The Dying Light

by Sean Williams

  “The Box never seemed to have any worries.”

  “It wouldn’t.” Roche scanned the sky for any sign of Daybreak, but it wasn’t visible. “Myself or one of the outriggers”—she forwarded him the unique frequencies Idil had given her—”will stay on the surface to wait for Disisto. The sooner he leaves, the better. Call me if there are any problems.”

  Haid signed off and Roche returned her attention to the world around her. She was resting in the very low local gravity near one of the hairlike spikes protruding from the surface of the moon. The soil below her seemed to glitter faintly—an effect magnified by the crackling of the ion bridge high above her. When she bent to touch it, she learned that it was only a centimeter or two deep; below that was black rock, inert to all the suit’s sensors.

  “You’ll find it difficult to chip,” said Idil, balancing on her main thruster not far away. “Some of us tried to analyze it when we arrived, but didn’t have much luck. It might be some sort of artificial material we haven’t come across before. Designed from the molecules up.”

  “Any idea who made it?”

  “That’s hard to say. There are living quarters off one of the central chambers. We can’t get into them ourselves, but we managed to get some of our remote probes in.”

  “Did you find anything? Any reason why the builders left? Any bodies that might help identify the Caste?”

  “Nothing. In fact, the quarters were never inhabited. They were possibly intended as a shrine, or a museum perhaps.”

  Roche considered this. An ancient, unknown Caste, close enough to Transcendence to no longer need its hereditary form but not so removed to have lost all affection for it, might have modified or built the small moon for purposes that had become meaningless over time. Mok might have drifted far from its origins before being captured by the double-jovian, or—and this was an area Roche hardly dared venture into—the entire arrangement could have been artificial. The two gas giants, the ion bridge, and the single moon were an unlikely combination to have formed naturally. Although the possibility was daunting, the universe had a capacity for surprise far exceeding Roche’s own imagination and she knew better than to base any opinions on what she considered normal.

  The aspirations and achievements, and even the whereabouts, of the Caste responsible for the artifacts were as impenetrable as the artifacts themselves. And that only made her more curious. Assuming the outriggers joined her cause, she would have days before the Box arrived. Which would be plenty long enough to have a decent look around.

  * * *

  Disisto complied readily with her instructions, and was suited and able to go within the hour. Half an hour after that, he had joined Roche on the surface with a utility containing the requisitions her suit needed to remain operating for an extended period. While it looked after itself, she introduced him to the two outriggers.

  Mil’s voice was frosty. “You’re from the Galine station?”

  “I ran dock security.”

  “How much say do you have regarding policy?”

  “None, really. That’s all handled by the chief.”

  “Linegar Rufo?”

  “Yes.”

  If Mil was appeased by that, Yul was not. “Your people stood by while a clan was murdered.”

  ‘That’s simply not true—” Disisto began.

  “You deny that you had observers in the area of Aro when the spine was attacked?”

  “No, but—”

  “They did nothing.”

  “What could they have done? They were only a handful. If your people couldn’t do anything, how could mine?”

  “At least you could’ve talked to us afterwards,” said Idil. “Traded information.”

  “To have broadcast like that would have given away our location!”

  “You’re lying,” said Yul. “You broadcast regularly on the old channels.”

  “Through relays.”

  “Exactly. That must be safe enough. Whoever it is you’re talking to can’t be any less dangerous than us.”

  Roche noted the comment. It seemed the outriggers also suspected Rufo of trying to contact the Sol warrior.

  “This is all irrelevant,” she interrupted. “Disisto is here because he’s interested in the ruins you’ve found. He’s not here as my ally, or yours. Far from it. If you object to his presence, I’ll happily send him back.”

  Yul grunted, the waldoes on his all-suit twitching uncertainly.

  “We will suffer his presence,” Idil decided. “But if he gets into trouble, don’t expect us to help.”

  “At least we know where we stand.” Disisto’s voice was stiff and formal.

  Roche didn’t trust herself to comment. “Shall we get on with it?” she suggested.

  They descended into the moon, this time via another shaft. Roche had no way to tell this one from the rest, apart from its map coordinates. Again she had to rely on the outriggers to navigate for her and Disisto as they zigzagged through the tunnels.

  “There are four thousand two hundred seventeen entrances on the surface of Mok,” Idil said as they traveled. “The tunnels themselves extend for many thousands of kilometers within the moon. We haven’t even come close to mapping them all. Some go nowhere or loop back on themselves; others end in chambers like the one you saw earlier; still others lead to museums, or what might be machines of some kind. It’s hard to tell. But I get the feeling that we haven’t touched upon the stuff that actually matters. It’s hidden in some recesses of this moon we haven’t discovered yet.”

  “You think this is just a smoke screen?” Disisto asked.

  “It’s a possibility. A labyrinth designed to make it difficult for intruders to get in.”

  “Or out,” Roche added quietly to herself.

  “They could’ve built a door out of the crust material and kept just about everything out,” said Yul.

  “Perhaps that wasn’t enough,” Idil ventured. “Depends how fearful their enemies were, I guess.”

  “It seems like you picked a good place to hide, then,” said Roche. “Too good, almost.”

  “When the clan of Wide Berth died,” said Yul, “it was an obvious place to seek shelter: distant, relatively secure, and belonging to no one else. We were hoping we’d go undetected.” The outrigger’s all-suit rotated slightly on its axis. A shrug, Roche intuited. “We have ruins similar to these recorded in the spine’s archives. Other clans have found them and passed on the knowledge. This one was unrecorded because we are the first outriggers to come here. Until DAOC announced that they were seeding the inner belts with prowling mines, the system was never considered worth looking at. It wasn’t until Thin Trunk spine passed on the word that there was a vacant turf large enough for two spines, and Wide Berth was free at the same time as us, that we decided to come...”

  Yul talked on, but Roche let her mind wander. She was less interested in why the outriggers had come here than how they could help her. No one had mentioned it yet, but she was probably their only hope of leaving the system. If the Kesh destroyer that delivered Galine Four didn’t stop to pick them up—which was unlikely—they would be destroyed along with the ruins they inhabited. And while Roche wasn’t keen to use blackmail to get the help she needed, she would do so if it was the only option left to her.

  It wasn’t just the matter of information on the Sol warrior she wanted. If the outriggers were working with her, the chances of rescuing Maii and Cane improved. The only question was, still, how?

  When Yul had finished, Roche broke in with: “How heavily armed are you?”

  “That depends,” Idil responded.

  “On?”

  “If you want to know what weapons we have, the answer is none. But we do have cutting lasers, ion drilling cannons, spectrometry bombs, nano seeders, seetee crust-rippers—”

  “Ah.” Disisto suppressed a chuckle. “The smuggler’s toolkit: weapons that never show up on customs declarations, but always appear when you try to haul them in.”


  “These are not weapons,” Idil said coolly. “We would only use them as such if we are attacked.”

  “Why didn’t Wide Berth spine do that on Aro?”

  “They did, but...” Idil hesitated. “They didn’t know how to retaliate. We are not trained at war.”

  “What about the stories I’ve heard about dust-shoals and booby-trapped asteroids?” said Disisto.

  “All retaliatory,” Idil insisted. “If one of our kind makes the mistake of broadcasting the discovery of a rich deposit, it is not uncommon for that deposit to be taken away from us. We can’t prevent a system’s owners from moving us on; even if we have a legal licensing agreement for the territory, the fact that they technically own it works against us. We are regarded as scavengers, or worse, by most people. Most of the time, we lose everything we have worked for, and that is all. But if we are expelled by force, we feel it to be our right to retaliate. So we leave reminders that we have been there, and that we are angry at being robbed.”

  “It’s ironic,” said Disisto. “The Sol clone warrior used some of your own tactics against you, over Aro.”

  “But his motives are decidedly more malicious than ours,” said Yul. “Or yours.”

  “True,” said Roche. She wanted to move the subject on, but before she could, her suit signaled that she was receiving a tightbeam from a source nearby.

  “Disisto? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Haid gave me this frequency if I needed to talk to you in private.”

  “Good thinking.” She glanced at her instruments; none of the outriggers seemed to have noticed the private conversation. “What do you want?”

  “To explain what happened back on Aro. You seem to agree with the outriggers that the chief is at fault.”

  Roche sighed. “You want to defend Rufo?”

  “There really was nothing those observers could have done to save anyone.”

  “You don’t know that. And they certainly didn’t know that at the time.”

  “They were only there to observe—”

  “What if they’d observed survivors on the ground?”

  “They didn’t, did they? Listen, Roche: if one of our observers had been captured, the location of Galine Four could’ve been traced. That would’ve placed all our lives in danger.”

  “I thought you said the clone warrior had left the system.”

  “That’s what I believe, not the chief. And it pays to be safe rather than sorry.”

  “What pays isn’t the issue here. I’m talking about basic Humanity: helping people in trouble.”

  “I’m sure Rufo would have allowed the observers to intervene,” Disisto said, “but the fact is hours would’ve passed before signals from the observers reached the station and our replies went back. By then, the attack would’ve been over. There was nothing those observers could do—except watch.”

  Roche didn’t respond immediately. Disisto’s last point was probably true, but it didn’t allay her doubts. And there was something else, something he wasn’t telling her....

  “You can ask Mavalhin if you don’t believe me,” he said into her reflective silence. “He was one of the senior observers of the Aro attack.”

  “Well, that explains why they didn’t use their initiative,” said Roche. “Or follow their conscience.”

  He was quick to reply: “Exactly.”

  The sharpness of his voice startled her, but she had no time to ask him what he meant. The outriggers were slowing again, and—now that she was paying attention to her environment—she became aware that she was feeling gravity. Gently at first, but becoming stronger, her sense of up and down was returning.

  The only problem was, it was coming at right angles to where it should have been. She let the suit orient itself properly against the field and scanned ahead to see where they were headed.

  Not an exit, as she first guessed. The tunnel around them ballooned outward until it reached almost ten meters across, then joined another to form the stem of a Y. Two more joined, one after the other, and Roche began to feel as though she were swimming through the veins of an enormous beast.

  “We’re approaching the heart of the maze,” said Idil. “Be careful. Gravity does odd things ahead.”

  Roche was grateful for the warning as, moments later, up suddenly became down, then began to corkscrew rapidly around her. Her inner ears complained at the disorientation, and for one horrible second her gorge rose in a manner she hadn’t experienced since her early days of training. Only when the sensation subsided did she become aware of Disisto’s chuckling.

  “Neat trick,” he said.

  “What’s that?” asked Yul, his voice as surprised as Roche felt.

  “The only safe way past that point is to fly past,” Disisto explained. “It’d be impossible to walk without bouncing off the walls.”

  Roche cast an eye behind her, studying the width of the tunnel. “Another defense?”

  “That’s the only thing we can think of,” said Idil.

  “What were they hiding?” asked Roche.

  “I don’t know,” said Disisto. “But can you imagine the technology required to construct all of this?”

  “Opaque your visors as we go through this next bit,” Idil interrupted, a mandible waving toward the end of the tunnel. Ahead of them a cerulean membrane seemed to ripple as they approached. “Don’t worry. It’s quite safe. Just better to see it cold the first time.”

  Roche’s stomach felt full of water as she took the outrigger’s advice and let the instruments in her left eye guide her through the membrane.

  * * *

  There, rotating oddly in the center of a spherical chamber easily a kilometer across, was a pinch of space that defied Roche’s best efforts to describe. It was hard to see directly, appearing almost as a shimmer in her view of the walls behind it. But it was more than a mirage. Much more. It had its own structure, its own definition—yet it wasn’t anything at all. In a strange way, it reminded her of the anomaly they had passed through in order to enter Palasian System.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It might be,” said Idil. “It’s hard to tell from within the Gauntlet, but we’ve found no reason to doubt it.”

  “An anchor point—inside the moon?”

  “Why not? There’s no particular law that says they have to be in open space. The vacuum’s as perfect as it can be in here. Even the atoms and particles spilling off us somehow disappear into the background flux. As long as it doesn’t bump into the walls, or anything else, it’s quite safe.”

  “But an anchor point is fixed to the space-time grid, not the things around it,” said Roche. “The ones near systems have to be taken apart and rebuilt regularly or else they drift. To try to fix one in place while the moon orbits Kukumat and Murukan and Hintubet would be impossible, surely.”

  “And yet there you have it,” said Idil. A waldo waved at the odd patch of space before her. “It doesn’t work, of course.”

  “Because the whole system is in hyperspace,” Roche said. “The only way out is through the external boundary, and even then only by slow-jump.”

  “It cost us lives in Free-For-All figuring that one out,” said Yul.

  “But an anchor point is a weakness in space-time,” said Disisto. “What’s this a weakness in?”

  “Good question,” said Idil. “If you find the answer, let us know.”

  A thought struck Roche: that if the anchor point was fixed, and the system revolved around it, then that would explain why it could be contained in such a way. But that didn’t make sense either. Her mind hurt just thinking about it.

  “Why did you bring us here?” she said after a moment.

  Neither Idil nor Yul replied immediately. She looked around at the outriggers. They were floating motionless in the vacuum. She repeated the question.

  “Sorry,” said Idil. “The Plenary has begun. We would all like to attend, so we’ve brought you here to keep you occupied. There’s a lot to look at withou
t leaving this chamber. Down the far end are some structures that will interest you.”

  “You’re leaving us here?” asked Disisto, glancing at Roche.

  “No. The Plenary doesn’t require our actual presence. We’ll simply interface with the others from here. It’s just that we’ll be preoccupied if you try to talk to us, that’s all.”

  Roche tried unsuccessfully to read Disisto’s expression through his transparent helmet.

  “That sounds fine to me,” she said. “We won’t be going anywhere.”

  The all-suits floated motionless in the zero gravity without response.

  “Shall we take a look?” Disisto said, indicating the far end of the chamber.

  The anchor half hid a structure of some kind. Roche couldn’t make it out. “After you.”

  Disisto used his thrusters to head off across the space, cutting a chord deeper into the chamber rather than hugging the outside. Roche did likewise, keeping an eye on her instruments.

  “Don’t go too close,” she said as they neared the anchor point. Although it seemed, perversely, to shrink in size, she was wary of it all the same. In the highly unorthodox domain of the Gauntlet, anything was possible.

  “So they’ve convened a Plenary,” he said, ignoring her instruction. “To talk about what?”

  “Us. Whether or not to help me.”

  “I see.”

  His gaze was fixed forward. He began to fire his thrusters, nudging his way around the anchor. This close it looked like smoked glass spun into a tangled web and seen through a foggy lens. It still looked as though it was moving, although in which direction was hard to determine.

  “Do you expect me to help you when it comes time to rescue your friends?”

  “You’ve told me you won’t betray Rufo.”

  “That’s right. I have.”

  “You won’t change your mind?”

  “No.”

  “It would be easier if you did,” she said. Then, watching his movements around the anchor point: “I can take over your suit at any time, you know, in case you were thinking of throwing yourself into that thing.”