A Star Wheeled Sky

by Brad R Torgersen

  “Aye,” Elvin said, staring at the funnel.

  He nodded his head in agreement.

  Five minutes later, they had one of the smallest, lightest females in Fazal’s TGO group tied off securely, with an impromptu climber’s seat arrangement. Lowering her down into the funnel—with three different lanterns attached to her body—they played out the rope slowly, with half a dozen men on the line, working in concert. Elvin had insisted on being at the front. His ankle may have hurt, but he knew ropes too. A pair of heavy gloves from his pack kept his hands from getting burned as he gradually let the line go down, and down, and down some more. As the end of the rope hit the back man, they paused, he tied off another length obtained from another TGO trooper’s pack, and then they would start again.

  It was supremely frustrating not having wireless for the job. The corporal on the business end of the detail couldn’t give them an immediate report on what she was seeing. Occasionally, the line would slack a bit, as she hit a flat part in the tunnel below, but then the line would go taught again as she approached a vertical space.

  Captain Fazal was directly behind Elvin, both of them breathing deeply, and sweating, as they worked.

  “You might be right,” Fazal wheezed, “about there being no bottom.”

  “Just don’t let the line get too loose,” Elvin grunted.

  At almost five hundred meters, the rope—or series of ropes, knotted together—went very tight, and then became very slack. For a few moments, Elvin wondered if one of the knots farther down had come undone. Then he felt the rope jerk three times in succession, a solid yank-yank-yank, which was the signal for them to all begin pulling.

  “Here comes the sweaty part,” Elvin said, and shouted for the team to reverse what they’d been doing. Instead of gradually paying out line, they began to gradually reel it back in. Which was a much more muscle-intensive chore. Several other TGO troops rallied to the job, and soon a dozen of them were hauling rhythmically, for many minutes. At the end of which the corporal emerged from the bottom of the funnel—soaking wet—but with a grin on her face.

  “There’s a big compartment down there,” she reported. “It’s got thousands upon thousands of gallons of fresh water in it. But what’s more, I saw a ladder leading up to the top of a ledge. Guess what I found when I checked up there?”

  The corporal produced a tiny blue elastic hair tie. The kind Lady Oswight often used to put her hair into a bun.

  “Merciful God,” Elvin breathed, reverently taking the hair tie, and turning it over and over again in his large, gloved hands. “But you didn’t see the Lady herself? What about the lieutenant commander?”

  “Both gone,” the corporal reported. “When you get up on the ledge you can see a long tunnel that goes back into the wreck. Wherever the lieutenant commander and Lady Oswight went, it’s back there somewhere.”

  Elvin and Captain Fazal looked at each other, then Elvin snatched one of the corporal’s lanterns away from her, went to the lip of the funnel, and unceremoniously shoved himself off. He could hear the captain shouting his name as he dropped, but he didn’t care. The water still flowing into the funnel smoothed his way. When he passed through the hole, he worried that his bulk might get stuck, but the hole was more than large enough to accommodate him. Suddenly, he was being whisked along through a series of watery twists and turns. He kept his feet facing downward and kept the lantern raised to his chest. The way ahead was a blur of smooth-sided metal pipe, which didn’t give him any clues about which way it might twist, turn, or drop. Several times, Elvin almost bit through his tongue, the drops were so sudden. But then he hit the final drop, and was in over his head, feeling the cold, fresh water up his nose and into his ears.

  Pushing back to the surface, Elvin burst through the top, choking and coughing, but with his lantern still firmly in hand. He scanned around the space until he saw the ladder the corporal had been referring to, and swam vigorously toward it. Climbing up to the top, he saw the tunnel too, and limp-marched his way forward, favoring his sprained ankle as little as possible.

  The tunnel’s end was a shock. Elvin emerged dripping and sputtering into a huge chandeliered space, almost like a ballroom, except for the fact that there was a mosaic covering the floor, composed of countless little pieces of tile, portraying a map. He reached a shaking hand down to his sidearm, unclipped it from his gunbelt, and drew it slowly. With his thumb, he clicked off the weapon’s safety, and kept his index finger outside the trigger guard while he slowly advanced. Where there were lights, there was power. And where there was power, that meant people. Which meant Lady Oswight and the lieutenant commander may have run into someone who couldn’t be counted as friendly—even if they weren’t necessarily from Starstate Nautilan.

  Elvin paused in the middle of the map to marvel at the intricacy of the thing. Huge blue oceans and green-brown land masses were arranged in a configuration the majordomo had never seen before. It certainly wasn’t the Constellar capital. And it looked nothing like Uxmal either. This planet—if it was an accurate depiction—looked nothing like any world Elvin had ever seen.

  Several branching corridors presented themselves. Elvin paused, and listened intently, trying to see if he could hear anything. When he finally discerned what sounded like very distant voices, he picked his path, and proceeded with caution. After several more minutes of painful—because of the ankle—feather-stepping, Elvin discovered a huge room with numerous doors ringing the exterior, and couches and chairs filling the space in the middle. He thought he smelled delicious beef in the air, but was all eyes for Lady Oswight, who stood next to the lieutenant commander. She was in her zipsuit, and Antagean was in his zipsuit plus armor. They were having an animated conversation with a third person Elvin couldn’t see, with the Lady and the lieutenant commander’s backs to him.

  “Oy!” Elvin cried loudly.

  Lady Oswight spun on a heel, her mouth hanging open. Then she rushed up to Elvin and threw her arms around his neck.

  “Good timing, Mister Axabrast,” Antagean said, walking up to him.

  Elvin safed his sidearm, deposited it back into its holster, then detached from Garsina and took Antagean’s extended hand. The two men shook strongly, their gaze meeting for a moment—just as it had the night prior, when Elvin had fallen and hurt himself—then Elvin dropped the handshake, and peered past the lieutenant commander to the old woman standing behind him.

  “A new friend?” Elvin asked, looking from Antagean’s face, to Garsina’s face, then back to Antagean’s.

  “You might say that,” Garsina said enthusiastically. “She knows a lot about the Waymakers, Elvin! She’s going to take us to the pyramid!”

  “I’m afraid that’s a dicey proposition, lass,” Elvin said, wiping water and perspiration from his brown.

  “Nautilan?” the lieutenant commander asked.

  “Affirmative,” Elvin replied. “Nauties landed in a wee sexy aerospace plane, not too long before we discovered where you’d both gotten off to. I would have liked the ride better, Lady, if I’d not been half afraid to find you drowned at the bottom of it.”

  “We almost did,” Antagean said. “We owe Lethiah here for providing us with a place to dry off, and a hot meal. Not to mention one hell of a story.”

  The old woman walked up to Elvin, and circled him slowly, looking him up and down. The lieutenant commander and the Lady shared knowing glances, while Elvin suddenly felt highly uncomfortable.

  “Ahem,” he said. “Even when I was a young, braw lad, I never had a lass be as forward as you.”

  “British Isles,” the old woman said, using Mariclesh. Then she peered a bit more closely at Axabrast’s face and added, “Or maybe Australia?”

  Elvin couldn’t make sense of those words, and looked at Lady Oswight with pleading eyes.

  “Did you see the big map on the floor?” Lady Oswight asked.

  “Aye,” Elvin said.

  “Island nations, both,” Lethiah said. “One of them, in
the northern hemisphere, the other in the southern. But what’s this about the Temple? People are already there?”

  “She means the pyramid,” Lady Oswight said.

  “Aye,” Elvin said regretfully. “I’m afraid the Nauties beat us to it. If they haven’t taken off again to go get more troops, they will soon.”

  Lethiah shook her head, and tsked loudly.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said.

  “The problem is theirs,” Lethiah said. “The machines in the temple react differently, to different stimuli. Most of the time they remain dormant. But if someone who can use Anchors went to the Hall of Anchors, there could be trouble. That person won’t know how to talk to the machines the way I know how to talk to the machines.”

  “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Elvin said. “What are ‘anchors’?”

  “She means Keys,” Garsina said.

  Elvin raised an eyebrow.

  “If we’re going to go, we’d better go now,” Lethiah said.

  “Madam,” Elvin said, doing his best to remain polite, “as I’ve tried to say to you, there won’t be any goin’, so long as Starstate Nautilan controls the pyramid. To get inside we’ll have to get through their security detail first. Which may or may not be possible with the few Constellar troops we have.”

  As if on cue, Captain Fazal staggered up. Like Axabrast, he was soaking wet.

  Lethiah promptly performed her walkaround.

  “Jordanian, or maybe Syrian,” she said. “Somewhere in the Levant.”

  “What?” Fazal said, looking at Elvin.

  “Long story for later,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said. “Where are the rest of the men?”

  “Still up top,” he said. “I told them to wait until I come back and tug on the rope.”

  “If ye haven’t noticed,” Elvin said, “we’ve been using the service entrance.”

  Puddles of water were forming under Elvin’s and Captain Fazal’s boots.

  “Ye wouldn’t happen to know a faster, dryer way to get back to the lobby?”

  “Of course I do,” the old woman said. “But before we do anything, I have to warn you all. The Temple isn’t built for men. I go in there only when I absolutely have to. A lot of the ones who tried to study it extensively, way back when we first got here? They went crazy after a couple of years. And that was with us being as gingerly and unprovoking as we knew how to be, when we were doing our initial survey. Is Starstate Nautilan violent?”

  “They can be when they feel like it,” Elvin said gruffly.

  “Which is often,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean added.

  Elvin nodded at the man in agreement.

  “Then I can’t guarantee how the machines will greet us when we get there.”

  “If we get there,” Elvin reminded. “I don’t see us just walking past the Nauties who are setting up to keep the place permanently.”

  “Just how many people are we talking about?” Lethiah asked.

  “Three destroyers,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said.

  Lethiah shrugged, and shook her head—the words had meant nothing to her.

  “If they can bring down every last jack with a gun in his hand?” Elvin said, “It’ll be a couple hundred at the very least. Starstate Nautilan wants this planet, just as they want every other world in the Waywork.”

  “But this world isn’t part of your Waywork,” Lethiah said.

  “Which just makes Uxmal a juicier target!” Elvin said, exasperated.

  “Uxmal?” Lethiah said, testing her pronunciation.

  “It’s what we named this place,” Garsina said. “Before we knew somebody still lived on it.”

  “That’s fine,” Lethiah said. “After a few hundred years, I stopped caring that it even had a name.”

  Elvin looked at Garsina and mouthed, A few hundred??

  She waved him off with the flick of a hand.

  “The fact remains,” Elvin said, “that Uxmal is now Starstate Nautilan’s number-one objective for domination. Even if we can get through their security line, and enter the pyramid, that doesn’t get rid of the destroyers in orbit. And as long as those destroyers are in orbit, Uxmal belongs to them—no matter what we might say about it.”

  “Uxmal belongs to the Others,” Lethiah said bitterly, “and always has. You children just haven’t figured it out yet. The machines will make sure it stays that way too.”

  Chapter 40

  Golsubril Vex awoke to find herself surrounded by a small heap of bodies. The attack by the machines had occurred so quickly that there’d been little time to react. Vex had been focused almost entirely on her Waypoint pilot, who appeared to be nowhere that Vex could now see. She reached a hand out to feel the neck of one of the soldiers who was sprawled nearby, and discovered warmth, as well as a pulse.

  Colonel Jun was slumped against her, snoring lightly.

  They weren’t in the hall anymore. The room they occupied was much, much smaller, with no Keys of varying sizes, nor any of the menacing machines who’d come to life earlier.

  All of the troops’ weapons were gone.

  “They didn’t kill us, but they won’t let us fight them, either,” Vex said quietly, trying to will herself to stop having a headache. The very last thing she remembered was being tossed like a rag doll, then the record in her head went blurry.

  When she tried to dislodge the colonel, he groaned, and sat up slowly.

  “You’d think I tied one on,” he moaned, rubbing at his forehead. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere in the pyramid still,” Vex said. “Though I can’t say how we got here. Our Waypoint pilot is gone, which cannot be a mistake.”

  “Poor girl,” Colonel Jun said. “Activating that Key must have flooded her perception. It’s a tough enough profession, being a Waypoint pilot who merely has to use the Keys to take a ship from one star to the next. If these Keys in the pyramid are more powerful, or come equipped with a two-way interface, our Waypoint pilot may have been exposed directly to the Waymaker network which clearly runs this facility.”

  “What do you mean?” Vex asked.

  The colonel struggled into a sitting position, eyeing the troops around him.

  “Alive,” Vex said. “For now. Just like us.”

  Jun frowned, then said, “A thought occurred to me, once the shooting started. We’ve been assuming that the technology in this pyramid is passive. It doesn’t do anything until we do something to activate it. But once it’s activated, we have no idea what it’s all programmed to do. Or to what lengths any of it will go to protect itself from a perceived threat. I am thinking now that those machines are all part of one big artificial intelligence. It doesn’t notice humans at the singular level, but it does notice us if we try to interact with it through its Keys. Now that it’s aware we’re here—and may have rather intimate knowledge of us, depending on how well it’s managed to interrogate the mind of our Waypoint pilot—we have to be very, very careful. We came here, after all, assuming that this would be our world to do with as we please. What if the pyramid doesn’t agree?”

  Vex made a scoffing sound, as others in their group began to stir.

  “Report,” groaned the battle sergeant, who rolled over on his hands and knees, and began slapping the legs and arms of some of his compatriots.

  “Detained, and unarmed,” Vex said matter-of-factly.

  The battle sergeant quickly did a self–pat down, and cursed, realizing that all of his grenades were gone, along with his weapon, and the magazines for same.

  “You act like this place has a will of its own,” Vex said to the colonel.

  “Doesn’t it? Even if there are no true Waymakers here with us, this pyramid and all of the machines within it bear the Waymaker legacy. Those machines which attacked us—acting as sentinels—might simply be the pyramid’s way of dealing with infestations. It would explain why the people from the ark are all gone. Something they did must have triggered the pyrami
d. So it took care of them.”

  “An entire population?” Vex said. “Using what?”

  “We don’t know. But we might—unfortunately—have a chance to find out.”

  “It may not matter,” Vex said. “I left explicit instructions with General Ekk that if I do not return, he is to bombard this site from orbit.”

  “Now that’s an encouraging thought,” Jun said, laughing sarcastically.

  The rest of the men were staring at Vex with no small degree of horror.

  “Madam Kosmarch—” the battle sergeant started to say, but she cut him off.

  “Every line soldier must understand his ultimate duty,” she said sternly. “I will not allow this facility to fall into enemy hands, be it a known or unknown enemy. General Ekk won’t act until he is certain the expedition is a failure. At this time, we don’t know if the rest of your men are even aware of what’s happened in here.”

  “I left instructions that if we did not return before the sun sets, as soon as a full platoon’s worth of troops had been brought to the surface, a follow-up squad was to be sent into the pyramid.”

  Vex checked her chronometer. “I’m going to guess that the sun set a long time ago, battle sergeant.”

  “Yes, Madam Kosmarch.”

  Vex stood up slowly, and stretched out. Her head still hurt, but she felt unharmed otherwise.

  “If only we could figure out some way to talk to them,” she said.

  There was a whispering sound, followed by the distinct smell of electrical ozone, and a space suddenly appeared in the wall, where none had been before. Through it staggered the Waypoint pilot—or what had formerly served as the Waypoint pilot. The lieutenant moved like a badly puppeted marionette, with halting steps, and her head cocked at a poor angle. A line of saliva leaked from the corner of her half-open mouth, and she held one of the Keys—much smaller this time—in both of her hands. The Key glowed softly, its interior matrix shining brightly through the translucent surface.