by J. N. Chaney
In a way, they were right.
Since Sentinel could bring the Archetype to Dash if needed, they left the mech in a flat, rocky highland among the foothills of a rugged mountain range on the far western edge of the main continent. Rough peaks soared among valleys carved from ancient rains, the alluvial fans of gray debris spread out over ground marked by huge boulders, their edges still bright and sharp.
“Lotta rockfalls here. This is hard country,” Dash remarked, eying one rock that was the size of the Slipwing, which he boarded for the remainder of the trip to Featherport. The traffic controllers seemed as uninterested in the Slipwing having fixed her fictional helm issue as they’d been in the problem in the first place. That was fine, as far as Dash was concerned. Boring was good. No one paid any attention to boring.
Featherport sprawled along the coast, a bustling city hazed with smog. The spaceport occupied a plateau overlooking the city; as they debarked the Slipwing, they just made out all but the northernmost part of the place.
Leira looked at Dash. “This is a big planet, and we’ve got about a day and a half to explore it. Please tell me you have some idea where we should start looking for this core.”
Another ship, a squat freighter, dropped out of the clouds and descended toward the spaceport with a roar of thrusters. Dash waited for the commotion to subside, then said, “Yeah, I do.” He pointed at the part of the city obscured by a massive outcropping of crystalline rock thrust out from the plateau. “It’s right down there.”
Leira blinked. “Really? It’s right here?”
“It’s somewhere in the north end of the city. The closer I get to it, the better I seem to feel it’s location.”
Amy grinned. “That’s amazing! Did you know that before we got here? Is that why we came right here?”
Dash shrugged. “I guess so, yeah.”
“That’s weird,” Amy said, shaking her head. “Really amazing, but weird.”
“Weird is pretty much my motto these days,” Dash replied. “Anyway, we’re not here for the nightlife—which actually kind of sucks, because I could use a night on the town right about now. Let’s head down there, find this core, and get back to the war. As much as I relish the idea of bad beer and a surly bartender, I don’t think the Golden will wait for me to finish my pint.”
“After you, boss,” Conover said with a grin. “No beer. Just juice.”
“Power, you mean,” Dash said. Conover was a bit young for anything stronger than juice, but as to alien tech, he was old enough to hold his own.
By previous agreement, they left Amy and Viktor with the Slipwing to watch over her and do some repairs she actually needed. Dash, Leira, and Conover, meantime, caught a shuttle from the spaceport, down into the city.
They rode the shuttle in silence, that was finally broken by Conover, who said, “I’m not in love with her or anything, you know. She’s just a really interesting person.”
Dash looked at him, momentarily confused by the kid suddenly bringing up something that wasn’t about power cores or ancient alien wars. “What?”
Conover’s face had flushed again. “Amy. Viktor made it sound like I’m in love with her, back on the Forge. I’m really not.”
Dash looked at Leira, sitting opposite them in one of the shuttle’s passenger bays. She smiled, but just shrugged.
“First of all,” Dash said, “yeah, I think you are in love with her.” He held up a hand to stop Conover’s protest. “Or you think you are. Or wonder if you are. Anyway, second of all—that’s okay.”
“It’s not like that, Dash.” Conover’s protest was swift, but weak.
“Conover, Amy’s a great girl,” Leira said. “I know I’m really fond of her. It’s no surprise you’re attracted to her. Like Dash said, it’s fine.”
“Yeah, but Viktor made a big deal out of it.”
“Was just lashing out a bit,” Dash said. “That’s no surprise, either.” He gestured around at the shuttle’s other riders, scattered among the passenger bays. “These people are all blissfully unaware of what’s going with the Unseen and the Golden, the Archetype, the Forge—all of it. They don’t know there’s a whole alien race out there anxious to exterminate every one of them.”
“I kind of wish I was blissfully unaware of it, too,” Leira said.
Dash nodded at that. “Yeah, me too. Anyway, we’re involved in some galactic, superweapon-grade bullshit here, Conover. I think we can forgive Viktor a bit of lashing out.” He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. “And Leira’s right. Amy’s pretty awesome. Honestly, I think you’ve got pretty damned good taste.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
The flush in Conover’s face had faded, replaced by a grateful look. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Now, how about putting all that aside and focusing instead on, you know, helping us win this war.”
Conover nodded and settled back, just staring out the shuttle’s window and watching the cityscape now blurring past. “I am sixteen, you know. Almost seventeen, and a year older on most worlds. My home had longer years.”
“I know, and that’s why I wish you could think about Amy first, and war second,” Dash said with real regret.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of place you’d find an Unseen power core,” Leira said.
Dash had to nod as they looked around this most northern district of Featherport, where Dash was sure the core was stashed. It was probably the oldest part of the city, the buildings looking tired and worn, although still reasonably tidy. A lot of them seemed empty, though, a symptom of the shift of Featherport’s affluence to the newer districts farther south.
They started walking from the intersection where the taxi had dropped them off. All Dash knew was that they were close. The trouble was, he couldn’t tell exactly how close, or in what direction. It seemed that Dash would need to just walk about, trying to get a general sense of where he wanted to go. It made for a tiring and frustrating afternoon, as the three of them trudged along streets, turned along cross-streets, and even traversed back alleys and narrow laneways, their feet dusty with alien soil by the time they’d covered the first few blocks.
Fortunately, the district’s largely deserted character held up, meaning they did most of their walking along quiet avenues, among silent buildings. Most seemed to be dwellings, often grouped in clusters of four in a single structure, but few were actually occupied. Dash wondered why the area hadn’t fallen into more evident disrepair. Somebody, it seemed, thought it worth putting enough work into the place to stop it turning into a slum, and there was a quiet air of purpose among the people they did see, which was at odds with everything Dash expected from a place with so many empty buildings.
They saw only occasional pedestrians, and just a few vehicles gliding past with the electric hum of repulsors, their plastic skirts keeping the worst of the dust at bay. None of them seemed at all interested in Dash and his two companions. In fact, the only person who did seem curious about them was a scrawny boy, maybe twelve years old, with tousled brown hair, shabby clothes, and bare feet. As soon as they caught his eye, though, he turned and hurried away, vanishing around the corner of a desolate shop with empty windows and part of a faded sign that proclaimed something about SERVICES.
“You’d think that after dealing with the Unseen and the Golden and all the associated, galaxy-shaking stuff, that I wouldn’t be creeped out by some random kid.” Dash loosened the flap on the satchel that he, like the others, had slung over his shoulder. Besides a water bottle, a hand lamp, and a few other odds and ends, each packed a small pistol and a couple of reloads.
Fortunately, the regs around carrying weapons turned out to be pretty lax on Shylock. Still, they’d left the plasma pistols behind, because a gun that could blow away entire buildings might just be pushing the tolerance of the planet’s authorities. There was such a thing as overkill, even on a world where the law was meant to be bent now and then.
Conover gave him a cu
rious look. “It was just a kid, though.”
“And the comet where I found the Archetype was just a comet, right up until it wasn’t.” Dash shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t take anything at face value anymore.”
They moved on, continuing their ambling way through the warren of streets and alleys. Dash was aware of the power core as a sort of distant call, the direction of which was impossible to discern. Sometimes it seemed nearer, and sometimes farther away, but it stubbornly refused to resolve into anything really definitive other than a hum that tickled at the periphery of his senses.
After another hour of trudging about, Dash held up a hand. “We stop here for a minute.”
“What are you hearing?” Leira asked.
“Everything, and nothing definitive. That’s not going to work for us from this point on.”
They’d reached a small square, around which several buildings with oddly elaborate facades loomed, the stonework covered in a patina of dirt that lent an air of dignity to the place. An equally fancy fountain graced the middle of the square, but dirt and dead leaves had taken the place of bubbling water. This was, Dash had worked out, probably the place where the sensation of being near the core was the strongest. He could see nothing, though, to suggest where a power core might be. He doubted it was inside one of the buildings, because how could it possibly have not been found by some tech hunter by now? It could be inside the fountain, maybe—but they’d have to chip or blast away the dun-colored stone it was built from, and that would be tough to do.
“Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way,” Conover said, while sitting on the edge of the fountain and pulling off a boot to massage a sore foot. “Maybe, instead of just wandering around and hoping you find it through your knowing about it, maybe we should use some logic.”
Leira, who’d sat beside him, asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe we should be trying to figure out where the Unseen would have put the core. Let’s face it”—he gestured around with his free hand—“it’s not like any of this was here two hundred thousand years ago.”
“Unless the Unseen have agents working for them today, the way the Golden have Clan Shirna,” Leira replied.
“I think the kid’s onto something,” Dash said. “It probably isn’t going to be just sitting around. In fact—” He pointed at something he’d just spotted, an arched doorway on the side of a nearby building that seemed to lead to stairs going down. “You know what? It probably won’t be on the surface of this place at all.”
Conover stuffed his foot back into his boot and they crossed the square to the doorway. A filigreed metal gate that was rusty and grimed with accumulated dirt, blocked it. It was locked, but Conover pulled out a cleaning rod for the pistols and began to work it into the tumblers with surprising delicacy. His tongue stuck out as he squinted, moving the rod back and forth until they all heard a distinct click. The lock opened without further resistance.
Dash grinned at him. “Little bit of criminal enterprise in your past, kid?”
Conover stared blankly back. “No. It’s just a simple mechanism, involving a moving cam and a stationary—”
“It’s okay,” Dash said, holding up a hand and grimacing. Humor seemed lost on Conover, especially when it came to engineering. “You got it open, and that’s what matters.”
They switched on their hand lamps, cutting through the darkness to reveal a winding set of cracked, uneven stone steps, each surface streaked with years of moisture, grime, and mold. They led down into a dank, brick-lined room that their lights revealed to be empty of anything but a damp, musty smell and some junk—old cargo crates and a grubby tarp—piled in one corner. Whatever this place had been used for, it was now apparently used little, if at all.
Dash, though, ignored the room, instead concentrating on the core. It was definitely closer, and the hum he’d been hearing rose to a chorus. His senses began to warble with the presence of Unseen energy, making him pause for a second in an effort to triangulate.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice echoing off the damp stone. “It’s down here somewhere, under the ground. I knew it.”
“That could be a problem,” Leira replied. “Everything up above us is either paved or buildings.” She shone the lamp around. “And this is still all recent construction, at least compared to when the Unseen would have been here. So maybe there are some ancient ruins or something even deeper under this city? Sort of goes to the question of how long people have been here, and how much have they built?”
Dash shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it? Even if we can just pass ourselves off as another party of tech hunters, if we have to start digging, it’s going to take us way too long. Time isn’t on our side, but we have an advantage the hunters don’t. We have me.”
“In any case,” Conover said, “you’d think that, given how many tech hunters have pored over this planet, anything that could be got at easily would have been found by now. I saw the piles of tailings all over the place. Those hunters aren’t playing around—they’ve scoured this place above ground and below.”
They sat in silence as they chewed over the situation. Dash felt an echo of uncertainty. Sure, there was a power core here, but it didn’t matter if they couldn’t get to it. He reached out, letting his senses play across the landscape, but beyond a wildly echoing hum, he found nothing definitive. The core’s signal was nowhere and everywhere, all at once.
“I’m pushing too hard,” Dash said. “Can’t get a fix, and if I can’t then I think we’re out of luck.” He ground the words out, trying to fight the sense of waste—wasted time, wasted effort, and leaving the Forge when it was the one sure thing they had to work with, other than the Archetype and his ship.
In other words, they’d taken the last throw and, true to Dash’s luck, they’d lost.
“Well, this hasn’t worked out,” Dash said. “I guess all we can do is head back."
“Guys?” Conover said sharply. “We’re not alone.”
Conover had turned his lamp back to the stairs where it now illuminated a small figure who stood in a wary, almost crouched posture, a hand raised to shield his eyes against their light.
The boy shuffled forward a couple of steps, bare feet scraping softly across the rocky floor. “Are you guys looking for something?”
Dash scowled, but it was Conover who spoke up. “What we’re doing here is really none of your business."
“Conover, let’s just take a minute here to talk to one of the locals.” Leira walked forward, stopping a few paces away from the boy and kneeling.
“We’re not really looking for something. We’re looking for a way to go down, deeper under the earth. Because we’re explorers. Do you know if there’s a place like that around here? A way we could go that goes even deeper than this place here?”
Dash was surprised when the boy immediately nodded and pointed back in the general direction of the stairs. “Sure. There’s a door. It’s supposed to go way down into the earth. That’s what I heard, anyhow.”
Leira glanced at Dash then turned back to the boy. “Can you show us where it is?”
“The monks won’t let you inside.”
“What monks?” Dash asked. “And why won’t they let us inside?”
The boy shrugged. “They don’t let anyone inside. They say it’s forbidden.”
He said forbidden in a way that somehow made it seem mystical. Conover, though, just sniffed.
“Monks. Really? What monks would—” Conover stopped when Leira held up her hand.
“That’s okay,” she said. “We’ll talk to the monks. All we’re asking you to do is take us there.”
The boy nodded then held out his hand, palm up.
Dash smiled. “And they say there’s no universal language.” He pulled out one of the credit chips he’d brought along for just such an occasion and tossed it to the boy, who snapped his fingers closed around it. Nodding, the boy turned for the stairs with a decisive air that had been missing
seconds earlier. Money had that curious effect. It could make you taller—or a lack of it could make you feel small.
Dash looked at the others and offered a final shrug, then they all set off, following the boy. In seconds the hum of the power core began to sing in his blood, and he smiled into the gloom.
13
“I think he’s taking us out of the city,” Conover said.
Dash frowned at their surroundings, the buildings becoming fewer and smaller, separated by empty lots and stands of trees, some of the underbrush thick enough to qualify as a jungle. They’d already been walking for nearly half an hour, making him wonder if there was more to this—if the boy was just trying to scam them, or if something even more sinister might be afoot. Maybe the boy, and the supposed ‘door’ were just bait for some gang, a way of luring people out into some remote place to jump them, rob them—or worse. He’d only even told them about this door in response to Leira’s question about a way to go down, deeper into the earth. A quick, clever kid, he might have just told them whatever he thought they wanted to hear to lead them out here.
Hadn’t he even said, I don’t take anything at face value anymore? And yet, here they were. Some bets were riskier than others, and sometimes you had no choice about putting your money down.
Trees and thick undergrowth now lined both sides of the road. Buildings, mostly lapsed into ruin, stood further back, just visible among the leafy bushes and dangling branches. Aside from the scrape of their own feet on the cracked pavement, all Dash could hear was a fitful wind that rattled and hissed through the foliage. He reached for the flap covering his satchel to ready the slugger; at the same time, he opened his mouth to raise a warning—
“Over there,” the boy suddenly said, stopping and pointing. “See?”
Dash peered along the line of the boy’s grimy finger. Another of the dilapidated buildings stood in a clearing, partly enclosed in an old security fence. A weather-beaten cargo pod hunkered nearby, capping off a scene of such decay that Dash was amazed anything was standing at all.
