Dark Side

by Jonathan Green

  At this last comment, as if it had been planned down to the last second, a juddering tremor passed through the cavernous chamber. There were sudden chittering thought-screams of fear and panic as, with a sharp crack, one of the stalactites broke free of the ceiling and plummeted into the throng of Selenites below.

  “Your majesty,” Ulysses said, steadying himself as the seismic shudder continued, with no sign of abating, “I can assure you that we have nothing to do these tremors.”

  How can you say that? They are not the work of the Cythalan’xians. Therefore they must be the work of human-kind.

  “Then they are not caused by your mining slugs? The Uuhge?”

  Of course not! Do not risk my wrath, Earth-man.

  “One individual cannot be held to account for the actions of another of his race,” Ulysses pointed out.

  Why not? They can if they are Cythalan’xian.

  “But mankind is not like your race, your majesty.”

  That is patently clear.

  “It was a tremor such as this that set us on the path that brought us here. We were lucky we weren’t killed.”

  You might think that.

  Ulysses swallowed hard and looked up into the clicking alien face of the Empress.

  “Before we were diverted from our mission,” Ulysses said, mustering himself again and pressing on regardless, “we were heading for the moonbase that lies on the far side of the crater above us, and believed we were closing on the source of the disturbances.”

  He swallowed hard, hoping that his pheromones weren’t giving him away. Anyway, it wasn’t a complete lie.

  So you do not deny that this – the Empress pointed at the stalactite smashed on the floor of the cavern with a taloned claw – is the work of others of your kind, a race that is no better than a parasite, and that, having despoiled your own world, you would now despoil ours, the world that we have made our home, after incalculable aeons traversing the stars? We have monitored your communications and we have seen what you have done to your own world. And now you would do the same to ours. You have brought your warring natures to this world and we will suffer as a consequence.

  There was nothing Ulysses could say to appease her and he could not deny the truth of her words, no matter how much it pained him to hear them. He was reminded of the broadcast put out by the Darwinian Dawn on the first day of their terrorist bombing campaign against the capital over a year ago. He might not have agreed with their methods, or even the ideals of men like the reactionary Jago Kane, but neither could he deny the accuracy of their allegations against the empire of Pax Britannia and, by extension, the entire human race.

  “No, I cannot deny it,” he said at last.

  The Empress rose up on her hind-quarters, talon-arms stretched out before her, as if she were the Grim Reaper personified.

  His pulse thumping in his ears Ulysses snatched a quick breath and, before the chitin-blade could fall, said, “But if a race is to be condemned by the actions of one then let it also be redeemed by the actions of another.”

  The Empress hesitated, the moment of execution halted, allowing them to enjoy the briefest reprieve.

  Go on.

  “If you have the heart to set us free, my man and I will continue with our mission and make our way to the epicentre of the disturbances and do all that we can to stop them.”

  His heart pounding against his ribs, he awaited the alien queen’s sentence. There was no doubt in his mind now that his and Nimrod’s lives were hanging in the balance.

  Two Earth-men?

  “Yes, your majesty. If you doubt we are capable of accomplishing such a thing then by all means send us in the company of a cadre of your finest warriors.”

  No! Long ago we decreed to have nothing to do with the affairs of human-kind. If you do this, you do this alone.

  Ulysses waited, every muscle in his body tensed.

  No, sister, not alone.

  Ulysses turned in surprise, hearing the thoughts of N’kel interrupt the declarations of the Empress.

  Cocking her head on one side, the alien queen regarded N’kel with the same mantis interest she had shown Ulysses and Nimrod on first meeting them.

  How so? The Empress demanded.

  Because I shall go with them, as their guide.

  Very well. Earth-men, the Empress said, turning her startling compound eyes on Ulysses, it would appear you have been given the chance to redeem your race. You are free to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Underworld

  T MINUS 54 MINUTES, 13 SECONDS

  THEIR FOOTSTEPS ECHOED hollowly in the empty darkness of the tunnels, the lamps attached to their helmets stabbing the gloom with slender beams of light. Once their path was set and the Empress had decreed their safe passage from the colony, the explorers’ gloves and helmets had been collected and returned to them.

  In the lull that followed the Empress giving her permission for them to leave, the air supplies in their suits’ oxygen tanks had been replenished as best they could be, although N’kel told them it was just a precaution; they would not need an artificial air supply to reach the moonbase.

  To Ulysses’ mind that could mean only one thing – that the Selenites’ sub-lunar tunnels reached as far as the armoured dome itself. If that was the case, and the Selenites knew about it, why hadn’t they acted to do something about the tremors themselves?

  Ulysses asked N’kel as much as they continued to negotiate the twisting miles of abandoned chambers and slug-cut passageways – the same party of five that had first entered the Empress’s audience chamber together; Ulysses, Nimrod, N’kel and the two hulking, soldier-caste Selenites.

  We abandoned these tunnels long ago, she thought-formed.

  “Why?”

  For us to maintain the atmosphere we need to survive, the Uuhge have to eat. If we stayed still for too long and starved the Uuhge, they would die, while we would dehydrate and ultimately suffocate.

  “How large is the colony?” Nimrod asked.

  The whole is made up of approximately thirty thousand individuals.

  Ulysses was quiet as he peered at the walls and dome of the cavern, his suit-lights barely able to illuminate the edges.

  This one cavern alone was vast. And there were features that were recognisably Selenite – or rather space-slug – in design, but this place had been abandoned long ago. A fine dusting of regolith sand covered the smoothed floor. There was an eerie air about the place. It was like walking through a mausoleum.

  “How long have your kind been here?” Ulysses asked.

  Since the passage of the comet sent us off course, two thousand of your years ago.

  Ulysses didn’t know what to say in response to that revelation.

  N’kel suddenly broke away from the party, approaching the curving wall of the chamber with quick, darting strides.

  See, she said, pointing with a claw.

  Ulysses and Nimrod looked.

  “Good lord!” the usually unflappable butler gasped.

  The two men joined N’kel at the wall. They could see the markings more clearly now, the shadows cast by the lanterns highlighting the marks made by chitin-axes centuries ago.

  The intricate carvings were not unlike those found in the Trois Frers cave in the Pyrenees – that Ulysses had visited once on a family holiday when he and Barty were children – the Nazca lines of Peru, or the Tanum petroglyphs. But at the same time there was something otherworldly and inhuman about the stone-cut images.

  It soon became apparent that the carvings were a pictographic record of the history of the Selenite civilisation, etched into the undulating grey walls of the cavern.

  It took Ulysses a moment of study to realise that the story was told from right to left, the more recent carvings being those they must have already passed on their way through the abandoned portions of the Selenite city.

  Ulysses saw the depiction of something that looked like a seed pod, or a cluster of spider’s eggs, and to the
left of that a depiction of what could only be a crash or explosion. The markings that followed these were simplistic depictions of the Selenites themselves and the beasts they employed to constantly renew and expand their hive, including mantis-like spider-things that Ulysses and Nimrod had not encountered for themselves. Looking at the monstrous representations more closely, Ulysses was glad that they hadn’t.

  Other carvings showed ranks of what were obviously soldiers venerating a bloated arachnoid form residing atop a raised platform within a domed chamber; troops paying fealty to their Empress.

  These wall-carvings were made by our ancestors.

  “And how long ago were they made?” Ulysses asked.

  The first ones during the time of the first Empress, N’kel replied.

  “And how long ago is that, exactly? How long is a generation? I mean, how old are you?”

  If you mean in terms of measuring the passage of time in relation to how frequently the Earth and Moon travel around the star you call the Sun, the Selenite began, speaking slowly, as if giving herself time to think, then I am 114 years old.

  THIS IS THE place, N’kel’s gentle voice spoke inside his mind, as their party came to a halt, and Ulysses could immediately see that she was right.

  The Selenite tunnels showed no sign of coming to an end but something else had intruded into them from above, pillars of mooncrete and reinforced steel thrusting through from the surface like the roots of some giant alien plant.

  Ulysses approached one the pillars, passing right the way around it.

  “Okay,” he said. “But how do we get in?”

  Without any warning the ground around them began to shudder and shake. Ulysses was forced to grab hold of the pillar to stop himself losing his balance altogether. Nimrod, cat-like in his movements, kept his balance, as did the Selenites. Dust showered down onto them from the roof.

  It was almost a minute before the quake subsided but Ulysses could hear N’kel’s voice quite clearly over the din of the crumbling rock.

  It’s this way, she said. Follow me.

  The fissure lay not much further on. It had formed between one of the pillars and the roof of the tunnel that the foundation support had been sunk into. Ulysses had no idea how far below the crust they were at this point, but it seemed likely to him that the fissure would lead up into the base above if it went anywhere at all, and N’kel seemed certain that it did.

  The crack must have been formed during the construction of the base or – what seemed just as likely to Ulysses – as a result of the constant moonquakes that were afflicting this region. If it hadn’t been for the Selenites’ air-filled tunnels, when the crack formed, the dome above would have begun to lose its atmosphere.

  Ulysses smiled wryly to himself. It was a crack in the surface of the Moon that had taken them into the world of the Selenites in the first place, and it was another crack that was going to get them out again.

  “Righty-ho,” he said, “last one up’s a rotten egg!”

  THE CRACK WAS wide enough for a man – or Selenite – to pass through, but only just. Like a natural chimney through the rock, the fissure described a zigzagging path through the Moon’s crust, the rift providing the climbers with plenty of handholds and ledges for them to put their feet on. In places it was almost like climbing a ladder or a flight of highly irregular stairs.

  Ulysses led the way, sending showers of grey dust down onto the heads of those following him but he was saving any apologies for later, knowing that they could all too easily be overheard by whoever it was that might be occupying the dome.

  The climb took longer than Ulysses had been expecting – the foundations must have been sunk far into the Moon’s crust to anchor the dome, limpet-like, to the floor of the Jules Verne Crater. But at last, Ulysses looked up and saw the glimmer of light above him. Dousing his own helmet light, he took the last ten feet of his climb very slowly until he cautiously poked his head through into the chamber above.

  Wedging himself at the top of the fissure he quickly turned his head from left to right, taking in the confines of the small storage chamber in which he found himself. Other than a few cargo crates he could see nothing – certainly no signs of human life – and so he gave the signal for the others to follow him up.

  Nimrod was first to enter the room after Ulysses; the armoured head of one of the soldiers was next. Ulysses had not necessarily expected the Selenites to do any more than lead them to the place where they might enter the dome, but he felt glad that N’kel and her bodyguards were coming too. After all, everyone knew there was safety in numbers.

  When all five of them were ready Ulysses made his way over to the only door he could see and, moving with heightened caution, his pulse thumping in his ears, he turned the handle and opened it a fraction.

  The corridor beyond was empty and devoid of any decoration, as was the one after that, and the T-junction they came to after that.

  The base certainly did not appear to have been built for anything other than some entirely practical purpose. From what they had seen so far, it certainly wasn’t somewhere that had been built with human comfort in mind.

  Ulysses pressed on, and where he led, the others followed.

  The gently curving corridors all seemed to be leading one way, towards what the dandy took to be the centre of the moonbase. The further they went into the dome the higher the ceilings of the corridors became, as if they mirrored the shape of the arching roof. If that was the case, then they were certainly steadily working their way towards the centre.

  The passageways were steadily broadening too, but they were eerily empty, not only of people but of any equipment that might help them determine for what purpose the base had been built in the first place.

  Ulysses began to wonder if it there was anyone here at all, or whether – with the deaths of Shurin, Rossum and Bainbridge – the project had faltered and remained unfinished. But that would have meant someone had known what they were up to and wanted to stop them before they could complete their work. Was that why Barty had been killed, he wondered. But then why was there power and air inside the dome? It didn’t make sense – unless it wasn’t uninhabited after all.

  And then, with Ulysses caught up in his musings, they reached the centre of the dome. The echoing silence of the labyrinthine passageways gave way at last to the pulsing whub-whub-whub of a fan and the dull hum of living machinery.

  Ulysses was the first to peer around the corner of the floor to ceiling opening in the wall in front of them.

  “Oh my God!” he breathed. “I don’t believe it! Nimrod’s it’s –” He turned to share what he was seeing with his manservant, his words giving way to shocked silence.

  The first thing he noticed was that the Selenites were gone. He had no idea when the three aliens had abandoned them but they certainly weren’t there now, leaving him and his weary butler to their fate.

  The second was that he and Nimrod had picked up two different hangers-on instead.

  Standing in the passageway behind them were a young man and woman. Each was holding a gun, both of the weapons trained on the intruders. Other than for their over-large hand cannons, they looked like any other smart, young couple enjoying the sights of the Moon for the first time.

  “Well, well, well,” said the woman, stepping out of the shadows, one eyebrow raised, a cruel smile curling her lips and a triumphant glint in her eyes. “What have we here, Mr Chapter?”

  “We would appear to have company, Miss Verse,” the man replied.

  “And unless I’m very much mistaken, it is the redoubtable Mr Ulysses Quicksilver who has deemed to honour us with his presence. You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you? Well following us here was your first mistake.” She glanced around her at the empty corridor. “Not bringing back-up would appear to have been your second.”

  “And I know you too,” Ulysses growled, realisation dawning. “You were on board the Apollo. I saved your life.” He turned to the man. “And your
s!”

  “Oh, I stand corrected. That would have to have been your first mistake,” Veronica Verse said, pointing her pistol at Ulysses’ face. “Still, no hard feelings, eh? After all, business is business. Now turn around and start walking or I’ll blow your bloody brains out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Sphere

  T MINUS 21 MINUTES, 48 SECONDS

  “HANDS WHERE I can see them!” the woman screeched, stabbing her gun into Ulysses’ face again.

  Never once taking his eyes off her, Ulysses slowly did as he was instructed. If she and her companion had wanted them dead, they would be lying on the floor by now, a tidy bullet hole through each of their skulls.

  “And turn around.”

  Again, the dandy and his manservant silently did as they were commanded. The hitman remained silent, a contented smile playing about his lips.

  Ulysses felt the nose of the woman’s pistol poke him in the small of the back, even through his environment suit. He grimaced.

  His mind was suddenly a focused needle of light. Had he caught up with Barty’s killers at last? Had he saved their lives during the incident on board the Apollo XIII only for them to murder Barty and now threaten his life and Nimrod’s?

  “Now move,” the woman snapped.

  A weapon trained on them each, and their own inaccessible to them beneath their environment suits, with leaden steps Ulysses and Nimrod trudged through the towering aperture and entered the central chamber.

  It was hemispherical in form, formed from moulded mooncrete supported by a spider’s-web of steel girders, lit by a dozen electro-globes hung on lengths of cable from the roof. The room was ringed by a raised walkway lined with banks of curious equipment that ticked and hummed, dials spiking and lights flickering in response to some unknown process. But it was what stood on the far side of the chamber that had so shocked Ulysses when he had first peered inside.