by Worth, Dan
‘Presumably those who fail to comply with the recall order can be written off as having been implanted by the enemy’s agents?’
‘It is possible, though as Admiral Chen discovered, there are a number of personnel within the Commonwealth armed forces and the intelligence community who have been swayed by Admiral Morgan and have sided with the Shapers out of their own free will, seeing an alliance with the enemy as the only way that humanity can survive. We could be dealing with many enemy agents and double agents within our ranks. The CIB is not secure Madam President, though it pains me greatly to admit it, and the information that we have regarding the enemy is not reliable.’
‘Very well,’ said Sorenson. ‘Admiral Cartwright, you have permission to begin moving fleet assets to forward positions as long as defence of this system is not compromised. We’ll reconvene to discuss our next course of action once we have more information. Thank you everyone, that’s all. Admiral Chen, if I could have a moment?’
As the others in the room gathered their things, President Sorenson moved around the end of the table and approached Chen. She shook Chen warmly by the hand and beamed at her in admiration.
‘It’s good to finally meet you, Admiral,’ said the President. ‘I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.’
‘Thank you Madam President,’ said Chen, a little taken aback.
‘You did a hell of a job defending Earth. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.’
‘I was just doing my duty, ma’am,’ Chen replied modestly.
‘Yes you were, to the highest standard. Mark my words, your bravery will be duly recognised.’
‘Ma’am, it was the Nahabe who saved us in the end. I made a stand, but we couldn’t have won without them. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be standing here.’
‘Maybe, but these are dark times, Admiral Chen. The people need heroes, someone to look up to, someone to give them hope. Winning wars isn’t just about guns and ships, it’s about morale, it’s about giving people the will to fight. My father taught me that.’
‘Your father, ma’am?’
‘Sorenson’s my married name. President Cook was my father.’
‘He was President during the First K’Soth War.’
‘He was, and he never gave up no matter how bad things got - and they did get very bad before the end, - and neither did the people, thanks to him. I hope to live up to his memory. Did you have any relatives who fought in that war?’
‘Yes ma’am, my grandfather was a captain in the Navy.’
‘And I bet he’d be proud of you, Admiral Chen.’
‘Yes,’ said Chen, looking at the President of the Commonwealth smiling back at her. ‘I think that he would.’
They were about to leave when there was a commotion in the corridor outside. An aide, breathless from running and clutching a document, had collared Admiral Hawkwood and was hurriedly trying to explain something to him. She saw Hawkwood turn and re-enter the room. Everyone else in the process of leaving did likewise and began to resume their seats.
‘What is it?’ said the President. ‘What’s going on?’
‘It’s Haines,’ said Hawkwood. ‘We received an encrypted emergency transmission from a distress beacon in the Achernar system. He’s alive.’
Chapter 13
Deep in the asteroid belt, squadrons of ships from the Shining Glory moved like bright schools of fish amidst the scattered metal-rich rocks. The graceful fighter craft were using their weapons to smash the larger boulders into more manageable chunks, which were then moved by the tractor beams of heavier utility vessels into the waiting maws of two ore harvester vessels, whose flat, disc shaped bodies and long, manipulator arms gave them the appearance of giant, glittering crabs as they fed the raw material from the asteroids into their gaping loading bays to be broken down into their constituent metals. A long stream of ejected waste material issued from the back of each craft as stone and ice were discarded.
The mineral content had puzzled the crews of the harvester craft. A lot of the rock being discarded was of types not commonly found except within the crusts of planets. There was sedimentary rock here in abundance as well as deposits formed by volcanic action. There was also an awful lot of water mixed in with the various types of stone and metal, indeed entire mountains of ice had been spotted floating amidst the rocks, gleaming blueish white in the light from the binary. Complex carbon compounds were also in abundance. Clearly there had once been a planet here and something catastrophic had happened to it - that much was clear. The distribution of the asteroids in their orbit and their dense concentration into a crescent shape rather than being evenly spread in their orbital path around the parent star also pointed to the event being the relatively recent past, geologically speaking, though exactly how long ago it was difficult to say. Perhaps a rogue body had passed this way and collided with this one, shattering it into a billion pieces? This close to the core, the skies were densely packed with star systems and such events must surely be more common than way out in the relative safety of the spiral arms.
It was then that they began to find the remains of artificial structures amidst the tumbling rocks, regular forms that could not possibly have occurred naturally, shapes formed from purified metals half melted by intense heat. It wasn’t until they cracked open one particularly large boulder and discovered the remains of an underground bunker, perfectly preserved within like an insect in amber, that they found the bodies.
Katherine placed her hand against the glassy, black surface of the building and gazed up at the symbol carved into its surface. The details of the carving were still clear and sharp, the building itself almost pristine after ten thousand years and a nuclear bombardment. The alien script formed a double line underneath a circle emitting rays that touched the stylised figures that were arrayed before it. She stared at it, wondering what it represented. A holy symbol of some kind, that much they had deduced from its presence in the temple that Steelscale had discovered, but anything more was still a mystery.
‘Rekkid,’ she said. ‘What does it say? The line of Progenitor script, can you read it?’
‘Ah, yes I can actually,’ said Rekkid, shaken from his trance-like state as he too scrutinised the carving. ‘Hmm. Their use of the Progenitor language contains some inaccuracies with regard to the grammar, as though the carvers were not native speakers, but as far as I can render it into English, the inscription reads: “Fortress of the Soldiers of the Sacred Way” or something similar, although the word that they’ve used for “way” could mean a number of other things. In any case, this is, or rather was, a place filled with holy warriors, and I’m assuming that it wasn’t built by the Progenitors.’
‘But it doesn’t belong here,’ said Steelscale. ‘This building: look at it. It’s so different to the others in this city.’
‘You’re right,’ said Katherine, pressing her palm against the smooth, shiny surface. I don’t know what this material is. It feels like glass to the touch, but it’s obviously far stronger than that. It’s been used in these great blocks to construct this fortress and there’s barely a mark on it, when the rest of the city lies in ruins.’
Rekkid was hunting around on the ground, searching for something amid the dirt. Eventually he found a tiny chip that had fallen from the fortress wall and popped it into his sample analyser. He looked at the result and furrowed his brow.
‘This stuff is exactly the same as the base material used by the Progenitors to construct their mega-structures such as the Dyson Sphere we excavated,’ he said.
‘Is this a Progenitor structure? Did the locals build their city on top of an ancient site, do you think?’ said Katherine.
‘I’m not sure. The analyser places the age of this sample at over four billion years old, but this doesn’t look like Progenitor construction to me. Everything that we’ve seen constructed from this material so far was seamless, as if it had been grown in one piece. This ziggurat is very neatly constructed, but it’s made from sep
arate blocks, albeit very large ones.’
‘There’s also the small matter of the age of the star system,’ said Steelscale. ‘If this planet was in any way habitable four billion years ago, I’d expect the stars in this system to be rather older looking; as it is, they look like any other yellow dwarf star in the middle of its life cycle. I’d suggest that we check with the ship.’
Katherine looked closer at one of the blocks where a piece near the edge had fallen away, cracked by frost or flying debris during the bombardment, revealing the side of the adjacent block. Though almost perfectly flat, it felt rough and unfinished, with a definite pattern of shallow ridges in contrast to the almost mirror-like sheen of the outside face.
‘These blocks were definitely cut to size,’ she said. ‘Come and feel this.’
Rekkid stepped over and ran a fingertip over the rough surface and nodded in agreement.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Something has been used to saw through this. Maybe they found some Progenitor ruins and used them as building material?’
‘Like the churches in Europe built out of ancient Greek and Roman buildings?’ said Katherine.
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘It still doesn’t explain why these people were using the Progenitor alphabet as well as their own,’ said Steelscale.
‘No it doesn’t,’ Rekkid replied. ‘There’s something here that we’re not seeing.’
‘We need to get inside that building,’ said Katherine. ‘If it’s this intact on the outside, the interior could also be well preserved. Maybe we’ll find the answers we’re looking for inside?’
‘Not to mention the source of that mysterious signal,’ Steelscale added.
‘Agreed,’ Rekkid replied. ‘We’ll contact the ship. Maybe they can render us some assistance.’
The small image projected from Rekkid’s comm. was heavily distorted, the sound scratchy and sometimes indistinct, but Mentith’s face could still be seen. He looked tired - worn out by recent events –but he still listened carefully to the three archaeologists as they explained their discoveries so far.
‘So, there is evidence that points to Progenitor influence in this system,’ he said. ‘I think we can all agree that Eonara brought us here for that reason.’
‘Unfortunately we’re still not much closer to working out exactly why,’ Rekkid replied.
‘And sadly we’re not much closer to reactivating Eonara to ask her why,’ said Mentith. ‘We have detected changes in the surface of her AI core, but whether that points to some sort of self repair underway, we simply don’t know. We may have more answers once the ship’s own AI core has been reconnected. My engineers assure me that we are getting closer to getting the Glory back online, pending a full purge of the ship’s systems.’
‘A purge, War Marshal?’
‘Shaper viruses have been found throughout the ship. We reactivated a number of areas of the internal network and found them infested with intelligent and malevolent programs. Quite how they got there and circumvented our countermeasures is a mystery, though presumably it occurred during our attack run on the Shaper portal and our subsequent escape. All areas of possible storage are being wiped and rebuilt before we reconnect the ship’s AI. It’s a laborious task for my engineers, but they are making good progress.’
‘We would appreciate any assistance that you could spare to help us get inside this structure we’ve discovered,’ said Katherine. ‘Any heavy cutting or lifting gear would be a great help in gaining entry.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mentith. ‘I’ll see what I can do about that. However, the mysteries you have uncovered are not the only ones that have come to light.’
‘Oh?’
‘We dispatched a fleet of ships to the asteroid belt around this star in order to gather raw materials so that the Glory can manufacture replacement components for itself. However, the crews made a number of interesting discoveries. Judging by composition and distribution of the debris it would appear that the belt is in fact the remains of another planet and moreover that it was inhabited. A number of bodies and the remains of artificial structures have been found amidst the rubble, miraculously preserved since the planet’s destruction. Here, let me show you:’
A static image appeared alongside Mentith’s. It showed a number of contorted and desiccated humanoid forms floating free inside a hollow space.
‘We have carbon dated the remains,’ said Mentith. ‘These people died about ten thousand years ago.’
‘I wonder if they’re the same people that inhabited this planet?’ said Katherine. ‘We found the butchered remains of a number of people in the ruins, but it was difficult to tell what they originally looked like. We did find depictions of humanoid figures down here though.’
‘It’s very possible that they are the same race,’ said Mentith. ‘Even a civilisation with relatively primitive space flight technology would not have found it too difficult to make the crossing from one world to the other. We won’t know for certain until we have samples from both to compare.’
‘What the hell happened to these people? What could destroy a planet so utterly?’
‘A chance collision with another body is one possibility,’ said Mentith. ‘Perhaps a rogue planet, thrown out by its parent star entered the system and collided with this one? We are very close to the galactic core. The chance of such an event occurring is much greater here.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Katherine replied. ‘This planet that we’re standing on was nuked over and over. Somebody wiped these people out deliberately. I don’t think that the destruction of its sister planet was an accident, I think someone blew it to pieces.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Mentith. ‘With enough time, one of our dreadnoughts would be capable of such a thing. But why destroy one planet completely and nuke the other? It makes no sense. More to the point, it smacks of wildly differing levels of weapons technology being used.’
‘Perhaps the Shapers did this,’ Steelscale suggested. ‘Perhaps they destroyed one world whilst their minions dealt with the other?’
‘Well, maybe we’ll have more of an idea once we’ve gained entry to this building,’ said Rekkid. ‘Incidentally, War Marshal, are the Glory’s sensors able to estimate the age of this star system?’
‘Yes of course,’ Mentith replied glancing to one side as he obtained the data from the ship’s sensors. ‘This is only a rough estimate,’ he said. ‘But based on the mass of the stars, their current energy output and their spectroscopic signature, this system appears to be slightly under three and half billion years old.’
‘So the Progenitors could never have come here in person,’ said Rekkid. ‘They left the galaxy before this system had even formed. Which begs the question: what is a building constructed out of Progenitor materials doing on its surface?’
The shuttle, sleek looking despite its wide bodied design, landed carefully on the flat, broken ground next to the ziggurat and folded its wings like a bird settling onto its nest. It had descended from the Shining Glory, bringing with it what technicians Mentith was able to spare and their equipment. It had first landed at Camp Keros to collect Arrakid and then made the short hop to the ziggurat.
A boarding ramp formed in the craft’s rear and slender figures began to exit, carrying boxes of equipment on AG pallets and shielding their eyes against the fierce wind that had blown up, filling the air with grit as it howled around the broken buildings of the dead city. There was another figure too, a slender, snake-like thing that shone silver in the wan sunlight as it studied its surroundings with compound sensor clusters. It was a combat drone.
‘I don’t know why they’ve brought that thing,’ said Katherine, eyeing the drone with suspicion through the eyepieces of her re-breather as the mechanoid retracted the multiple weapon arms it had deployed upon exiting the shuttle. ‘There’s nothing alive down here but us.’
‘Maybe they’re erring on the side of caution?’ Rekkid suggested. Katherine snorte
d derisively. Steelscale gave a low growl as he eyed the metallic thing moving unnaturally across the rubble.
Arrakid approached and waved in the Arkari fashion at Rekkid. Rekkid returned the gesture.
‘We got a good look at this place from the air,’ said Arrakid. ‘Very impressive. We tried to get a good look from the Glory but the damage to the sensors and the state of the atmosphere made it difficult. There’s so much dust and cloud at high altitude that it’s difficult to get a clear view of the ground at times.’
‘We may have found the source of those transmissions, but we can’t get inside it,’ said Rekkid.
‘I’m sure we can find a way. Odd looking building though. It doesn’t seem to fit with the others that we saw on the way in. Mentith said that it has connections to the Progenitors?’
‘Yes, there’s Progenitor script over the door along with an inscription in the native language and the construction material appears to be of Progenitor origin. I’m hoping that we can find more bi-lingual inscriptions inside and figure out the language of this planet’s inhabitants.’
‘Well, we found a few fragments of the native script along with the bodies in the asteroid belt. Given that they were found in what looks like the remains of a deep shelter they’re probably just instructional or warning signs, but I thought you might like to see. No examples of the Progenitor language though. Here, have a look.’
Arrakid produced a slim datapad and handed it to Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale who passed the device between themselves and squinted at the images of writing stencilled onto a metallic looking wall. It was immediately obvious that the script in the pictures and the script over the entrance to the ziggurat shared a common set of characters.
‘Are these the same people though?’ said Katherine. ‘We need to know if the remains that we found match the bodies that you pulled out of the middle of that asteroid.’