by Worth, Dan
‘I wanted to see it for myself,’ said Beklide, resolutely. ‘I wanted to see first-hand what they had done to us.’
‘There is considerable data available on all aspects of the Shaper attack. Losses both military and civilian, the tactics employed by our enemy, a catalogue of systems invaded, the relative effectiveness of our weapons and defences versus theirs.’
‘It’s not the same. This place was my home, my family... my family lived here for generations. They were still living here when...’ She almost choked on her words and then added. ‘I had to come.’
‘I’m afraid I cannot comprehend the emotional attachment to a particular place, but I appreciate that the deaths of your loved ones must cause you considerable grief.’
‘Yes, it does,’ Beklide replied, stifling the urge to rebuke the coldly clinical AI ‘Billions more Arkari doubtless feel the same way.’
The shuttle was above the atmosphere now. The view ahead was filled with stars and the dull reflected light from the chunks of spinning debris still in orbit above the planet. In the distance she could see the rapidly growing shape of the Sword of Reckoning, the two hundred kilometre long capital ship’s wings beating slowly as it held station in the void. A vast number of other Arkari ships were also in orbit above the blasted world, as rescue teams did their best to extract survivors from the surface. They hung above the planet in a great, gleaming shoal.
‘Irakun Mentith saved us, you know,’ said Beklide. ‘Most of us, anyway.’
‘Yes, I’ve accessed the reports from the survivors from the Black Rock research facility,’ said the warship. ‘They say that he took the Shining Glory through one of the open wormholes and it collapsed soon after. Presumably he must have destroyed or disabled whatever device was generating them.’
‘I wonder if he made it out of there alive? I hope he did.’
‘I suspect that the odds were definitely stacked against such an eventuality.’
‘Then you don’t know Irakun Mentith too well,’ Beklide replied fighting the voice inside her that told her that Mentith and his crew were, in all probability, dead. The ship said nothing. Despite being an artificial intelligence with no real emotions, it knew when to keep silent. The Sword of Reckoning loomed large now, its huge hull forming a curving expanse of metal above the shuttle
‘Mentith has bought us a reprieve,’ said Beklide. ‘For how long, we cannot know, but it gives us a chance to prepare.’
‘To prepare for what, if I may ask?’ said the ship.
‘For our revenge,’ she replied firmly. ‘It’s time to take the war to the Shapers. I dare anyone to stand in our way.’
Chapter 8
Katherine stood at the head of the valley and gazed into the heart of the dead city that lay in the distance on the plain. Serried ranks of smashed and crumbling buildings slumped along the edges of cracked and buckled roads that led towards the horizon under a sky filled with lowering clouds. She was enveloped by the silence. There was no plant life to rustle in the breeze or animal life to fill the air with calls. The only sounds were the crunch of her boots on the endless fields of grey gravel and rock, and the mutterings of complaint from Rekkid as he eased himself into a sitting position on top of a flat lump of debris and contemplated his surroundings.
‘Of all the shithole planets we had to get marooned on, this place really does redefine the term “armpit of the universe.” Could we find a lush, verdant paradise world? No, we had to find somewhere that had been nuked into oblivion. Lucky us.’
‘Oh be quiet, Rekkid,’ chided Katherine, weary of his griping. ‘We’re not marooned. Mentith and his crew will get the Shining Glory up and running again, you’ll see.’
‘And then what? We’re tens of thousands of light years from home. It’ll take us years to get back, and to what? Is there anything left back home, or has it all been destroyed by the Shapers?’
‘I don’t know Rekkid, just... can we deal with things one at a time?’ Katherine replied and looked over at her Arkari friend who was massaging his skull either side of his head-crest, a sure sign as any that he was anxious. ‘We’re alive, we have to be thankful for that, and the ship brought us here for a reason. We need to find out what that reason was. There’s something important about this place, I’m sure. We have to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ Rekkid replied and sighed heavily. ‘Sorry, it’s just that with all that’s happened I’m finding it a little difficult to think clearly. Gets on top of me, you know? I mean look how far away from home we are.’
He pointed at the sky. Even in the day-time the brilliant, lenticular shape of the galactic core laced with dark lanes of dust and gas dominated the patches of grey sky visible between the clouds. Mentith’s crew had established that they were on the opposite side of the core to the western spiral arm, home of the Arkari and the human race. This part of the galaxy - permanently occluded by the densely packed stars and dust and space-time distortion of the core when viewed from Earth or Keros - was uncharted space.
The crew of the Shining Glory had made some progress with the repairs. Power to the manoeuvring surfaces had been restored and the ship’s orbit had been stabilised. A mass evacuation to the surface had been postponed, for now. In addition, they had also managed to coax the nanotech hull to respond to basic commands, allowing the docking bay to be opened and the ship’s complement of smaller vessels to be despatched to survey the system. They had found very little. The star system they now found themselves in was a widely separated trinary system. A pair of closely orbiting G type yellow dwarf stars were orbited by a third at a distance of over nine hundred AUs. Whilst the central binary had no planets, the third star was orbited by five worlds. Three were little more than barren rocks, the outermost planet was a small gas giant with a faint system of rings, whilst the fourth world from the star was the one they now walked upon. There were no signs of settlement on any of the other worlds and none of them seemed suitable for life to have ever existed on their surfaces. There was, however, a large asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets with a high metal content, and Mentith had despatched ships to the belt to begin processing the asteroids into raw materials to repair the Glory.
Teams had also been sent down to the surface of the planet, both to survey for useable resources and to investigate the mysterious dead city from which the endlessly repeating transmissions were emanating. A temporary base had been dropped from orbit inside the Glory’s transport vessels. The lightweight buildings had arrived as flat metallic pallets, which had then unfolded themselves into long, tent like structures with thin, but incredibly tough, nano-form walls that contained heating, power, sanitation and a series of internal rooms. Further ships had then arrived with equipment and supplies to enable a home away from home to be established on the planet’s surface, just outside the edge of the dead city.
The Arkari were being cautious. It was still unclear what sort of weapons had been used to flatten the population centres of this world, and how long ago. It was entirely possible that pockets of radiation or the residues from chemical or biological warfare could lurk in pockets hidden within the ruins and hence they had chosen to place the temporary base, already dubbed Camp Keros, outside the city limits. Teams exploring the surface had been issued with small detectors that would alert the wearer to any dangerous levels of radiation, toxic chemicals or recognisable biological threats, although they were expected to be far less effective at detecting the latter given the wholly alien nature of the planet and any remaining life forms, if they existed.
Fortunately, the environment of the planet was suitable for both humans and Arkari. Gravity was roughly eighty percent of Earth’s and the atmosphere was breathable, though correspondingly thinner, approximating that of a high mountain on Earth. However, the lessened gravity made it a little easier to move around, and compensated a little for the difficulties of physical exertion in such rarefied air.
Katherine, Rekkid and Steelscal
e were to make an initial exploration of this part of the city, working their way inwards towards the source of the signals before Arrakid, the Shining Glory’s lead scientist, organised teams to follow up on their initial findings. They had been issued with comm. units and had been instructed to request extraction at once if they discovered anything hazardous. Steelscale had seemed to relish the challenge of this harsh environment. Perhaps the warrior instinct of his people encouraged him to pit himself against the rugged terrain. He had bounded off on his own into the ruins, his muscular, centauroid body carrying him across the broken terrain with surprising speed. They had not heard from him since he left Camp Keros at first light, his concubines having been left behind in their own dedicated hut where they ignored all attempts by the Arkari to get them to help.
Mentith, meanwhile, remained aboard his ship, where he co-ordinated the repairs and the mining operations for raw materials to manufacture new components for the ship. As yet, his crew had not succeeded in reconnecting either the ship’s own AI or the Progenitor entity that called itself Eonara. They remained active, but had resisted all attempts to communicate with them so far.
Katherine took a sip from her water bottle, replaced it in her rucksack and stood up, peering into the heart of the city. A dust storm had blown up, obscuring the distant buildings from view behind whipping grey clouds.
‘Come on Rekkid, don’t look so glum. I’m sure there’s plenty of fascinating things for us to find here,’ she said, trying to cheer up her friend and colleague.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Rekkid, standing and hefting his own pack. ‘It ought to at least take my mind off our current predicament.’
Taking care to avoid slipping on the rolling gravel underfoot, they made their way down the hillside until they reached the remains of a road at the bottom that appeared to head straight into the city. The cracked surface seemed similar to concrete, and had long since been scoured of any markings by the wind and dust. Doubtless it had once been flawlessly smooth, but subsidence and weathering had cracked and twisted the surface until it undulated gently across the landscape. They set off walking along its hard surface, the sound of their footsteps and the whisper of dust in the breeze the only sounds that broke the enveloping silence.
After about a kilometre the first remains of buildings started to appear. They were in various states of collapse. Most lacked roofs and the majority seemed to have crumbled on the side facing towards the centre of the city. The interiors of many were choked with rubble. Eventually they came across one that was more intact. Although a portion of the roof had collapsed and plunged through the floor below, the majority of it remained. The roof had been low and sweeping, as if designed to repel large amounts of rainwater. Katherine and Rekkid pondered this as they looked about them at the lifeless desert that the planet had been transformed into.
They approached the building’s low door and peered inside. It had obviously been constructed to accommodate a physiology rather shorter than humans or Arkari.
‘That’s odd,’ said Rekkid, thoughtfully assessing the state of the structure. ‘See, the roof has collapsed through the first floor, but there’s no rubble inside or outside the building. Someone must have cleared it away.’
‘Some people must have survived for a time after the bombardment, I guess,’ said Katherine. ‘Perhaps whoever owned this building planned to repair it but never got the chance.’
‘I imagine it must have been a long slow death for this planet,’ said Rekkid. ‘A bombardment of this magnitude on a planet-wide scale would have thrown up tremendous amounts of dust into the atmosphere. It would have blotted out the sun for years. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone could have survived.’
‘The science teams haven’t found anything larger than microbial life so far, and nothing that relies on sunlight for sustenance.’
‘Hardly surprising. The food chain would have collapsed completely. Anything relying on photosynthesis would have been dead in days or weeks, and higher life forms would have followed once the food ran out. I guess some people could have survived by scavenging dead animals and food stocks for a while, but when they ran out... not to mention the possibility of radiation poisoning on top of it all. No wonder this place is a tomb.’
Katherine ducked inside the entrance to the building. Inside she found a low, L-shaped stone counter and a number of shelves inset into the thick walls. There were rusty marks set at regular intervals indicating where further shelving had been attached to the walls and where power or data sockets had once been situated. Steps at the back of the room led down into darkness.
‘Looks like a shop of some sorts to me,’ said Rekkid, bending low as he negotiated the entrance. ‘A cosy, family run sort of place, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Katherine. ‘Unless this is the food preparation area for a house.’
‘Seems a little large for a building of this size, though granted we know little about these people. Those steps over there, I wonder where they lead to?’ said Rekkid, indicating towards the shadowy stairwell.
‘Let me find my torch and we’ll take a look, shall we?’ said Katherine, fumbling in her rucksack and producing a slim, pen sized device.
They walked over to the stairwell, shining their lights down into the darkness. It appeared that the stairs had originally been barred by a heavy door of some kind. Traces of the hinges could be seen in the walls. However now nothing remained except traces of rust. Gingerly they stepped down into the darkness.
The steps led down into a large cellar. Judging by the large shelving recesses cut into the walls it had served as a storeroom for the shop above. Down here, a little more had been preserved, the cellar sheltering its contents from the ravages of the elements. The remains of broken crates and containers littered the floor, and there were bones. There were bones everywhere.
Katherine and Rekkid shone their torches over the grisly scene, their beams revealing the remains of large skulls amid the scattered bones. The bones had been broken, often into numerous pieces, but from the size and shape of the skulls, there was no mistaking the fact that they had once belonged to sentient beings. Large binocular eye-sockets and oversized brain cases betrayed the presence of intelligence.
‘Looks like we found some of the locals, poor bastards,’ said Rekkid. ‘Perhaps they crept down here to die together?’
Katherine stepped carefully across the bone strewn floor so as not to disturb any of the remains. She crouched down in front of one of the more intact skulls and played her torch over it. The skull lacked a bottom jaw and the upper one contained a number of broken teeth towards the front of the mouth. Looking carefully Katherine could see that these people had endlessly replacing teeth, similar to terrestrial sharks. A number of other partially formed teeth could be seen growing from the jaw, but the front teeth had not had time to re-grow and looking closer she could see that there were fragments of broken tooth still within the upper jaw. There was also the small matter of the massive wound across the creature’s left eye. A sharp edge had chopped down diagonally, embedding itself in the eye socket, biting into the creature’s cheekbone and cracking the frontal bone. The cranium had been broken open. Looking inside it, Katherine could see the telltale scrape marks made by a metal implement of some kind. She looked about at the bones around her from legs, arms and ribs. There were cut marks on them. Somebody had used a blade to strip them of meat.
‘My god, Rekkid,’ said Katherine in horror. ‘These people didn’t come here to die: they were forced down here and butchered like animals. Look at the marks on the bones!’
Rekkid peered closer at a nearby bone resembling a femur and also saw the cut marks clearly visible in the light from his torch. This largest bone had been smashed open, presumably to get at the marrow inside.
‘They must have been desperate,’ he muttered. ‘Imagine what must have happened when the food ran out. Civilisation is just a thin veneer. People will do anything to survive whe
n it comes down to it. The owners of this shop could have been hoarding food down here. They would have been easy prey for any roaming, desperate gangs, and they would have been well fed compared to everyone else, plenty of meat on their bones...’
‘Stop it!’ snapped Katherine. ‘Christ, Rekkid. How can you be so callous?’
‘Sorry,’ Rekkid replied sheepishly. ‘I guess I use black humour as a coping mechanism.’
‘I’d noticed, thanks.’
‘You’re absolutely correct, this is a pretty grim scene,’ said Rekkid, his brow furrowing. ‘Maybe they were killed and butchered down here and the meat taken elsewhere along with whatever food they had hoarded.’
‘We should log this site, it needs proper investigation and maybe we can reconstruct some of these skeletons to get a proper impression of what these people looked like,’ said Katherine.
‘Agreed,’ said Rekkid. ‘But first I intend to get a date on the age of these remains.’
He removed his sample analyser from his pack and after selecting a small bone fragment from the floor of the cellar, placed it within the device. After a few seconds, the analyser displayed a result.
‘The analyser doesn’t recognise the genetic structure of the sample. But it can estimate that it’s about ten thousand years old, give or take a century or two,’ said Rekkid, scrutinising the device’s display. ‘Someone killed this planet whilst the human race was still using stone tools and it’s lain undisturbed ever since. The question is, why?’
‘We need to keep looking,’ said Katherine. ‘Come on, let’s push further on into the city.’
Further in, the buildings became larger and more closely packed. Some had obviously been many stories in height and had come crashing down when they had been hit by the blast wave. Others had survived the attack, but had simply crumbled with the ravages of time. Increasingly the road became choked with drifts of rubble, making the going more difficult. There was far more dust here, and it swirled in choking clouds at the slightest breeze. Katherine and Rekkid removed Arkari made re-breather units from their packs and fixed the slick, flexible devices to their faces, allowing them to breathe and see easily in the filthy atmosphere.