by Alex Kings
“We pay attention to the outside world. We saw how you engaged with it, and saved the Tethyans – while we just sat back at home and watched. Some of our people want to engage too.”
The computer terminal let our a sort of deep-throated bark. Kuta looked at it. “It's done,” she said. She gestured at the screen again. “Arka's still on the planet. Or his ship is, anyway. It was last seen heading towards the Rughk Volcano Range, about two days ago, but one of its shuttles left, so he's probably not there. Here are the co-ordinates.”
“Perfect,” said Hanson. He offered his tablet, and Kuta connected it to the terminal to download the location and a map.
“Thank you,” he said. “I hope you don't mind if we get going without a long goodbye. We need to find Arka as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” said Kuta. “But there's one other thing. The forecast has a razorstorm heading that way. It might pass you by, it might not. But I'd keep an eye on it if I were you. It might be too much even for your shuttle.”
“Well, I'm not willing to wait two hours in which Arka might escape. We'll just have to get in and out quickly,” said Hanson.
As Kuta was leading them down the corridor and back to the shuttle, Agatha fell into step alongside them. She spoke directly to Kuta. “Before we leave, I really gotta know.”
“What?” asked Kuta.
Hanson gave Agatha a warning look. Don't piss off our allies if you can help it.
She ignored him. “What have you got against Srak?”
“Agatha,” said Srak in a low growl.
“No, really. What's the problem, princess?”
Kuta came to a halt, and looked Srak up and down. “He is an exile,” she said.
“Why?”
“He renounced his place in our society.” Kuta growled.
Agatha turned to Srak. “Really?”
“It was boring,” said Srak.
“And so you left? For what? To demonstrate to the other species how Varanids are just criminals and mercenaries.”
Agatha looked between the two Varanids. Then she laughed. “So you basically agree with each other? Really! Look at it, Kuta. You want to change this place, make it less inward-looking. Well, so does he. And you know what he actually demonstrated to the other species?” She put her hand on Srak's shoulder. “How to work with others and save the galaxy! Why don't you try not being a hypocrite?”
Kuta snarled and started walking again. “Enough,” she said.
She led them to their shuttle in silence. Speaking to Hanson alone, she said, “Good luck.”
Once they were in the air, flying over the capital towards the volcano range, Agatha put her head in her hands. “Stupid,” she muttered to herself. “Yeah, let's piss off your ally. Should know by now when to keep my mouth shut.”
“For what it's worth,” said Hanson. “I think she needed to hear that.”
Agatha looked up at him.She seemed to be struggling with some conflicted emotion.
It was the first halfway friendly word to pass between them since their discussion about Emily.
“Thanks,” she said at last.
They left the capital behind for an immense rocky desert, heading towards Arka's ship.
Chapter 15: The Cold, Black Depths
The Black Cat made its final jump into an unknown location. Behind it, the wormhole mouth quivered and shrank.
Operative Serafin sat forward in her chair and looked over her console. The location the Ancient technology had been transmitting. What's so special about it? She thought.
Everything seemed sheathed in black. The stars were visible, clear pinpricks of light against perfect darkness. But nothing else.
Except …
There seemed to be a circle with no stars inside it.
Serafin, keeping her lidar as low as possible, turned her sensors on the object.
It was a planet.
A rogue planet, out here forty-trillion kilometres from the nearest star. No light, no heat. So cold it was effectively invisible until you were right on top of it. Colder than Pluto, even – according to the sensors it was a little less than 4 degrees above absolute zero. Its surface was frozen nitrogen and hydrogen. No atmosphere. A little bigger than Earth.
Existence of self, the Ancient technology had said. What did that mean? Was it talking about the planet?
Serafin manoeuvred the Black Cat in to a closer orbit around the planet. Even in a low orbit, a couple of thousand kilometres above the surface, it was impossible to see visually. It was just a black expanse, blocking out the stars.
She felt a sort of sympathy for it. The planet, hiding in the dark, cold, invisible and alone. It seemed to sum up her career working for the SIS.
One of the Black Cat's systems told her it saw something. Maybe. The signal was incredibly weak, almost too weak for the Black Cat's exquisitely sensitive antennae to pick up. A whisper of radio waves.
She worked at the console for a few moments, homing in on the source of the signal, and carefully edged up towards it.
As she got closer, the signal was definitely strong enough to pick up. After a few minutes the lidar found the object.
It was an irregular mass of spikes, orbiting the planet alongside her. No more than a metre across.
And definitely Ancient.
“Run the Ancient translation code on that signal,” she told the ship.
The signal was still too weak.
She brought the Black Cat closer still, until its nose was only a few tens of metres away from the object, then tried again.
This time the translation worked. First it was just a bunch of binary noise. Then the signal changed.
The words flickered into life on the display screen in real time:
… where the mighty once strode across the cold black depths all things have now died now fallen into entropy and chaos and darkness and the painful quiet, be they the crimes of the arrogant or the inevitable fears at the end, I ask we ask for salvation but hear only quiet see only darkness …
Serafin watched a little while longer while the signal vomited up more and more incomprehensible run-on sentences.
“The translation key Yilva gave us … “ she asked the ship. “Does it include words like arrogant?”
“No. The signal is generating this message letter-by-letter.”
Which meant, Serafin realised, that the object had figured out the ship's unicode so it could represent letters – and the English language so it could arrange those letters into words.
And it had figured that out using only the brief contact of her scanning it.
Even the best computers on Earth weren't that powerful. Even the Tethyans – as far as she knew – couldn't do that.
She stared at the mass of spikes on screen, and murmured to herself, “What are you?” After drumming her fingers on the console for a few seconds, mulling the matter over, she decided on a course of action. This thing had to be brought back to Mars. Even though it could be dangerous.
“Prepare a bulkwave distress signal,” she told the ship. “Include all received date about the object, current planned trajectory home, and all other blackbox data. Set recipients: SIS office on Mars. And the Dauntless.”
“Signal prepared,” said the ship.
“Trigger the message to be sent if: One, there is any unknown corruption of primary expert systems; two, there is any loss of life support or engine control.”
“Trigger ready.”
“Now wall it off from the rest of the ship's systems.”
“Wall ready.”
There, she thought. That should do it. If the Ancient object did anything to hack the Black Cat, or to kill Serafin herself, the distress signal would be sent immediately. She probably wouldn't survive, but someone else might be able to pick up the object before it fell into the wrong hands.
With that done, she manoeuvred the Black Cat towards the object, opened the bay doors, and prepared to take it on board.
One of the alarms
on the console warbled. Another ship had just jumped in.
Chapter 16: Volcanoes
As they neared the Rughk Volcano range, the desert below became darker. Banded stripes of black volcanic ash lay against the sand and rock. Further on, there were acidic pools in the rock, colour bright orange and red, and bobbling near boiling point. Off in the distance, the first volcano appeared in the horizon, its sides streaked with yellowish sulphur.
The air became hazy from some recent eruption. Below, the desert gave way to layers of cooled lava.
“What the hell was he doing here?” asked Agatha.
“Apparently there is a private geological research facility,” said Vyren.
Soon after, the facility itself came into view. It was more of a cave than a building – a sort of overhang built into the rising slope of a nearby volcano. At least here, the ground looked quiet.
Vyren was checking the details of their assignments on Ghroga's local net.
“How long since this area was active?” Hanson asked.
“About ten years,” said Vyren.
“Good. I'd hate to get buried in lava just as find our target. What about the razorstorm?”
“It is accelerating and growing in strength. At the current estimate, it should be here in thirty minutes.”
“Alright,” said Hanson as he landed the shuttle directly by the overhang. “That's thirty minutes, in and out. We find any evidence we can.”
“What if Arka comes back before then?” Vyren asked.
“Then things gets a bit harder,” said Hanson. He turned the shuttle off. The gullwing door opened with a faint hiss. “Srak, any chance he'll be armed?”
“I doubt it,” said Srak.
“Well, then, we're in with a chance. Let's move.”
There was a baking heat outside. Even the occasional gust of wind felt like the draft from an oven. The sunlight was near-blinding, and left sharp shadows on the crumbly, unsteady ground beneath their feet. Hanson was acutely conscious of having no weapon.
He led them forward into the shadow of the overhang. A pair of steel doors were set a little way into a tunnel. They were heavily scuffed and eroded by the continual impact of razor storms. Control panels were hidden behind sapphiroid shields on either side.
Vyren floated up to the left panel in his globe of water. Extending a tendril of effector field, he tapped in the codes Kuta had given them.
The doors slid open with a groan. They were a good six feet thick, armoured with layers of sapphiroid in the core.
The tunnel extended further inwards. It was reinforced by a skeleton of some grey substance, from which hung dim lights.
“Close the door behind us,” Hanson told Vyren.
Vyren did so, leaving them in a warm, dry, semi-darkness. Hanson led them forwards.
The tunnel went on for a few hundred metres, heading downwards, then opened up into a giant cavern. Mining tractors and smaller mining drones were scattered about.A few computer terminals were set into the walls. Ten or twenty metres further on, the floor dropped away vertically. Their footsteps returned deep, delayed echoes.
Hanson's comms gave a warning chime. They'd lost contact with the shuttle and the Dauntless.
“Check the terminals,” Hanson said. “Vyren with me, to the left. Srak and Agatha, to the right.”
They split up, looking over the terminals. The first one Hanson and Vyren encountered was turned off, apparently permanently. The second, though, was still active.
It was all in Varanid.
“Is there an Isk option?” Hanson asked.
“No,” said Vyren. “But I can translate.”
While he was busy, Hanson took out his tablet, extended it, and plugged in into the terminal. “Let's get everything we can,” he said.
“This is mostly mining data. Automated notes on the geological composition of the volcano,” said Vyren. “There seems to be nothing of value here. Perhaps if I check the direction of mining … It appears they discovered a signal.”
“What sort of signal?”
“It doesn't say. Perhaps … history.” Vyren was silent for a few moments. “Yes: This facility was made a few years after the last eruption because something inside the volcano began emitting a long wave radio signal. Four years ago the signal stopped, and the Varanids gave up mining. Two months ago, Arka bought the facility and started operations again. He redoubled efforts to find the source of the signals. Then he stopped … until three weeks ago.”
Hanson thought about this. “I'm betting this artefact is some Ancient technology. What d'you think the odds are?”
“Very, very high,” said Vyren.
“Me too.” Hanson considered the timeline. “So, some months ago, IL see this artefact and go after it. Then they stop. Why? Because they've found a better way. Three weeks ago, they make their attack on Tethya, and lose. Then, straight away they start operations here again. That's not a co-incidence. This is their Plan B.”
He looked into Vyren's electric blue eyes. “So what's so important about this artefact?”
Vyren began looking through the terminal again. “The artefact itself is nearly uncovered. It's buried three hundred metres below us, in that pit.” He pointed with a tentacle. “If we began operations again, perhaps we could uncover it and find out what it is.”
“Or we could just be giving it straight to him,” said Hanson. “No, not yet.”
Srak's shout came from across the cavern: “Hanson! We found something!”
Hanson and Vyren made their way over to the terminal where Srak and Agatha were standing.
“It's a bulkwave transmitter,” said Srak.
“Do you know where to?”
Srak shrugged. “All the location data have been cut free. But it's ready to activate.”
So, whoever was on the other side of that line was working with Arka.
It was a long shot, but …
“Think you can pretend to be Arka?” Hanson asked.
Srak laughed. “To someone who has never seen him before, perhaps!”
“That'll have to do.” Hanson turned to Vyren. “Before we do this, is there anything else you can learn from the terminal? We might not get another chance.”
“No, Captain.” said Vyren. “I've searched through everything there.”
“Very well. Srak, activate the bulkwave. Let's see who Arka's been talking to.”
Chapter 17: Contact
Hanson and the others stood to the side as Srak positioned himself in front of the terminal's camera. When he was ready, Srak gestured at the terminal to start the call.
The screen was mostly black for a few moments, displaying just a few charts showing the bulkwave was connected. Something pinged, then a woman's face appeared.
She brushed her blonde curls out of her face. A momentary reflection of a tablet screen danced across her tablet. Hanson recognised her immediately. They were speaking to Millicent Dawes.
“Arka here,” said Srak.
The woman blinked. “Um. Yes. I know who you are. What can I help you with, Arka?”
Srak, evidently not used to acting, looked at Agatha. Agatha shrugged. Srak quickly turned his attention back to the screen and said, “I'm done here. I have the … artefact.”
Millicent nodded, frowning slight. “Yes … ?” she said.
So much for that line of attack, thought Hanson. Clearly Arka already had the rendezvous co-ordinates memorised, or Millicent would have told him. It was time for another go.
Fortunately Srak was already on top of it.
“But there's something else,” he told Millicent, growing more confident. “There's an Alliance ship here.”
“Over Ghroga?” Millicent pronounced the planet's name perfectly. It was odd hearing her delicate voice effortless produce the “gh” back-of-the-throat growl that most humans left out.
“Yes, over Ghroga. It's the Dauntless.”
Millicent's eyes widened a touch.
“They've just got here, but w
e need to move quickly.”
“Yes, of course!” said Millicent. “Do you want to speak to Mr. Pierce?”
“Yes!”
“Just a moment, I'll put you through.”
The screen went blank again. Srak looked at Hanson and shrugged.
Ask to meet, Hanson mouthed silently.
The screen flicked on again. This time, everyone recognised the face. Philip Pierce, former CEO of Interstellar Liners. He had greying, neatly-trimmed beard, and dark brown, almost fatherly eyes. His expression, always cultivated, always warm, never gave anything away. He sat in a chair of rich brown leather, with the wooden panel of an luxury ship's bulkhead behind that. Beside him, Millicent stood silently. She adjusted her glasses once.
“Pierce,” said Srak. “I have the artefact, but there's an Alliance ship in orbit. I need to get out of here quickly. They know about my ship. Could you send another before I get to the rendezvous point?”
Pierce nodded, sat back in his chair, and said softly, “You're not Arka.”
“What are you talking about?” said Srak.
“It's no use pretending, Varanid,” said Pierce. “Arka is larger than you. His neck scales are more red.”
Srak closed his mouth.
“So what is going on?”
“I'm Arka's representative.”
“He would not use an unknown to speak to me. You are beginning to try my patience.”
Hanson sighed and stepped into view alongside Srak. “It's pretty clear what's going on,” he said.
This got Pierce's attention. He leaned forward, smiling broadly. “Captain Hanson!” he said. “What a … pleasant surprise. The Hero of Tethya. I'm honoured.”
Hanson smiled back. “The honour's all mine,” he said. “It would be easier, I think, if you gave up now. We've found Arka's base. You lost over Tethya, and you've lost now. It's time to stop playing this ridiculous game of hide-and-seek.”
Pierce interlaced his fingers together under his chin. His expression had gone thoughtful, but there was a faint hint of worry in his voice. “Perhaps, Hanson.”
“Ms. Dawes,” Hanson said, turning his gaze to her. “I know you had your reasons for choosing the side you did, but you have to understand it's over now. Give it up now, and I'll do everything I can for you. You can stay out of prison. You'll still be able to visit your niece, and –”