Nepenthe Rising (Stars in Shadow Book 1)

by John Triptych

  They had made it out of the airlock and were moving briskly towards the dig site. Hauk suggested they try to commandeer a vehicle and get out of the area, but Maeve had insisted they head back towards the artifact’s location.

  Hauk checked his hard suit’s com-link system. He tried sending a coded extraction signal up into orbit, but there was no reply or acknowledgement. “I can’t get a signal from the Eon Shrike. I think she probably left orbit already.”

  Maeve continued moving just ahead of him. “It’s okay.”

  Hauk caught up with her. “What do you mean it’s okay?”

  “I can sense something,” Maeve said. “Trust me.”

  Hauk scanned ahead, but the thick blanket of fog and the outlying boulders made everything uncertain. “Didn’t you hear? Both sides are bringing in more teams to this area. This whole place will be swarming with soldiers and bots.”

  Maeve moved past a menhir-like slab of rock. “I know.”

  “Then what are we going back here for? To get captured again?”

  Maeve shook her head in silence. She could see the distant outline of a blast wall up ahead.

  “What then?”

  Her voice became a soft whisper. “It’s … calling out to me.”

  “What is?” Hauk asked before his own thoughts doubled up on him. “The artifact?”

  “Yes,” Maeve said.

  Hauk checked the sensors on his helmet. “I’m not getting any com-link readings other than increased Union traffic. How’s it communicating with you?”

  “It just seems to be in my head somehow,” Maeve said. “It … sort of feels like a far-off song, hidden in a breeze.”

  “I’m not hearing anything,” Hauk said.

  “I think only I can hear it.”

  Hauk grabbed her by the elbow and both of them crouched low behind a pile of rocks. “Hold on, I’m detecting increased activity ahead.”

  In the murky distance, a warbot could be seen just hovering near one of the blast walls, its underside attached to a pair of very powerful lift fans, churning the opaque mist around it while floating from side to side, checking the perimeter. There were also men in hard suits milling about, cradling various rifles.

  “Unless you have some sort of secret weapon, I don’t think we’ll be able to sneak past them,” Hauk said.

  “The voice, it’s telling me to keep going,” Maeve said.

  Hauk sighed. “If they don’t fire at us then they’ll detain us for sure. Is that what you want?”

  Maeve stood up. “We have to keep going.”

  Hauk tried to grab hold of her again, but she moved past their cover and began making her way forward. “What are you doing? Come back!”

  She kept on walking. Unwilling to leave Maeve’s side, Hauk threw away the needler before catching up with her. They had just made it to a small clearing ahead of the blast walls when the warbot turned in their direction and sounded an alert.

  Hauk heard an audio message on general frequency. “You there, hold it!”

  Maeve stopped walking when she got to within twenty meters of the blast wall. The warbot ran its targeting lasers all over her body, scanning for weapons and locking her aspect into its sensors.

  Hauk also stood still the moment he came up beside her. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Three figures in hard suits approached while the warbot continued to train its weapons on the two kids from a distance. Hauk really didn’t want to be taken prisoner a second time, and his knees continued to twitch, hoping he wouldn’t have to make a run for it again.

  The lead person wore a much bulkier and humpbacked hard suit. Hauk could plainly see it was in fact a riwwr walking upright, for its back-canted legs ended in smaller sized boots due to its characteristic gait. Both the riwwr and the two humans walking beside it had their laser rifles pointed at them, ready to fire at the slightest provocation.

  “Identify yourselves,” the riwwr said. “You were spotted coming down from the Concordance station, but you are not wearing their regulation suits, nor are you equipped with the proper transponder signals to be down here. Speak up.”

  Hauk looked over at Maeve, but the teenage girl just stood there.

  They heard a low growl coming from the riwwr’s audio link. “I can kill you both right where you stand. I know you can both hear me. Identify yourselves, now!”

  One of the men beside the riwwr tapped the side of his helmet. “Lieutenant, I’ve cross-referenced them with the consortium. I think they’re part of that prospecting team we’re looking for.”

  The riwwr lieutenant eased up a little, but continued to remain confrontational. “Is this true? What were you two doing in this part of the dig site?”

  Hauk was tempted to speak, but he sensed that Maeve would be the one to take action. He continued his silence.

  The riwwr noticed the boy continued to look at the slightly taller youngling. One of his stubby gloved hands shot forward and grabbed hold of Maeve’s left forearm. “Since both of you refuse to answer, we’re taking you both into custody. Do not attempt to resist.”

  A sudden ear-piercing wail erupted in their audio speakers, making Hauk cringe as he placed his hands at the sides of his helmet, even though it wouldn’t matter. Two of the men turned, weapons at the ready, while the riwwr let go of Maeve’s arm before backing away.

  Without warning, the deafening screech stopped.

  One of the men pointed his rifle at Maeve. “Did it come from her?”

  The riwwr’s head tilted sideways. “Our men standing beside the artifact just reported it’s starting to glow.” He turned his attention back to Maeve. “Are you doing this?”

  Maeve continued her silence.

  The riwwr held his stubby left hand up in the air, gesturing for the warbot to approach. “We’re taking you in.”

  Maeve shook her head. “No, you won’t.”

  A sudden flash of light erupted from behind the warbot as it approached the group. Hauk had seen this before, when the forked lightning bolt somehow disabled the security robot that killed Dhara. Now it happened again as a bolt of energy struck the warbot’s rear, sending the machine crashing down a few meters away from the shocked group.

  The riwwr pointed his laser rifle at Maeve and roared. “What are you?”

  Once again, the shrill dissonance erupted in their heads, only this time it was loud enough to stun them. For some reason neither Maeve nor Hauk was affected by it. The two men and the riwwr lieutenant were doubled up on the ground, twitching in agony from a debilitating noise they could not cancel out.

  Hauk grabbed one of the rifles lying on the ground beside the incapacitated men and threw the others out into the mist before he started trailing Maeve. “Now what?”

  “Follow me,” Maeve said.

  They both made it past the blast wall and began moving ever closer towards the glow in the near distance. Hauk could hardly believe his eyes. The artifact’s radiance had somehow gotten stronger, and there were several other downed warbots and stunned humans lying nearby as they moved in closer to the relic.

  By the time they got to within ten meters, Hauk’s visor had automatically adjusted to maximum opacity in order to prevent blindness. He walked slowly, just a few paces behind her, as the intense light made it seem like a solid mass of energy was all around him, slowing down his movements as if he were wading in chest-deep water.

  When they stood just a few meters in front of the glowing artifact, Hauk felt the ground shifting beneath his feet. “Earthquake! Look out!”

  Maeve’s voice seemed almost angelic. “Duncan, it’s time to let yourself go.”

  Hauk cringed as he held up his left arm to shield his visor. It seemed like the artifact was erupting out of the ground. “What do you mean?”

  Maeve spread her arms out wide. “There, it’s now open.”

  Hauk’s visual sensors were on overload as the artifact somehow pushed itself above the ground, revealing its once hidden base. The boy drew in
a deep breath as part of the relic began to open. When he finally saw the inside of it, he couldn’t help but cry out in astonishment.

  28 Betrayer

  Pushing off from a nearby wall using her hind legs, Commander Creull drifted across the length of the Nepenthe’s inner maintenance deck. She’d been living inside the ship for almost a decade now, and the carbon composite walls and the stale manufactured air still made her uneasy. It was never going to be like home.

  Maybe it’s just in my blood to hate being inside all this, she thought while making her way along another wide corridor. Her cat-like ancestors roamed a vast landscape of grassy savannahs and hilly jungles before they managed to unite and reach for the stars. The riwwr had steadily become the dominant species of their homeworld, and in so doing nearly destroyed themselves in the distant past.

  Centuries ago, the riwwr population had spiked, and their prey animals were on the verge of extinction due to overconsumption. The largest of the clans ultimately managed to work together, and harnessed a technological breakthrough, learning how to control and breed their food instead of just hunting whenever they felt like it. A steady food supply eventually allowed some of them to specialize in other things, and soon an interstellar empire was born.

  Yet even in a time of profound scientific advancement and expansion, riwwr society experienced a lot of turmoil. Despite their unity against the other races they met while exploring the stars, the intricate web of clan loyalties was in constant flux, as the larger packs attempted to absorb the weaker ones to gain an advantage over their rivals for control of the riwwr-administered worlds.

  Creull was the last of the Bonecrushers, a proud clan once numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Duels were common amongst the riwwr, with any imagined or real insult as an immediate trigger for a fight to the death. The Bonecrushers were one of the fiercest, their males being expert duelists, and the clan would have reigned supreme, until an alliance was formed by their bitterest enemies and almost every one of their members was killed off in ambushes and fixed bouts. The bitter end came when the final Bonecrusher enclave was attacked, and countless younglings were slain along with the last of the defenders.

  Pushing the painful memories into the back of her mind, Creull concentrated on the task ahead as she opened a hatch and pulled herself into the next tunnel. One day, I shall return to the homeworld to avenge the deaths of my mate, my children, and my clan. One day.

  She found Zeno floating near one of the nanite memory nodes, just behind the main bulkhead leading towards the manufacturing deck. The synthetic man didn’t seem to notice her, his unblinking eyes staring off into the void, as if deep in unimagined thought.

  Creull’s yellowish eyes were like slits as she grabbed a nearby handhold. “Zeno, are you alright?”

  The synthetic man didn’t react right away. For a few seconds his body twitched, as if jolted by an electrical spasm, before he suddenly twisted his neck and addressed her. “Yes, Commander. What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve all been looking for you for quite some time,” Creull said. “I even asked Sappho where you were, and she couldn’t say. This is all highly irregular.”

  Zeno’s artificial left eyebrow arched upwards. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been acting … strangely since your return from the Kolob operation,” Creull said. “I’ve known you for a long time, yet you’ve started to exhibit some … quirks lately.”

  Zeno tilted his head sideways. “Quirks? I ran a full self-diagnostic via Sappho the moment I returned. She didn’t report anything out of the ordinary. What kind of quirks have you observed in me?”

  “Little things,” Creull said. “In the past, whenever I or anyone else spoke to you, you would reply immediately. Now you seem to pause a lot before you interact. It seems like you have slowed down a bit.”

  Zeno rubbed his chin. “Oh? I was not aware of such an issue. I do a daily internal system check and my core processing unit works fine.”

  “Another thing,” Creull said. “You seem to go off by yourself a lot, and you’ve developed a habit of hiding out in the more remote areas of this ship. It seems as if you don’t want to be found these days.”

  “I just wanted to check around some places I don’t normally venture into,” Zeno said. “Nothing wrong with it, is there?”

  “Why would you need to do that? You can plug in and interface with Sappho anywhere; there’s no need to play hide and seek down here,” Creull said.

  “I’m not hiding,” Zeno said. “You could have just contacted me via com-link or through Sappho.”

  Creull let out a low growl. “That’s another thing. Like I said, I asked Sappho to contact you and she was unable to do so.”

  Zeno frowned. “My, that is peculiar.” He looked up. “Sappho, how come you weren’t able to call me?”

  The voice of the ship’s AI resonated over the audio speakers embedded along the corridor. “Hello, Zeno. I don’t know. I checked all my security sensors and I was unable to notice you. I only managed to reacquire your signal after Commander Creull found you.”

  Zeno disengaged his hand from the interface hub. “Now that is very strange. I have been plugged in for the past few hours on this node, and yet you couldn’t detect my presence either?”

  “No, Zeno,” Sappho said. “I never detected your signal until just now.”

  “Did you run a diagnostic on your sensors?”

  “I just did,” Sappho said. “System reports everything is functioning properly.”

  “We’ll have to do a full top-down diagnostic run on your entire operating system the next available chance,” Zeno said to her before glancing back over to Creull. “What do you need me for, Commander?”

  “Like I said, we’ve been looking for you. Lieutenant Strand’s debriefing is over, and we’re all needed for a conference in the low-gravity meeting room,” Creull said.

  “Very well,” Zeno said. “Let us proceed over there together.”

  Creull and Zeno made their way into the meeting room a few minutes later. Chief Engineer Viniimn of the 23rd Percentile had attached his cyber-harness to the side of the far wall while his stubby tail wrapped itself along one of the handholds. Captain Lucien Dangard leaned on the side closest to the doorway, near the shadows. Lieutenant Garrett Strand was seated on the chair in the middle of the room.

  Creull was the last to come inside, and she made another growl before sealing the hatch behind her. “Apologies for being late, but we might have an issue with Sappho.”

  Viniimn shifted his snout towards her. “What’s the problem?”

  “She seems to have gotten some glitches,” Creull said. “Zeno was plugged into one of her remote nodes, yet she didn’t detect him until I got there.”

  “We can do a system-wide scrub-down soon,” Viniimn said. “It’ll be tricky, since we’ll need to link up with a separate AI to make sure we clean the entire memory and processing core, then restart her from scratch.”

  Creull looked towards Strand. “Your friend Xander has his own shipboard AI, does he not?”

  “He does,” Strand said, “but he’s probably halfway around the other side of the galaxy by now. He just got paid, remember?”

  Captain Dangard licked his lips. “Is it a major problem that needs to be fixed right away?”

  “No,” Zeno said. “Our combat operations will hardly be affected. We can do it later rather than sooner.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Creull said. “In the meantime, we called this meeting to discuss our options after what happened on Horizon.”

  “We need to go back,” Strand said. “I know I can rescue them.”

  “We’ve lost people before, Garrett,” Viniimn said. “Going back to Horizon after everything blew up will be very risky. I heard over the com-link that the whole system is in complete lockdown.”

  Strand grimaced. “I don’t care! As long as they’re not dead, we go back for them. Every spacer onboard this ship will stop respecting us
if we don’t.”

  Viniimn kept quiet. The lieutenant was right. It was an unwritten rule that crewmembers look out for each other, even to the point of risking their lives to bring back one of their own, regardless of the odds.

  Zeno had plugged his right hand into the room’s interface port once more. “One moment, I have received updates from an encrypted code via courier signal—the same one we issued to all the strike team members on Horizon. Duncan Hauk and Maeve Lindros are alive, and have gotten out of the system.”

  Creull roared. “This is great news! Have you confirmed the authentication code?”

  “Yes,” Zeno said. “It was only issued to the strike team members just before the operation, so no one outside of this ship would know how to trigger it.”

  “You sure the code wasn’t taken from the children and made to look like they sent it voluntarily to lure us into a trap?” Captain Dangard asked.

  “There is that possibility,” Zeno said. “But Hauk’s message specified the Mystic Mountain part of the Carina Nebula Region. If he was made to confess he would have volunteered to rendezvous at the Vela Molecular Ridge system instead.”

  “We need to get going then, it doesn’t matter if it’s a trap or not,” Strand said. “Give them the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Hold on,” Creull said. “Do you honestly believe the two younglings could have commandeered a ship by themselves and escaped a lockdown by both the Union and the Concordance? It sounds too good to be true.”

  “According to snippets of information from the mining consortium’s com-link network, one other vessel made it out of the blockade after the Eon Shrike did,” Zeno said.

  “That kid Duncan is pretty sharp,” Strand said. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Captain Dangard rubbed the long scar along his cheek. “What type of vessel escaped the blockade?”

  “Unknown,” Zeno said. “Some eyewitness reports state she looked like a small ball of light.”

  Strand scowled. “Huh?”

  “What’s the status of Horizon now?” Viniimn asked.

  “Two very large fleets from both the Union and the Concordance were dispatched to the system, and they’re staring down at each other over there,” Zeno said. “Both sides have accused one another of breaking the bilateral agreements. Everyone on the planet has been detained. No word on what’s happening at the artifact site.”