Minutes passed and each rung became a challenge to overcome. Duggan cursed his obstinacy and concentrated on lifting his arms and dragging himself upwards a single step at a time. He didn’t think about falling, refusing even to accept the possibility. Instead, he occupied his mind by counting each rung he climbed. At four hundred metres, a readout within his helmet advised that his heart rate had climbed to an unsustainable level and advised him to take a shot of battlefield adrenaline. Duggan hated the thought and he ignored the suggestion.
He paused to look upwards and wished he hadn’t. The change in perspective, allied with the blood rushing through his head, made him dizzy. He closed his eyes, but not before he’d seen an outline of a rough hole from the Lambda strike against the pyramid. Where the ladder went, he couldn’t see. The dizziness passed and Duggan began once more, repeating a mantra in his head. Grip, pull, climb, six hundred, grip, pull, climb six hundred and one.
By seven hundred metres, the suit was unable to regulate his body temperature adequately. Sweat covered his forehead, dripping into his eyes and stinging them constantly. There were a series of red alerts on his HUD about the physical state of his body. It wouldn’t be long until the suit took matters into its own hands and started injecting him with whatever concoction of drugs it felt he needed. Luckily, the pillar had begun to taper, presumably coming to a point like the pyramid itself. Therefore, Duggan was no longer climbing vertically and the going was fractionally easier. He growled at the imaginary person which inhabited the spacesuit mini-computer and told it where it could shove its battlefield adrenaline.
It took him a while to realise he was no longer in an open space. He glanced around and discovered that he’d ascended through the ceiling and was in a semi-circular shaft which continued through the metal. Heartened, he tipped his head back and his eyes told him the shaft ended in another fifty metres or so. His body’s reserves were depleted and the last part of the climb took a huge expenditure of effort to complete.
At last, he made it. The shaft ended at a metal ceiling. There was no way to tell if the pillar went higher and in truth Duggan was beyond caring. There was a square opening in the wall on the opposite side of the shaft. It was large, wide and more than a metre away from the ladder. Duggan cursed and used his feet to push away from the rungs. His legs were leaden and he didn’t get the distance he’d wanted. Nevertheless, it was far enough and he landed with a thump in the opening. He was in a passage, approximately two metres wide and three high. There was no light to speak of and he turned on his helmet torch. His heart fell – the passage continued for only a few metres before it ended at a dull, black-metal door.
He advanced, flexing his shoulders to try and get the blood flowing into his tired muscles. As he’d feared, the door didn’t open automatically for him. However, there was something attached to its surface which didn’t appear very often on the doors which Duggan habitually used. It was a heavy metal handle - nothing more than a horizontal bar. It looked stiff, but when he pressed down upon it, the handle moved silently and easily. He switched off his torch, in case there was something unexpected on the other side. The door gave the impression it had a great weight when he pulled on it, yet it opened without requiring much effort.
There was a room beyond. It was unlit, except by the tiny quantity of light which came through an irregular six-metre opening in the ceiling. The metal around the hole had been melted and then reformed as it cooled. Duggan had seen plasma damage often enough that he knew this was part of the crater resulting from a missile strike. Through the gap he could make out the pinpricks of stars which filled Trasgor’s night-time sky.
The ceiling itself was five metres above and the room was five metres across, with the opposite wall being vertical, rather than sloped like the sides of the pyramid. The floor went to the left and right away from him. Duggan stopped for a moment while he struggled to make sense of the overall shape. Then it came to him – the room went around the inner perimeter of the pyramid. Ten metres away on each side there were corners and the room continued at a right-angle to each. He was sure if he went in either direction, he’d end up at this door. There was no sign of furniture, however there was a row of screens running along the far wall. They were all dark, as if the power had been switched off.
There was something else – a misshapen object a few metres away. When Duggan focused, he saw there were others with it. His motion and heat sensors were clear and there was no sound to be heard, so he walked over to the nearest shape. It was a body, so badly damaged by the ingress of plasma fire that it was unrecognizable. Dreamers, thought Duggan. He pulled at the remains, hoping there might be something for him to look at – to see the features of humanity’s new enemy. The body was little more than charcoal and ash. It crumbled under his grip, giving away nothing of how it once looked. He checked the other remains without learning anything further about these aliens.
He got to his feet, feeling the early signs of aching in his limbs. Stepping carefully over the bodies, he made his way to the place where the room turned left. He peered around the corner, uncertain if there were any active defences. It was clear and the room continued until it reached another corner. There were more screens embedded in the wall – a row of dozens, each as blank as the next. He went across to one and pressed it, wondering if he could activate it. The screen remained off, but there was something vaguely familiar about everything here. The idea tugged at his brain and told him this was significant.
Duggan turned left again. There were more screens and a door in the centre of the wall. He hurried over to it. This door had no handle and it was closed. There was a clear square plate on the wall adjacent. He pressed the plate, knowing before he did so that it wouldn’t activate at his command. He was sure this had been the main control room for the pyramid, or at least a secondary one. The answers he’d hoped to find continued to elude him and his frustration grew. He kicked the door with the front of his foot and swore at it.
The realisation that he might have to climb the ladder came to the fore in his mind. He didn’t want to contemplate it – the way up had left him with little spare for the way down. He called up the timer. Sixty-five minutes – I’ve got to hurry. Leaving the door, Duggan moved to the next corner, which would take him around the full perimeter of the pyramid. There were more screens and another closed door. Next to the door was a slumped figure. Now he’d ascertained there were no defences in this room, Duggan switched on his helmet torch and light illuminated the body. It was partially charred, though there were signs it had escaped the worst of the plasma. He walked towards the corpse, hearing his heart beating in his ears. His mind had reached a conclusion that he didn’t want to accept, at least not until his eyes gave him no choice.
The Dreamer had been dressed in a flexible, dark silver material, which had burned away and allowed the exposed flesh to be eaten by plasma. Its head pointed away, the dead face looking at the metal floor. Duggan didn’t want to see it and he put out a hand slowly, hating his weakness. He closed his eyes and pulled at the body. It rolled over with a quiet sigh. Duggan opened his eyes again and found himself looking at the lined, grey face of a Ghast.
Chapter Twenty
Duggan stared dumbly at what he’d found. The alien’s eyes were open and they looked back at him, blank and lifeless. He wasn’t a man to be frozen by shock or indecision and he stood up, turning his attention away from this revelation and onto the task of escaping the pyramid.
The nearby door was sealed and also lacked a handle. There was another activation plate to one side, which he pressed without any more luck than the last time. The fingers of the dead creature were curled up tightly into its palm. With an effort, he straightened them, feeling the thick digits crackle as tendons stiffened by rigor mortis were stretched. The body was heavy and difficult to move, seeming to weigh more than its size suggested. It took a few seconds for Duggan to haul it into a position where he could push the grey palm onto the door’s activation plate. Hi
s hopes were dashed when the door stayed close. Before he could think of anything else, he heard a crackling in his earpiece and a female voice spoke, the words unclear.
“The hole!” he said, looking through the damaged ceiling and to the stars outside. He dashed over, until he was standing directly beneath it. “ES Terminus, this is Duggan, do you copy?”
There was a response, clear and crisp this time. “Sir, this is Commander McGlashan. Where are you?”
“I’m inside the pyramid – there’s a hole in the roof for the signal to get through.”
“You’ve got to get out. The Ghasts are going to destroy it!”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “They were the ones who asked us to leave it untouched.”
“They must have received orders to the contrary. They’re planning to wipe out any trace it was here.”
“What about the squad? Have you told them we have people down here?”
“They gave us sixty minutes to evacuate and we only have fifty-five remaining.”
“Do what you can to stall them,” said Duggan. “I’ll be out of comms sight in about five seconds and won’t be able to speak until I exit the pyramid.”
“Understood. I’ll do what I can, sir. The shuttle will need to leave in fifty minutes to be sure of getting clear.”
Galvanised by his determination to bring news of his discovery away from this place, Duggan ran towards the open door he’d first entered through. He sped along the short passageway, the light from his torch sweeping aside the darkness and glinting off the surface of the black pillar. The rungs were clear to see in the artificial light and he sprang for them, grabbing the closest tightly with both hands.
He started to climb, now knowing why the rungs were spaced so far apart. After a hundred metres, the effects of his earlier exertions caught up with his willpower. A hundred metres later and exhaustion threatened to overcome him.
“Damnit, I won’t die because I’m too proud!” he said angrily. What he’d found was too important for the information to be lost because he’d fallen from a ladder.
He ordered the suit to give him some battlefield adrenaline. He felt the prick of the needle, sharp and intense. The drug coursed through his veins, giving strength to his limbs and making him feel like he could run a thousand miles. His heart hammered in his chest, his pupils widened and his jaw clenched tightly.
Down he went, his arms and legs metronomic as they carried him towards the floor below. Four hundred metres to go, he thought with surprise. Feels like I’ve just started. The fifty-minute timer ticked steadily downwards on his HUD. Plenty of time, I could get used to this. He shook the feeling away – the adrenaline was dangerous if it was overused. It took something out of the user and never gave it back. It was a trade – the drug helped you live in exchange for an undying lust to use it again and again. Duggan had seen the effects of long-term abuse and there was no way he’d give in to that.
His leading foot struck something unyielding. For a split second, Duggan thought he was in the process of slipping away to his death. Then he saw that he’d reached the bottom of the ladder. The adrenaline’s initial rush was already subsiding - the drug would keep him going for a few hours yet, but the first big kick had faded. He took a few seconds to get his bearings and then made a run for it. There were broken pieces of the pillar around him on the floor. He was tempted to grab one, before telling himself that he trusted his squad to do as they were told.
“It’s too important to leave to someone else,” he said, scooping up a piece from the ground and resuming his sprint around the base of the pillar. The suit detected the extremes of temperature and offered a warning. Duggan held onto the rock and exited the huge central room, passing the chunk from hand to hand. His palms got colder and colder and the material of his suit became stiff and brittle. He dashed through the rooms he’d passed and the pain in his hands got worse, until he had to grit his teeth against it. The battlefield adrenaline had strong numbing properties and Duggan knew the coldness was doing him real damage.
An object appeared in his path. He leapt over it before remembering it was the pyramid’s outer door. A few paces more and he emerged into Trasgor’s night, his eyes searching left and right for the transport shuttle. There was no sign of it and he was forced to drop the pillar shard for a moment.
“This is Duggan, where the hell are you?” he shouted into the comms.
“Sir, we’re still here,” said Ortiz. “I’ve got a lock on you and we’ll be there in a moment.”
A searchlight appeared on the ground a couple of hundred metres away, moving towards his position. He squinted up and saw the shuttle hovering in the sky, level with the top of the pyramid. It dropped towards him and thumped heavily into the ground, the pilot sacrificing finesse for speed. Duggan picked up the rock and ran towards the transport, feeling the deep chill rush into his cold-blistered palms. The entry ramp opened and Duggan jumped onboard, throwing the pillar sample onto the floor. The pain was intense and the suit injected him with a strong painkiller without his intervention. The visors of the men and women in the passenger bay looked at him, giving away nothing of the expressions within. Duggan fell into one of the seats which had survived the damage from the heavy repeater and closed his eyes, the pain already fading.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Ortiz, leaning out of the cockpit to be sure Duggan was safely inside.
The door closed and the shuttle lifted off, accelerating faster than procedures allowed for. Duggan checked the timer. Seven minutes.
“Want to stick around for the fireworks, sir?” asked Ortiz
“We’d best not, Lieutenant. I’d rather we weren’t accidentally hit by a stray missile.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t do that,” she replied.
“I’d have agreed with you only a few days ago,” said Duggan, wondering what he believed about the Ghasts after recent events. “We’re escaping by the skin of our teeth. Let’s not slow things down.”
“Right you are, sir.”
The transport flew into the sky, still accelerating hard. It had a life support system that could mitigate the effects, though not one that was able to withstand the abuse of a determined pilot. There were rough metal patches over the holes through the hull. Duggan had no idea where the soldiers had got the materials to make them. This was the sort of thing they were good at.
The shuttle docked twenty minutes later, with Ortiz allowing the autopilot to take control over this final manoeuvre. Duggan was first off, eager to return to the bridge and resume command of the ship. When he exited the docked craft, he saw where the soldiers had cut through the metal clamps which had previously held it in place. Without them, the shuttle might not survive the jump to lightspeed.
Before the squad could return to their quarters, Duggan took his helmet off and thanked them for their work on the surface. There were nods and acknowledgements, with more than one person speaking of their eagerness to become reacquainted with the food replicator. The suits sustained their occupants but they couldn’t replace the feeling of having a full stomach.
“I need a medic,” said Duggan. He knew his hands were going to be a mess and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing what state they were in. The gloves of his spacesuit were splitting and he knew he’d put himself at great risk to bring the sample of the pillar.
“You should have left that piece of rock, sir,” said Ortiz. “Your squad brought a couple of pieces already.”
“Damn,” said Duggan ruefully. “I should have trusted them more.”
“You’re like me, sir. You don’t want anyone to do something you could do yourself.” She smiled at him, her features softening. “I’m glad you got out.”
“Me too,” he said. “Though the information I discovered won’t be welcome when I hand it on.”
Ortiz was a professional and she didn’t pry further. “I’ll send Corporal Bryant to the bridge. She’ll have you sorted in no time.”
“And have those samp
les locked up somewhere safe. Have one brought up to the bridge in a cold-proof box or something – Lieutenant Breeze might know what it is.”
“Will do, sir.”
Duggan returned to the bridge. The crew were happy to see him and greeted him warmly, except for Lieutenant Nichols who didn’t smile and only said enough to avoid giving insult. There was little time for pleasantries and Duggan got straight on with business.
“Have the Ghasts done what they said?” he asked.
“Right at the time they promised,” said McGlashan. “They didn’t hold back either. We tracked just shy of one hundred missiles inbound to the pyramid. Here’s what it looks like now.” An image came up on the bulkhead screen. Duggan had to take McGlashan’s word that the Dreamer artefact had once been there. After the Dretisear’s missile bombardment there was nothing recognizable, just a cluster of craters and an area of heat-blackened rock.
“Where is their spaceship and what information have they given you about why they wanted to destroy the pyramid?”
“They’re ten thousand klicks away and moving in a tight circle over the target area, same as we are.”
“No more information?”
Lieutenant Breeze was the next to speak. “We’ve got a fission signature from the Dretisear.”
“Get Nil-Far on the comms!” said Duggan loudly.
After a few moments, the Ghast captain’s voice reached Duggan’s earpiece. “Captain John Duggan,” he said, the interpretation giving away no hint about the Ghast’s demeanour.
“Shut off your engines, Nil-Far. I want answers!”
“I have been ordered to leave this place. You have found what happened to your missing ship, therefore our mission is completed.”
Chains of Duty Page 14