by Dan Worth
‘You chose him yourself I understand.’
‘Yes sir. All of our intelligence gathering found him to be the best candidate for the job, and we were not disappointed I might add. He is a fine pilot and though he is a little rough around the edges, a decent man.’
‘However…’
‘Isaacs was a pilot in a bomber squadron almost fifteen years ago. He was top of his class in training and joined his squadron with the anticipation among his superiors that he would go far, only to resign after less than a year. In all respects he should have been an exceptional pilot and good officer material. There’s no mention in his file as to why he was honourably discharged’
‘Well, the military life doesn’t suit everyone, you know. Perhaps he had other personal problems and whatnot.’
‘That’s what I thought too, but our vetting process didn’t dig up anything untoward. I asked him casually about it and he told me that it was classified which didn’t tie up with the records that I’d seen. He seemed quite distressed, angry too I’d say. I used my special clearance to obtain the secret documents and found that it was classified at the highest level. I’ve managed to obtain clearance for you also, however the breakthrough came when I used my clearance with your military to access any records pertaining to classified rescues of human pilots. I found a file that correlates with Isaacs’ own record.’
‘And what does the file say?’
‘Sir, I think he may have had first hand contact with the Shapers, I think he may know how they implant people.’
Chapter 9
The stubby-winged shuttle fell swiftly out of the fume laden sky, its controlled descent speeding it across a landscape shaped by intense vulcanism. Smoking cones of ash towered over plains of black glass, glistening chemical deserts and the coiled ropes of lava fields. Here and there, peaks still spewed fire and smoke into the sky, bright molten rivers trickling down their steep, fume shrouded flanks. The very air burned, sparks filled the sky, whilst corrosive clouds of acid boiled overhead, their dark undersides periodically lit by the intermittent flashes of lightning. The poisonous sky turned the light of the blue-white suns a sickly yellow and obscured much of the marbled face of the vast gas giant that hung heavy above it.
Rhyolite was a primordial vision of a biblical hell, an entire planet so hostile to life that to venture outside without a suit was to risk being asphyxiated by the atmosphere, burned alive by lava or super heated gases or dissolved by concentrated acid, possibly all at the same time. In some places, just to touch its very surface was to risk losing the skin from your hand, or possibly the hand altogether.
This caustic hell, however, was also a source of great riches. Mining rigs roamed the surface, harvesting the bounty of chemicals. These great floating industrial plants the size of small towns floated above the poisonous wastes on AG units, protected from the elements by heavy shielding. In more stable regions, mines had been sunk into the rock, probing the rich seams of heavy metals found there. The armoured domes of the settlements that had grown up around the mines dotted the surface - tiny islands of human activity and sanctuary in the wilderness.
Katherine peered through the tiny porthole in the shuttle’s hull at the infernal landscape passing quickly beneath them. From this height, the landscape looked savagely beautiful: Whorls of light and dark, splashes of yellow from dunes of pure sulphur, intermingled smears of red, brown, orange and black, light glinting from the purple waters of an acidic lake, drifts of grey-white ash, pillars of smoke thundering into the sky. All of these amid the twisted lines of the tortured land, rent and cracked by the tidal forces exerted by Beatty – the gas giant looming so close she felt she could almost touch its bloated cloud-tops.
Lights glinted on the horizon atop a basalt plateau that rose above the surrounding wastes like a black island above a multicoloured sea. She felt the shuttle begin to slow its descent and heard the whines and clunks of the undercarriage unfolding beneath her. To her right, Rekkid sat in the aisle seat, eyes tightly closed, cursing in his own language with every jolt of turbulence from the updrafts caused by the tortured terrain below. Reynaud and Cox sat in front, apparently nonchalant. Both were working from datapads and paid little attention to the spectacular landscape passing below. Doubtless they had seen it countless times before.
‘Rekkid, are you alright?’ asked Katherine of her grimacing companion.
‘Oh, wonderful. Great. Fantastic. Couldn’t be better,’ he replied testily. ‘I’ll be much better once I’m off this death-trap.’
‘This shuttle is heavily shielded you know. We’re quite safe,’ she chided.
‘Yes, I’m sure we are. We’ll be a lot safer once we’re on the ground.’
‘You don’t have much faith in our technology do you?’
‘No. How would you feel if you had to fly in an Apollo capsule every time you went anywhere? That’s how it feels to me.’
‘You’re just not adventurous, that’s your trouble.’
‘I’d rather be a live unadventurous person that a dead thrill seeker, if it’s all the same to you.’
The shuttle braked rather suddenly. Rekkid’s hands gripped the arms of his chair more forcefully. The knuckles of his light brown, seven fingered hands were almost white with tension.
‘Well, it looks like we’re almost down anyway, so you can stop complaining,’ said Katherine, peering ahead through the porthole. ‘We’re coming in to land at a base of some kind.’
As she spoke the shuttle braked to a complete stop, hanging in the air on AG units, before beginning a steady descent towards the landing platform below. Katherine strained to see over the curve of the shuttle’s wing, but nevertheless caught glimpses of domes and low buildings clustered around a large geodesic structure. The uniform white outer skin of the base was stained yellow by the sickly light and drifts of accumulated dust on its surface.
The shuttle landed with a gentle thud. Then the landing pad itself began to sink into the large angular structure beneath. Large armoured doors slid smoothly closed overhead, sealing them in from the toxic world outside.
There was another slight jolt as the pad reached the bottom of the shaft, before a set of heavy doors slid open in front of it, admitting the now taxiing craft into a large hangar area, where it parked among a selection of passenger and cargo vessels.
Katherine and Rekkid followed Cox and Reynaud out of the shuttle and across the noisy hangar between the rows of parked craft. They exited through a small security area and into the base proper via a grimy lift that squeaked and rattled on its way down.
‘So, where’s this ship you say you’ve found?’ said Katherine. ‘I didn’t see anything on the way in except the mining complex. Is it inside the mines? Pardon me, but I hadn’t planned on going down a mine full of toxic chemicals.’
‘No, the ship is on the surface I assure you,’ said Reynaud.
‘Then where is it?’ said Rekkid.
‘About a day’s travel from here by crawler,’ Reynaud replied. ‘Don’t worry. The journey is relatively safe, despite the harsh conditions out there.’
The lift jolted to a halt and they stepped out into a dimly lit corridor lined with exposed pipes and conduits, busy with the comings and goings of miners and base staff. They followed in Cox’s wake through the subterranean maze.
‘A day’s travel?’ said Katherine. ‘Why the hell didn’t we just land at the site instead of coming here?’
‘All in good time Doctor,’ rumbled Cox. ‘For now I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your mouth shut for the time being. We wouldn’t want to go blabbing about it all over the station.’
Katherine felt as though she had just been admonished by a bad tempered school master.
Cox lead them through the labyrinthine base, past offices and mess halls, workshops and loading areas and along a corridor overlooking the main cargo craft hangar where, through the plexi-glass viewing windows, huge ore lifters could be seen docking in a vast, shielded blast pit. Eventually
they arrived at a vehicle garage containing a number of security rovers as well as a handful of boxy surface crawlers, their armoured bodies each squatting on four huge wheels. A small ramp sloped down from the open rear door of one of the hulking yellow vehicles. Cox strode over to it.
‘I still don’t see why we couldn’t have just flown to the site,’ said Katherine, as the four of them sat in the crawler’s rear crew lounge, which swayed erratically as the vehicle traversed the uneven terrain. Through the rear windows, the black silhouette of the mining was receding into the amber-coloured haze of the horizon.
‘Because,’ said Cox. ‘We don’t want the general public knowing about it, that’s why. It cost us enough to pay off the two prospectors who found it by accident. We hardly want a whole planet full of miners poking their grubby noses in do we? Ships coming and going from an unregistered site would attract attention sooner or later. This way we can operate unnoticed and preserve the site from thieves and raiders.’
‘What about military vehicles coming and going from the desert?’ said Rekkid. ‘I don’t know if you’d realised, but twenty foot high crawlers painted yellow tend to stand out.’
‘Ah well, you see in that we are fortunate,’ Reynaud cut in. ‘You may have noticed all the troops hanging around Barstow Station?’
‘Yes. We assumed it was something to do with the pirate trouble you’ve been having.’
‘You are correct,’ said Reynaud. ‘Apparently those thugs have been causing quite a lot of trouble for the inhabitants of this system. Mining settlements are no exception; there have been a number of raids on precious metal shipments and so on, so the Commonwealth has stationed extra troops on the surface to re-assure the population and keep the mining operations going. Our forays into the desert can be explained away as part of such measures. We’re just another patrol, no?’
‘Are any of these troops stationed at the dig site?’ said Katherine.
‘A few,’ said Cox. ‘Just to patrol the perimeter and stop anyone sneaking in or out. There’s a big market for ancient alien artefacts on the black market, as I’m sure you’re aware. A lot of people come to the frontier systems to make their fortune. Smuggling out a few items like the ones I showed to you yesterday would go a long way to achieving that for somebody.’
Katherine nodded. ‘Well that’s true enough. Thieves have always been the bane of our profession. So much has been lost over the years to greed and vandalism.’
‘Pardon me for asking what might seem like an obvious question,’ said Rekkid. ‘But what is there to stop someone from spotting the sight from the air or from space. Surely the dig site must be quite large? You are excavating a ship after all.’
‘Fortunately the site lies well away from any of the flight paths to and from the surface settlements, as for prying eyes in space, well, it’s all a matter of knowing where to look in the first place isn’t it? In any case, we’ve erected a temporary shelter over the site until the ship can be moved. As well as shielding the site from view, it helps to protect our workforce from some of the effects of Rhyolite’s environment.’
‘You’re planning to lift the ship off the surface?’ said Katherine.
‘Yes. The vessel will be moved off planet for further study if possible to somewhere where the environment isn’t quite so hostile. Henri is already putting together a team to study the craft’s technology. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, absolutely. Perhaps there may be a place for you both on that team. I would appreciate your input and your expertise,’ said Reynaud, his gaze firmly fixed on Katherine.
‘Well, we’ll think about that when the time comes Doctor,’ Katherine replied smoothly. ‘For now we’re simply interested in viewing the site and the progress you’ve made so far.’
‘Naturally,’ Reynaud replied. ‘You do not approve?’ he said, turning to Rekkid.
‘I think it all depends on how long either of us can tolerate your ego,’ Rekkid replied. ‘I’d also appreciate it if we could have some sort of firm information on what you’ve actually found, though I suppose that would spoil your sense of theatre, wouldn’t it?’
‘Professor Cor, I only refrained from bringing such documentation with me because to do so would contravene the security regulations surrounding the site, is that not so Admiral?’ said Reynaud. Cox nodded slowly. ‘Now, I think we should put aside our professional differences and work together on this. Besides, we have a day to get acquainted aboard this crawler.’
‘Yeah, great,’ said Rekkid. ‘I think I might choose to ride on the roof. If it’s a choice between acid storms and your company I’ll go for the clouds of sulphur dioxide every time.’
Reynaud laughed and shook his head.
That evening, Reynaud found Katherine in the control cab of the crawler, curled up in one of the command chairs opposite the current driver, a thick-set man by the name of Farouk who glowered over the controls at the uneven terrain ahead. They were currently crossing a dried up lake bed, the white plain of crystallised minerals tinted a fiery orange by the light of the setting sun. Farouk appeared to be concentrating on the line of existing vehicle tracks across the heat-cracked surface that meandered around the more fragile or broken areas. Though the vehicle was guided by satellite navigation, the unpredictable nature of Rhyolite’s surface still required a human driver to cope with the ever changing terrain.
Outside, the wind howled against the cab windows, spraying their outer panes with fine dust.
‘Ah, Katherine. I wondered where you had got to.’
‘I came up here to think, and to admire the view. Farouk’s been pointing out the various natural features.’
‘It is not so different from my home,’ said Farouk, his eyes never leaving the road ahead. ‘My home is a harsh, beautiful place like this one. Though on New Hatti you can breathe the air without it boiling your lungs away.’
‘Sound like a charming place,’ said Reynaud.
‘I like it,’ said Farouk darkly. ‘Sometimes one needs the emptiness of the wastelands. Gives you time to think. No idiots chattering away to disturb your thoughts.’
‘You do a lot of thinking then?’ Reynaud quizzed him, half mocking in tone.
‘What, you think I’m some stupid bus driver?’ Farouk shot back. ‘I’m one of the best prospectors in this system, and the best land crawler pilot. Just because I get my hands dirty doing a day’s work, you think I’m an idiot? Perhaps you can drive this thing. Let’s see how far we get then, eh?’
Katherine twisted round in her seat so she could look directly at Reynaud. ‘What did you want Henri?’ she said. ‘Did you get bored of trying to wind up Rekkid so you thought you’d come and annoy us?’
Reynaud sat himself down in an empty seat behind Farouk across from Katherine. He removed his spectacles and started to polish them with a handkerchief.
‘No, though you are right about my boredom. I thought perhaps we could get acquainted.’
Great, thought Katherine.
‘Henri, how did you end up on this dig?’ she said. ‘I’m well aware of your talent for self promotion, but why did Cox pick you for this?’
‘Ah well…’ said Reynaud and replaced his glasses. ‘Poor Admiral Cox, he is a very… a very bitter man in many respects.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Admiral is, by all accounts, a brilliant strategist and a respected commander of men, but he doesn’t know how to play the political game. He thinks that that’s why Admiral Haines was chosen to lead the war whilst he was sidelined and given the task of defending our other borders. Cox was promised his own command in the field, but the war was over before he got it. He and Haines have had their differences over the years. They served together for some time, you know. I think Cox believes that Haines had something to do with his ill fortune.’
‘Does he?’
‘Maybe, who knows? I don’t honestly care.’
‘So where do you fit in?’
‘James Cox and I have known one ano
ther for some time. My ex-wife was a friend of his sister’s so we moved in the same social circles. When the wreck was found here on Rhyolite, I think Cox saw it as an opportunity to raise his profile in the eyes of the Joint Chiefs by presenting them with new and exciting technologies that the Navy could use. So he turned to me - someone he could trust and who had the necessary skills to see the project through the way he wants.’
‘And what’s in it for you?’
‘Why, my name in history of course. Cox gets his prize, I get my discoveries. It’s win-win all round Katherine. Of course, we needed people with knowledge of very ancient civilisations and their languages, so we turned to you two. You know, this could really revive your fortunes.’
‘My fortunes are fine, Henri.’
‘Hmm. Yet no-one knows where you two have been for the past few years. No-one has seen either of you since the start of the war. I know, I checked with your faculty back on Earth.’
‘I can’t tell you, it’s classified.’
‘So I gather… your colleagues told us to contact the Navy as to your whereabouts. Ah well, we all have our secrets, do we not?’
‘We certainly do.’
‘Perhaps you’d care to share a few stories in confidence? The device you found at Maranos for example - I would be fascinated to hear your own personal account of what transpired. I was only jesting earlier when I said I did not believe you. The things we say in the heat of an argument eh?’ He laughed self effacingly.
‘Sorry Henri, I don’t crack that easily. As your military friends like to say: you’ll be informed on a need to know basis, and well, you don’t need to know.’
‘I don’t? Katherine, you disappoint me.’
‘Sorry, nothing to do with me I’m afraid.’