by R F Hurteau
Antiquity’s
Gate
Book One
Three Days Till Dawn
A Novel by
R.F. Hurteau
Copyright © 2019 R.F. Hurteau. All rights reserved.
Contents
Prologue
One…It’s Not Smoke
Two…A Dish Best Served Cold
Three…Cause and Effect
Four…Of Rats and Spies
Five…What Lies Beneath
Six…Tapestry
Seven…The Snow’s Cold Embrace
Eight…Out of the Loop
Nine…Once More unto the Breach
Ten…Delusions of Grandeur
Eleven…Reunion
Twelve…The Truth Within
Thirteen…Outside Perspective
How long did it lay, in the ice tucked away,
That silent strange traveler from space?
Alone, without sound, it hid in the ground,
Content in the snow’s cold embrace.
Till upon it they stumbled, by such majesty humbled,
So eager its secrets to find.
If only they’d known, they’d have left it alone,
But their greed, it had made them all blind.
That which slumbered, now woken, with wonders unspoken,
Took root and continued to thrive.
How could they have guessed? They’d have left it to rest,
If they’d known what they had was alive.
It confused and confounded, intrigued and astounded,
And still they continued to pry.
How they’d fret—what regret!—when they realized that,
It was death. It was death from the sky.
Prologue
THE headlamp’s faint circle of light whispered back and forth across the steel panel as sparks flew like drunken fireflies from the tip of the welding torch. Tobias could no longer feel the biting pain as they lit upon his exposed skin. Droplets of sweat slipped along the creases of his furrowed brow to skid down his nose. His heart pounded like a warning bell in his ears as the hollow drone of a passing train rang against the metallic walls of the chamber.
It wouldn’t be long now, and he tried to console himself with the hope that this would be his final attempt. Tobias had already run out of fuel once, and there was no guarantee he would be lucky enough to steal a third torch without being caught. Stealth had never been one of his strong suits.
The torchlight shuddered and his breath hitched in his throat. No. No, not yet!
As if to defy his wordless plea, the flame weakened. It retreated, sputtering several times before vanishing altogether. The brightness of the beam remained, its afterimage seared into his vision.
“No!”
His exclamation echoed back at him, ricocheting off the high ceiling of the chamber in callous mocking. The growing chill whispered over his face, intensified by the perspiration that had coated his skin as he fought to control each shivering breath. He licked his lips, tasting salt.
Giving the empty canister a defeated shake, Tobias reached down to rummage through his sack for matches, knowing it was no use. Coming up empty, he spun on the spot, the torch hanging limply in his hand as his eyes searched the blackness for answers. Deprived of the singular focus of his mission, his adrenaline waned.
He turned back. A faint red glow still outlined his nearly- completed square. Six inches. Six inches was all that separated him from whatever lay beyond.
“Damn it!”
Out of options, he slammed the torch against the wall. The blows were jarring, yet Tobias pounded over and over, sheer strength of will flowing into the void where all of his careful planning had failed him. There was no return from this. If the Elder Council became aware of his discovery, he knew where he’d end up. That stinking pit was the only way they could assure his silence.
Tobias did not wish to be silenced.
He railed against the wall, cursing it with uncharacteristic gusto. This was a mistake.
“No!” he protested into the emptiness. “I saw it!”
Go back, teased the insistent whisper. There’s still time.
“It’s too late!”
He knew he was only yelling at himself as he slammed the torch against the wall once more in hopeless frustration. The vibrant orange glow of molten steel had faded first to a dim red streak, and now to little more than a memory. It was as though it had never existed at all. As if it were all in his mind. As if—
Tobias struck again, and this time when the torch made contact the metal gave way. Not much, not nearly enough, but he’d felt a subtle, grudging shift.
With renewed vigor he resumed his pounding. The upper edge of the panel began to bend outward and cool air rushed through the small opening like water over a dam. Heaving with exertion Tobias stepped back, allowing the draft to wash over him as his breath came in gasps.
Gathering all the force he could muster he lifted his leg, kicking with his heel until at last the steel relented and he stumbled forward, his foot meeting no further resistance as it moved from the darkness of the chamber into the inky blackness of the unknown.
Torch clutched in white-knuckled fists like a lifeline, Tobias righted himself.
He stepped up to the hole and gazed through.
One
It’s Not Smoke
HISTORY would not remember Ripley Prior.
His footsteps echoed down the corridor as he ventured further into Sigil’s north wing. He didn’t come down here often. Maybe he’d passed it? He wished there were signs.
Ripley paused beside an unmarked door and reached a tentative hand toward the keypad, second-guessing whether this was even the right room. Relief washed over him as the door slid away to reveal a glowing bank of monitors and the back of a familiar, curly-haired head. Felix sat up straighter, attempting to look busy, but when he recognized Ripley he slouched back down in his chair again.
“Oh.” He was flicking a small silver toggle back and forth between his forefinger and thumb. “I thought it was someone important.”
Ripley offered a wry smile. “Sorry to disappoint.”
He scanned the room, taking in the mess. A musty scent hung about the place, though it might have been his imagination. The scrubbers kept the air as clean here as anywhere else in the city, even if Felix seemed to try his best to defy them.
Cleanliness was not something Ripley’s friend aspired to.
All around him a distinct air of neglect reflected Felix’s underwhelming enthusiasm for his work. The whole place was littered with stacks of paper, overstuffed boxes, bits of wiring and insulation sticking out of crates at odd angles. Like a fungus, thought Ripley, amused.
There was a cot shoved into one corner, empty dining trays scattered across the thin blanket. Ripley made a disapproving sound as he cocked his head in their direction.
“You know those aren’t supposed to leave the commissary.”
Felix only gave a half-hearted shrug. “If they don’t want me to take the trays, they should give us longer mealtimes. I don’t want to inhale my food and race back here. I’ll get cramps.”
“Well, you could at least bring them back eventually.”
Ripley cleared away what looked to be log reports from the only other chair in the room. He glanced down at the top sheet, skimming over the monotonous columns.
1498/7 No activity.
1499/1 No activity.
1499/2 No activity.
1499/3 No activity.
1499/4 No activity.
The stack was thick. He flipped through a few pages to reveal more of the same. Ripley frowned as he looked up, searching for a clean surface on which to place the logs and settling for the top of a stack of nearby boxes. They leaned slightly to the left, the contents of the ones above too heavy for those beneath. The edge of the bottom box had collapsed inward over time as it surrendered to its inescapable fate.
“I don’t even know what it is you do here. Looks like a whole lot of...” Ripley’s gaze trailed across the silent bank of monitors, “no activity.”
Felix’s shoulders jerked as he snickered.
Sigil performed annual personnel reviews, moving people around based on ability and need, but the odd disappearance of the previous Observatory Attendant had created an unexpected vacancy that Felix had jumped at the chance to fill. The position had its pros and cons. For instance, Felix now held the great honor of being a department head—since there were no other employees.
“What’s that do?” Ripley asked, pointing.
“Huh?” Felix’s eyes flitted from Ripley to the toggle he’d been playing with. “Oh.” His lips pursed in feigned arrogance. “Well, it’s a science facility, you know. It does science-y type stuff.”
Technically, Felix’s job was to keep watch on the area surrounding Sanctuary, but there wasn’t much to watch.
“Seriously?” Ripley groaned. “Are you supposed to be fiddling with it like that?”
“Meh. It’s broken. I requisitioned parts for it.” Felix hooked a thumb over his shoulder without looking, pointing toward a particularly precarious tower of crates. “But no one’s come to fix it. The Anniversary is in two days, and everything has to be running nice and smooth. Everything except for the Observatory. Nobody cares about Felix and his Observatory. I could be dead down here and no one would discover my body for months!”
“That’s not true.” Ripley’s expression turned grave. “I doubt they’d find the body at all, given the state of this place. They’d be more apt to assume you’d just up and left one day, like the last guy.”
Felix pushed his heels against the panel in front of him, tipping his chair back and rocking so that its legs creaked in alarm. “Fair enough,” he conceded at last, brow furrowing as he gazed around the room with a thoughtful expression.
Given his predisposition for laziness, the job seemed to suit Felix quite well. Staring at the barren Antarctic landscape all day certainly couldn’t be considered taxing work.
“I could take a look at it,” Ripley suggested.
“Be my guest. But the whole damn panel is shot.”
As proof, Felix slammed a fist down amidst the controls, which offered no protest of light or sound. “It was broken when I got here. Not that any of the working ones are much more exciting, mind. Numbs the brain a little, staring at these things six days a week. I’m surprised I haven’t yet lost the power of speech.”
“If it’s really that dull, you could request a transfer.”
Felix scoffed. “Yeah right.” He kicked off from the panel so that his seat spun in a slow circle. “Like they’d honor a request from a Halfsie.”
Ripley frowned. “I bet they’d at least give you your old job back.”
Felix let out a little huff of disdain. “I don’t want to go back to Pod Manufacturing. What do we need pods for? ‘Research,’ they say. If you ask me, they do too much research and not enough of anything else.”
He paused, a shadow of resignation passing over his eyes. “Anyway, it’s not like this job is hard or anything. No one bothers me, which is a nice change. And then there’s the mystique, you know?” He had returned to the rhythmic click, click, click of his toggle. “Ladies love mystique.”
Ripley snorted. “Well, it would help if all of your equipment was functional, at least. And besides, you only have to impress one lady with your ‘mystique.’ You know, Willow? Your wife?”
As Ripley slid out of the chair onto his knees a sharp pain in his side made him wince. He ignored it as he began sizing up the station’s access panel.
Pretty standard, nothing exciting. Not that he’d expected it to be, but there was always hope.
“Where are your tools?”
“I don’t have any.”
Ripley sighed and pulled his faithful multi-tool from his back pocket. “Did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in?” he suggested with a faint smile as he began working the tiny screws. They didn’t offer much resistance, which surprised him. Stuff this old usually didn’t cooperate with so little protest.
“Not my job, is it? I contact Engineering, they make it go. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”
Ripley’s smile faded. Growing up, he’d always dreamed of being an engineer. He had a penchant for mechanical things. Alas, engineering positions were always given to Therans, whose longevity meant that openings were rare.
Still, Ripley hadn’t abandoned his hopes of being the first Human to join their ranks. Not until his assignment day, when he’d found his sixteen-year-old self at a registration desk staring down at a manual entitled Vital Systems and You and being pointed toward orientation.
He slid the heavy panel away to expose a nest of wiring, the grating of metal on metal masking a heavy sigh. The color-coded insulation was faded and brittle, yet another reminder that beneath its shiny exterior, Sanctuary was falling apart.
Like the people that crafted it, Theran technology seemed to hold up better against age than any of the Human components that made up the city. Unfortunately, the Human components accounted for a large part of the inner workings of most of Sanctuary’s systems. Ripley scrutinized the mess with an appraising eye.
“Where are the parts they sent down?”
Felix walked away, and Ripley heard the sounds of scraping and a rather concerning crunch before his friend returned, dropping a box to the floor beside him with an unceremonious thunk.
“In there somewhere. I think.”
“Thanks a bunch.” Ripley’s sardonic reply was muffled by the metal housing into which his dark, tousled head had disappeared.
“Anytime, buddy.”
“If you don’t know what’s wrong with it, how’d you even manage to order parts in the first place?”
“I just got one of those requisition slips at the front desk and marked off one of everything. Not sure what they actually sent me, though. I didn’t check.”
Ripley bit back a retort as he traced the pathway of the wiring with his eyes, checking connections at critical junctures. Felix had signed off for a box of parts without even looking what was in it. Ripley could only imagine the headaches his friend had caused for countless dutiful Sigil workers over the years. How many of the meticulously accounted-for items that the city depended on had gone missing under Felix’s less-than-stellar stewardship?
Right now, however, Ripley wasn’t in the mood to argue about it. He wanted to focus on the mystery of the broken machine. Working on a puzzle took his mind off his own mundane existence, if just for a moment.
It had been five years since he’d become an employee of Sigil, the heart and soul of Sanctuary. Ripley’s aptitude for mechanics had landed him in Core Operations. Day after day, he dutifully kept track of Sanctuary’s vital systems, recording numbers off water reclamation gauges, checking geothermal readings, ensuring proper coolant levels.
It was tedium. Unadulterated tedium.
He’d been told during orientation that this was a prestigious position. He should be proud of his work. Keeping Sanctuary running was dependent on him and his teammates, they’d said. It was a great honor to have been chosen for such an assignment, they’d said.
It was also incredibly dull.
That, they had conveniently failed to mention.
Sometimes it felt like they were all just trying to look busy. At least Felix was honest about
it.
“You know, this kind of negligence would never fly in Core Operations,” Ripley reprimanded as he found his hand momentarily trapped between two thick coils of wiring. He freed himself and moved on with the exploration.
“Uh, fun fact, buddy, but we aren’t in Core Operations. I mean, I can see how you could get confused, I suppose. They’re both just so gosh darn exciting, right?”
Ripley rolled his eyes. The most exciting thing that had happened to him in recent memory had been a slight imbalance in the air filtration system that had failed to self-correct. Heightened nitrogen levels had left the population of Dome One, commonly referred to as D1, light-headed for the space of about an hour before Engineering could repair it. Ripley had known he could have fixed it on his own, but tinkering with life support systems by unauthorized personnel was forbidden. Instead, the citizens of D1 had experienced an hour of oxygen-deprived giddiness, a time he had spent shoved to the corner of his station, crowded out by engineers who treated both him and his space with no more regard than a foot shows to the floor.
At this particular moment, however, Ripley felt free to tinker to his heart’s content. There was no one here watching over his shoulder, no one demanding logs of his every action. It was just him and a machine that needed fixing.
And Felix, of course. He prodded Ripley with the toe of his boot. “You almost done in there?”
That Felix was unconcerned about the malfunctioning hardware came as no big surprise. An involuntary shudder ran down the length of Ripley’s spine. Thinking about the vast, empty world outside was something he tried not to do. But with the anniversary of the city’s founding approaching, it was hard to avoid the pervasive thoughts. One hundred and twenty-five years since the end of the world. Was that what they were celebrating?
He thrust his hand deeper, feeling his way along a thick, braided wire which he suspected would lead him to the console’s power supply. A stray lock of black hair slipped down as his forehead creased, brows knitting together as he frowned.
Felix had been watching Ripley dip in and out of the machine with a bored expression, but now a flicker of interest sparked in his emerald eyes. Although they had the characteristic mother-of-pearl sheen that all those of Theran descent shared, they lacked the stuffy, superior attitude so common to purebloods.
