Imperator

by Nick Cole

  The day passes and turns to night, but his new obsession takes him right into the long darkness. He continues adjusting stones and listening for the differences made. He makes a horrible wind-burnt sour face if a note is wrong, and he laughs triumphantly if somehow a little chorus of stones, or a snatch of harmony, comes to him in a sudden gust atop the icy plateau.

  It is late when he remembers that he has not had a drink of water all day. He crawls into his cave, tired and dehydrated, because the cold and the wind can dehydrate much worse than any desert.

  He drinks the melted water and lies next to the fire, listening to the wind in his dreams.

  In the morning he chews some cold meat absently and returns to the stones. Now he tries systems and patterns. He works all day at this and into the night, remembering, just barely, to drink and eat as he does so.

  On the fourth day he goes out to stare at the stones. The wind taunts him. Lies to him. Tells him that there is a solution to be found. Promises that this will waste his time. That this will kill him. That it will lead him too far into hunger and thirst to survive.

  If he keeps this up he will be too weak to fight the cats.

  But like a slave to addiction, he bends to his task once again, expecting a different outcome, and he is soon lost in the insanity of the puzzle.

  Days pass.

  The meat is gone.

  He only barely remembers to drink melted snow water.

  Now he takes the snow and melts it in his mouth. It burns his raw and ragged wind-burnt throat.

  His voice is a croak. A hollow croak. It is a cracking croak on the morning he finally harmonizes the last stone and the howl of the wind reaches its perfect harmony, a multi-tone chorus vibrating on a single note…

  … and the howl fades to nothing.

  Silence.

  Beautiful.

  Sweet.

  Silence.

  He falls to his knees and hears the croak that his dry husky coughing laugh has become. He hears that and only that in the yawning sweet silence.

  He basks in that silence.

  And then sound returns.

  A white noise hush. The wind, far off, distant, moving through… trees.

  He stands and stumbles away from the bowl, never to return.

  He follows the soft broom whisk noise beyond a crevasse he’d always been wary of. And hours later he stumbles down into a high alpine forest. Here there are trees. Water. Game. And the land leads down into a valley that seems, from this great height, to be blossoming into coming spring.

  He will live.

  He falls back against a warm tree and smiles. He sinks onto the twig-laden forest floor and listens to the sweet sound of the quiet wind whispering in the treetops above him.

  And the Master comes.

  In the forest dark, in the night, the Master comes. The student has built a fire of sweet-smelling woods.

  He recognizes the Master.

  It has been many years.

  He remembers the command. The lesson required of him.

  And the Master speaks, for the Lesson of Focus is now done.

  “Live moment to moment… one must. Haunt our minds things do. Unimportant these are. Focus, or you will die.”

  The Master smiles. But it is not a warm smile, or a friendly smile. It is a smile that knows worse things are coming. A cruel smile that delights to see what may become, or not become.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The fetid jungle was already reclaiming the scorched earth the falling starship had carved in its wake. They followed the long burnt scar, and within an hour they’d passed beyond the point of initial impact, where the ship’s repulsor fields had first smashed the treetops.

  They continued walking for the rest of the day, and it was hard going because there were no trails. They had to weave around murky pools of green, moss-laden swamp water, and maneuver past giant trees that had fallen and lay rotting. The heat grew, and the air became like an oven. Casper’s shirt and pants were soaked with sweat.

  They found a stream miles from the crash, and Casper tested it with a small survival scanner. It was good, or at least its burbling course contained nothing known to kill anyone back in the galaxy.

  Casper dropped his pack and got down on all fours to dip his canteen cup into its coolness. The cup would also attempt to purify the water. Its advanced nano-forged construction could purify, chill, or heat liquids to a boil. None of this was needed though.

  As Casper sat drinking the cool water, he ruminated on the fact that there were no trails. No animal trails. No trails left by hunter-gatherer-type civilizations. Other than the insects, and the strange unseen birds that cried out at soul-chilling moments, there were no other life forms here.

  And then he remembered the giant lizard that had destroyed what was left of his ship. It had left a trail. A trail of flattened trees and wanton destruction. A single trail that led away from the crash site, as though, having done what it had come for, the beast had retraced its steps.

  Despite the cleared path, Casper had chosen not to follow that trail. For reasons of self-preservation.

  A sudden hopelessness caught him as he once more considered the desperateness of his situation. He raised the cup to his lips, breathed in the iron sharpness of the water, and concentrated on solving the problem. He’d learned that back in NASA. There was always a solution. Or so they’d taught him.

  But what if he finally found what he’d come for… and there was no way off this planet? No way back to the galaxy proper. What if he was doomed to live here on this planet, lost between the galaxies, for as long as his body’s machinery allowed him to live? And even the members of the Pantheon of the Obsidia had no idea how long that would be. As extensionists, their only goal had ever been for more life, regardless of the cost and no matter the length. A little bit more was all that mattered to the mummies of that hell ship.

  That’s what Rex had called them when they led the rebellion on that ship. He’d called the Pantheon “soul-sucking mummies.”

  He’d been right.

  And that was when Casper saw it. In the stream bed.

  He was tranced out, back there on the Obsidia once more. Trying not think about anything other than the absolute hopeless folly this expedition had become. Trying not to think that he’d turned his life into a long-lived hell trapped forever on a planet no one would ever find.

  And he saw a carved stone.

  A shaped stone. Something that evidenced tools, construction, and therefore… a civilization. Which was what he’d come here to find. A lost civilization that held the secrets of a great power beyond anything the Republic, and the galaxy, could ever imagine.

  He put one hand down into the cold water and felt the ancient stone. It was only one of many—the stream was lined with them. Perhaps they’d once been part of some canal or aqueduct. Some redirected course of water. A common thing for any civilization.

  He cast his eyes across the jungle. The ground was covered in gnarled and warped trees, moss, vines, and strange red ferns. But he knew—he knew—that underneath the undergrowth were other carved stones. That this, once, long ago, had been something that someone had built.

  The stream flowed from a hill above. A hill implied a temple. And even if it wasn’t the temple, it would, most likely, contain a clue that led to it.

  He pulled his hatchet off his ruck and went to a large clump of vines. He hacked at them, clearing them away. Underneath the clustering mass he found more shaped stones: the remains of a pedestal and the barest portion of a rising column that had been broken off who knew how long ago.

  Ancient runes were carved around the pedestal. He threw the hatchet down and pulled at the clutching vines, revealing more of the runes. He heard himself shrieking and felt his hope returning.

  He knew these runes. Knew them well.


  He’d seen them in the Moirai.

  He’d chased them in all the years since.

  In an ancient library on the desert world of Uraam, he’d found an actual book. An old-school, ink-printed-on-page book that no one in the library had even known was there. Runes just like these had been copied on the brittle pages within. None of it was intelligible. Nothing beyond a note left in the front of the book, written in semi-modern ink.

  Found in the wreck of the Halstead’s Rhone out in Jumai. –T. Noc

  Halstead’s Rhone had been one of the ships someone had built during the Exodus. Who Halstead was, Casper didn’t know. Just another kid, probably, much like he’d been, with the gumption to put together a hyperdrive and get off planet using a prefab ceramic hull. And where Halstead had found the book was also unknown.

  T. Noc, on the other hand, was known. He had been a scout in the Republic Scout Service seven hundred and fifty years ago. At some point he’d found the book, and at some point after that, it had found its way to the library on Uraam.

  Casper kept the book. Had it analyzed. Transcribed.

  And in time, translated.

  It was a long form epic of an ancient warrior known as Gogamoth. It was striking in its similarity to other ancient epics, from Beowulf to Gilgamesh.

  The translation was imperfect, as all translations are. There was a chance that every time the epic mentioned “the Sea,” what was really meant was “the Stars.” And other translation options might have put a different spin altogether on the ancient fable. But as best as Casper understood, the original had begun as follows…

  Gogamoth Sailed the Seas from the Lost Home Beyond the World and came to Land of Angry Kraken.

  And Gogamoth did battle against Ur-Zyxgar and subdued the Behemoth-Leviathan with his Invisible Hammer. Many-armed People did obeisance at his great powers of Chankar and in time he leaped across the Sea to Lost Home Beyond the World once again.

  Casper had, of course, tweaked the translation options, analyzed for deeper meaning, and drawn his own conclusions. Had he taken the time, at this moment, to reference his research, he would have found the following annotated version…

  Gogamoth Sailed the Seas (Stars) from the Lost Home Beyond the World (a planet beyond the Galactic Lens) and came to Land of Angry Kraken (Tennar).

  And Gogamoth did battle against Ur-Zyxgar (the Tennar deity known as Ash-Kaxor) and subdued the Behemoth-Leviathan (ancient Tennarian records use this as an early name for the legendary tyrannasquid) with his Invisible Hammer (psionics?). Many-armed People (Tennar) did obeisance (became mindless slaves like thralls) at his great powers of Chankar (Tennarian name for the mysterious pyramids left by the Ancients on most planets across the galaxy) and in time he leaped (faster-than-light travel) across the Sea (Stars) to the Unknown (not part of the stellar map) Lost Home Beyond the World once again.

  And now, here on this forsaken planet, were more of those same runes. And along with these were pictoglyphs depicting humanoid lizards battling against other alien humanoids. Insect people. Possibly.

  That ancient book had contained the first reference to the Temple of Morghul. It had placed it at “across the Sea to Lost Home Beyond the World.”

  The place of ancient power that Gogamoth had made his own.

  But it was the mention of the Dark Wanderer that first told Casper he was on the right trail. Deep within the book’s brittle pages, a book bound in some kind of leather that had resisted categorical analysis, he’d found these words.

  And Gogamoth was a servant of the Dark Wanderer, whose power was his and his alone. And even Gogamoth did tremble at the terribleness of the un-named demon.

  On the Moirai, all those years ago, they would meet the Dark Wanderer. The possessor of the power the prophetesses had barely been able to wield. Finding that book with its crazed and snake-like runes, and then later a direct mention of an entity he had personally seen within the worst and last moments of the ancient lighthugger, had sent a cold chill up his spine within the deeps of the dark and warm library. And… it had confirmed that there was a trail that led to this planet, a place beyond the known. The Lost Home. It confirmed that there was a place where the power he sought… waited to be found.

  “133,” said Casper breathlessly as he sat back on his haunches and stared in disbelief at the runes he’d uncovered. Runes just like those he’d found in a forgotten library long ago. Letting their weirdness wash over him. Letting their unbelievable realness comfort him. “Scout the hill. We’ll camp here tonight.”

  “As you command, master. Though I can tell from my sensors that that there are no life forms here for me to kill. Other than you and the Urmo. It seems a rather boring place, though I am always open to surprise attacks by hordes of combatants who are willing to die badly for some cause they desperately believe in. I have always found that quite amusing. I doubt I will get that opportunity today. Still, one can hope.”

  The homicidal bot went off, heavy blaster rifle at the ready, stalking through the undergrowth, on alert for anything from a MK9 main battle tank to the fabled OGRE mech of the Krogon Reich.

  Casper cleared away more vines from other stones, relishing in each new discovery. Watching the story of the carved lizard people come to life. Seeing the symbol that represented the enigmatic pyramids. Remembering the one he’d seen inside the lighthugger—on the night battle with the crazies that came for the rest of the light infantry in that abandoned city on the curving plain.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Fifteen of them had made it to the abandoned city. Out there, across that insane landscape no sentient mind failed to struggle with, were other structures. Abandoned cities. Enigmatic ruins. And halfway up the cylinder from their current position lay a strange pyramid. Just like the pyramids the first star travelers of the Exodus had seen on so many other worlds.

  Everyone had ended up calling them the ruins of the Ancients. They defied explanation, and their secrets remained undiscovered.

  On every planet where they were found, the pyramids were formed of local rock and organized in complexes that involved one massive pyramid and three smaller ones. They were usually located in the deepest and most forsaken wastes, and they were in no way connected with any other planetary civilizations, modern or ancient. They served no apparent purpose.

  And… the pyramids were impenetrable. Unreadable by the most powerful of sensors, even by deep-scan radar. They could not be destroyed or damaged. Not even the heaviest cutting tools had marred them in the slightest.

  The galactic excitement at their discovery died down when they refused to reveal their secrets. Now they were merely there, everywhere, and no one really much cared.

  Theories, and that’s all they were, posited that they had existed long before the Galactic Republic—on the order of possibly millions of years. It was assumed that they were created by some ancient civilization that had also once spanned the galaxy. This other galactic civilization had had their heyday, and then they’d mysteriously died out, for no known reason. That dead civilization was the living embodiment of the argument against the Fermi Paradox, which anyway had pretty much been destroyed with the advent of the hyperdrive. The answer to “Where is everyone?” had been: everywhere. They just didn’t have faster-than-light travel.

  Not until mankind came along.

  Everywhere humanity went, they found life. And not just bizarre and hard-to-understand alien life, though they found that too. Humanity also found a multitude of humanoid life forms much like themselves. This had been the source of endless discussion in the field of xenobiology.

  But the ruins of the Ancients, the strange pyramids that seemed almost to curl, though the math and measurements said they did not, were the real response to the Fermi Paradox. They served as proof that there had been a galaxy-spanning civilization before our own—a civilization that had come and gone. The Ancients were a Galactic Repub
lic from long ago.

  Yet here, in an Exodus lighthugger, was one of those pyramids. How could that be? The last thing Casper expected, as he ran for his life, old-school Savage bullets whipping past him through the dry brown bio-engineered corn still growing in the fields outside the dead city on the curving plain inside a massive ship, was to see an Ancients’ pyramid inside the main hab.

  All Casper could hear was his heavy breathing, coming in ragged gasps, as he dashed forward. In the moment before he saw that pyramid up above him, hanging in the sky that was merely more of the dark plain they were fleeing across, he would’ve told you that they were all about to die. They were too deep inside the ship. Too outnumbered. And heading into more of the unknown.

  This was how everyone got killed.

  They were at least four miles from the entrance that could take them back up through the outer decks to the only ship that could get them out of the Dead Zone. A Dead Zone no one had ever gotten out of.

  And those four miles between them and the Lex were overrun with long-running science experiments gone horribly awry. On this ship, man had left his humanity at the door and opted for the next step—seeking some kind of godhood, ripe for the taking, if we would just let go of ourselves and grasp it. If we were willing to become monsters in the process.

  Casper threw himself onto the dry dirt below the field of wild dead corn. He sucked in lungfuls of the cold, stale air as though there were little and less of it in each frantic second. All around, the electric fire of the Martian infantry mixed with the hiss and whip of Savage bullets, actual bullets like those used by ancient bands of tribal jihadis back on Earth. Hundreds of enemies closed on their position.

  “Sergeant Trask!” shouted Rex over the comm, his voice mixing with the sound of automatic weapons fire up close and personal. “Fall back to the city and secure a perimeter. First Squad will hold here until you do. Standing by for your confirmation.”