by Kelly Gay
The remainder of the flight was quiet as well, and eventually they arrived at the tip of the continent and the slope that held the Builder’s seed facility, which overlooked the blue sea.
As the armiger navigated Ace beneath a giant root that spanned from one mountain ridge to another and then came around to a docking station covered in overgrowth, small debris, moss, and flowering vines, Rion couldn’t help but feel small in relation to the facility and the nature around her. Like a tiny fly, they came to rest in the place of ancient, spacefaring gods.
A place ripe for plunder.
A place that could be their own tomb if they weren’t careful.
Rion drew comfort from the routine task of suiting up in the locker room with the crew, grabbing her rifle and handgun from the armory, and then unlocking her grav cart. This was what she knew, and she could do it with her eyes closed. After hanging her tool bag on the cart hook, she comm-checked the crew, then waited at the head of the ramp while the airlock doors opened and the ramp lowered.
The armiger’s footsteps rang out behind her, sending goose bumps up her arms. She glanced over her shoulder as the tall metal figure appeared, its hard light glowing and reminding her that he belonged here among the ruins and ancient technology.
He drew to a stop beside her. “Ready, Captain?”
She faked a smile; yes, she’d run all the tests herself, but she couldn’t help but ask, “Are you certain the global toxin’s inactive at this point?”
“Quite certain. It has long since dissipated.”
“After you,” she said, and allowed the armiger to proceed down the ramp ahead of her. Rion gestured to the crew, and then they were on the move, heading into the facility and fanning out.
The g’s on Triniel were a little heavier than optimal, but it was manageable, and the atmosphere was good. Boots crunched over dead leaves and debris. Beyond the docking station, the calls of wildlife and alien seabirds echoed. The warm air was fragrant with a mix of flowers and sea. As they entered the structure, familiar glyphs appeared on the walls and floor.
The armiger moved ahead, approaching a console, which Rion immediately recognized. It was very similar to the one they’d found in the ruins of the debris field, complete with domed pad. He stood aside and gestured for Rion to place a hand on the pad.
“What will happen?”
“Power returns to the facility.”
Staring into the eyes of a one-hundred-thousand-year-old AI to try to find the truth felt like an exercise in futility, but Rion did it anyway. He regarded her with understanding. “Do you remember our conversation about trust, Captain?”
“I wouldn’t call it a conversation,” she said, frowning.
His shrug said the choice was hers. He wouldn’t force her. How nice of him.
He’d been right when he said back on the ship that trust was a hard thing to give. It was especially difficult for the jaded, for the ones schooled in hard knocks and painful lessons. But the trust she had to put in him now wouldn’t exactly be freely given. They hadn’t come to Triniel because of a mutual decision, and if they wanted to get home in one piece, playing the armiger’s game was a necessary evil, whether that game was an honest one or not.
“Might as well get this side trip started,” she muttered, slapping her palm to the dome’s cool surface.
Instantly the console lit up. The facility came to life; glyphs and lines and lighting activated in sequence like dominoes, illuminating a vast circular chamber with a central vertical cavity that rose high into the mountain and dropped deep into its depths. The scope of the place exceeded Rion’s imagination, more expansive and strange and awe-inspiring than any ruin she’d ever visited.
Only this wasn’t exactly a ruin.
It was, like everything on Triniel, a place in waiting.
As they approached a railing that overlooked the cavity, a spiral walkway ringing its interior wall sprang to life, lights winking on one after another in a dizzying display, from somewhere high above them and disappearing far below. One story after another was illuminated inside the cavity, displaying not only the walkway but hundreds of glass-fronted rooms built into the cylindrical wall.
Several stories below, an ancient piece of technology was revealed, suspended in the center of the cavity by clamps attached to long spokes driven deep into the rock.
Niko leaned over the railing. “What is that?”
The armiger leaned over the railing to get a look. “A translight engine. There are several engines below that one. The cavity is very deep—”
Ram’s laugh suddenly echoed through the space, sounding a little dazed and giddy. “A translight engine. Oh, no big deal. Just a translight engine. . . .” He turned away from the railing and pulled the rolled cigarette from behind his ear, giving it a deep sniff, then chuckled again.
If there was any occasion that called for a celebratory smoke, this was it. But he simply rolled it between his fingers with a disbelieving grin.
“This is unreal,” Lessa murmured.
Rion studied the enormous chamber with a feeling she couldn’t quite name. But it wasn’t excitement. The technology here was extraordinary, and ONI’s warning and Kip’s loss on Sedra weighed heavily on her mind. “Where to?” she asked the armiger, wanting to move things along.
She waited while he accessed a terminal nearby. Now that power was restored, he didn’t need her DNA to search through the terminal’s knowledge banks. “Third level below us,” he finally answered, staying right where he was.
Rion moved closer. “What are you doing?”
“Powering the communications satellites in orbit. It will take some moments for the relays here to send the signals, then further time for the satellites to come online.”
“Amazing that things still work though,” Lessa said, wandering around behind them.
“The Forerunners built cities to last millions of years,” he told her matter-of-factly. “The cities of Triniel can be powered on at any time . . . like flipping a switch. It all comes back to life.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rion told them before they got any bright ideas. She edged closer to the armiger. “Why are you accessing the satellites?”
“To send a message.”
“What kind of message?”
The armiger withdrew from the terminal. “Please, follow me.”
Rion stepped in front of him before he could walk off and ignore her question.
“We all have our secrets, Captain,” he said, staring down at her from his lofty height. “Do I demand you share yours with me? We have a deal. Or have you forgotten it already?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“Then that is settled.” He moved around her and headed to a circular platform nearby, which was slightly raised from the floor and emitting a soft blue light.
No, it’s not settled, she thought, as he stepped onto the platform and motioned for the others to join him. Not by a long shot.
Once everyone was gathered, he pressed the panel nearby.
In the blink of an eye, they were suddenly several levels below, standing on a different platform, and bent over, gasping—all but the armiger and Ram, oddly enough, who stood there just fine and looking at them with a triumphant grin at having escaped the physical ramifications of instant teleportation.
Rion scowled at him and stumbled from the platform, found the nearest console, and leaned against it, needing to ground herself, to hold on to something solid and real. She felt ripped apart and put back together, and her body didn’t know if it wanted to vomit, faint, or explode.
“What the hell was that?” Niko asked, out of breath.
“Translocation platform.” The armiger walked past them and headed for a long corridor dug into the rock.
Rion lifted her head, exchanging looks of disbelief with her crew, before she bit back her physical distress and followed the armiger.
The first chamber they entered appeared sterile and clean, with tall tables set b
eneath strange devices hanging on tracks above. “This is the laboratory where crystal was cut.” The armiger crossed to a long wall where neat illuminated shelves held shiny rectangular boxes of varying sizes. The armiger reached out and selected the smallest one, no bigger than a finger, and opened it.
Light spilled from the container. He snapped the lid shut. “This one will do. But I must warn you all: even a sliver such as this creates spatial distortion, exposing you to radiation and disorientation. It is capable of bending space and time, energy and gravity, and is not to be handled under any circumstance except within the confines of the box.”
Niko was immediately fascinated and stepped closer to the shelves. “If all these flakes are so powerful, how did they handle cutting it? I’m assuming they cut the flakes from a bigger piece, right?”
“The Source Crystal, also called the Mother Crystal by the cutters. It does not reside here—rather, larger pieces were cut from it and transported to manufacturing facilities across the ecumene. The cutter would then slice off flakes from the pieces for use in ships, from the smallest craft to the largest. Those devices hanging on the tracks are crystal cutters.”
“So where is Mama Crystal these days?” Niko asked as the others were examining items.
“I do not know. The location was one of the best-kept secrets in the ecumene. Only the cutters knew, and they would die rather than reveal its location. Crystals are inherently dangerous.” He lifted a metal hand, ushering them away from the boxes. “Therefore I cannot allow you to salvage these. We have taken only one, which will act as an accompaniment to the upgrade seed, and even then it will be stored in its protective casing until the upgrade process.”
Rion wasn’t ready to entertain the idea of upgrading just yet, but there was no point in arguing about it now.
They left the room and headed to another stomach-altering translocation pad to another level, and the jump did not get better a second time around. After recovering, they followed the armiger into another laboratory of polished white walls and counters that seemed to have been carved from one piece of stone—or perhaps it was metal, Rion wasn’t sure. As they entered, massive holographic displays along the walls powered on, filling with glyphs, blueprints of ships, and other elements of design.
“This is where they drafted the design seeds,” Rion guessed as she stared at one of the large projections. It was the blueprint for an incredible angular ship with three long wings, unlike anything she had ever seen before. She had a deep appreciation for starships—their design, power, lines—she loved everything about spaceflight. And finding designs from an ancient advanced race was nothing short of extraordinary.
“Yes. The seeds are codes, drawn with hard light filaments and coded with quantum commands.”
The armiger stood next to her and studied the blueprint that had caught Rion’s attention. “A keyship,” he told her, regarding it for a long moment before moving on and accessing one of the glass panels on the counter workstation. Another screen lit up with strange glyphs and patterns and glowing strings. The screen itself was an incredible bit of technology. But when the armiger reached into the screen and began pulling and manipulating light strings, she was stunned and her jaw dropped. She watched, fascinated, as a blueprint of a Mariner-class ship appeared in the background of the screen. The armiger had somehow put Ace’s specs into the screen and was injecting light strings and code into those specs quicker than she could keep up with.
“This will take some time,” he said over his shoulder. “I will complete the design seed and then repair the injury to this armiger’s neural framework. You are free to salvage this level.”
The Ace crew left him and headed farther down the corridor.
“So . . . anyone think this is strange?” Niko asked.
Rion glanced over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. The whole place, the whole damn planet—it’s one giant grave. Looting here . . .”
“Feels a little wrong?” Lessa finished.
“Yeah, something like that,” he said, then gave them a wry smile. “Look at us. Salvagers with a conscience.”
Finding Forerunner artifacts was the highest achievement for a salvager—they were rare, and took effort and time and money to find. Ram was right: being here was a dream come true—and yet there was nothing in her grav cart.
Rion and Ram exchanged looks. They’d both been in the salvage business a long time. They’d looted wreck sites, tried to be respectful of the dead, following protocol wherever they came across remains. But they had to eat, they had to buy fuel and supplies, and couldn’t be squeamish or let their emotions get in the way of a job.
Even though she too was reluctant, she forced the feeling away. “Try to put it out of your mind,” she said, knowing the idea of planet-wide suicide was hard to forget, but they did need to focus and get this little side trip done. And get back control of my ship. “Anyone who was here is now long gone. We do this like any other job. Concentrate on restoring the nest eggs ONI took from us.”
An hour later, they had each filled their grav carts with small devices and artifacts they’d found sitting on or within lab workstations—none of which they could identify. Everything they picked up was sleek and alien and way above their ability to understand. They’d need the armiger’s help to classify their small trove of salvage. It had been a slow process and they hadn’t gotten very far in terms of exploring because there was so much to marvel at and so very little they actually wanted to disturb.
As they headed back to the seed-building lab, Niko veered down a small corridor they’d skipped before. Like all the other places they’d seen so far, the walls were polished and etched with straight lines and glyphs. The doorway at the end was open, its frame tall and trapezoid in shape and carved like everything else.
The rooms inside led one into the next, different than the labs they’d been in, more intimate, with seating and rugs on the floor, geometric art on the walls . . . They were drawn into one space after another . . . . Every room they entered seemed frozen in time, as if someone had just left: things still left on a table, drinking vessels, utensils . . .
Then they came upon the remains.
Four sets of headless armor—stylized shoulder and arm guards, torso plates etched with symbols, leg braces and boots, bound by the molds of their former hosts—remained poised in a tableau on a long couch, shells of a couple embracing, and two others turned toward each other, their gloves entwined. Four helmets sat on the cushions beside the armor as though just taken off, in order to face each other, say good-bye, whisper words of love or fear perhaps. . . . Small traces of dust and bits of bones on the armor and seat suggested that these ancient giants had decomposed to near ash, leaving behind their dust and hollow armor as markers of lives long since lost.
“Yep. I’m out of here,” Lessa said, immediately turning and heading into the corridor.
There was a fifth Forerunner sitting at a lit control panel with a screen above, arms and hands stuck in a position of action, its helmet still on. A shiver went down Rion’s spine. Niko stepped forward, just enough to see the panel.
He reached forward slowly and pressed the glyph under the gloved finger. The screen shimmered to life, and they recoiled in surprise at the Forerunner staring back at them. It was a seated figure in the same armor as the deceased. Only his helmet was off.
Thanks to the story the armiger had shared, they’d seen images of Forerunners in and out of their armor, but seeing one virtually alive was astonishing. He was surprisingly . . . familiar. The facial shape and bone structure were almost identical to those of humans. The eyes were nearly the same, but the nose and mouth were very small, just slits for nostrils and tight lines for lips, and his skin was a dark gray given to tints of blue.
He began speaking, but the language was incomprehensible.
Movement by the doorway indicated Lessa had returned, lurking there as the armiger entered in behind her. He scanned the ro
om, and then approached the screen. He touched the pad, entered commands, and it began to play again, now translated:
“The toxins are airborne. They say we won’t see it, smell it, or be pained by it, only that we will grow tired and sleep. The Flood is upon us, our sensors indicating star roads already opening outside our orbital defenses. We have only hours now.” He paused. “I and two others remain here. Their spouses have joined them. Together we will shut down the facility and power down our personal ancillas to prevent them from saving us. This is our last act of defiance. The Flood will get nothing from Triniel. We stand united. We fall together.” He cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “And may our sacrifice, all 883,489,876 of us, from the youngest to the very oldest, be forever stored and remembered in the sacred halls of the Domain.”
The screen faded.
“I have completed my tasks,” the armiger said in the ensuing silence.
“Good,” Rion said in a clipped tone, turning away from the scene. “Let’s get the hell out of this tomb.”
Before they left, the armiger paused at the terminal on the main level, checking to see if the communications relay was now operational. Rion waited for him to send out the message he’d mentioned earlier, but he hesitated.
“Once the relay is working,” Lessa said, stepping next to the armiger, “others will find Triniel, won’t they?”
The armiger was quiet for a long moment, and then dipped his head. “Yes. Eventually.”
She sighed, wistful. “Seems a shame. . . .”
The Ace of Spades flew over the cities of pink and green and metal and root, then across mountain ranges and ocean, and finally up into the atmosphere, past communications arrays and satellites that hadn’t been used in a hundred thousand years.
The armiger had pulled them offline before they could reboot. Turned out he had a conscience after all.
Triniel would remain a lost planet, in a lost star system, in a lost sector of the galaxy, free from mass exploitation.
