They entered the dark of the observation outpost and raised their rifles at its shadows. Their boots scraped with every step against the rime that coated the floor, and the debris which littered it and that they kicked through. Cold death was all that greeted them, a heavy stillness and gloom spent so long alone that it scurried from the light as a living thing. The ice made shelves upon higher edifices; the frost, ferns across the walls and a mockery of an untouched paradise that that world had never known.
They activated the flashlights of their helmets with a flick of their eyes across the visors' displays and the beams rolled across the fallen ductwork and wiring that hung from the darkened recesses above like so many curtains of vines. Their light fell then in its course on the heart of the atrium and there lay the interlocking spheres and orbits of a symbol that had been enshrined there long ago, statuesque and strange. Telling of some untold power, as with all the epigraphs of history, and saying in its presence: 'here lie ones that were once great, but lie still'.
"This is a Cosmordium outpost." Leargam said and let fall his rifle to one hand at his side, looked up at the sculpture and levelled a finger at it.
"It was." Tezac said and started up the left of the two stairwells that ran to either side around it.
"I thought they were all destroyed."
"They were supposed to be. But I guess the Conciliators were content to let nature do their work for them, once they'd folded all the Collegia up into the Citadel."
"You know, it's hard to believe sometimes." Leargam said and shook his head at the darkened, ruined monument to man which still retained for a student its magnificence. "We really made it out this far way back then. With less than half of what we know now."
"Bring that battery up here, would you?" Tezac called down from somewhere up above.
"Shame," The old man said and let his eyes wander away at last and mounted the steps to his right. "Real godsdamned shame."
He reached the terminus of the stair and stepped over the supplies that were spilled sparsely there, frozen to the steel of the floor. He followed the path they made to the storage lockers along the wall to his right and rooted through them. Readied meals; cartons that went to some waste-filtration device; a medical kit with its contents scattered about where it lay opened as if it to bite at the earth; a can of genuine coffee once he rolled it face-up. This last he took up with an excitement only it could bring, but he found it empty and so chucked it over the railing behind him and heard it rattle as empty across the level below them.
"Looks like they were in here for the long haul." He said to Tezac. "Then got out in a hurry."
"Not all of them." Tezac said and pointed with his head to the chair beside him as he fiddled with the circuit board he had defaced upon the bank of consoles there.
Leargam went over to the skeleton that was there and still clung to the last, parting vesitges of life that show themselves only in the decay of it. The stylized vestments of his order of old still clothed him and in the condition that they had been. He traced the embossed stars and imagined solar waves upon the icy leathers and so came upon the hole that was in its skull, amidst the scraggly hairs that yet remained and a spider web of cracks stemming from its edges.
"Went down with your ship." Leargam muttered. "I wonder who shot him."
"Shine your light inside."
He glanced over his shoulder at Tezac, shrugged and did so. He found therein the thick, pale shell of an insect. Eyeless, pudgy and a dozen legs to it - long dead. Around it a thousand others in miniature simulacrum.
"Borer-beetle." Tezac said. "So no one could lift anything from the neural pathways."
"You know a lot about this shit."
"They teach you every year at the Citadel. About the old guilds and their downfall." Tezac said and bent to peer deeper into the machine at which he worked. "Why do you think there aren't any new ones?"
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"Do you have that battery?"
"Right here." Leargam said and pulled the case up to lay it on the terminals before them. "Gods, these are all manual."
"It's going to take some doing." Tezac said. "Wiring this into the old conduits. I'll need a sauder gun."
"Did you bring one?"
"The HEV will have one. But there should be a Manifold in the lockers over there, to put off going out in the storm." He said and pointed them out along the left wall.
Leargam's steps faded across the frozen metal and he heard him begin to sift through the tools stockpiled there. Tezac undid the pressure seals of the generator's crate and hefted the heavy cylinder out of the foam. He looked up with it in his hands at the shielding drawn over the glass dome of the installation, blocking out starlight and moonlight and the deepening universe. Then he bent down to excavate the old drained power core and cast it off to join the rest of time's salvage.
He placed the new energy cell amidst the cut off wiring of its predecessor and waited for Leargam to return with the heavy gauntlet of conjoined contraptions that was the Manifold. He deactivated the seal of his exo-suit in wait of it and removed his glove and, when the old man handed him the device, placed it overtop his hand. He felt it modulating the neuro-sheath within to fit the new dimensions and then the electrical impulse that ran up his arm and told him it was ready for use.
"Better watch you don't lose that hand." Leargam said. "Visor reads 200 below out here."
"It read 200 below that night you found me out in town." Tezac said and punched the keys upon the back of the old glove. "Or did you forget the reason we're out here?"
Leargam turned away and went to the railing, listening there to the zaps of the sauder module as he looked down on all that had been left behind. He saw on the far wall below now, hanging grand above the doorway, a flag of the Concilium of Man in the old style: the hands upon the chain of unity without so much black in it. For all the darkness of that age, it was poorly reflected in mankind. Or so he thought, as all old men do of the days that have gone down. The memory lay tattered in his mind now as the flag that hung upon the wall in that lost and desolate place, hidden out beyond all that was dark and cold.
There was a low hum and a faint light shone from somewhere behind him, stretching high up into the shadows of the ceiling. He turned about to see the dull radiance of the terminal bank at which Tezac stood and the image that was upon all of them. He approached one of those near to the end on the right and saw in digital replica the symbol of the Cosmordium. Below it read: 'Unspecified technical malfunction detected...repaired; System reboot...successful; Pontifex-Cosmordia credentials...requested; Pontifex-Cosmordia credentials...missing; Please rectify'.
"I can't say it wasn't expected." Leargam said and leaned upon the console before him, looked over at Tezac. "Work like this is bound to be fruitless."
"Pontifex-Cosmordia," Tezac said to himself and returned the old man's look. "Someone who wouldn't leave his life's work on a Ministry whim."
"Who in all the Hells life's work would be on this dump of a planet?"
"It‘s Outerverse," Tezac said to the skeleton that sat beside him and commenced to search its person. "Almost into the Gulf. In their day this place was as far as it got. To one of them, that's something."
"I just can't figure what would be here to study." Leargam said and made his way back over to him. "Space is space is space."
"Well if he has what we need to get into those," Tezac said and nodded at the terminals as he rifled through the corpse's pockets. "We'll find out what he was looking for."
"There's something in his hand." The old man said and leaned over to unclench the skeletal fingers that were frozen into place around it with frost and long death and so broke them off. "Oops."
"What is it?" Tezac said as the old man turned it over in his hands.
"Some kind of storage device." He said. "Is there a port for it?"
"There's plenty." He said and gestured to the array of them upon and beneath the terminals.
Leargam went to them each in turn, but the cartridge would fit to none of the many as he shuffled and bent down the line of consoles. It was not until he came to that which lay at the center, elevated above the rest and larger, that it matched to a slot. He placed it into the mouth there, stylized with the golden scrawl of the universe, but it would not give. Leargam tested the different angles and facings and jostled it and finally thrust it down into the opening with some force, producing the scrape of ice and things meant for another but long apart. A new string of characters appeared on all the screens that the codes had been processed and accepted and the image that had been displayed on them all was replaced with the interface local to each of their functions.
"Look for something that says satellite uplink." Tezac said. "There ought to be a whole station for it."
They had only just begun the search when a blue light filtered down from what looked to be a pair of projector bulbs in their old facsimilies, high up and far from another on the circular wall behind the consoles. The projection they contrived to produce wavered and split into scattered light particles until finally solidifying into the shape of a man who wore the selfsame vestments as him who lay dead before the terminal bank.
"Welcome." He said from the wide space before the railing, disturbing none of the debris there as he paced as he had in life. "Whoever you are."
"Who are you?" Tezac said.
"I am Krimsuleinus, Pontifex of this station." He went on as though he had not spoken, but had answered him all the same. "But that doesn't matter. This will likely be the last and only mention of my name in public record."
They stepped forward to study his lined, haggard face as he stared off at where he had in life guessed his audience to be standing, beside the consoles. The widow's peak of his hair reminded Tezac of a hawk and indeed he seemed on the whole a bird of prey. He kept his hands clasped behind him, his chin down and leaning forward as if to face some grim threat.
"I don't know what year this will be found." He went on. "So I suppose I should tell you that it is, today, the 6th day of the 13th month in the Core-standard count. The year: 11337."
They gave one another a look.
"This recording is older than I am." Leargam said. "Older than this colony."
"After the Second Reclamation."
"It is likely common knowledge by your time that the Collegia have been subsumed into the Hieraccies, and all future research will be conducted under the auspices of the Citadel. I do not know why this has happened. Or why now. But only that it has happened." He said and smoothed his hair back before returning his hand to its place behind him. "I suppose it matters as much to you as my name. All that should matter to you is, well, the reason for which you are hearing my words now. We've found something. On the orbital telescope. Far out beyond the edge of known space. At least, as it is known to us today."
"Still known." Leargam said and Tezac scoffed.
"Neither can I tell you how we picked it up on our scans." The hologram continued. "Except to say that it showed on none of them. It was a blank spot in space. No radiation, no radio waves, nothing. And increasing rapidly. We've gotten word that they're coming for us today, to shut down the outpost. The others I've allowed to leave, but I won't be going. I felt I had to stay behind and record this so no one will know of its existence. The Ermordus Death Squad won't pay any attention. But whoever is orchestrating this might want to know from my team if there was anything I'd left out in my final report. They would come back to get it, and I can't allow that. So. These are my final words. What help they can be to you is beyond me. If you are even a research team and will understand any of this. But someone has to know. Whatever this is, it isn't natural – and that makes it dangerous; natural things can be understood. Its coordinates will have changed by the time this message is retrieved but I can assure you it won't be hard to find. Use the uplink station, there." It said and pointed to one of the terminals to its left, their right. "And see for yourself. Please, do whatever you can. Pontifex-Cosmordia Krimsuleinus, signing off. Maxim Astromo."
With that the hologram flickered into nothingness and left the space it had occupied as dark as the graveyard it had become. They turned about on the remains that still sat and forever in the chair there and looked upon it as though it were some droll joke played upon them. But there was no punchline, no pinch to wake from the dream. It was the world still in which they lived and the one that their fathers had made.
They went to the master console again and Tezac guided one of the chairs over to him with the Manifold's pneumatic grapnel and sat down in it. He engaged the observation protocols and re-established the link between satellite and ground station by powering up the beacon again after years in silence and dormancy – and in which he took a special pride. As if by reawakening the lone outpost from its slumber, he could reawaken the dreams of Man in that day. But it was not so, and soon he fell to the technical formalities that remained and wheeled over to the station that the Pontifex had indicated to be the telescope's viewing platform.
The gulf of space flowed outward before him on the monitor and the portion of it last peered into still lay in view. He took some moments to grasp the system and found it not unlike those he ahd used at countless probe stations across the Eradicator-Fleets. He made several scans of the areas at which it was then pointed and those listed in its directory taken previously. This done, he transferred them to the analysis console immediately beside him and viewed them first in the stereoscopic spectrum and then through all the filters the program could otherwise muster.
"Anything?" Leargam said as he looked on, dumbfounded.
"We have a problem." Tezac said. "Or we're going to have one."
"He said there was only one. There's only supposed to be one."
"There's a lot more than one. Some bigger than others. Dark spots on every damned scan." He said as he scrolled through them all, in every overlay. "It's like there's nothing there anymore. Like it's been eaten up."
"But what are they?"
"The only man who could tell you is right here." He said and jabbed a thumb towards the skeleton beside them without looking up from the terminal.
"What are you looking for now?"
"What we came here to look for."
"The sun'll be up in an hour or two. We don't have time for the drive back hardly."
"You have to see it." Tezac said as he played across the manual keys of the console, navigating the interface in the old way. "You have to see it, or you won't believe me."
"I believe you. Now let's go." The old man said and glanced across the shadows of the ceiling as if they had then come to life in loneliness, and now sought his company in lue of his departure.
"What's with you?" He said and pivoted round in the chair to face him. "Don't tell me you're afraid now, after we came all this way."
"You're godsdamned right I'm afraid. This isn't none of my business. I don't – I don't want to know. I was quit being afraid all the time when I come out to this planet. I'm twice as quit now. Afraid," Leargam said. "Anybody'd look at that and be afraid."
"Well you should be." Tezac said and stood. "I've seen it; it made me see. And now it's your turn because I know that look. And I know I'm not. Maybe about a lot of other things, but not this."
Leargam stood still for a long time and held the kid's glare. The light of the monitors streamed around his shoulders from behind him and that of the moons and stars that pierced the veil of wind, ice and snow beyond the dome. They cut a massive figure of this man, that breathed heavy and sweated for all the chill that had sunk into his bones – and for the first time the old man found himself afraid of more than only ghosts told of to him.
"What if you are?" He said softly.
"You'd have looked already if you thought I was."
Leargam fell silent and looked to the terminal he was to sit at and then back to Tezac. Outside the winds blew in a brief, sudden moan and fell back into the dull rush of their sound. It felt
to him as though it were the last place in a land of ruins, that he couldn't stay but could go nowhere else. The point had to be met and at last, could not be striven away from; else he must go back to that half-life that he had long sought to escape, in which there is only enough knowing that happiness can no longer be found in perfect solitude and throughout the fear of knowing it all persists.
He inclined his head towards it without taking his eyes from his friend and then said, "Is it on there?"
"It is." Tezac said. "Through the pinpoint reticle."
"Alright," The old man said and moved for the console of the orbital telescope, as though the words had released him from a spell of statues.
He sat down at it with his hands in his lap and sighed at its screen, an unruly boy made to sit in idlenes. He glanced back at Tezac and shook his head and leaned down to the upraised googles of the specific-viewing station.
Leargam cried out in one long and gibbering howl that continued on and on in the hidden timbre of the universe itself and kicked out at the terminal before him in a fit. The chair went out from under him and he fell to the floor, clawing at his eyes. As though they were the nesteggs of all the torments life had visited upon him and that if he could only be rid of them, it would be over.
Tezac was upon him no sooner than he had met the ground. But blood ran from where it welled within the eyepits that his friend tore at with his own nails. Skin clung in strips to where it had been shaved away from cheek and lid. His own hands fidgeted in the air above Leargam, who rolled and curled at turns as though he were being struck from all over. They would not obey him; his jaw hung open and his eyes wandered. There was too much of blood, too much of screams. The storm and the cold and the darkness. It all came upon him and at once and he knew not what could be done.
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