“He said he was recharging,” Suzy said, “but that was hours ago now. I’ll bet he’s ready to go. Petrick will get him. Let’s go find the captain, I’ll bet she’s hungry too.” She offered Barry her arm for steadiness, just in case.
“You guys go get Haber,” Petrick said swiftly. “I’ll get Balta.”
And then he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. He could feel them watching him as he left, puzzled. He was acting weird, and he knew they knew it. But he couldn’t look at Haber.
The door to the core room was open a sliver, the way Petrick had found it seemingly a lifetime ago. He creaked the door open the rest of the way and looked at the glowing gold core. It seemed not to have changed at all. It was slightly dimmer, perhaps, but still mesmerizing and silent.
“I thought I told you not to come in here,” Balta said from behind Petrick.
I need to work on my peripheral senses, Petrick thought to himself. Except this time he hadn’t been sneaking, per se. When he turned to the pirate captain, he relaxed slightly, seeing that Balta had been joking . . . perhaps. The woman was so gruff it could be hard to tell.
“We’re going to have Haber make some breakfast,” he told her, “if you want some.”
Balta didn’t break stride with the long slender cylinder she was bringing out from the storage room off to the side of the core. She glanced in Petrick’s direction. “You look like an Iridite insomniac.”
Petrick didn’t recognize the reference, but he gathered the gist. He was going to have to wake himself up somehow to stop the comment barrage.
“I just . . . ,” Petrick began awkwardly, “just wanted to say thank you for your words back at Liberatia. In the cockpit.”
Balta snorted and waved Petrick off. “Don’t be ridiculous. You were just in my seat, that’s all. Never take advice from a pirate.”
Petrick nodded. Balta dropped the cylinder down on the grated deck with a loud clang! The sound rang hollowly. Balta grunted and then gazed at the starstuff core.
“It’s running low,” Balta said with a nod to it. “We’re almost out of the ’stuff.”
Petrick looked at it too. It hadn’t been his imagination, then. It was definitely dimmer than it had been the first time he’d seen it.
“That cylinder is the last one I had in storage, and it’s bone-dry.” Balta kicked it for emphasis, and it clattered its way over to a pile of other empty cylinders along the wall.
“Do you think we have enough to get to Syrruk Prime?” Petrick asked.
“No way to know for sure.” Balta shifted and rubbed her face. “Chronos gave us a trajectory to follow, not a set of coordinates.”
Petrick nodded. He knew that.
Syrruk Prime was a Wandering Giant; it didn’t stay in the same place, tethered to a star. It floated out in empty space on its own random trajectory, pushed and pulled by any gravity well it came near. It’s what made them so hard to locate, and what made that data stick Chronos had shared with them so incredibly important to finding their destination.
“What happens if we run out?” Petrick asked.
Balta shrugged. “I’ve never let it happen before. I can’t imagine it would be good . . .” Balta sighed. Petrick realized she was nervous. “No use worrying about it. If the ’stuff running dry doesn’t get us, the Syrruk themselves might.”
Petrick blinked. This was new information. “Are they dangerous?”
Before Balta could respond, an alarm blared around the ship, and small red lights dotted here and there on the walls and corridors began flashing. It was the familiar proximity warning.
“We must be approaching Syrruk.”
45
SYRRUK PRIME WAS A SHADOW, a blot of black ink on a black page. It was so dark that even the holographic display was having difficulty finding its shape and edges. It was not round.
It was also not what had set off their proximity alert.
Moving diamond forms, dark like the shadow they came from, whooshed past the Red Robert, and the small ship shuddered. There had been three in as many seconds.
“What are they?” Petrick asked.
In his customary side seat, Colossus crunched out some response that Balta translated. “Ships,” she said. “Syrruk, I’d guess.”
“You don’t know?” Haber asked.
Petrick stole a glance at the android, and Haber looked back wordlessly, attentively, like he would have before. He was his usual self. He didn’t remember.
“I’ve never been to Syrruk, android,” Balta growled, “and neither has anyone else that I’ve ever known.”
“Where are they going, then?” Barry wondered. He then crunched delightedly into a munchin’ strip. Apparently, breakfast had been served, at least in part.
“Very good question.” There was apprehension in the pirate captain’s voice.
Suzy seized upon it. “You think they’re not friendly?”
“There are rumors,” Balta continued. “Fringe encounters. Super religious, they say, appear and disappear, can read your mind and tell the future. Mumbo-jumbo like that. But no one’s ever been to Syrruk Prime, at least who’s ever lived to tell anyone about it.”
Another diamond shape slid past them, twenty or thirty times their size, and completely dark.
“No one except my father,” Petrick said.
Balta nodded. As she did, the heads-up display on the cockpit clicked green, and a new graphic was displayed. Like the path they had seen plotted through the rock fields of the Wall, this one lit up in oranges and yellows, leading toward Syrruk Prime.
“Looks like they’ve rolled out the welcome mat,” Balta said with unabashed surprise. She shook her head and rubbed the sweat from her brow. “Aw, hell,” she muttered to herself. She grunted and punched some controls, and the Red Robert surged forward to where the lit-up path pointed them.
Slowly, the Red Robert floated toward the dark planet. They were alone now; gone were the dozen or so diamond ships. As they neared, small pinpricks of light appeared dotting the rough surface. “Ragged” was indeed an apt word, for as they neared, they realized why Syrruk’s shadow was so hard to define; Syrruk was more a fragment than a planet.
It had been hollowed out like a worm-ridden apple—there were too many tunneled holes to count—and then cracked apart. Shards the size of continents had split and broken free as its gravitational forces had inevitably weakened with the diminishing mass. These chunks floated lazily close to the remaining portion, giving a vague idea of the sphere it once had been.
“What happened?” Barry asked. “Why does the planet looks so weird?”
“Starstuff mining is what happened,” Balta said knowingly. She’d seen this before. “This is what a Wandering Giant looks like when it’s been sucked of its starstuff ore.”
“It looks like it’s rotting,” Suzy said.
“Yeah, that’s about right,” Balta grunted. “With all the mass that’s removed, the crust of the planet starts to collapse inward, or just break off like those pieces.” She pointed to the floating splinters.
“You think the Authority has been here?” Haber asked.
“I don’t know. Someone has.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re so private,” Barry said. He was nodding his head sagely, as if he fancied he and the Syrruk might have something in common.
Silently, the dark world filled their view in every direction, blotting out the stars as far as they could see. Somehow, without those friendly pins of light, it felt as if the Red Robert were falling into some deep dark hole with no bottom. Vertigo filled Petrick, so he tried to focus on the heads-up instead, which showed them sloping obediently downward on the vector they’d received.
As they drew closer to the black shadow, blips of light began to appear on the surface. They were small domes, lit up and dotting the rocky, atmosphere-less surface like tents. They were miles apart from each other. Had they always been there, too small to see from a distant orbit, or had they just appeared?
She was right. They were. Concentric circles spread out over hundreds of miles, ringing an amorphous center, which was directly where the Red Robert was heading. But there was nothing to be seen ahead, just darkness ringed by the glowing tents.
Balta switched on their landing lights as they neared the surface, and their bright spots pierced through the inky black to reveal a pebbled and dusty surface. They were heading toward a mountain range, or at least what used to be one. Its tips had been stripped, layer by layer, down to rubble. They couldn’t see any sign of life or civilization, but the cockpit’s overlay insisted that they continue forward, straight toward the largest remaining peak of the once-great mountain range.
Closer and closer they came until even the shambles of the mountain peak towered above them, and still, no landing site presented itself, no figures pointed the way.
“Umm, Captain,” Barry said from the back, “why is that holo-thing telling us to fly into the mountain?”
“I’m . . . not sure.” Balta was busy scanning her instruments, also doubting these landing instructions they’d been given.
Was this what the Syrruk did? Give phony landing vectors to trusting ships and smash them upon their lightless rocks?
Just as Balta was about to let her suspicions override any small semblance of trust, shut their thrusters down, and just park on the nearest flat piece of land, a vertical beam of light appeared out of solid rock directly ahead of them. Everyone in the cockpit raised their hands and arms to cover their suddenly blinded eyes, and the line of light began to expand across their faces, growing wider. Once their eyes adjusted, there were gasps from the children and dropped jaws from the adults.
The mountain itself was rumbling open; two massive doors hewn from the rock were parting to let them inside. Beyond the stone door was an enormous chamber . . . a hangar. Petrick had seen two others now; he knew how they looked.
“Well,” breathed Barry, “that was neat.”
The Red Robert flew into the cavern and everyone twisted their necks to look around. As one would expect of a ship hangar in the middle of a mountain, it appeared to have been blasted straight from the rock of Syrruk Prime. Floodlights poured from the far back wall, where they could make out several person-sized doorways. No figures, however. The Syrruk themselves were nowhere to be seen.
Barry pointed at several small, diamond-shaped vehicles along either wall to the sides. They were matte black and seemed to suck in the passing light of the Red Robert’s landing gear. They were smallish, with a single-person cockpit centered in the front of each vessel. They were sharp and aggressive looking.
“They look like the larger ships we passed on our way in,” Haber observed astutely.
“Fighters,” Balta said with confidence. Then, “. . . Maybe?”
“Where is everyone?” Suzy asked. “Did they all leave?”
Balta set the Red Robert down with a practiced clunk, and Petrick heard the winding-down sound of the terrestrial thrusters. Outside, it was quiet.
The seat harness released Balta with a click-click, and she rose and loosened her arms and legs with a stretch. “Let’s find out.”
The gangplank had hardly hit the ground when Balta had the exterior hatch open, her two golden guns ready at her sides, and she began crouch-walking out into the hangar.
The air was surprisingly fresh, like stones washed in a creek bed. Petrick had expected it to smell stale, musty, and otherwise ancient, because the chamber looked ancient. The walls of the hangar rose far above what the lights could show them, but Petrick noticed they sloped inward. It reminded him that he was standing inside a mountain. Inside a mountain. It also made him think that this hangar was really a microcosm of Syrruk Prime itself: a hollowed-out shell.
Petrick tentatively set down Clarke, and his nails went tick-tick-tick on the matte black stone floor as he stuck close to his master. It was deathly quiet.
“Hello!”
Suzy’s voice echoed around the chamber like a chorus, and Balta jumped.
“Suzy!” she said. She gestured to the guns in her hands. “You want me to shoot you?”
“Someone has to be here,” she responded. “They opened the door for us, didn’t they?”
“Next time give me a warning before shouting in my ear.”
“I’m just trying not to waste anyone’s time.”
“Perhaps it would be best to let Captain Balta lead the way,” Haber said, inserting himself into the argument.
Suzy grunted and made a bowing gesture for Balta to continue. “Where to?” she asked her, knowing full well she had no idea.
“I’d bet my dinner we need to go through those doors over there.” Barry pointed to the back wall of the hangar.
Underneath the powerful spotlights shining out beyond the hangar were several closed stone doors, just slightly larger than one would expect for humans. They, too, were diamond shaped, perhaps nine feet tall and six feet wide. The Syrruk clearly had a favorite shape.
Balta and Haber looked at each other and shared a quick glance that said, Might as well, and they all started slowly stalking in that direction. They were tense, coiled. Even Haber looked ready for anything.
Another sound made Balta jump, along with Barry and Petrick, but this time it wasn’t Suzy. It was one of the doors sliding open with a distinct sound of grinding rock. Balta pointed her guns toward the door.
A backlit figure stepped into the frame. It was tall. Too tall, in fact, taller even than Haber. Otherwise, it looked human, albeit with exaggerated shapes here and there at the joints and torso. It was holding a staff of some kind. Balta signaled for the group to freeze, which was unnecessary because they had already.
The figure stepped toward them, and the backlighting adjusted enough for them to see that the exaggerated shapes came from the full-body armor the figure was wearing. It was sleek and the same matte jet black as all the other Syrruk technology they’d seen so far, including a wraparound helmet. Everything was dark, impenetrable . . . except for the staff the figure carried.
The staff glittered in the darkness. It was covered with jewel-like crystals of various brilliant colors, inlaid into the black material that formed the shaft. That shaft supported a large diamond-shaped tip, which glowed a bright swirling golden color. Petrick knew the color instantly, and he also remembered where he had seen the multicolored crystals on the staff’s shaft, though the ones he’d seen had been much, much smaller.
“Captain,” he asked Balta as the figure stepped purposefully toward them, “you said the Syrruk were religious. What is it they worship?”
“Starstuff,” said Balta, not taking her eyes off the figure, which was now three hundred feet or so away from them. It was the answer Petrick had expected; he’d seen that kind of crystal in Balta’s starstuff ore canisters.
Once the figure stood about ten paces from the group, Balta cleared her throat and stepped forward, brandishing her guns for the Syrruk to see.
“Stop right there,” she said in a much lower voice than Petrick had ever heard her use before. It caused the pirate captain to, tragically, cough immediately.
The figured stopped, tapping its staff down with emphasis.
“Welcome to Syrruk, outsiders,” said a voice of silk that sounded like it was coming directly from inside Petrick’s ear.
Haber stepped forward, surprised. “You speak Inner System Standard,” he said. “And you’ve tapped directly into my internal auditory processing.”
“It sounded like he was speaking directly into my ear, too,” Petrick said.
“Me too,” said Suzy, “and it didn’t sound like a ‘he.’ It sounded like a ‘she.’”
“Mind telling me if you’re friend or foe?” Balta asked of their greeter, warily waving her guns again.
“We’re Barry, Suzy, and Petrick of Mother Indacar,” Barry piped, “and we’re friendly
. Haber and Clarke, too.” He pointed at Haber and then Clarke, who on cue let out a small growl and raised the hair on the back of his neck. “And that’s Balta. She’s nice, too. Promise.”
“We know who you are,” the silk voice responded, and Petrick had to agree with Suzy. It did sound like a woman’s voice.
The group looked at each other after the bold proclamation by the Syrruk envoy. They knew who they were?
“May I ask how that is possible?” said Haber.
“The Seer wishes to speak with you, Petrick of Indacar,” the voice answered, and she pointed directly at Petrick. “You must follow me.”
The figure made an about-face and began to march swiftly toward the still-open door at the back of the hangar. She meant for them to follow. “Quickly,” she added.
Petrick started walking, and before anyone could protest, he said, “You guys stay here. I’ll be fine.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Suzy called after him, and hustled up to walk at his side. “If you’re going in there, we’re going with you.”
“No, really,” Petrick said, trying to speed up and leave her behind.
The rest of the group was also now following. “Master Petrick,” Haber called up to them, “I have to agree with young Master Suzy. It would be safer—”
“It would be safer for you guys to stay here.” Petrick stopped, and so did Suzy. Despite his sharp words, she was undeterred; she folded her arms and glared at him.
“Let the grown-ups worry about ‘safe,’ kid,” Balta growled as she, Haber, and Barry rejoined them.
“But they only asked for me,” Petrick countered.
“Did you wake up funny?” Suzy asked, and she bonked him on the top of his head. “We stick together. I’m sure tall-suit up there won’t mind.”
Petrick was about to indicate he didn’t agree when the silk voice was back in their ears, impatient. “Your companions are requested as well, Petrick of Indacar.”
“See!” Suzy was triumphant.
Starstuff (Starstuff Trilogy Book 1) Page 30