by Chris Reher
She craned her neck to see the remnants of endless stories of windows, ledges that might have been balconies or walkways now fallen away, and recesses of rooms whose external walls had crumbled. The hands of thousands and as many years would have been needed to carve this mountain into a city.
They had approached the Abiah from the shelter of the canyons where the stone turrets reached like a petrified forest nearly to its feet. Although they had spent the past few hours taking a circuitous route aboard their sleds to avoid the roving gangs of rebels, no one waited here to challenge them, nothing disturbed the silence of the dead swamps. There were no boats moored at the lake that washed around the far side of the mountain and they saw no air cars or sleds. And yet hundreds of pinpoints of light gleamed in the recesses above them like so many windows. Something beyond the entrance hummed steadily, hinting at some sort of power source or engine. Nova guessed that the planet’s geothermal activity created more than enough energy to provide for light and heat. And the transmitter.
“Are they all out looking for me?” she whispered. “I don’t even see any sentries.”
“They think you’re alone. There is no one on this planet but Arawaj, as far as they know. And Kada’s peculiar crew.” He nodded toward the entrance. “Stay to the left.”
She moved ahead of him, her eyes still taking in the age-worn carvings, feeling like some ill-equipped spelunker at the mouth of a stupendously immense cave. The misty light from outside faded as they entered a vast chamber and she slowed to give Tychon a moment to adjust to the gloom. They moved along the stone wall, following a flattened walkway that gradually angled upward.
A lake had settled inside the entrance over time, reflecting some light from above. The water was clear and lifeless and fallen crystal on the bottom sparkled like lost treasure. Tychon looked up, like her astonished by the massive crystals that studded the ceiling here. They seemed illuminated from within, lighting their way upward.
“This is—” Nova stopped abruptly when her whispered words echoed around the space like a soft hiss, seemingly returning again and again until they finally faded away. She turned to Tychon who had stopped in his tracks. She tapped her neural interface but he shook his head. Using a khamal now to communicate could easily debilitate him for whatever lay ahead. He gestured for her to continue.
They climbed upward along the perimeter of the chamber. Their path narrowed and they soon had to cling close to the wall, their eyes on the treacherous ground. The embedded crystal reflected glints of light as did the moisture seeping from thousands of pores in the stone, lending movement to the glittering walls as they passed. Like the crumbled landscape around the Abiah, the place was in a state of decay dating back for millennia.
Nova nearly cried out in surprise when her foot slipped on a loose shard of crystal. Tychon’s grip pressed her against the wall until she recovered. When she looked up at him he exhaled sharply, a question on his face. She nodded her assurance that she was ready to continue.
Cooler air met them after climbing a few minutes further and soon they found openings cut into the rock, leading deeper into the mountain. They stepped off the narrow ledge and into a passage. Here, too, a light source seemed to exude directly from the crystal in the walls.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she murmured, reaching up to touch the smoky material. “How can you carve out an entire mountain and still work around the crystal veins like this?”
He crouched to look at the ground. “See that?”
She followed the finger he had extended. The floor of the corridor was strewn with dust and gravel and glittering bits of crystal. Clearly, she saw footprints there, made by those of her kind. The sort that wore shoes. “There,” she pointed at one made by a larger foot, this one bare and three-toed. “Caspian.”
He nodded. “We’re not alone, that is certain.”
“These are recent.” Some of the tracks were ground into debris through which thin runnels of water seeped, not yet for long enough to distort them.
They continued upward, guns in hand, moving slowly, listening to sounds of movement. There were no voices; only the constant hum, now somewhere below them, accompanied their carefully placed footfalls.
Then they did hear movement. Something was coming toward them from above. They withdrew into a shadowed alcove and waited, barely daring to breathe. Whoever was coming their way carried a light with them and the passage grew brighter. Nova saw the walls more clearly now and gasped when the outlines of time-blurred carvings came into view.
Tychon had felt her sharp intake of breath and followed her gaze to the stone portraits. Whatever had lived here, creating this fortress which was perhaps only one of many on this planet, had not been of their species. These beings, as limited by gravity as they were, had four legs ending in short pincers and as many arms, it seemed. Between those appendages they carried a round torso ending in a tail or perhaps another limb curled under their body. Their heads had either been worn from the carvings by time and water or were perhaps just part of their bodies. This wasn’t the first time that Nova was faced by a reminder that her similarity to Tychon, and to the Centauri, the Feydans and even the Caspians could not be mere coincidence.
She was drawn from her observation by the sound of hurried feet approaching. They drew back further when the light reached them and three Caspians moved past at a quick pace and without speaking. The rebels took their light with them down a secondary corridor and the eerie carvings disappeared into the perpetual gloom.
Nova reached out and touched the wall. “Spider people,” she whispered.
Tychon, who had never seen a spider until Nova had shown him a picture of one not that long ago, raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure they’d appreciate the comparison.” He nudged her to follow the three rebels.
They moved onward, now encountering sets of steps hewn into the stone. Each riser was higher than their knees, offering a hint at the size of the Abiah’s ancient builders. Among these stone stairs, dwarfed by high ceilings lost in shadow, Nova again felt like an insect crawling around someone’s home. Tychon stopped at every turn to scrape a small marker into the rock with a piece of crystal.
The anguished shriek of a Human in pain echoed through the hallways and was then abruptly cut off. Tychon swung the kit bag from his shoulder and placed it on the ground before they moved toward the sound. There were more voices now; a Caspian laughed, another swore. Nova nodded when Tychon pointed at her gun and then a vein of crystal, clearer and purer than the sooty columns outside the Abiah. Neither knew its composition; a reflected beam from their laser could be as deadly as a ricochet off the stone walls from a ballistic weapon.
The next turn opened into a long corridor and revealed the shapes of the Caspians crouched near the end. Too far to approach stealthily, too exposed to reach at a run. Tychon stepped back to let Nova move ahead of him. She used the wall to steady herself, her vision and aim keener than Tychon’s in the dimly-lit passage. Her tracer flashed in rapid bursts, finding its targets until all three bodies were on the ground and unmoving.
“Got them,” she said.
They approached cautiously, looking for the Human whose cry had brought them here, and found a deep trench at the end of the passage beyond the bodies of the rebels. Tychon took one of their torches, adjusted its range and dropped it into the hole.
“Hey, Leon,” Nova said brightly. She was greeted by ghostly faces staring up at her in mute astonishment.
“Thank the Gods!” someone exclaimed. “Get us out, please!”
Tychon let himself drop over the edge of the pit. “Remain quiet. Please stand up, Elder Sister. Assist her, please.”
Slowly, the survivors of Dannakor responded to Tychon’s calm instructions until they were all on their feet and ready to be boosted, one by one, out of the hole and up to Nova. They freed the fittest first to help pull up those needing more help. Soon, seven tired, dirty and weakened civilians sat on the ground beside the hole, as far
from the dead Caspians as possible.
“Should be nine, I think,” Nova said.
Tychon crouched over one of the technicians who had not stirred when the others had left the trench. He sighed. “Eight now.” He stepped back to the far side of the pit and took a running leap at the edge to haul himself upward and out.
“You can’t just leave her down there!”
Tychon bent to put his hand on Doctor Unwin’s shoulder. “We’ll return. Please keep your voices low. We are not out of danger.”
Nova looked around. “Where is Jovan?”
“He went for help.”
Tychon muttered something under his breath when he went to fetch the kit bag. They distributed what food and water was left along with the medical supplies. “We’re going back to the main corridor,” he said. “You will walk quietly between Captain Whiteside and myself. Step carefully on the loose stone.” He raised a hand when one of the technicians began to speak. “This isn’t an interactive discussion,” he continued without changing his tranquil tone. “You will hide where we put you, without speaking, without moving, until we return. You will not try to leave this place on your own. No matter what happens. No matter what you hear.” He glanced at Nova. “We do not need any more heroes getting lost in here.”
The others nodded half-heartedly.
“Do you know where the Delphian went?” Tychon asked.
Unwin nodded. “Some of the rebels were torturing him. He didn’t care much about what they said and then one of them cut his arm to see if it’s true that Delphians feel no pain. I told them to stop. I told them it wasn’t true. But Jovan didn’t seem to care about that, either. Then they told us that Captain Whiteside had been captured and killed. That nobody was coming for us. So we got him out of the hole and he left. The rest of us didn’t have the strength to follow him.”
“Where did he think he was going?”
“The Caspians talked about a control room above us somewhere. And a transmitter. That’s how they know that there aren’t any Union ships coming for us. Jovan told me he had a copy of the ANI and wondered if it were possible to still use it to reach Air Command. I showed him how.”
“What!” Nova gasped. “When? How?”
Unwin shrugged tiredly. “He’s Delphian. His brain can activate the unit as if it was tapped into the neocortex itself. Just like he was able to reach you by touching your ANI, Captain.” He looked over to Tychon. “We had hoped that this development would entice more of your people to accept the device, Major. It is another reason we invited Shantir Tuain to join us on Dannakor. For you it would be medically entirely unintrusive.”
Nova stared wide-eyed at Tychon. If Jovan found the transmitter, time was no longer on their side.
“I am less enthused about your devices by the moment,” Tychon said. “We need to move right now. Everyone please get up and come with us. Quietly. Not a word.”
Their progress through the winding passages of the habitat tested Nova’s patience as much as her faith in Tychon’s ability to keep everyone calm and together. She was reminded to have more confidence in both of these things when, after endless minutes, he turned away from what seemed to be a main artery through a smaller network of rooms and tunnels until the space opened up again around them. Here too, the walls were embellished with graceful carvings as high up as they could see into the shadowed vault above. The extraordinary crystal light source lit their way when Tychon herded their charges into a small alcove.
“This will have to do. We’ll leave you with this gun. You can see the entrance from here. Shoot anyone you don’t recognize coming down this way.”
“This isn’t much better than that hole you brought us out of,” Doctor Unwin complained.
“Here you have a chance,” Tychon said before Nova could snap something at the man. “If we are discovered or if Air Command gets here, you will be the first to suffer for it. At least down here you won’t be found as quickly. Now, again, stay here, stay together and don’t make a sound. We’ll return when we’ve found Jovan.”
Nova hurried ahead of Tychon back through the passages, relieved that they were able to move more quickly now. She touched each of Tychon’s scratched markers as they passed them as if for good luck. When they found the main corridor they turned and again headed uphill, hoping for the way to the top of the mountain.
Tychon called a halt when the passage split after what seemed an endless climb. Both ways looked equally well travelled, one slightly wider than the other. The walls here curved inward above their heads to meet in a graceful arch. Patterned friezes decorated both sides, still recognizable for their craftsmanship after all this time.
“This is what I get for lazing around Delphi for weeks at a time,” Nova huffed, feeling the strain of the climb in the backs of her legs. “Which way?”
“No idea. I don’t even feel any air moving through here.” He twisted his shoulders as if to rid himself of some uneasy burden hovering there. “This is too easy. Where is everyone?”
“Probably outside looking for me.” Nova pointed to her left. “We go this way.”
“Why?”
She touched the wall above his head. “Wires. New ones.”
He peered into the gloom and saw the gray conduits snaking over the wall, as foreign and out of place here as both of them felt. They followed the cables, their senses alert to sound and movement in the dark, now moving steeply uphill in a passage that grew more narrow with each turn.
“We must be close to the top by now,” Nova said when they paused again. She untied her hair to catch it up into a thick knot.
“Shh.” Tychon put his hand on her arm. After a moment he tipped his chin into the direction they were heading. “Voices up there.”
They warily approached a sharp bend filled by what appeared to be daylight. When Nova peered carefully around the corner she saw that they had, indeed, reached a high point of the edifice. Here, the stone had been carved into soaring pillars that met high over their heads. Slabs of crystal distorting the view of the broken landscape filled the spaces between them. Some of the crystal had cracked over time and a breeze moved through the space, chilling her at once. Outside, beyond the crystal windows, a flat outcropping of rock might have served as a viewing platform before much of it had crumbled away.
This was where the power cables led from whatever was humming far below them. They snaked to a control panel positioned awkwardly on broken blocks of stone and from there to the apex of the chamber. The serenity of the ancient structure only underscored the temporary, makeshift arrangement.
Nova grasped all this in seconds. What really drew her attention was Jovan standing in the middle of the room, a gun held in both hands and aimed at Sao Lok.
“You’re not going to shoot me, boy,” Lok said. “I’ve watched you for days. It’s not in you.”
“Step away from that board,” Jovan said through clenched teeth. The clothes that had done so well to compliment his graceful body were torn and stained by the blood from a deep scrape along his arm. His hair was carelessly gathered at his nape with a strip of cloth. “I won’t tell you again.”
A smile appeared on Lok’s narrow face when he saw Nova step into the arched doorway. He raised his hands. “All right. Don’t shoot,” he said to Jovan without the slightest hint of fear in his voice. “I’ll have to activate the transmitter. Then you can use it.”
“Stop!” Nova called out. “Don’t touch that, Jovan.”
The young Delphian froze but did not look at her. “We need to warn Air Command!”
“Give the interface to me,” Tychon said.
Jovan turned at the sound of Tychon’s voice. “Shan Tychon!” he gasped.
Nova stepped around him and raised her gun to Sao Lok.
He smiled at her, wrinkling his nose in the process. It looked nearly sincere. “I had every confidence you’d find one of my transmitters, Captain. But I’m amazed that Major Tychon has managed to track you to Gramor. You are indeed reso
urceful.”
Jovan lowered his gun and reached into a pocket to withdraw the small disk. He took a step toward Tychon and then, as if afraid to approach any closer, held his hand out to him. Tychon took the interface and dropped it to the ground where he blasted it with his pistol.
Sao Lok gave a tittering laugh. “Thank you, Major,” he said.
“You find something funny here, Arawaj?”
“That interface you destroyed had only limited access. It would have sent my program to a few fighter pilots, shuttles, cargo transports perhaps. A waste of my efforts but better than nothing at all. But you do not disappoint and here you are.” His yellow eyes lit on Nova’s temple. “Now you have no choice but to use Captain Whiteside’s unit.”
“I have no intention of using it, Lok,” Nova said. “I know what it does. Is this what you had in mind when you asked me to join you? Did you really think I would help you destroy the fleet?”
“I’m an idealist. But you yourself said that you would give your life if that meant peace for everyone else. Is that not also true of your fellow Union soldiers? Your pilots and agents? Would they not also want these wars to end even if their lives paid the price?”
“I can’t speak for them.”
“What if I told you that your signal will also reach just about any Union-built ship in the rebel fleet? By now I am guessing that most of their craft are also in the air.”
Nova frowned. “Your program can do that?”
“Indeed. This will mean the end of the Shri-Lan. Just imagine! I can see that you’re tempted by that possibility.”
“You don’t know me at all,” she said.
The gentle and reasonable expression on Sao Lok’s face changed to show them someone who has reached the end of his willingness to be either gentle or reasonable. “Then I suppose it was wise of me to add a little more incentive to the plan for you, thanks to our Shri-Lan friends.” He looked over to Jovan. “Tell them, boy.”