Intrinsic: Book One of the Terran Cycle

by Philip C. Quaintrell

  Intrinsic

  Book One of the Terran Cycle

  Prologue

  Keep running. It was the only thought Savrick had anymore. If he ever stopped running they would find Esabelle and take her from him. The Terran would most certainly kill him for breaking the law and having a child in the first place, but he wouldn’t let them take his daughter. Esabelle was all he had left of his wife, and with only three standard years of life, Esabelle’s blue eyes already reflected her mother’s.

  Keep running!

  “He went this way!” A deep Terran voice echoed through the cave.

  Savrick tried to ignore the pain in his lungs and push on. He had to put as much distance between them and Esabelle as possible. Just thinking of the toddler, hidden away in their makeshift home of a cave, renewed Savrick’s efforts to keep running. The mounted torches on his chest strap struggled to highlight the safest path through the dark tunnels, as he ran full pelt through the dark.

  The pitch black was illuminated with a crack of lightning when a ball of organic plasma shot through the cave and exploded against the stony wall. The super heated energy skimmed Savrick’s shoulder, scorching his flesh down to the muscle. The scream of pain couldn’t be helped, his pain receptors begging him to stop running and nurse the burn, but the Terran were faster and stronger than him. Savrick already knew that death was coming for him; it had become a certainty from the second he was detected outside the mountain.

  The gleaming city of Kaldor lay several kilometres away from the base of the mountain, the only city on the relatively uninhabited planet. The Terran had settled here mostly out of curiosity for the ancient war ships that littered the surface of the graveyard world, the remnants of their ancestors. Savrick had only survived this long because of the salvaged parts he came across. He was good with his hands, resourceful his wife had always said.

  Hunger had a way of driving people to be reckless, however. Hunting the Rorstack outside the protective walls of the mountain had been his mistake, one that would now cost him his life and probably that of his daughter. Kaldor’s sensor sweep had only required seconds to detect his presence and alert the inhabitants of the fugitive. It had taken many months to smuggle both Esabelle and he onto the deserted planet, away from the capital, Albadar. Savrick had underestimated Kaldor and how quickly other Terran would flock to the dead planet.

  Running footsteps gained on him. The Terran had no need of torches or scanning equipment to find him. Their higher state of evolution made them perfect hunters in the dark, able to feel his very existence emanating in the soup of the universe. Every movement he made exerted pressure on the molecules in the atmosphere around him, and those molecules in turn vibrated all the way back to the Terran’s heightened senses, giving away his exact location. Even if he stayed perfectly still, they would smell his pheromones in the air or hear his heart pounding through his chest.

  Savrick was forced to elicit another yelp of pain, when he miscalculated the size of a rock on the ground and tripped. The spiky rock cut up his knees and hands, spreading more pain across his body. Exhaustion was becoming harder to fight off in the damp cave. He only made it a few more metres before his next mistake would be his last. Running as fast as he could, the torches failed to reveal the abyss-like hole before him. A sharp scream was all Savrick gave until he continued to fall in silence. It was a short drop with a sudden stop that left him reeling in more pain, face down in a shallow stream.

  The thought of what they would do if they found Esabelle was the only thing that gave him strength. Savrick pushed himself up, blinking the ice cold water from his eyes, and tried to stand. His left leg buckled under the pain in his ankle, causing him to instantly collapse back into the stream. Muffled voices and heavy footsteps could be heard through the small opening above him.

  They had found him.

  Savrick gripped his spear tightly. The crude weapon had been made out of old piping salvaged from one of the buried ships, entombed within the mountain. If they were going to kill him he wouldn’t go out without a fight. They all deserved to die anyway for what they did to his wife. He only wished he could make them suffer as she had.

  On his hands and one good knee, Savrick dragged his body through the stream. Looking around the small cave, he realised there was nowhere to escape, the stream entered and left the cave via a small tunnel that he couldn’t fit through. Three heavy thuds and a splash of water was all that preceded the Terran.

  Savrick slowly turned around, his pain forgotten in the final moments of his life. The dark plated armour allowed the Terran to blend into the inky shadows of the cave, the torch light the only source of illumination. The central Terran stepped forward as a small light appeared on his waistline, creating a holographic image of an old man. Savrick knew who he was of course; there was only one old man amongst the immortal Terran.

  “Hello, Savrick.” The hologram greeted him as an old friend, long missed.

  “ALF...” Savrick hated the artificial life form. Everything that had happened to him could be laid at the A.I’s feet.

  “It’s time to stop running,” Alf continued.

  “I’ll never give her to you!” Savrick knew what ALF really wanted.

  “She was never meant to exist, Savrick. There’s a reason I created that law, and it wasn’t out of malice. Many Terran have died because of her.”

  “And that’s all you care about isn’t it? The precious Terran! What about us, what about the Gomar? Aren’t we your children as well?” Savrick could see that he wasn’t going to change the A.I’s mind. But when it came to his daughter, he would do anything, even beg. “Please, ALF... she’s just a child.”

  “Esabelle is dangerous and-” ALF’s image flickered before going out completely.

  What was happening? Savrick had never seen an image of ALF be disrupted before. Had the Terran ended the communication to get straight to killing him? He angled the spear towards them, prepared to die fighting if that was the way it had to be. There was no movement from his three would-be-killers in the dark. What were they waiting for? He would beg for Esabelle’s life, but not his own.

  Savrick adjusted his position on the floor and directed his torches at the Terran. All of them were frozen in agony, silently screaming as what appeared to be black liquid sinking into every orifice in their faces. Almost as one, they dropped to their knees clutching at their throats, desperate to breath. As suddenly as their agony started, it stopped. The Terran dropped face first into the hard ground, as dead as the rock around them. In the torch light, Savrick watched in horror as the black liquid wormed out of their bodies and returned to the source, behind him.

  With lots of splashing, Savrick rolled over in the stream and used his elbows to get as far away from the cave wall as possible. The torch light flashed across something metallic and shiny imbedded in the wall. With a deep grunt of pain, Savrick stood on one leg and slowly hopped towards the mysterious object. He moved his hand across the jagged slippery surface, unsure of what he was feeling. Some of the outcropping was coated in dense rock, while other sections of the shiny metal were visible in between. Had he not reached out and touched the object, it would have been impossible to distinguish the smooth surface from the surrounding rock.

  “What are you?” Savrick stood back, taking it all in. He could see the rough outline of the embedded object and decided it was one side of a cube, at least six feet wide. Wielding the tip of his spear like a knife, he began to prise the sharp rock away from the flat surface. He wiped away the mud and sludge to reveal markings and engravings on the cube. To be so deep within the cavern the object must be ancient. This was the sort of find the Ter
ran were searching for, a relic of the old wars. Like all recorded history of that time, Savrick’s knowledge was sketchy; so much had been lost in those violent times. He knew a great battle had been fought in this system, but he couldn’t remember over what or exactly when.

  Savrick took a moment to look over the hieroglyphs and symbols that ran in interlacing circles across the square. He didn’t recognise the writing but it could have been a pre-Criterion text. He suddenly withdrew his hand as he cut the pad of his thumb and index finger on the razor edge of a rock. Savrick grimaced at the blood he saw dripping down between the circling hieroglyphs. He moved to wipe it away when the surrounding rock cracked from an unseen pressure.

  He instinctively jumped back, landing in the stream again, while gripping his spear. Fissures split the wall, causing a waterfall effect of crumbling rock across the smooth surface. The cube came to life as openings appeared along the edges and the circled markings began to rotate like the cogs in a clock. Savrick held his breath somewhere between curiosity and fear. All at once the activity stopped, leaving a hand sized hole just above the centre. There was nothing but darkness inside. He rose from the wet ground and tentatively approached the cube. He may have been labelled a Gomar but he was Terran in nature. His species had advanced so far because of their curiosity and exploration of the unknown, after all.

  Hesitantly, Savrick placed his hand inside... and felt only pain.

  Chapter One

  200,000 years later

  Kalian woke up to the sound of the mag-train gliding past his apartment. It took him a moment to shake off the after effects of sleep, and realise he was supposed to be walking out the door when the 08:30 train passed by. He shot out of bed with the kind of start someone only late for work could have. He checked his wrist for the time, but the emitters inside his skin had frozen the holographic time at 03:10. He frustratingly tapped it until the time flickered before disappearing completely. Groaning, he wondered why he even bothered having it implanted in the first place; technology always disagreed with him.

  He checked his hair quickly in the mirror, thankful there was still some of yesterday’s gel in it to keep it fairly styled. He threw on the first items of clothing the wardrobe presented him with hoping the dark blue shirt would match his cargo trousers. His open-plan living space made it easy to run around collecting everything he needed while shoving a toothbrush in his mouth. Kalian hopped into the kitchen space with one trouser leg refusing to cooperate while he furiously brushed his teeth.

  That was when he stopped.

  His apartment was a mess, but it hadn’t been when he fell asleep last night. It had been part of his routine to tidy his home every Sunday night before the start of a new week. The first he noticed was his cream coloured toaster- stuck half way up the kitchen wall. He tapped it lightly on the side and the machine crashed back onto the counter. Almost every cupboard was open exposing the disorganised contents within. The chopping board was stood on one of its corners, slowly turning by itself at an impossible angle. His favourite teacups had been removed from their rack and were each stuck at a different angle to the underside of the above cupboard.

  Looking round the apartment it was clear to see the same had happened everywhere. The bedside table was standing on only one leg, though some how the contents had failed to slide off leaving the lamp lopsided. The central rug had simply turned upside down hiding the pattern from view. Kalian verbally commanded the TV, imbedded in the wall, to switch on but received nothing but silence.

  “Not again...” The words were garbled by the imposing toothbrush. He pulled it out and saw that he had forgotten to put any paste on it. Groaning again, he threw the toothbrush into the bathroom, the only other room in the apartment. He pulled up his trousers and rolled up his Datapad, shoving it into his satchel for work. If he didn’t leave now he would be unforgivably late, and he didn’t want to set a precedent with the freshers.

  He took one last look out of the window, which made up one of his four walls, and narrowed his vision to between the buildings. He could just make out the Sun rising steadily over the San Francisco horizon, its light bringing life to the city.

  The walk to the university was long, especially in the summer heat the Weather-Net had created. Kalian was thankful for the towering height of the surrounding skyscrapers- they provided much needed shade. It was easy to feel small living amongst such colossal structures. He admired the height of them though; the central buildings could touch the cloud bank most days. The majority had been built centuries ago for housing purposes. As a history lecturer Kalian was well aware of the population crisis before the construction of habitats on the Moon and the mega structures built on Mars, after it was terraformed. Earth had been running out of land at the time and there was only one way to build: up.

  After some of the pressure was relieved, Central Parliament had had cities all over the world re-designed in places to bring back the beauty and restore a dwindling economy. With housing no longer an issue, Central Parliament was even able to reduce the population laws, allowing for families to have two children instead of one. It had never concerned Kalian much since he was an only child like his parents.

  Kalian liked his part of the city. He had moved here after taking his job at the university four years ago. Being closer to the bay it wasn’t as dense, allowing more space for parks and trees. In some of the denser areas it was hard to even see the clouds through all the sky-bridges and advertising holo-boards.

  The sight always amused him when he thought of his ancestors’ centuries before. They had thought everyone would be flown by automated cars across the galaxy, to one of the many worlds they had no doubt terraformed. That the human life span could conquer death with such futuristic medicine and all diseases would be cured. Well they had succeeded at a great many feats, including the habitation of the solar system and beyond as well as expanding the human life span, but the sights surrounding him only proved that technology could only progress so fast.

  The streets were as hectic as normal; Kalian saw dozens of automated transports crammed with people. Hundreds of people hurried about in every direction, Kalian wondered if they were as late for work as he was. He couldn’t quite make out the university yet through all the mag-transports that glided between the buildings on the traverse ways above.

  In his rush he walked straight into the back of a woman standing still in the moving crowds. With a quick apology he stole a cursory glance at the screen on her Datapad, wondering what could possibly make someone brave enough to stop. He recognised one of the better known news reporters, but he didn’t have time for the headlines now, he was really late. He silently cursed his info band at failing to wake him. Then he cursed himself for expecting it too after all the others that had spontaneously broken.

  He heard the magnetic hum as someone drove past him at high speed in their mag-car. Some idiot had obviously hacked the safety protocols to put it into manual drive- a feature that was not supposed to be available in the city. He felt his grip tighten around the strap on his satchel.

  Focus, think of something else.

  He couldn’t help it though. The unusual speed of the Mag-car brought back the memory. He didn’t have time to push it to the back of his mind like he had practised. He felt the static on his arms as the hair stood on end. He had the usual tingling sensation in his spine that left his hands feeling numb. The noise above his head caught his attention. The sound of some machine malfunctioning was all too familiar. This time it was one of the servo lamps that hovered above street level. Sparks burst out of the top as it span end over end. The noise didn’t go unnoticed by the people that surrounded Kalian. He knew what was coming though. He jumped to the side pushing the person in front to create space as it plummeted to the ground, shattering the glass within. Only moments later a cleaning mech hovered out of its housing unit and began clearing up the glass and debris into its body for recycling.

  The sight of a Mag-car didn’t usually bother him so
much; in fact he barely noticed them among the usual activities of the street. It was the out of control driving that had done it. Kalian was suddenly aware of the disgruntled people around him. The servo lamp could have seriously injured any one of them. The guilt was already setting in, along with some paranoia. Thinking logically he wasn’t sure what he was worrying about; to the casual observer he hadn’t even touched the servo lamp. His real worry was that he had no idea how he had broken it, but like all the other unexplainable incidents in his life, he knew he was responsible. He blended back into the crowd and moved on. He could see the reflection of the sun on the domed university exterior now; his lecture theatre was a refuge where he could focus his mind on Earth’s history rather than his own.

  The campus was teeming with students and lecturers as usual. He found himself checking the time on the Info-band again- his wrist was blank.

  Technology hates me..!

  He regretted not having the time to take in the beauty of the campus and its surroundings. The position of the university allowed for a clear view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  What I wouldn’t give to see the old one. To think that bridges used to stand in the water...

  He embarrassingly failed to navigate the group of children touring the campus with their school teacher. He tried to blend through the minors but at waist height he ended up tangled amid the throng. He kept calm and let them pass by, flashing a fake smile to the teacher as she silently apologised. After breaking into a quick march he found the corridors were fairly clear of students and teachers, the occasional cleaning mech wiping the floors. The automatic door, made to look like oak, parted in the middle as he approached. He walked straight to his desk rummaging through his bag for his Datapad where he had stored all the sessions for the day.

  “Sorry I’m late everyone. Let’s get started shall we?” The general chatter of the first year class began to die down immediately. “Today we’re going back four hundred and twenty one years to look at the history of Solar Drive technology.” He took a breath, rolling out his Datapad until it became rigid like a tablet. “Now, who can tell me the significance of this event?” Kalian looked up for the first time since entering the room.