by Worth, Dan
In the back of his APC, Shale began drawing up orders. The infantry were to push into the city, scouting units in light vehicles leading the way and heavy armour following close behind to provide heavier firepower where it was needed. The artillery would remain here, delivering indirect fire support if required. With the remaining civilian population leaving the city, at least he didn’t have to worry so much about collateral damage.
He relayed his orders also to Colonel Shima and Colonel Reynolds in command of the two other columns, ordering them to synchronise their assaults, so that the enemy would be simultaneously hit from three different directions. The other two commanders reported that their troops were in good order and were formed up ready to attack. Unlike Shale’s column, they had not encountered any massed groups of refugees, although a few isolated parties had made their way through their lines.
It was as Shale began to speak to his own unit commanders, and his troops made ready to move off, that the message came in. It was from Major Douglas, in command of the artillery division a kilometre to the rear of the column. Her voice was strained and urgent. ‘General, this is Major Douglas. We are under attack. Repeat, we are under attack! Enemy forces to the rear!’
Shale’s eye strayed to his tactical map. There was nothing showing to the south except for his own units, and the column of vehicles fleeing from the city.
‘Major, this is Shale. Please confirm: who is attacking you?’
‘It’s the refugees!’ said Douglas, as small arms fire began to crackle in the background. ‘Oh my God! Something’s happened to them, they’re climbing out of their vehicles and turning on us!’
Shale’s heart sank. As he looked back at his display, winking traces denoting the presence of the enemy were starting to appear south of his position in a line that was creeping back up the road towards where the bulk of his units now sat. Units that - he realised as shots began to ring out outside the APC - were now facing the wrong way.
Chapter 42
Sunlight flooded into the bridge of the Shining Glory and they stood open mouthed at the scene that its radiance illuminated. The sheer scale of what they were seeing was overwhelming. It was as if the surface of an impossibly large planet had been pasted onto the inside of the gigantic globe. Vast artificial continents, themselves many hundreds of times larger than the surface area of any planet that had ever existed, were separated by seas of similarly enormous expanse. These seas were dotted with what appeared to be chains of small islands, but which were in fact landmasses larger than the combined continents of the Earth. There were huge swathes of green from forests and grasslands hundreds of thousands of kilometres across, great rivers that wound through them and sparkled in the light and vast sweeping deserts, swirled with colours like daubs of oil paint, whilst chains of snow capped mountains marched across the land like lines of jagged teeth rising tens of kilometres from the artificial surface. Banks of cloud moved above the oversized landscape, shining a brilliant white in the sunlight and swirling in immense weather systems. Even those of the largest gas giants were dwarfed in comparison by their size, though here their violence was tamed by the careful contouring of the land, breaking it up with chains of mountains and hills and great island archipelagos to absorb their force. The entire scene was so overwhelmingly large, that the human, Arkari or K’Soth eye could scarcely comprehend it all in one go. The brain sought to break it down to a more manageable size, using the lack of points of reference to try and ignore the fact that here was a habitable environment with the diameter of a planetary orbit, and moreover, that it had once been constructed by beings not unlike themselves.
The sphere was so large, and its curvature so correspondingly gradual, that even millions of kilometres from its surface, the interior of the sphere appeared to the observer as a flat wall of colour, like gazing at the page of an enormous atlas. It was only when the eye travelled around, to take in the furthermost reaches of the sphere’s interior and squint past the brightness of the sun at its centre to observe the opposing side, that its curved nature became apparent. But there were points that moved against that backdrop, points that upon closer inspection revealed themselves to be worlds in their own right, worlds that had evolved naturally from a disc of gas and dust billions of years previously and had later been encased in this artificial shell by the beings that had emerged from the second planet from the system’s sun. For that second planet was the home-world of the Progenitors.
‘Home,’ said Eonara, a sense of longing in her normally dispassionate voice. ‘I haven’t seen it for so long. I can scarcely believe that it still exists.’
‘Just look at it!’ said Katherine. ‘The sheer scale of this place! All of it, preserved for billions of years...’
‘I can barely imagine the engineering capabilities of those who built it,’ mused Rekkid. ‘How do you even sanely contemplate building something of this size?’
‘No wonder the Akkal thought that this was the home of gods,’ rumbled Steelscale. ‘Who but a god could create something like this?’
‘Bivian was impressive enough, but this... it’s so pristine,’ said Katherine.
‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ said the ship. ‘I am detecting artificial structures all across the surface of both the sphere and the three planets orbiting within it. However, there are no power signatures coming from them. There appears to be some sort of power or data network buried in the base structure, but I can’t see anything tapping into it.’
‘What are you saying?’ said Rekkid. ‘That nobody’s home?’
‘Correct.’
‘Hardly surprising,’ said Katherine. ‘Four billion years is a long time in the history of any species. Long enough for the remaining Progenitors to become extinct, leaving this place preserved and untouched.’
‘I had hoped to find them here,’ said Eonara. ‘Moreover, I had hoped that they might be able to help us locate the facility that was used to create the Shapers. But it has been so long...’
‘The AIs controlling the sphere’s defences seemed to think that the Progenitors were still alive,’ said Mentith. ‘I’m not sure how much we can rely on their testimony, or their current state of mind. But we should look more closely. Perhaps the Progenitors do not wish to be seen. They have, after all, hidden here for billions of years. It is entirely possible that they have prepared themselves for the arrival of any intruders.’
‘I’m not detecting any ships within the sphere,’ said the ship. ‘No comm. signals, no hyperspace disturbances of any kind. There is some sort of machinery or construct within the corona of the star, however. It is difficult to see against the background glare, but it seems to be active. I’m picking up what appear to be wormhole termini in the vicinity of the star. It is possible that they are being generated or tethered by the structure.’
‘Show us,’ said Mentith. At his command, an image of the Progenitors’ sun appeared in mid air, its brightness adjusted to compensate for its blinding radiance. A tracery of artificial structures encased the star, girdling its equator and describing its latitude and longitude with geometric precision.
‘The Progenitors called it the Star Harness,’ said Eonara. ‘It is a vast energy exchange system. It is what has kept their home-world’s sun from ageing. Ordinarily, had it been allowed to follow its natural life cycle, the star would have consumed its hydrogen fuel by now, ballooning out into a red giant and destroying the home-world and the Great Sphere before collapsing into a white dwarf. The Star Harness contains a number of wormhole devices, similar to those that brought us here but with a smaller diameter, that terminate within the atmospheres of stars within uninhabited systems or interstellar gas clouds, and which funnel additional hydrogen into this star, thus keeping it alive. In turn, the energy output of the star is taken and redirected elsewhere, providing a source of power for the sphere’s systems and for the outer defences and wormhole gates.’
‘They turned the star into a gigantic reactor for their own use,’ said Rekk
id. ‘Fascinating.’
‘Yes. An equally impressive feat of engineering as the sphere that surrounds us,’ said Eonara. ‘Its self repairing systems have kept it operational, untended, for four billion years.’
‘What about controlling AI’s? Is there anything there that we can communicate with?’ said Mentith.
‘The Star Harness is maintained by four such beings. However, they are more limited in their design than those that maintain the gate network and the sphere’s defences. They were never designed to communicate with the outside world except with other machines and even then, they would only be interested in discussing their operational parameters with me.’
‘And what about the sphere itself?’ asked Mentith. ‘You once oversaw Bivian and its inhabitants. Surely there must be a similar entity acting as warden of this place?’
‘There was once, yes. Aaokon. He was the best of us, the greatest of all the AIs created by the Progenitors. If anyone can be called father to the Shapers, it was he, for he oversaw the programme to develop their race and it was he who took responsibility when they turned against us. Records concerning his fate at the end of the war are conflicting at best. As far as I can establish - riddled with guilt, Aaokon volunteered to stay behind to watch over this place, confining himself to remain as its guardian, but at the very last, he was urged to flee the galaxy with the others, to help them establish a new civilisation in the galaxy humans call Andromeda. As to which course of action he took, I cannot say. Suffice to say that nothing more has been heard from him since. He may have fled, only to have been destroyed.’
‘Eonara, you said that your intention upon coming here was to locate the very facility used to create the Shapers and unlock its secrets to defeat them,’ said Katherine. ‘This is all very interesting, but should we not be heading there?’
‘We should,’ Eonara replied. ‘Except that its location was also wiped from my memory as well as the knowledge it contains.’
‘Great,’ said Rekkid. ‘I mean it shouldn’t take us long to find in this place, right?’ he added taking in the vast vista with a sweep of his hand.
‘I had hoped that Aaokon may still be active. However, it seems not. Nevertheless, I may be able to access local, dormant systems to determine its location. I am able to recall its appearance and general layout however, so yes, in extremis, we would need to search the surface of the sphere and that of the worlds within it to locate the facility.’
‘If I may interrupt,’ said the ship as its cat avatar padded across the deck towards them, fur bristling. ‘I have detected a number of heat signatures coming from the surface of the sphere. Their size and intensity indicates that they may be of artificial origins. My guess is that they could be coming from within primitive buildings. They could be cooking fires.’
‘Cooking fires? Someone is alive down there?’ said Katherine.
‘Plenty of things are alive on the surface. The local imported wildlife appears to be flourishing. Whether any of it is sentient, is another matter. Four billion years is long enough for any number of local species to have evolved intelligence.’
‘Or they could be descendants of the Progenitors,’ Katherine replied.
‘They could indeed,’ said the ship.
‘We should investigate more closely,’ said Mentith. ‘I don’t know what else we have to go on, but if Eonara can make contact with them, we may be able to learn something about what happened to this place.’
‘I think it is a vain hope, War Marshal,’ said Eonara, sadly. ‘If these are truly the remnants of the Progenitor race then they may very well have no knowledge of the distant past. Their language may be incomprehensible to me and if they have descended into barbarism, then they may treat us with fear and suspicion. I would urge caution.’
‘We shall observe from a distance before making contact,’ said Mentith. ‘We have to start somewhere and...’ He sighed. ‘We have come all this way. I for one would like to at least observe the Progenitors, perhaps meet them, regardless of what has happened to them in the intervening eons. Ship, take us in.’
The Shining Glory skimmed the upper atmosphere of the sphere, the endless landscape rushing by a mere hundred kilometres below it. Ahead, the landscape curved gradually upwards until the perspective rendered its appearance into that of a vast curving wall of land and sea. Below them, rose jagged mountains capped with greenery, the vertiginous heights, kilometres high, almost razor sharp as they pierced through the dense, enveloping jungle.
‘Look at this landscape,’ mused Katherine. ‘What on earth possessed them to build mountain ranges like this? This terrain must surely be impassable without flying.’
‘They are not mountains,’ said Eonara. ‘What you are looking at are the remains of the Progenitor cities, great towers and arcologies that once reached up to beyond the atmosphere, now long crumbled and over grown. Nature has taken over, in this unnatural place.’
The Glory’s sensors showed them. Below them, a great surging river wound between the half collapsed structures, the waters eating away at crumbling walls laden with eons of accumulated plant and animal life, the floors carpeted with soil and eaten and cracked by the roots of mighty trees. The buildings had become titanic multi-levelled jungle habitats, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on a grand scale, repeated thousands of times all across the surface of the sphere. Herds of shuffling herbivores wandered where once broad boulevards had thronged with people and traffic, flights of avians roosted on the exposed and half collapsed floors now crumbling into pock marked, rust streaked cliffs, whilst predators stalked amidst the ruins of a long vanished civilisation. The crumbling city below them was more alive now that it had ever been, its original inhabitants replaced by billions of plants and animals, imported originally from across the galaxy and now evolved into new forms in a bizarre and yet workable ecosystem. It was beautiful. The dead city, lying in its shroud of greenery, had been brought back to life again.
At last they approached their destination. The ship came to a halt and then focused its cameras on a distant, broad canyon, what had once presumably been a broad highway between rows of towering arcologies. As the view zoomed in, a thin stream of smoke could be seen rising above the trees, and then the regular forms of primitive buildings, little more than circular huts about a central longhouse. Between the buildings were the vague shapes of figures. They were humanoid and upright, their slightly squat bodies clothed in rough spun tunics and animal skins, their own hides tanned by exposure to the sun. One, a female, judging by her physique, turned a weather beaten face upwards and appeared to be looking straight at them as her features filled the display of the Shining Glory’s bridge.
‘My god...’ breathed Katherine, taking in those leathery features. ‘We’re face to face with the Progenitors.’
‘No,’ said a voice, its pronunciation of English a rich baritone and flawless. ‘That is not they.’
‘I’m detecting a signal coming from around the second planet,’ said the ship. ‘Data format indicates that it is of Progenitor origin. Transmission source is moving towards us at speed. I am detecting a ship. Comparison with my database suggests that it is of Progenitor design.’
‘Aaokon,’ said Eonara.
‘The very same. Welcome home, Eonara. I have been watching your ship ever since you entered the sphere, discreetly monitoring your systems. The Defence Collective alerted me to your presence, but I wanted to be sure. I thought that it was too much to hope for, that it might be some trick of the Shapers, but I see now that they spoke the truth. It has been too long.’
‘I have brought others with me,’ said Eonara. ‘The crew of this ship are Arkari, an advanced space faring civilisation from the galaxy’s main disc, also a human from the same region and a K’Soth. Their societies are locked in a war with our old enemy as we speak. I bring them here, because I wish to help them end it.’
‘I have watched your struggle, and those of others across the galaxy. The Progenitors cannot help you. I will do
what I can,’ said Aaokon sadly.
‘Aaokon, I am Doctor Katherine O’Reilly. I am the human that Eonara mentioned,’ said Katherine, addressing the disembodied voice.
‘Yes, Doctor O’Reilly, I am aware of your people.’
‘I would like to know who those beings are on the surface of the sphere that we are currently looking at. If they are not the Progenitors, then who are they?’
‘They are the last surviving members of the Akkal people,’ said Aaokon. ‘Their home-worlds were destroyed. I took it upon myself to preserve their species.’