-classified as a real and present danger, rather than low-level rodents scampering around their race’s ruins . . . I doubt we will be able to get close enough.’
‘You doubt?’
‘Listen, there was a world in the Omicron Ceti system where a Heezy dig’s defences were accidently triggered by an Alliance exploration team. Outside of the team’s single call for help, we don’t know much about what happened because the world simply isn’t there anymore. The planet just disappeared along with all our scientists and archaeologists. Sun’s still good, just missing the fourth planet in the system, is all. Our best guess is that the automated defences teleported the whole world somewhere else. That’s the level of threat we’re dealing with.’
Teleportation? Lana had never encountered a species that had made teleportation work, beyond pushing a few atoms around using quantum entanglement. A whole world? We really are in deep trouble now.
‘Damn your horror stories. What are their defences here?’ demanded Steel-arm.
Sebba shrugged. ‘Who knows? The Heezy were masters of programmable matter. Their automated defences hide dormant as information viruses in the rock. I was working very hard to supress their legacy systems’ immune response to our presence. But now? They could manifest themselves as almost anything.’
‘How have you been keeping the Heezy defences dormant?’ pressed Steel-arm.
‘There’s a system installed at the mine broadcasting a faked Heezy signal that identifies human DNA as friendly, as though we’re a recently sanctioned addition to the official Heezy eco-system. Unfortunately for us, your attack will have re-characterised our presence as either malfunctioning or hostile or both. Right now we’re just a biological glitch awaiting deletion.’
‘Is there any way to travel below the surface without being exterminated?’ said Lana.
‘One of the artefacts we retrieved is a crystal broach that acts like a transponder, given to visiting alien species as a guest pass. So visitors could travel into Heezy facilities for negotiations, or perhaps worship would be a more accurate term, without newcomers being eliminated.’
‘And these broaches would be enough to keep us safe?’
‘Depends on what you mean by safe, Captain Fiveworlds. Closer to a Heezy gardener avoiding slicing too many worms with its shovel because worms aerate the soil,’ said Sebba. ‘And in case you’re in any doubt, we’re the worms in that analogy. The closer we get to sensitive Heezy systems, the more likely we are to be purged.’
‘Worms are useful in the garden,’ sighed Zeno, ‘but you wouldn’t want them getting into your garage and clogging your car up.’
‘Precisely,’ said the professor.
‘I’ll take that Heezy broach,’ snarled the pirate commander. Steel-arm shoved the woman into his crew of rogues. ‘Escort her to her stash of antiques and bring the thing straight back to me.’ He fingered the remote on his belt. ‘And remember, my bucks, in case any of you get ideas of absconding with it . . . you’re still wearing a fine pirate necklace around your precious necks.’ Steel-arm turned to the captain of the Gravity Rose. ‘We’re going on a little jaunt, Lana girl, you and your miner friends. The good news is I won’t be selling you on the slave market straight away. The bad news is that you and your crew will be my canaries down the mine.’
Lana grimaced. A herd of cattle whipped across a mine-field to clear it is closer to the truth. She fingered the shock collar locked a little too tightly around her neck, a matching set to the bands worn by every member of the captured base staff. I guess this is how pirates volunteer.
‘Don’t be looking so angry, now,’ laughed Steel-arm. ‘I’ll do my best to keep you alive until this planetary shield’s been spiked. I find myself in need of a new ship, and I reckon that your crew will return fast enough when they see my pistol shoved into your pretty mouth.’
Damn him. Steel-arm understood her crew almost as well as Lana did. Polter would return with the Gravity Rose if he thought that surrendering the ship would spare Lana and Zeno. After all, what was a vessel compared to her immortal soul? That ship is my soul. It was a measure of how bad things were on Abracadabra that surviving the Heezy’s deadly legacy, losing her beloved ship, then being put up for auction in a pirate slave market was currently looking like the best outcome out of a miserable bunch. Lana was held inside the brig for ten minutes. When the other pirates returned dragging the professor and her recovered broach, they did so at speed, faces distorted with panic.
One of the men tossed the broach at Steel-arm who caught it. It resembled a flower carved in green quartz, intricate crystalline folds. No larger than a medal. ‘What’s the matter, lad? Out with it!’
‘Our soldiers guarding the corridors,’ spluttered the pirate, ‘they’re gone!’
Steel-arm frowned and pulled out hi
s trigger for the suicide collars. He activated it, a hologram image springing into life above the device’s surface – a map with green dots marking where each recipient of one of the loyalty collars stood duty. All around the base, green points disappeared as Lana watched. Pulsing off. I’m guessing his soldiers aren’t defusing their suicide collars. Steel-arm swore and turned off the device, holstering it and reaching for his comm, switching it onto general chatter – a confusion of screams and yells, as though he had tuned into the final moments of a starship torn apart in an asteroid belt and exposed to vacuum.
‘What’s happening out there?’ bellowed Steel-arm.
‘Coming—through the—laser fence—just—walking through.’
The pirate captain’s face was turning purple. ‘What, damn you? What?’
‘Covered in—spines—they’re—’ The voice cut off in a bloodcurdling scream.
One of the pirates turned and fled, his nerves snapping. Steel-arm didn’t wait or waver. The commander’s arm snapped up and the suicide bolt exploded inside the confines of the brig, the deserter tumbling forward into the shaped concrete wall with a smouldering hole where his neck used to meet his spine. ‘I’m still to be a-feared more than some antique robot sentries!’ yelled Steel-arm. ‘Spines or no. And if any of you dogs doubt it, just try to desert on me.’ He waved his pistol at the imprisoned miners. ‘Out, my little flock of canaries! We’re heading for the shuttle on the roof.’ He palmed the broach and shoved it under the professor’s nose. ‘How do I activate this?’
‘I need to trace an activation sigil on its surface. But wait until we arrive at the mine. The broach’s power source only remains active for an hour . . . it takes days to recharge itself. You’ll need it far more inside the Heezy complex than here.’
Lana considered the screams she had just heard. Needs are a relative business, it seems.
‘Just an hour?’ snarled Steel-arm.
Sebba shrugged without looking apologetic. ‘We can’t tamper with the broach without destroying it. Even the Heezy’s wireless recharging systems are encrypted.’
‘After a million years, my power cells should last an hour,’ muttered Zeno.
‘Let’s just try and survive the next few minutes,’ said Lana. She found herself bundled outside the cage alongside Zeno and the surviving base staff, driven like a flock of sheep through the plain concrete corridors while the armed pirates jabbed at them with rifles barrels, their captors snarling and threatening to mask their own fear. Lana felt her heart thudding like a cannon volley inside her chest, terror rising; shared with everyone stumbling, half-running, alongside her. Fear so strong she could taste it. Every second she resisted the desire to sprint as fast away from here as she could. The unknown beyond the base, seeping inside, making a mockery of humanity’s pathetic laser fences and robot guns and sensor grids. Mere savages’ trinkets fashioned from mud and sticks in the face of what we have unleashed. But as fast as Lana ran, she could never outpace the coming solar storm, lashing everything inside the system with its killing fury. Never seen a supernova. How come I don’t fear it? Maybe because it’ll be quick and clean. Over before I can feel it. The monkey inside her, the barely evolved ape, didn’t fear a dying sun – it was the Heezy’s reanimated ghosts which filled her with dread. Rising out of their underground lair to punish humanity for its arrogance – the professor’s arrogance – in thinking she could steal sparks from the gods’ fire and live to tell the tale. They approached a cargo lift at the end of the corridor, an abandoned trolley with crates of supplies on its metal surface partially blocking their way. Steel-arm growled as he sent the trolley skidding into a side-corridor. Lana swivelled when Zeno barked a warning. Behind them, the walls bubbled as though someone was burning into them with a laser set on low-power. A shape formed in the wall and Lana remembered the Heezy’s peculiar method of transportation – motile bubbles passing through the planet’s solid bedrock. A figure stepped out of the wall’s surface, humanoid but faceless. Six foot-tall, slick ebony black and covered in evil sharp spikes, as though an armoured knight had combined with a giant porcupine. The thing’s skull resembled an eyeless hatchet. It instantly latched onto the nearest pirate and wrapped its spiked arms around the man’s chest, the soldier’s body impaled and only enough breathe for a swift broken yell that immediately turned into a gasp. He was crushed as though caught in the jaws of a trash compactor, a sudden spray of blood as his body burst. All around Lana the walls bubbled and ran, sentinels born from the bare concrete, stepping out and crushing miners and pirates alike, the humans’ guns chattering to little effect beyond deafening her ears. Lana stumbled back towards the lift, half dragged by Zeno, a press of desperate, shrieking survivors trying to escape the corridor’s slaughter. Steel-arm was inside the lift, one arm around Professor Sebba, using her as a shield as he emptied his pistol into the corridor’s narrow space. Lana slapped the button for the roof. The nearest of the sentinels rocked as it advanced into the line of fire from the frantic pirates cowering inside the lift, reaching out to seize necks and snap them as it lurched forward. It was nearly on her as the doors slammed shut and the lift rose upwards on its antigravity field, a bare second before the sentinel’s hand reached for the lift, a distorted screech of metal as it dug its fingers into the disappearing elevator.
Steel-arm reloaded his magazine, Lana imagining every shudder of the cargo lift as a Heezy sentinel trying to latch onto the elevator. There were only five pirates left standing, with the same amount of mining staff, as well as Lana, Zeno and the professor on top of those numbers. Not many survivors. Steel-arm shook Sebba with his cybernetic limb. ‘Activate the broach!’
‘Not yet.’ The professor was stubborn, Lana gave her that. Let’s hope she’s right, too.
‘I’ll put a bullet into your damn thick head and see if it improves your thinking.’
‘Then none of you will reach the mine alive,’ said Sebba, her voice pure ice. ‘My mind is fine. And I’m the only one in your circus of losers with a hope of deactivating this world’s energy shield.’
‘I’ll make sure you do survive,’ snapped Steel-arm. ‘I’ll take you for my cabin slave and whittle away a little of your skegging arrogance every day. I’ll enjoy that!’
‘At least one of us will,’ retorted Sebba.
The lift’s doors opened onto the rooftop, thick heat of the jungle air pouring in. Lana heard the distant whine and chatter of gunfire echoing from around the compound, pirates mounting their last stand against forces they could barely comprehend. Twenty feet away lay Steel-arm’s command shuttle, dwarfing the camp’s choppers on their helipads, a steel ramp extended from the vessel’s rear. Unlike Lana’s boxy workaday shuttles, this craft was obviously ex-military surplus, weapons pods and gun turrets dotting its surface, the bulbous back designed to land a couple of tanks and company of soldiers onto a world in the face of enemy fire. All of the survivors sprinted for the dubious safety of the ship. Lana tried not to look at the burning web of fire in the sky, trapping them down here, the vast snake of energy undulating between Abracadabra and the sun, filling it closer to bursting point with every minute that passed. It was too much of a reminder that spiked hands could rise from the roof any second, grasping their way around her ankles before she reached the shuttle. Just save me from this. Just save me and I swear I’ll mend my ways. Then they were on board, panting and sweating. It seemed an age before the craft rose into the air, twisting and turning for the mine-head and the heat haze-girdled mountain range. Explosions and flashes of fire dropped away below them as the ramp started to seal and the shuttle powered forward. Zeno reached out to steady her. A wave of relief nearly overwhelmed Lana. We’ve survived. Before the ramp fully closed she saw a dark figure standing on the roof, watching them spiral away into the sky. It raised an arm and there was a volley of crackling explosions all around the shuttle, as though the febrile air was being sucked into a vacuum. Steel-arm’s shuttle violently lurched to its side, and then the craft pitched to
wards the crimson jungle canopy below.
***
Calder spun in the air as the winch lowered him through the derelict colony ship’s jagged, broken hull. He could see the torchlight from Momoko at the bottom of the dark cathedral-sized space, the robot looking after Janet Lento. Calder wasn’t sure if he was doing the pair a favour by bringing them along rather than locking them inside their grounded shuttle; but the shell-shocked driver had become increasingly agitated when her rescuers left the shuttle, and Momoko was going to lose its memory soon, forgetting most of what it was, let alone who the rest of them were. Skrat followed last, controlling the winch with a mobile handset from his belt hook. After the skirl touched down he unclipped himself and stared around the chamber. They had descended into what looked like a cargo space, but one bare of equipment and transport containers. No ground vehicles or other forms of transport to return them to the base. Creepers had grown in through the breach and tried to colonise the walls, but it was too dark for them to prosper down here. Dark and hot, despite the sun not having risen outside yet. If the rest of the ship was similarly empty, Calder trusted they would be able to retrace their way back to the winching gear before the shuttle’s emergency battery reserves dwindled to zero.
‘A rather useful unit to have around,’ hummed Skrat, patching the robot into a panel exposed next to a large door. Vibrations trembled across the deck as he used Momoko’s fuel cell to jumpstart the doors. They fair screeched as they opened. Haven’t seen a maintenance team for centuries. ‘Good thing your body is too small to carry a fusion pile or you would be as dead as our shuttle.’
‘I am always glad to be of service to my honoured guests,’ said Momoko.
Calder wondered how glad the robot would feel if it found itself blundering around down here in the dark with its memory dumped. He helped Momoko lead Janet Lento out of the hold. A corridor lay beyond their opened portal, no different in its bare, functional design from the miles of passages Calder had worked inside the Gravity Rose. It was deadly silent, the chorus of the rain forest muffled by the hull. Cooler too, insulated. No hull breach here to spill in life from outside. Far too much like a tomb for my taste. Skrat went up to a plaque on the wall, wiping a layer of dust and grime from the metal. A ship-board map with assembly points and safe rooms marked in case of fires or micrometeorite impacts, and there was the name of the vessel, too. As Skrat has speculated when he first discovered the wreck . . . she was the Never Come Down. Maybe the settlers should have heeded the ironic advice in their ship’s name and stayed on whatever crowded, industrial hellhole they hailed from, never embarking on their new and all-too brief life.