A Star Wheeled Sky

by Brad R Torgersen

  “Talk,” the lieutenant said, though the word was slurred, with neither inflection nor emotion. “You…talk…through this one.”

  Colonel Jun’s face had gone deathly pale.

  “That’s obscene,” he said. Coming to his feet, he walked carefully over to the young woman, and reached out a hand to stroke her hair. She neither blinked nor flinched. Using one of his handkerchiefs, he wiped the spittle from her mouth.

  “Can you hear me, Lieutenant?” Vex asked.

  “Lieutenant…not hear…you…we hear you…instead.”

  “And who is ‘we’ that we might know you?” Colonel Jun asked.

  “We…are the ones who remain…we…keep the place of…power.”

  “This pyramid?” Jun asked.

  “Yes…place of…power.”

  “Is that what you’ve been programmed to do?” he asked.

  “Programmed…we are…what we are…you are…very different.”

  “Yes,” Jun admitted. “But I think we might be able to understand each other eventually. We didn’t know how to contact you. Did you build this place?

  “We…did not build…we…are the ones who remain.”

  “So you are not the Waymakers?”

  “Waymakers…are the creator…we…are that which was created.”

  “And does that which was created serve the creator?”

  “We…serve the creator…we keep the place of…power.”

  “What happened to the humans who came to this planet long ago? Their ship is on the beach not far from this pyramid.”

  “Those…were not the creator…they…did not suffice…all except…one.”

  Jun looked at Vex, who had been carefully watching the whole conversation. She motioned for him to continue, as the lieutenant’s eyes did not seem to see any of them, and only blinked in a very slow, mechanical fashion, every thirty seconds.

  “Who is the ‘one’ that sufficed?” Jun asked.

  “She…came from your old world…she…is of the planet called…Earth.”

  “Earth!” Vex blurted.

  “Yes…she…is the one…we know best…she…convinced us to open the…connections to your Waywork.”

  “Why?” Jun asked.

  “We…do not know…only she…knows.”

  “The woman from Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “She still lives?”

  “Yes.”

  Vex stopped Jun before he could ask another question.

  “Will you free us?” Vex asked.

  “Free…you.”

  “You’re detaining us against our will,” Vex said impatiently.

  “Will…there is only one…will…and that is the will of…the creator.”

  “Is it the will of your ‘creator’ that we be kept here?”

  “We…are not sure…we…will ask the one from…Earth.”

  “And what about the lieutenant?” Jun asked. “Will you release her to us, at the very least?”

  “What are you doing?” Vex hissed.

  “Like I said,” Jun hissed back, “this is obscene. Look at the poor girl!”

  “This ‘poor girl’ knew her duty, Colonel. And now she’s our translator for these sentinels as you called them. We need her to be their mouth and ears.”

  “But at what cost?” Jun said. “Slavery to these revenants of Waymakers who’ve long since departed? To them, she’s just a sack filled with meat! She’s not a living mind as they would recognize. They’ve repurposed her!”

  “Maybe. But they apparently hold this ‘one’ in high regard,” Vex said. Then turned her attention back to the lieutenant—or at least, the lieutenant’s body.

  “Can you summon this woman from Earth?”

  “No…she will come…when she is…ready.”

  “Does she live in the wreck on the beach?”

  “Yes…where the others of her kind…once lived.”

  “Will you let us go if we promise to bring this ‘one’ back for discussion?”

  “Cannot trust…your motives…you are…not known to us.”

  “If we bring the ‘one’ back, as promised, this might help you learn to trust us?” Vex suggested.

  “Your kind is…so confusing…we understand our…creator…but your minds go in…so many directions.”

  “They got that right,” Jun muttered, as he began to pace nervously.

  Suddenly the Waypoint pilot’s head jerked up, and her eyes fluttered with consciousness. The Key in her hand dropped to the floor, going dark. She looked around the room, then stared at Colonel Jun, and collapsed toward the old man, who caught her and gently settled her onto the floor.

  “Make them stop,” the young woman sobbed, clutching at her head, “make them stop, make them stop, make them stop…they’re in my brain!”

  Jun made comforting noises, while Vex stepped over and picked up the Key in one hand. If it was aware of Vex’s presence, the Key didn’t show it. She eyed the opening through which the Waypoint pilot had come a few minutes earlier; it remained open.

  “Come on,” Vex said. “Battle sergeant, you’re in the lead. We’re getting out of here.”

  “Something happened,” Jun said, holding the young woman in his lap. “What caused them to release her?”

  There was an echoing sound, very, very far away. Like an explosion, but so distant as to be little more than a muted clap of thunder.

  “My God,” Jun said, “has Ekk begun the orbital strike already?”

  “No,” the battle sergeant said, “that was conventional. Something’s happening outside!”

  He motioned for his men to follow, with Vex in the middle.

  “Come on, Colonel,” Vex urged. “If you have to, leave her.”

  “Go to hell, Kosmarch,” the old man said.

  “I could have you executed for saying that,” Vex said plainly. “I could have your family executed too.”

  Colonel Jun’s harsh laughter filled the room, making the soldiers on the end of the escape detail look back and forth between Vex and the colonel with nervous faces.

  “You cannot touch me,” he said, “and you never could. I came here to learn the truth about the Waywork, but you came here for the sake of your personal ambition. Neither of which is worth the price being paid by this young lieutenant. You and I both owe her more than to just leave her here.”

  “Then pick her up and bring her,” Vex said. “Or stay, and be at the mercy of the sentinels.”

  Jun struggled to get the lieutenant to her feet. She sagged on him uncontrollably, while her arms flopped limply. Two soldiers stepped back in and put the lieutenant’s arms around their shoulders, and together they began dragging the Waypoint pilot out of the room. Jun slowly stood up, and walked to the exit, pausing where Vex stood. Her eyes burrowed into his, but his burrowed right back. No, this one could not be intimidated. It was rare to find anyone so reckless or so fearless, that he would challenge Golsubril Vex’s authority. She had half a mind to order the old man shot once they returned to camp. But she still hoped to get some use out of him.

  “We’ll finish this later,” she said, and allowed Colonel Jun to pass.

  The troops—weaponless—double-timed their way through several hexagonal corridors, until they reentered the hall which featured the gallery of Keys. The sentinels had resumed their motionless resting state, though at different places around the hall. Vex eyed them carefully as she jogged past, then the whole team was trotting down the switchbacked ramp to the ground-floor corridor, which elbowed back to the main entrance corridor. As they neared the portico, they could smell the explosives from rifle rounds, and hear the irregular chatter of weapons being fired. Another horrendous boom made the bricks directly outside the portico shift unsteadily, raining sand onto the portico floor.

  The battle sergeant and his men had grouped up at the portico, but didn’t dare go beyond it.

  “Madam Kosmarch,” the battle sergeant said, “I cannot guarantee your safety beyond this point. Someo
ne has engaged our forces from the camp.”

  “You mean, Starstate Constellar has engaged our forces?” Vex asked.

  “I think that’s the logical assumption, Madam,” the sergeant said. “Without our wireless we can’t ask for assistance. I’ve sent two of my men to quickly reconnoiter the ruins beyond the portico. We might be able to take shelter, and determine if there is a safer route back to camp.”

  Chapter 41

  It had taken them most of the day to creep toward the pyramid, using the brick ruins for cover. In that time the aerospace plane had gone to orbit twice more, and returned with additional Nautilan soldiers, munitions, and equipment. By the time they were within striking distance, Captain Fazal estimated that at least sixty Nautilan troops were on the ground, compared to his thirty—which included the lieutenant commander, Mister Axabrast, Garsina herself, and Zoam Kalbi, who had only allowed himself to be brought along for fear of being left behind. He was most unhappy about being forced to participate in an offensive ground-combat operation. Even if he wasn’t be expected to do any of the shooting.

  Lethiah herself had come of her own free will, and didn’t seem particularly bothered by the potential danger. Garsina kept watching the old woman out of the corner of her eye. Lethiah had the same kind of calm poise Garsina had witnessed among some of the matriarchs of the First Families—like Garsina’s mother. Unafraid. But not foolishly so. Eyes wide open. Spine kept straight. Steps confident. She walked while others scuttled and crouched. Only allowed herself to duck when either Elvin or Captain Fazal demanded that she do so.

  Garsina herself was scared almost to the point of being giddy. There was nothing in her experience which could have prepared her for what was about to happen. Unlike Kalbi, Garsina was armed—clutching the small carbine which Elvin had brought for her from the starliner, and which Elvin had retrieved again during the storm—though she felt horrendously awkward trying to mimic the movements of the TGO soldiers who surrounded her. They darted and zigzagged their way through the ruins. Using a movement pattern of cover-overlap which allowed the men and women behind the bounding formation to ensure that those going forward were not moving unsecurely. Like a slithering snake, the loose battle formation made its way to the edge of the ruins just as the sun dropped below the horizon. From there, Garsina and the others in the leadership council—as Garsina had come to think of it—made their plans.

  “The aerospace plane hasn’t returned,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said, using his binoculars to survey the camp on the pyramid’s northwest corner.

  Garsina’s own binoculars showed several bivouacs erected within a perimeter that encircled the aerospace plane’s landing site, which had been jet-blasted down to the stone. On that perimeter, Nautilan troops using big squad weapons—large-caliber, rapid-fire, high-capacity guns—had sandbagged in several defensive fighting positions. Including pieces of thick steel being used as overhead cover. The barrels of the squad weapons swiveled back and forth continuously, as the men in those fighting positions surveyed their respective quadrants.

  “Gotta hand it to them,” Captain Fazal said, “they’re a pro bunch. I don’t think I could have set it up any better myself.”

  “So what do we do?” Garsina asked.

  “Our two advantages are darkness, and the fact that they don’t have any air cover,” Elvin said.

  “Our single greatest disadvantage is that there are two or three of them to every one of us,” Wyodreth Antagean said, putting his binoculars back into their case attached to his battle pack. “Which means any way you slice it, we can’t take them on directly. We have to get their attention somehow, if we want a clean corridor to the pyramid entrance. And then we have to hope that they’re not already inside.”

  “Unlikely,” Captain Fazal said. “Posting troops inside would be the first thing I’d do, once the aerospace plane landing zone was secured.”

  “Which means they’d be shooting at us in a thoroughly unfamiliar environment with indeterminate possibility of cover or concealment,” Elvin said.

  When Garsina simply stared at the old man, he cleared his throat and said, “There would be no guarantee we’d find anything to hide behind.”

  She nodded.

  “Which begs the question,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said, this time in Mariclesh, “what exactly is it that we’re trying to do inside, that necessitates all of this risk?”

  All eyes turned to Lethiah, who’d been watching the conversation, but not understanding any of it, until Wyodreth’s last sentence.

  “Out here,” the old woman replied, “we are powerless. But in there? I can talk to the machines. It’s not easy. I was never the kind of Anchor adept, as you’ve described to me—the people who have a natural talent for using the devices. It’s taken me a lot of mental self-training and discipline, and then I’ve not exposed myself to the Anchors any more than I’ve felt is necessary. I saw what happened to those who did. I didn’t want to lose my mind that way. But if we can get to the hall where the different Anchors are kept, I can convince the machines inside to intervene on our behalf. The power of the Temple will be—not exactly ours to command—but more likely to swing in our favor.”

  “What exactly are these machines, anyway?” Zoam Kalbi asked.

  “I can tell you what they think they are,” Lethiah replied. “The Others are who they think of as their creator. Singular. They don’t really make a distinction, regarding individual Others. It’s possible there may not have been an individual distinction? Some of my peers—before they died—speculated that the Others may have been a single intelligence shared across multiple sapient organisms. But the machines regard the creator as the source of definitive knowledge and guidance. The machines don’t necessarily have a will of their own, as you and I understand it. There is what the creators want, and there is…everything else. Which is either interesting to the machines, or not. The only reason I was able to convince them to finally open starlanes to your Waywork was the fact that I got the machines interested in the potential destruction of the Waywork by an outside power. Not human. Not creator. Something new.”

  “Which is what I personally want to know about,” Lieutenant Commander Antagean said. “And I think Admiral Mikton would too. DSOD will want explicit details on this outside threat. Assuming you can provide us with details.”

  “That’s just it,” Lethiah said, the whites of her eyes showing brightly as the moons of Uxmal began their slow journey across the clear night sky. “I can’t be sure about details. I wish I could. I only know what the pyramid’s own long-range sensors can tell me. They’re tuned into the Overspace somehow.”

  “I thought the Waywork was the Overspace,” Captain Fazal said.

  “We think the Overspace is everywhere, all at once,” Garsina responded. “The Waywork is merely a map of explicit travel paths opened on the ‘surface’ of the Overspace. Using these paths is an instantaneous process in our linear universe. But the Overspace itself goes far beyond the Waywork. We’ve been wondering if our Waywork is just one of many which might exist in the galaxy. Perhaps there are tens, or even hundreds, or maybe thousands of other Wayworks? Each one distinct from the others, built by either the Waymakers themselves, or other advanced species which have discovered how to manipulate the Overspace as the Waymakers have—using the Overspace as a kind of road bed.”

  Lethiah tapped the shadow of a finger to the side of her nose.

  “My people and I reached the same conclusions, and the devices in the Temple support these deductions. It was while trying to monitor the extent of the Overspace—well outside of your Waywork, and far from anywhere men have ever traveled—that I noticed a problem. A shadow is occurring in the Overspace.”

  “What does that mean?” Garsina asked.

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” Lethiah said. “It wasn’t there a few hundred years ago. But it’s there now. And it’s growing. Your Waywork hasn’t noticed it yet, because your Keys are only useful for trave
ling the starlanes. But the shadow is growing near to you. If it overtakes you, it may destroy your Waywork, and the ability to rapidly travel from star to star with it. When I focused the Pyramid’s conventional telescopes on this same region of the galaxy, I see hints that there may be a force at work in our linear universe causing the Overspace to unravel.”

  “Unravel…” Antagean said, with the same disbelieving tone he’d often used with Lethiah. “Why? For what purpose?”

  “That I can’t say,” Lethiah said. “Only that proving the existence of the shadow to the machines in the Temple was a very long, very arduous project. Once I had their attention, they agreed with me that something ought to be done. But because they didn’t have contact with their creator anymore, they didn’t have any active guidance on how to respond to the shadow threat. So I suggested the starlanes—the Waywork—as a potential ally.”

  “If you’d have known about Starstate Nautilan beforehand,” Elvin said, “you might have changed your mind.”

  “Even Nautilan may eventually prove a vital ally against the enemy I believe is coming,” Lethiah said. “If what you’ve told me is true, Nautilan believes that only a united Waywork—beneath Nautilan’s flag—can decipher the secret of the Keys, and open the Waywork to a wider galaxy. They’re many days late, and numerous dollars short.”

  “Begging your pardon?” Antagean said, unfamiliar with the phrase. Which Garsina had never heard before, either.

  “Right, sorry,” Lethiah apologized. “I mean that Nautilan won’t have time to unite the Waywork, before it’s over. Severed from each other—unable to quickly jump the distance, star to star—humanity will be utterly vulnerable before the shadow. So it’s important that you not only have advanced warning, but I also wanted you to come here. To this planet, in person. I can’t use the Temple or its tools the way they might be used, to prepare for what’s ahead.”

  “If everything you’ve told us is accurate,” Garsina said, “nobody can use the pyramid—or what’s inside—for very long, without it proving harmful. To our bodies, and our minds.”