Marcus nodded, looking over his shoulder at her. He did, indeed, have a little smile on his face. “Well, as long as she’s not dragging her feet.” He turned back to where the city passed below them through the viewing field, and his voice turned wistful. “I could get used to this, if you don’t get me out of here soon.”
It was meant to be a joke, she assumed. But the thought sent a shiver down her back. What if the Human didn’t want to leave? Exactly how much power did the Skorahn afford him, above and beyond what they knew to expect? It would have been hard enough to oust Uduta Virri if they had wanted to, and it appeared now that he had not even been marginally attuned to the medallion.
The old discomforts arose again. She could not believe she was in a shuttle, alone, with a Human. No one needed to tell her about Humans. She did not need a history book to remind her what they were capable of. She only needed to close her eyes and remember the scars stretching across the surface of Iwa’Ban. In fact, since Marcus Wells and his friend and been dragged into her office, she did not even need to do that. The old dreams had come back with a vengeance, and every night as she slept, she wandered the ravaged cities and burnt plains of her homeworld.
“Where is Sanctum?” Marcus Wells turned to look down at her, breaking unknowing, into her dark reverie. “Right or left wing? Top or bottom?”
He had spent a great deal of time familiarizing himself with the city, but the new administrator occasionally showed his ignorance in the strangest ways. “Not top or bottom. We refer to the right and left wing, correct, oriented by looking out over the Furnace and the Gulf. The portions of the city pointing ‘up’ or ‘down’ from the Relic Core are designated as the high city and the low city, using the planet below as a reference.”
He nodded, his eyes fading out of focus as he committed the information to memory. Sometimes he was obviously frustrated when he made such an error, but he never acted hurt or annoyed when she corrected him, only grateful for the help. It was another thing that differentiated him from his predecessor.
His smile returned as his eyes concentrated on her once more. “So, where is Sanctum? Left or right? High or low?”
For a moment, she almost smiled back. Then, with a chill, recoiled from the moment, retreating into the cool professionalism that might keep him at a distance. “Sanctum is located upon the very center of the Relic Core, overlooking the Gulf.”
He nodded. “Makes sense. You’re landing on some strange artifact, you land on the top; or, at least the top as dictated by the artifact’s current orientation. Whose ship was it?”
She shook her head, settling back into the seat. “No one knows. It doesn’t follow any of the standard patterns of known species. Its origins obviously stretch before the Great War, but no race has ever successfully claimed it as their own. It has become as close to public property as Penumbra gets, really. Sanctum and the Concourse.”
He nodded and moved back to the viewing field. Beneath them, the raised surface of the Concourse fell away as the Ring Wall passed below, revealing a dark, pitted surface. Ahead of them crouched a squat bronze structure, all alone on the dark bronze-colored field.
“Is that it?” He asked, and she nodded. “It’s not connected to anything else?”
She rose to stand beside him. “It is not. The only way to reach Sanctum is by shuttle or walking across the Bronze Plain with protective gear.”
He made a buzzing noise with his mouth and turned back to the view below. Sanctum rose up to meet them, lights flashing into brilliant dots of illumination at their approach. It had been a long, low-slung ship; the forward section was a huge swollen dome of paned crystal several stories tall.
The shuttle had chosen a primary docking port, and as they sailed in through the wide bay, the chamber snapped into bright life to receive them.
As the shuttle settled into a landing cradle, the wide side door opened automatically, and she moved down the integrated stairway. “The observation hall is this way,” she gestured at two massive blast doors off to their right. “That is probably as close to ‘new’ and ‘different’ as Penumbra can come.”
The burnished material of the ship gave the corridors a heavy sense of ancient times. The architecture was soft and flowing, with very few straight lines or right angles anywhere to be seen. The lights snapped on at their approach with an alacrity she had come to expect from her experiences escorting Marcus Wells. The Skorahn had never served Uduta Virri so well, but it seemed very eager to please its new, Human owner. It made her vaguely uneasy when she thought about it.
Current thinking in Penumbra agreed that the observation hall was probably the bridge of the ancient ship; a vast oval space, a terraced floor oriented toward the vast array of crystalline windows, actual openings into space rather than viewing fields or screens. The enormous panels began high overhead and reached down to the lowest level far below them, and to either side more than half way around the space. The bronze surface of the Relic Core could be seen stretching out around them, and then abruptly diving down into the Gulf beyond. The wings of the city swept out past them to the right and left, vaguely lit by the fiery sapphire illumination of the power source, known as the Furnace, far below.
Marcus Wells was speechless as he moved out into the middle of the wide space, staring out over the void above them. He moved past the small, silent islands that had probably been the various command stations of the ancient ship. The entire thing looked more like a temple or some other sacred place now, but with a little imagination, one could easily see a living, breathing command bridge stretching out around them.
The Human stood staring out into space for some time, and then turned to her, a slight smile twisting his lips upward. “Yeah, this is exactly the kind of place I meant.” He looked around. His eyes found the recessed area known as the Alcove. Everyone noticed it eventually.
The most popular theories concerning Sanctum focused on the interface between the material of the ancient ship and the surface of the Relic Core. The massive opening in the ship’s decking might once have been an airlock or docking connection point, using energy fields to keep the vacuum out. But when the ship had first landed, it had been pressed up against the surface of the Core, in the only place on the entire artifact where there was an identifiable point of entrance. The dark features of Sanctum gave way, in a circular hole, to the eroded bronze of the Relic Core itself. The two surfaces existed here side by side. Within the center of the revealed section the metallic surface formed a ramp heading down into a depression that ended in a broad, featureless wall of smooth, glassy blackness.
Marcus nodded at the wall. “Is that what I think it is?”
Iphini followed his eyes. “An entrance to the Relic Core? Most think so.”
He peered down into the shadows. “There are no wires, or cables, or anything. How does power move from the core into the ship?” He looked back up at her. “Or any of the other parts of the city, for that matter?”
She frowned. She had almost no idea how Penumbra worked. No one did. She had only been to Sanctum a handful of times, escorting Virri on one of his disgusting little jaunts. And yet for some reason, she was loath to answer the Human. It felt too much like offering assistance to the enemy. She was going to have to control these reactions, she knew, if she wanted to last until they convinced someone to replace him.
She looked down at him, forcing herself to meet his dark gaze. “The best guess is through mere contact with the surface. There is very little understanding as to how it actually works, however.”
He looked skeptical. “Water? Air? It all just passes through contact? And where does it come from? It’s not like those sorts of things can be easy to come by up here. And they can’t just pass through solid metal.”
She looked at him with flat eyes, and then gave a slight shake of her head. “There are reservoirs beneath the surface that we have access to. In fact, the crust of the Core is honeycombed with passages and storage chambers, all of which are supplied
with air and water. The creators of Penumbra simply tapped into those areas for the needed substances. As for the energy, merely contacting the material of the Core, whether you choose to believe it or not, appears to be enough.”
He nodded with a shrug, and turned back to the door, his head tilting curiously to the side. “How do you get in?”
She moved away. “You don’t. At least, no one ever has.”
The Human navigated his way down the steep ramp to stand before the high, lustrous sable wall. After a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand upon the material as if communing with the ancient Relic. His head was cocked to one side as if he were listening to something only he could hear, and again she felt a little unnerved, seeing a Human in this place, behaving in such a way.
He looked back to her. “Why hasn’t anyone tried to force it?”
She laughed. “In all the thousands of years, you think no sentient has lost their patience? Many attempts have been made.” She pointed to dark splotches that marked the edges of the starship’s floor around the black expanse. “No one has ever been able to claim any greater success than damage to Sanctum.” She nodded back to the black wall. “They have not so much as blemished the Relic Core itself.”
Marcus turned back to the wall, spreading both hands out, splayed across the shimmering surface. He stood that way for a very long time.
“Wow.” The word was low, almost inaudible, and sent a frightened shiver down Iphini’s back nonetheless.
Marcus Wells was somber when he finally turned away from the wall and made his careful way back up to her. He stood one last time in the center of the chamber, looking out over the Gulf, and then nodded to Iphini that he was ready to leave.
He was quiet as he followed her through the corridors, which fell into dark silence behind them as they passed. Back in the shuttle, he stood at the forward viewing field, one forearm resting on the bulkhead, head resting on his arm. He no longer paid any attention to the dizzying kaleidoscopic skyline as it slid below them.
Her disquiet grew.
*****
Marcus watched the improbable cityscape below without really seeing it. He was normally fascinated by the Escheresque geography, reaching out in all directions with no concession to such mundane qualities as up or down. But his hands still tingled with the remembered sensations of the smooth black wall, and he could still hear the soft, nearly inaudible whispers that had called to him in the ancient observation hall.
It was clear from the way Iphini had been acting that she didn’t feel quite the same sense of awe the place had instilled in him. And he was fairly sure that the sounds, if they weren’t hallucinations, were not reaching her either.
What they might mean, however, he couldn’t figure. Coming off his seeming victory with the Diakk and his son, and then the confrontation with Taurani, he had been frazzled enough as it was. He had just wanted to distract himself for a little while. He had succeeded in that, for sure. The ancient ship and its observation hall, and the doorway into the Relic Core, whatever it was, opened up whole new vistas of mystery and confusion.
The shuttle slid silently into the executive docking port, and the big blast door snapped shut behind them. Iphini was waiting at the hatch as it opened, and led the way down and to the access door across the cold room.
“I shall take my leave here, Administrator, if you don’t mind.” She didn’t turn to look at him as she moved through the door. He could not get a handle on the pale, hairless little woman. He had dated girls he would have categorized as running hot and cold, but Iphini Bha would have out played every one of them at that game.
“Certainly.” He tried to be gracious, bowing slightly in her direction in the off chance that she could see him in her peripheral vision. “Thank you for taking me to Sanctum.”
She nodded, glancing over her shoulder, her face blank. “Of course.”
The corridor behind Iphini was well-lit despite the slightly ruddy cast to the illumination. It stretched away following that strange zig-zag pattern that all the halls in the Red Tower shared. He had been told it was a defensive measure, making boarding actions more difficult. And as each corner loomed up, heavy and reinforced with studded metal, he believed it.
Even with the heavy, metal architecture, however, shadows were not a common occurrence in the well-lit halls of what had once been a premier warship of a very warlike people.
But there was a strange shadow against the wall behind his reluctant deputy. It was incongruous, there in the well-lit passageway. His brows fell as he scanned the stretch, looking for something that might be blocking the directionless light. There was nothing, and yet the shadow seemed to grow darker as he watched. If he focused on it, it faded away, but from the periphery of his vision, it was a brooding, physical presence.
Iphini Bha realized that he was not speaking, standing behind her staring off down the hall, and turned with an annoyed expression. The fine black lines that divided her pale features into small, irregular sections often made it hard to read her, but those big blue eyes made it a lot easier to tell when she was irritated.
“What—” She began, but cut off abruptly as his eyes widened in sudden fear.
The shadow leapt off the wall without warning and swirled down the corridor toward them. It moved like a swarm of insects, undulating through the air in an erratic pattern that seemed to fill the hall, but left no doubt as to its ultimate target: Iphini and her boss.
Marcus grabbed the girl’s arm and tried to pull her with him down the hall, but she yanked away from him, her own eyes narrowing in fury, and stumbled backward. Backward into the rippling shadow.
As he felt her slip from his grasp, Marcus began to fall himself, away from her. He set his arms swinging in a pinwheel as he struggled to keep his feet beneath him, carrying him farther down the hall. He fetched up hard against one of the reinforced corners, the back of his head ringing against the steel, and watched in mounting horror as the shadow swept down over Iphini Bha.
And flowed right past her. As harmless as smoke, the cloud divided, puffed around the Iwa’Bantu woman and set her clothes rippling as if a stiff breeze had blown past.
Whatever it was, it cared nothing for Iphini. It continued to move directly at Marcus.
Iphini’s eyes widened as she saw the shadowy form sweep around her, and felt her clothing ruffle in the ethereal wind. Her mouth opened, moving with the slow, deliberate pacing of a nightmare, and screamed a single word that meant nothing to him in his panic.
“Nanites!”
Marcus staggered backward, grasping at the wall behind him, and tried to flee. He tripped over his own feet, spinning and staggering several steps toward his rooms before falling to his knees on the hard, rubber-like floor. He flipped over, seeing the cloud rearing up above him, and raised one hand as if shielding himself from the bright light of the sun.
The cloud descended.
There was an explosion of heat over his chest and a bright, blinding light flooded the corridor. An electrical crackling sound exploded in his ears, and he tasted ash on his tongue.
Opening his eyes, the first thing Marcus saw was that the hallway was empty. There was no cloud of darkness engulfing him, hovering over him, or fleeing down the corridor. Iphini stood, her blue eyes wide, staring at him.
Marcus looked down at himself as he sat up. He was lying in the middle of a dark, amorphous stain. His tunic and trousers were dark, a layer of fine ash coating his entire body. He reached one gritty hand up to his face and drew a finger down over his cheek. It came away smudged with ash as well.
“What the hell.” He muttered the words, and then spat gray gobbets onto the floor as the harsh, acrid taste registered. “What the hell!”
Iphini Bha took a couple tentative steps forward, staring at the fine layer of ash that had settled across him. “Offensive nanites. They’re … they’re illegal, even here.” She looked up, casting a glance up and down the hall. “They can be programmed for a particular genetic code
, and then they attack, tearing the target apart at a cellular level … there’s almost no defense.”
The heavy warmth on his chest was still there, and he looked down to find the medallion glowing with a single, unwavering spark deep within its sapphire depths. The lines floating within were sharper than they had ever been, and he started at the familiar surge of near-recognition.
The sharp slaps of running feet brought his head back up, and Iphini spun quickly in place, crouching as if ready to flee. Marcus scrambled up, brushing his hands across his chest and thighs. The dust cascaded into little drifts at his feet.
Two figures came running down the corridor, tearing around a corner not far away. One figure wore fluttering white robes, the other in flowing black: the Thien’ha.
The two figures fetched up in front of Iphini. The female Diakk in the black robes looked annoyed, her nose wrinkling beneath the scattering of markings. Beside her, the pale green fur of the creature in the white robe was luminous in the red-tinged corridor lighting, the white fringe of tendrils that swept up either side of its jawline and into the hood swayed with its slight panting. It seemed to be smiling. Clutched in one furry hand, a dull metal rod absorbed the light.
Marcus felt his eyes narrow, his nostrils flaring, as a snarl began to twist his lips. He pushed Iphini Bha roughly behind him, thrusting himself into the path of the two robed figures, and put one hand up to stop them from coming any further.
“We’ve got the situation well in hand, thank you.” He kept his tone even, but suspicion tightened his chest. “Please move along.”
The woman scowled at him, but the smaller creature rested a long-fingered hand on her elbow. His serene expression was a marked contrast to her glare.
Legacy of Shadow Page 23
