The Complete New Dominion Trilogy

by Drury, Matthew J.

  Cris shrugged, looking down at the glass in his hand. He drank it. It tasted like hot shit, but it felt good after everything they were going through. After several seconds, Chen prompted, “Well ...?”

  He grinned. “It’s not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever drank, but I could get used to it.”

  She laughed, then coyly lifted the bottle, ready to pour again.

  Before long, they descended into a large canyon, and the Zat Car came to a stop at the destination coordinates, in front of what appeared to be a large wall of basalt that rose up before them. High up, near the top of the wall, they could see rectangular openings. A line of them, from one end of the wall to the other.

  “This is it,” Chen whispered, and found herself trembling.

  Cris swallowed dryly. The wall had a dusty, ancient look to it, but was clearly artificial. He felt a sense of dreadful anxiety flush through his body as he stared at it; hopefully, whoever had built this place was long since gone. He’d gotten more than he’d bargained for on this trip already without having to deal with some alien creature, or whatever else might be lurking inside.

  Chen pressed the control to open the outer door, and they stood up.

  “Ready when you are,” Cris said, his heart pounding with anticipation.

  She nodded and went first, leading him out into the heat of the day. The harsh rays of the red sun overhead beamed down on them as they walked along the length of the wall, toward a crude opening that resembled an arched doorway. As they neared it, mathematical symbols etched in the same ancient language they’d seen on Heaven’s Gate were faintly visible on the surrounding rock.

  “Jesus,” Cris breathed. His throat felt dry. “How old is this place?”

  She took a deep breath. “Several million years, at least. Fascinating, isn’t it?” Then she stepped through the doorway, following a heavily eroded flight of steps leading up into the canyon, the walls faintly decorated with a series of curving lines.

  Cris followed just a few steps behind her, preferring to stay close. The walls either side of the staircase began to widen after a distance of about half a mile, creating a small rocky clearing before opening out into a larger crater, probably the result of a meteorite impact eons ago. There, in the centre of the crater, was what appeared to be an ancient onyx palace, a dark yet glittering perversion of geometric law; a piece of abstract, alien architecture the likes of which neither of them had ever seen before. It was a vast construction, its immense walls, mighty buttresses, and clustered and bulbous domes and clusters of spires sitting silently, patiently, in the sand. The whole tangle was monstrously weathered, and the surface of the crater from which the towers projected was strewn with fallen blocks and huge amounts of debris.

  Cris and Chen continued climbing steps, threading along a purpose-built alley that led up to the outskirts of the construction. The wind was gathering force, howling all about them, clouding the air with sand, becoming a choking whirlwind that pelted their suits and exposed skin with relentless force. Chen reached out and took Cris’ hand so as not to lose him. Visibility quickly fell to only a few meters, much to Cris’ distress.

  “Sandstorm!” Chen roared. “We’ll be safe once we get inside!”

  They passed under a great black arch, and emerged in what Lorelei Chen guessed was once some kind of garden or courtyard. It was filled with large, triangular objects with cunning bas-reliefs, pedestalled and mysterious pyramid-like statues of veined black marble, beneath carven columns covered in marvellous scrollwork. The polished walls all joined to form an obsidian doorway, shimmering like a vision under the bright, pinkish sky. No other presence, human or otherwise, was evident here, and Cris was glad it was so. Then they passed through the doorway, out of the sandstorm and into the darkness within, descending another onyx alley of steps, tunnelling into the unknown.

  Chen lifted her right arm and whispered to her Rãvier suit. “Show me the way.” A bright, bioluminescent light flickered on, cast from a glowing orb in the suit’s upper wrist. She pointed it forward into the eons-old tunnel and continued leading the way, using her other hand to carry her Vei’nl, the air turning increasingly colder as they descended. The passage was smooth save for a small wavy-line inscription that repeated itself every fifteen steps or so.

  “Is this place safe?” Cris murmured.

  She glanced at the readout on the Vei’nl. “Structurally sound, as far as I can tell. Still, I would recommend caution.”

  Eventually, they emerged from the tunnel onto a stone platform above a deep pit, looking down from halfway up the smooth, curved wall of a large dome-shaped chamber littered with hundreds of doorways on upper levels. Below, a massive black cube, thirty or so meters to a side, appeared suspended in mid-air as though it were caught in some antigravity field, surrounded by strange, unidentifiable objects made from some glowing, precious stone.

  “My God…” Chen breathed.

  “What is this place?” Cris asked.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  They kept moving, around the cube chamber and into another doorway. They had to clamber over fallen masonry to get there, and shrink from the oppressive nearness and dwarfing height of crumbling and pitted walls.

  “Structurally sound, you say?” Cris said, finding it hard to believe.

  She nodded. “According to the Vei’nl, yes. Make sure you watch your step, though. Your suit will afford you a certain amount of enhanced self-control, but you still need to be careful.”

  They passed down a debris-littered alley, and suddenly, Cris stopped.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Listen.”

  He could hear a subtle sound coming from some indefinable point – a kind of muffled whistling, a deep piping, not unlike that of the wind above. But somehow, it was disturbingly different. It sounded sinister, contrived, and gave him a feeling of terrible unease. His imagination ran riot, imagining what primal entities had once dwelt in this ancient, unfathomable place.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Chen said.

  He swallowed. “Are you serious? You can’t hear that?”

  She listened. All she could hear was the soft panting of her own breathing. She shook her head. “No.”

  He frowned. He could still hear the sound quite loudly. A moment later, it was gone. “It stopped,” he said. “I guess it was my imagination.”

  She gave him a concerned look, then moved on through the maze of stone. They clambered up ramps and twisted around corners; truly, the place had been built with an almost labyrinthine complexity, an aeon-dead honeycomb of passages and silent chambers. Chen felt overwhelmed by the implications of its existence; truly, this was the greatest archaeological discovery in the history of mankind.

  Cris followed, keeping quiet. He could hear the whistling sound again, and it was freaking him out somewhat. Why couldn’t Lora hear it? He knew he couldn’t be imagining it… it sounded close, like it was following him. Then once again, the sound disappeared.

  He looked back, sweating. The tunnel behind them was pitch black.

  He reached out to hold Lora’s hand again, feeling like a scared child in the darkness.

  19

  Eventually, Lorelei Chen’s scientific nature got the better of her, and they paused in a vast, well-preserved chamber to begin some archaeological work; mechanically carrying out a program of chipping specimens from all the different rock types represented in the masonry. Lora wanted to get a full set in order to draw a more accurate conclusion regarding the age of the place than could be afforded by the Vei’nl analysis. Cris wanted to continue exploring, arguing that somewhere there had to be a kind of burial chamber or crypt where the ancient inhabitants of this city were buried. But Lora was adamant that they start with the basics; there was plenty of time to study the entire city but it was a process that would take months, if not years, at least.

  “Look at these inscriptions,” Chen was saying. She was looking at a mural on the north-westerly wall of the
chamber, which appeared to show a patchwork tale representing the life of strange, six-limbed beings on other planets, in other galaxies.

  “Can you translate it?” Cris asked.

  She shook her head. “Not a chance. It’s written in the same language as the inscriptions on Heaven’s Gate, back home. Not even the most experienced linguists in the Terran Alliance have ever been able to decipher this language. And these parts here,” she pointed to a repeated pattern of designs and diagrams, “seem above and beyond even the latest findings of mathematics and astrophysics that I scarcely know what to think of them. Truly, this was a highly advanced civilisation, indeed.”

  Cris swallowed dryly, watching as she continued to take notes and samples. His tongue went out to moisten his dry lips and he asked, “Do we have any more water? I’m parched.”

  “Look in the bag.”

  He bent down and opened the pack of supplies they’d brought with them from the Zat Car, and pulled out a fresh bottle of water. He popped the membranous cap eagerly and took a swig, gulping the cold liquid into his dry throat. As he did so, that sound – that whistling, ghostly piping sound that had disturbed him earlier – could be heard again, a monotonous, half-acoustic pulsing that was building in intensity.

  He put the bottle down. “Do you hear it now?” he asked, turning to look at her. “That noise. Do you hear it?”

  She frowned. Listened. Shook her head. “Cris, I really can’t hear anything. Are you feeling all right?”

  He wiped sweat from his brow, unable to comprehend why this woman couldn’t hear the haunting, fluting sound that now echoed around the chamber. Was he really the only one who could hear it? “I’m fine,” he said. “I guess I’m just tired. I haven’t slept for some time.”

  “Perhaps you should get some rest,” she suggested, and turned back to the mural.

  Slightly annoyed, Cris turned and looked in the direction of the open doorway on the westerly wall. His instincts told him that the sound was coming from that way, almost beckoning him to come closer. The fear that had gripped him earlier, while they were traversing the dark corridors of the city, had mostly gone now – replaced by a stark curiosity and determination to prove that he wasn’t imagining things. Without a word he walked over to the doorway, trying to peer down the blackness of the corridor beyond. As he stared into the dark, he heard the sound change, touching musical notes on a wider range. It began to curve, becoming more guttural.

  “What’s down there?” he muttered.

  Chen turned to look at him. “Don’t wander off,” she said, and meant it. “Cris. Do you hear me? Stay with me.”

  He nodded. Then, as he stared down the corridor, he saw a glistening of light. A misty object resembling a man, or a large animal, appeared to be standing and watching him. Cris recoiled with horror, blinked, and the thing was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  What the fuck…?

  He blinked sweat out of his eyes. “Lora!” he roared. “I saw something!”

  She came over to join him quickly, her brow furrowed with concern. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Down there!” he pointed. The guttural sound was strong now, forming a harmonic structure, becoming a croaky, chanting voice. But he couldn’t make out what was being said…

  Chen raised her arm, feeling sceptical, and shone the torch straight into the corridor. The darkness lifted and they saw a massive cave-in, about thirty feet into the corridor from the doorway itself. Rock had collapsed from the ceiling and covered the floor, completely blocking off whatever it was the corridor had originally led to. “See?” Chen said, as if speaking to a child. “There’s nothing there, Cris. It’s a dead end. You’re imagining things.” She went back to the mural on the other side of the room. “Get some sleep,” she said again.

  The sound had stopped.

  Cris rubbed his eyes, and yawned. Maybe she was right. “What about you?” he said. “You look exhausted.”

  She thought about it for a moment, then looked up at the huge mural, and down at her rock samples. There was so much work to be done – but like she’d already admitted, it would take months of work to catalogue everything. No matter how fascinated or curious she felt right now, she had to admit she was grossly tired. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept. She took a deep breath, and gazed at Cris. Nodded. “Okay. Perhaps we should both get some sleep.” Then she took a small, rectangular package from the bag of supplies and casually threw it into the centre of the chamber. Within seconds, the rectangular package had expanded and reshaped into what looked like a two-person hiking dome tent, covered in a rigid, membranous skin.

  “We’ll sleep here,” she said. “But no more than a few hours.”

  Cris took one last look toward the doorway, and decided that he must have been hallucinating. He went to join her by the tent.

  Lora was right. He needed some sleep.

  There was no such thing as ghosts, after all.

  Cristian Stefánsson stirred, and blinked his eyes open. Somewhere in the darkness outside of the small two-man tent, he could hear the ominous piping sound whistling across the chamber. Immediately his heart rate increased, and he felt a sense of dangerous foreboding. He had no idea what time it was, or how long he’d been asleep, but the adrenaline sent coursing through his system now meant he was wide awake. The interior of the tent was pitch-black.

  “Light!” he gasped. Immediately his eyes were dazzled by a bright blue haze emitted from the torch on his Rãvier suit, and he was able to focus on the tent’s interior, and the sleeping form of Lorelei Chen as she lay beside him. He exhaled heavily, his eyes bolt open now.

  The ominous sound changed, becoming an eerie whisper. Its exact location was difficult to pinpoint. “Cristian…”

  He gasped, absolutely terrified, and moved his arms across to shake Chen wildly. “Wake up!” he hissed. “Lora, wake up!”

  She wasn’t responding. Instead, she made a mewing sound in her sleep and rolled over. Cris shook her again, feeling desperate. “Wake up,” he said again. “Lora, for God’s sake…” No matter how hard he tried, she wasn’t showing any signs of budging. “Damn it!” he roared.

  Then, he heard one of the empty water bottles, which had been left outside in the chamber, fall on its side and roll some distance across the stonework. Terrified, he pressed open the seal to the tent’s exoskeletal door and rolled out into the darkness, leaping to his feet. Gasping for breath, he held out his left arm like a flashlight, scanning every wall and crevice for whatever the hell was making that noise.

  “Show yourself!” he shouted.

  Bizarrely, there was nothing in the room with him, but he could see the water bottle that had been knocked over, still making small rolling movements in opposite directions as it settled some distance from the others. Instinctively, he shone the torch toward the doorway on the westerly wall, and again saw a faint, mist-like object disappear into the corridor towards the cave-in. Against his better judgement he ran towards it, screaming. Down into the corridor he charged, all the way to the fallen rock at the end, but the misty object had already disappeared. Cris cried out in frustration, banging his fists against the smashed debris.

  Around him, the whistling voice turned into a laugh.

  Cris had maybe half a second to figure out something was wrong, and then the floor fell out from under him, a roaring barrage of cracking and disintegrating rock. The corridor collapsed. He tried to throw out a hand to grab onto something, a ledge, maybe – but he found only air, and he plummeted helplessly down, flailing desperately. He fell for some time, travelling untold kilometres straight down into the planet’s cavernous crust.

  “No!” he screamed, confused and panicked. Petrified.

  And then the worst moment came: he crashed through rock, bouncing off vast ledges. His Rãvier suit was smashed instantly, reducing it to nothing more than a gelatinous, useless shell around his flailing body. He slammed into more rocks, and in that moment all of his ribs were smashed
, his legs and arms too. Another impact, making his body spin like a ragdoll, shattered his pelvis and ruptured several vertebrae in his backbone. His body ricocheted through, hitting side to side, before finally dropping onto an outcropping of rocky spikes, impaling him through the gut. His body made a spastic jerk and he wriggled for a moment like a fish on a hook, before he went still.

  Lorelei Chen woke up with a start, to a violent and rumbling crashing sound coming from outside the tent. She sat bolt upright and activated her Rãvier suit’s light, cursing herself for sleeping so deeply, then turned and saw the empty blanket where Cris had lay.

  “Cris!” she exclaimed, and felt a knot tighten in her stomach. Immediately, she knew that something bad had happened to him. Why hadn’t she gone ahead with her original plan and decided to sleep in shifts? Someone should have been keeping watch, for Cris’ safety more than anything. Hurriedly, she rolled out of the tent and saw a huge plume of dust spilling out of the westerly doorway, ejected from a fresh, huge cave-in happening in the corridor. The wall itself, above the doorway, was cracking under the intensely changing pressure, falling masonry and dust filling the chamber.

  Chen squinted her eyes and coughed, somehow managing to activate her suit’s breathing apparatus before the dust reached a toxic level, and finally settled. There was a final crash of straining rock, and then the chamber was silent once again.

  God…!

  Shaking, she took a moment to compose herself, before taking one careful step across the room toward the doorway. The decorative mural that surrounded the threshold was now severed by a large crack which spidered across its length, splitting it into several ruined pieces. As she took another step, it became clear that the corridor beyond had buckled and disintegrated, leaving only a gaping pit.