In a wordless silence broken only by the crunch of their footfalls, they filed out of the niche and headed up the path.
* * *
8
* * *
Sciacca's World
Behzad's Wall
'954.10.31 EN
0325
The wind picked up as they crested the ridge of the mountains and rose above the dense layers of the storm. From the ridge, illuminated by the Soul, a wide plateau stretched below them: a deep bowl ringed by cliffs, perhaps an ancient, collapsed volcanic crater, with a small town in its centre, too far away and too low in the dust to be seen clearly. The uppermost levels of two thin towers connected to each other by walkways were the only obvious detail.
"Houghton's Cross," said Emmerik, speaking for the first time in almost an hour.
"That's where we're headed?" Although he hadn't said so, Roche could tell that the town was dead, and had been for many years.
"Yes. The others are waiting for us there."
"Haid?" The name had been mentioned a couple of times earlier, in a context suggesting leadership or at least some sort of coordinating role. If Roche was ever going to find help getting off the planet, she guessed that he was the person she needed to talk to.
"Maybe. Depends what's happening in the port." The burly Mbatan shifted his pack into a more comfortable position. "We'll talk when we arrive. Let's keep moving."
They descended along a thin path barely wide enough for one person. An avalanche of dust falling through a dip in the ridge enveloped them, reducing their line of sight to the back of the person in front, but at the same time effectively hiding them from the eyes of anyone in the area. If the air within the crater was as gloomy as it appeared to be, they would be invisible to Enforcers standing on the ridge.
Roche walked grimly onward, the pain somehow keeping her focused on who she was and what she was doing. The straps holding the Box to her back were like whips in slow motion, digging into her bruised and battered shoulders with each step she took. The valise itself had been attached to her for so long that it was starting to feel like an extra limb — and a useless, hindering limb at that, dragging as it did behind her. In a way it seemed more of an inconvenience than her strapped left arm, yet without it she doubted she would ever feel complete again.
That thought depressed her more than any merely physical pain. That, and the still-ringing echoes of Maii's life.
The floor of the crater was relatively flat and composed of a loose, grey dirt. Although the soil here seemed as parched as that of the neighbouring foothills, hardy weeds grew from it, clinging to the ground in a desperate embrace against the severe winds. They crossed an unused road at one point, then a wide, flat area that might once have been a landing strip. An abandoned machine — an ore carrier — loomed out of the gloom, rusted and hulking, left to the elements centuries ago and now barely recognisable. Dust had sanded its paint and windshield back to bare metal, which itself was scored and pitted. A ragged hole in one side offered a mute explanation for the neglect, although Roche was unable to tell if the hole had been caused by an internal malfunction or external interference.
Closer to the town, the crater floor undulated in a series of low dunes, possibly a forestalled attempt at irrigation. Something glinting in the dirt at the bottom of one of the trenches caught Roche's eye, and she stopped to pick it up.
It was a silver coin, heavy in her palm, with a bold 'U' on one side. She didn't recognise the denomination.
"Except to deal with outsiders," she muttered.
Roche glanced at Veden, whose back was receding up the slope of the trench.
Emmerik glanced back at her as she approached. "Don't wander," he said. "We're almost there."
Made curious by the forbidding tone in his voice, Roche obeyed but kept her eyes peeled. Another road crossed their path, and Emmerik turned to follow it. The brown, stony surface was cracked and split in places, and puddles of sand had collected in the cracks, making footing treacherous. The ever-present dust allowed them to see no more than six metres in any direction; even via infrared, the world was dim and featureless. Roche wondered how Emmerik could tell their position relative to the town.
Then, rising out of the haze, shapes appeared lining the road and spreading off into the distance: a field of posts, perhaps, barely a metre high, or the trunks of long-dead shrubs, stripped of their branches. Roche couldn't tell exactly what they were, except that there were a lot of them. The wind moaned eerily through them, making the hair on the back of her neck rise.
She approached the edge of the road to look closer at one of the objects. Through the haze of dirt, she recognised the dull sheen of blackened metal and the sweep of a stock, sight, and barrel. It was a weapon, buried barrel-first in the dirt.
She crouched down to study it more closely. She hadn't seen a HFM peace gun outside the Armada Museum, but the distinctive line of the trigger guard, designed for digits larger than her own, confirmed that the Box was right at least about the Caste that had built it.
"Roche!" Emmerik's warning snapped at her.
She glanced guiltily upward. An indistinct figure was moving toward her through the gloom from deeper in the field, a vaguely Human shape wrapped in rags, hissing menacingly. She jerked upright, reaching automatically for her empty holster.
The figure stopped in its tracks and stared at her. Two more approached out of the dust, and stood on either side of the first. She stared back, mystified, waiting for them to make a move. It was only when Emmerik's gently restraining hand came down on her shoulder that she realised they would approach no closer while she stayed away from the rifle.
"Leave them alone," Emmerik said from behind her. "We have no right to interfere with them, and what belongs to them."
"Who are they?"
"Caretakers." Emmerik's hand, now on her good arm, led her away from the edge of the road. "They preserve the killing fields."
"The guns?" she said.
"No," said Emmerik firmly. "This is neither the time nor the place to discuss what happened here, Roche."
Roche opened her mouth to speak, but Emmerik was already moving off down the road, into the dust. She followed slowly after him, her attention caught by the three ghostly figures disappearing once again into the gloom. The movements of one of them disturbed her a little. With each step it took, its garments moved in such a way as to suggest that it had more than one right arm.
When the three figures completely vanished into the haze, Roche hurried her pace to catch up with Emmerik.
"How many?" she asked, coming to his side. "The guns, I mean."
Emmerik kept his attention on the road ahead. "Not now, I said."
"When, then?" s
he snapped. "I'm sick of not knowing anything."
"When we meet the others."
"You keep saying that." Roche fought to control her anger, but she could still hear the snap in her voice.
"Not far now," he said, adjusting his dust-specs. "The town's just a little further on."
* * *
The field of rifles petered out after a hundred metres. Moments later, a large shape appeared through the dust, glowing with the remnants of the day's heat: a wall, natural for the first five metres, then artificial above. Exactly how high it rose above the floor of the crater, Roche couldn't tell, but it showed no sign of ending at the limits of her infrared vision. She supposed that the builders had situated the wall, and the city within, on the central peak of the ancient impact crater to thereby gain the strategic advantage that would give the town. Higher than the crater floor, it was well placed to repel ground attacks — the unbroken expanse of the floor itself gave little cover for an attacking army — and the ring of mountains was far enough away to reduce the accuracy of sniping.
The road came to a halt at the base of a gentle ramp, which led to a wide pair of sliding doors set into the natural base of the wall. The doors were firmly shut, and looked as though they weighed tons. A sign on the door proclaimed a brief message in letters almost too faint to read, in a script Roche recognised but could not decipher.
<'Ul-œmato',> read the Box.
<'Founder's Rock'.>
Roche absorbed this information while Emmerik approached the massive doors.
Roche nodded.
Roche glanced at the Surin, who had spoken even less than Emmerik since their brief break in the mountains. The girl shivered deep in her survival suit — which had turned a deep, gloomy grey, mirroring both the night and Maii's mood.
said the reave.
Roche felt a slight chill at the reave's words. Not sick, but sickened. By something.
A deep, bone-jarring rumble distracted her. She looked up in time to see the mighty doors slide open a metre, then crash to a halt. Emmerik slid his bulk through the crack and gestured that they should follow. Cane did so first, sniffing at the air before entering the darkness. Veden and Maii went next, leaving Roche alone in the chill night air. If it was a trap, she reasoned, better to face it with the others than alone.
Darkness overwhelmed her as she slipped through the narrow space — a deep black broken only by the faint heat profiles of those ahead of her. Echoes told her that the passage was slightly wider than the doors, and barely as high. She was reminded of their earlier journey through the tunnel leading from the ravine. This passage seemed more oppressive despite its greater width — perhaps because it was designed to be lit, and was not.
Several minutes passed before anything changed. Veden grunted with surprise, and Roche tensed. Then she realised that his heat image was rising, as were those of Emmerik, Maii, and Cane. A second later, she too hit the ramp and began to climb. The passage had been designed to accommodate wheeled vehicles, not pedestrians, for the slope was steep and the walls lacked handholds. She maintained her balance carefully, conscious that if she slipped she might not be able to arrest a slide back to the bottom with only one arm to stop her.
The ramp levelled out after twenty paces, and reached another set of doors. Emmerik again approached them, and manipulated the controls of what could only be a magnetic lock, although one of ancient design. Roche felt the tingle in her implants as powerful fields shifted to a new configuration and the heavy barrier slid aside.
They stepped out of the tunnel into a square on the edge of the town.
The pearly sheen of the Soul, diffused though it was by the dust-laden air, seemed bright in comparison to the interior of the tunnel. Roche glanced behind her, and realised that their journey had taken them only as far as the inner edge of the wall, the base of which must therefore have been nearly thirty metres thick. Its top was studded with ramps and walkways, and sturdier emplacements where weapons might once have peered over the wall at the crater below. Every fixture seemed perfectly designed, intended to last centuries — as it seemed they already had. Roche could only admire the builders of the wall, and the military function it performed so well.
The square split traffic from the tunnel into five wide roadways that diverged as they led deeper into the town. The buildings were uniformly squat and solid, with rounded corners and domed roofs — an architecture common to Dominion military emplacements. Apart from the efforts of wind and time, not one of the buildings appeared damaged in any way. Every door was open, and the few windows were utterly black. In the absence of wind, the square seemed unnaturally still.
Raising her eyes from the buildings before her, she saw the two large towers at the heart of the city: the only buildings higher than two stories. From this close — less than two kilometres — they were far more impressive. The shorter stood at least one hundred metres high; its taller twin might have reached one hundred and twenty, although dust hazed its upper limits. They stood roughly ten metres apart with a tracery of scaffolding connecting the two, as though they had been undergoing repair when the town had been abandoned.
No, Roche reminded herself, not abandoned. Emmerik intended to meet someone here.
"Which way?" prompted Cane, gesturing at the five roads.
"Second from the left." The Mbatan's voice was muted, muffled by an emotion Roche could not read. "Please stick to the road and don't disturb anything. I'll follow in a moment."
"Are we in danger?" Cane studied the darkened doorways with suspicion.
"No." Emmerik shook his head. "It's not that."
Roche suddenly guessed what was bothering the Mbatan. Studying the silent streets more closely, she could see the way sand had gathered in every crevice, untouched for decades, perhaps centuries; the very air tasted pure, despite the tang of dust, untainted by the outside world. It was as though the whole town had been sealed in memoriam to whatever in its past had killed it. The town was a shrine, and they were violating it simply with their presence.
Again she swallowed her curiosity and forced herself to walk, eager to reach the end of their long journey. The others followed her lead, heading slowly along the road with their footsteps echoing off the stubborn buildings. Cane took the rear, his keen gaze studying the shadows for movement. Roche looked also, but from training rather than suspicion; in those deserted streets she didn't expect to find life of any kind. Still, the absence of Emmerik's steady steps among theirs made the procession seem somewhat unnatural, even tense. And the fact that he had their weapons only made her feel more uneasy.
Roche trod onward, refusing to look behind her. There were other ways to find out what was going on.
"What's he doing, Maii?" she asked, once they were out of earshot.
There was a hint of resignation in the reave's tone.
"Can you sense anybody else? The people he's supposed to be meeting, for example?"
Roche sighed.
Roche looked ahead, trying to locate the corner but failing.
Did she detect indignation in the AI's tone?
Sean Williams & Shane Dix - Evergence 1 - The Prodigal Sun Page 13