Warden's Fury

by Tony James Slater

  “They don’t make them here,” Àurea said quietly. “In prisons similar to the one we raided, in secret laboratories, in all the most powerful strongholds of the Church. But not here.”

  “I wish we could wreck them all.”

  “If my father keeps his word, we will. My people are primed for an uprising which will overthrow the Keepers of the Faith and utterly destroy the sickness of the Church.” She extended an arm to Tris, and he gripped it. “You are welcome to come along for the ride.”

  They left the Transgressors’ chamber the same way they came in.

  Tris found it surreal in the extreme to simply turn his back on a legion of psychotic monsters, but there was nothing they could do. And as always, Kreon’s eyes were on the mission. The second power-hungry room could hardly hold anything worse; the Warden was clearly hoping it would contain the records he sought.

  “The devastation you see around you will spread across the galaxy,” he told Àurea as they moved back towards the elevator. “The Black Ships are the greatest threat Humanity has ever faced.”

  “Not just Humanity,” she replied. “The old Gods fought the same enemies in the distant past. It’s forbidden to discuss those legends now, but some people still remember them.”

  “What do they remember?” Kreon’s voice was suddenly sharp with excitement.

  “I have heard two variations,” Àurea admitted. “One, that the old Gods left us alone on Earth when they went to defeat the Devourers of the Light. Prophecies maintain that they will return when the enemy does, to help us win the same battle.”

  “Interesting. The Gods you refer to are the race we call the Kharash. They are most definitely gone from this galaxy, and for many tens of millennia.” Kreon took the next few strides in silence, thinking this over. “And the second variation?”

  “Mostly the same,” Àurea said, “with only one minor difference. In the second version, the Gods also left to fight these Devourers. But they never returned, because they lost.”

  The elevator took them deeper, and Loader again brought them to an abrupt stop when they reached the right level. “I can engage with many of the devices here wirelessly,” he explained, “though none have a permanent connection to the mainframe.”

  “If we have come to the right place, there should be no shortage of terminals,” Kreon replied.

  They were much further underground here, almost to the very bottom of the lift shaft, and Tris could feel the weight of earth pressing down on them. The stonework surrounding them was older too, cracked and streaked here and there with mildew, as though this area didn’t see a lot of visitors. It didn’t seem the most promising destination for a bunch of computer equipment.

  Nevertheless, Kreon led them forward, following Loader’s spoken directions.

  “This door I can operate wirelessly,” the talos said, as they found their route forward blocked. “There should be a terminal beyond it.”

  Fingers crossed, Tris thought. They hadn’t seen one yet, and this level’s vibe was more castle dungeon than internet cafe.

  The door slid open, a mist of gas spraying out as the seal was breached.

  Tris looked at the others, and could tell they were also remembering entering the Transgressors’ vault.

  “Mist,” said Kreon, holding up a gloved hand. There was a tiny bead of moisture on his thumb.

  Àurea took a pace forward. “The ambient temperature inside is significantly lower than the rest of the structure,” she reported.

  Kyra nudged Tris. “Yup, she’s Kreon’s daughter alright,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Àurea was still standing in the doorway, looking back at them. “I am not sure I follow.”

  Kyra was shaking her head as she brushed past her. “You could have just said, ’It’s cold in here.’”

  Tris allowed himself a chuckle. It felt good, to know that even in this nightmarish place, his team were still relaxed enough to joke.

  Well, Kyra was, and that was all that really mattered.

  He followed her more willingly than any of the others, and he did so now, stepping through the thick stone doorway—

  Into a crypt.

  Shadows lay heavy on the room, the dusty silence so thick he could touch it. Rank upon rank of tombs stretched off into the recesses of the chamber, the great stone pedestals covered in elaborate carving. Tris had visited cathedrals in Europe with his dad; Notre Dame in Paris, St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, amongst others. Enough to recognise the exquisite detail that went into medieval sepulchres, topped by well-worn effigies of holy-men long dead. These resembled those, only the massive lids, sitting at shoulder-height from the floor, featured geometric shapes rather than sculptures of their occupants.

  “Dead end,” he said, taking a page from Kyra’s book. A little lightness never hurt, especially in a place like this. Kreon’s inevitable disappointment would be crushing their morale soon enough.

  “These are artefacts from ancient Earth,” Kreon breathed, limping along the first row. “They pre-date the Sundering.”

  “They’re a bit big to drag back into the elevator,” Kyra warned him. “And no offence or anything, but Wayfinder is already full of old shit. We don’t need a private mausoleum.”

  “Wait!” he called, the filtering of the comm units doing nothing to hide his excitement. “I recognise this glyph. This is not a Lemurian marking — it is Kharash.”

  “Dead alien bodies?” Tris wasn’t sure if that was more cool or more creepy. It blew his mind a bit to think of aliens on Earth thousands of years ago, dead or alive. But still…

  “No, Tristan. I do not believe these reliquaries contain bones. They are designed as repositories for holy relics, but the Kharash left us no evidence of their physiology. Show me your knife.”

  Puzzled, Tris reached back and detached the glaive from its magnetic strip. He felt much clumsier handling the weapon with the thick, rubbery gloves on, so he took extra care as he extracted the blade from its hollow handle.

  “Hold it close to the casket.”

  He did so, holding the knife up to glint in the muted light.

  Even through his glove he felt the feedback.

  “It’s buzzing!” he told Kreon, unable to keep the child-like wonder from his voice. “Like when it got near the Planet Forge!”

  “Indeed. It was my first indication that the Planet Forge was fully charged and operational. I believe the same is true in this instance.”

  “Want me to open one up?”

  “Delicately,” Kreon cautioned him.

  Tris took the knife and inserted the tip near the edge of a carving. The blade slipped into the stone with deceptive ease, perhaps aided by the vibration. When it seemed to snag on something harder he withdrew it slightly, working the cutting edge around in a rough circle. When he was done, the disc of stone fell away — revealing an altogether sleeker material inside.

  “You’re right! In this one, it’s like…” A sudden thought gripped him, and he glanced up and down the rows of tombs, appalled. “Are they all Planet Forges?”

  “No. Merely manufactured from the same substance — one that is too precious to leave in plain view.”

  “So ancient Lemurian people made these boxes? To house their relics…”

  “To house the last thing they had left from their erstwhile makers: the gift of knowledge. Unless I am very much mistaken, these stone sarcophaguses house storage devices of a kind we have never been able to replicate. And they in turn house the accumulated wisdom of the Kharash people.”

  26

  It took no time at all to get Loader wired up.

  The talos was somehow maintaining his wireless connection with ALI despite ten thousand tonnes of stone separating them; Tris was privately amazed. He couldn’t even get phone signal on the ground floor of his house without going into the back alley.

  The more human-style terminals were easy to spot, once they could tear themselves away from the alien supercomputers. Tris had revealed two
more, confirming Kreon’s theory that all the tombs were similarly occupied. The dull grey alloy felt hard when he tapped it with the point of his knife. He needn’t have worried about damaging them; with his full strength on the blade, he still couldn’t scratch the surface.

  “I am ready to begin exploring the Kharash system,” Loader reported. Even he had chosen to lower his volume, such was the solemn atmosphere of the room. “As their methods of notation will be unfamiliar to me, I anticipate this taking some time.”

  “We are in no hurry,” Kreon reminded him. “For once, it appears we are not in immediate danger.”

  Kyra snorted her opinion of that. She was pacing up and down between the rows of tombs, clearly ill at ease in the heavy silence. “Maybe I’ll take Àurea and do some scouting, make sure we really are alone down here.” She turned on her heel, taking in a three-sixty degree sweep of the chamber. “Where is Àurea anyway?”

  Tris looked up, scanning the row of tombs he’d been counting. He’d been so excited by their discovery that he hadn’t noticed the newest member of their team wasn’t in the room with them.

  And never had been, he realised; he’d brushed past her in the doorway and she hadn’t followed him in.

  Kyra’s swords were already in her hands, not that Tris could think of a use for them.

  “Find her,” Kreon commanded.

  Tris jogged over to the doorway, but stopped dead when a distant klaxon began to blare, its muted warble struggling to reach them through acres of stone-lined passageways.

  “I’m receiving a warning,” Loader informed them.

  “The Kharash units?” Kreon asked.

  “Negative. The native system has issued an alert. Power has been cut to the Asset Containment Facility.”

  Tris glanced back at Kyra. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “The Transgressors,” Kreon said darkly. “They’re waking up.”

  Sprinting in the heavy suit was hard work. Beads of sweat ran down Tris’ face, as the condensation from his breath ran down the glass. He ignored it, along with the screaming of his muscles and the burning in his lungs. Adrenaline coursed through him, powering him along, pounding the ancient flagstones a bare second behind Kyra.

  He couldn’t ever remember being this scared.

  They had a fraction of a chance — a tiny window of time, before the disconnected systems reached critical. If they could find Àurea, tackle her somehow… Tris fervently hoped he wouldn’t have to fight her.

  Not Kreon’s daughter.

  Not in this.

  But she could be convinced.

  Whatever her reasons, whatever twisted philosophy she was bringing into this situation…

  She would change it, fast. Or it was their job to change it for her.

  They hit the elevator lobby running, then stood panting with their heads down while they waited for the car. That it took so long to come was further evidence of Àurea’s complicity; with no-one else in the building, only she could have taken it upwards.

  To the Transgressors…

  What is she hoping to find? She’d had friends taken by the Church, he remembered. But was seeing their tormented faces one last time worth it? Or had she merely stumbled across some failsafe, and woken the monsters up by mistake?

  Kreon had stayed behind to work with Loader. He was adamant that the data they could harvest from this place must be protected at all costs. On any other day, Tris would have agreed with him. But when ‘all costs’ included being ripped to pieces by an army of malformed monstrosities, he was starting to think more discretion might be called for.

  ‘Take off and nuke the site from orbit’ — a movie quote from his childhood that had never seemed more appropriate.

  The elevator car arrived, the doors sliding open to reveal the gauze-clad body. Tris didn’t even glance at it as he got in and pushed the button. Three dots over the pyramid, he remembered — he’d been following the pattern of the destination lights when they’d slammed to a stop the first time.

  Kyra’s swords had been recoiled for their run through the bowels of the building. Now she pulled them loose again, preferring them to her rifle. Tris left his glaive where it was. He was under no illusion that he would be able to hold his own in a fight between the two women. Better to hold off at a distance and look for a shot. Not that there were many vulnerable places on Àurea’s armour; she was a formidable opponent all around.

  The doors hissed open and Kyra advanced down the corridor, swords at the ready.

  Tris couldn’t believe it was coming to this. He’d felt so sure… Kreon had been sure.

  Àurea was his daughter.

  Unless… she was a clone?

  Gerian had been as different from Tristan’s dad as could possibly be imagined.

  And an evil, scheming, master manipulator.

  So what was her plan?

  They reached the black security door to find it open. They exchanged a grim look, and Tris followed Kyra inside.

  The red lighting now pulsed like a living thing. The room looked exactly as they’d left it; only Àurea stood alone at the railing, her armoured back to them, gazing out at the closest row of capsules.

  All of which were empty.

  “You’re too late,” she said, her voice tiny in the vastness of the chamber.

  Kyra made no reply, stalking closer with her swords raised, so Tris mirrored her on the opposite side. As he moved closer he saw that all was not as they’d left it. Blood splattered the deck and railing; thick red streaks of it coated Àurea’s weapons, dripping rhythmically from the blades in her hands.

  “What did you do?” Kyra said at last, her voice cold and hard.

  “Nothing that you would not have, given the chance,” Àurea replied. “Your machine is not the only one with hacking skills. The first ones to wake, the closest ones, sprang for this platform.” She turned slowly, revealing the entire front of her armour encrusted with gore. “The others, as you see.”

  Kyra had been edging closer. Now she glanced out into the racks of capsules and swore.

  Tris followed her gaze to see a row of blasphemous figures, each writhing in fury as the canopies lifted on their glass cocoons. Writhing, clawing, stabbing in reflex, rage driving them to lash out even when no enemies lay within range. The twisted creatures shrieked and wailed, an unearthly dirge of hatred and torment, as they flailed around themselves with their surgically-implanted weapons.

  And died.

  One by one, choking, gasping, raking the air with razor-sharp talons, every one of the creatures expired. Brief puffs of air heralded new capsules opening, and new howls of insanity rose to replace those newly quieted. Seconds passed, glass capsules swung and shattered, the steel deck resounded with the weight of creatures leaping onto it; and still they died, rasping hoarsely, twisting this way and that, heels drumming on the deck as their death ran its course.

  Horrified, Tris lowered his rifle. “How did you know?” he asked Àurea.

  “Simple,” she replied. “For all their nightmarish appendages, Transgressors are human beings like you or I.” She turned, stepping past his guard before he could react, bringing her fist up in front of his face — then extending a single finger, and tapping it against his faceplate. “There is no air in this chamber,” she explained, rapping his helmet again for emphasis. “Or did you forget that?”

  * * *

  Kreon was incensed when he found out. “Reckless endangerment! Despite all I taught you, still you throw caution and common sense back in my face like you did at your Apprenticing.”

  Àurea’s sigh was audible over the comms. “Father, really. If ever there is a time to move past that particular event, it is now. How can you still not understand? You taught me too well. I’d learned everything I could from you. I asked to be assigned a different master for precisely that reason; I wanted to learn the things you could not teach me. Even if one of those lessons was failure.”

  Kreon huffed. “You expect me to believe t
hat your ambition drove you to fail? To set yourself up with an inferior mentor solely to experience losing?”

  “Not solely, no. Believe it or not father, your way is not the only way. I inherited my ambition from you, but I did not want to be limited to your methods. I stand by my logic; I aspired to grow beyond your teachings, and sought alternative sources of inspiration.” She paused for breath, leaning back against a tomb with her head bowed in weariness. “How was I to know that he was an idiot?”

  “Idiot.” Kreon’s anger had also ebbed. “Àurea, he killed you.”

  She scoffed. “He did no such thing! He merely led his crew into the middle of a battle which killed us all. Did he ever come back?”

  “Lord Bizen?” Kreon sounded surprised. “He did. He pleaded his failure before the council and was let off with a warning.”

  She shook her head. “I wonder if they let him take other apprentices? If he spent their lives as foolishly as ours, or if he learned from his mistake?”

  “Your death was the last one he was directly responsible for,” Kreon told her.

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “Because I lay in wait for him when he left Atalia. I crippled his ship, boarded it, and killed him as he sat in that ridiculous Captain’s chair.”

  Àurea laughed. “That is fitting. He hardly ever left that thing! And I’m sure a generation of young Wardens now exist that would have been wiped out wholesale by his mentorship. But I know you did it for me. Thank-you, father.”

  Kyra was sitting atop one of the tombs, kicking her heels against the carved stonework. “Ahhh!” she cooed. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like cold-blooded murder. You two are so alike, you should test for clone DNA.”

  Now that they were talking, Tris had a raft of questions to ask. He opened his mouth to start — ‘how did you survive and why didn’t you come back’ was his opener — when Loader’s synthesised drawl cut through the thick atmosphere of the crypt.