by David Brush
“We made it,” he managed, suppressing the urge to heave again. He wiped his mouth with his hand, raising his gaze towards Haley. “They didn’t poison you, did they? They unbound you.”
She nodded, clenching her fist subconsciously.
“What do you remember?” he asked, staring at the tiny slivers of glaze left in her eyes.
“Of my bondage to you? Everything…” she said, starting to feel ill at the thought. “You took my life from me. You killed our friends, sold out our people, and destroyed who I was inside. You turned my own flesh into a prison I could do nothing to escape.”
“You could have left me in the river.”
“I should have,” she replied, frowning. “But if the sphinxes capture you, then all of humanity would suffer. You’ve done enough damage for one lifetime. I’ll kill you myself before I let them take you.”
James shifted, moving his back up against the tree. “For what it’s worth, not a day has gone by that I haven’t hated myself for what I did to you.”
She spit on the ground in front of him. “That’s what it’s worth. You’re more like Nightrick than you even realize. When we get off this rock, I’m leaving for good. If you or Nightrick try to stop me, I’ll shoot you both dead.”
“We can talk about that once we’re not being hunted anymore,” he said, putting pressure on his wounded leg as he eased back onto his feet, using the tree for support. The appendage pulsed, but held. “We need to keep moving. If they catch up to us, it’ll all be a moot point anyway.”
Haley rummaged through the soaking rucksack at her feet, pulling a small datapad out. She tried the power, and the device glowed back to life. “They let us go, you know.”
“Why would they?”
“Because they’re probably trying to figure out where we’re going. They haven’t got an accurate planetary map of Dawn. Maybe they mean to locate our force’s deployment zone.”
James stuck his forefinger down his throat and regurgitated the remaining water that had been swirling around in his stomach. It spread across the dirt, branching into the first pool. “Well then, they’re going to be disappointed. They could have captured our entire force a moment ago.”
Haley slid her finger across the datapad’s display, studying it momentarily before stashing the machine back in her bag. “The GPS went down when the orbital station was neutralized. I could’ve relayed it through the Eternity, but with that option taken as well, I’ve been tracking an unknown transmission since we landed. I have no clue what’s giving off the signal, but that’s the direction I took us when I evacuated the crash site. I’m hoping it’s one of the installations.”
James nodded. “Well it’s either one of ours or one of the sphinxes’. One way to find out.”
Haley stared at him for a moment, then stood up, slung her rucksack over her shoulder, and walked deeper into the forest.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The small transport roared across the dry land of Dusk, passing over a seemingly endless spattering of ancient ruins. Rubble lay scattered everywhere with little organization, except for the rather rectangular pattern encompassing the site that looked to be the remains of a once mighty wall.
“Welcome to the ancient city of Old Andalaria,” said the Dread Lord. “This is the last site of true antiquity left behind by the Andalarian Empire.”
Nightrick glanced over at his captor. “And why have you brought me to it? I’m not an archeologist.”
“Nor am I in need of one. You see the temple there in the distance? It’s hard to miss; it’s about the only structure left standing. Within its walls is housed a piece of technology beyond the understanding of any other civilization in this universe. That is why I have brought you.”
Nightrick turned his attention back to the terrain below, taking in the odd patterns in the stonework as the transport descended onto a landing pad on the outskirts of the temple. As the thrusters cut out, the doctor stood up and followed the Dread Lord and his guards off of the ship and out into the courtyard. All along the face of the grey stone walls were purple vines, winding around carved pillars and hanging free down the sides like a shawl.
The group walked through the archway and into the main chamber at the heart of the large structure. The interior consisted of only one room, with a circling walkway constituting a second floor. Open space extended up eight stories to the top of the temple, where small cavities carved into the stone allowed light to shine down onto the floor below, casting shapes against the ground. Thirty or so humanoid creatures bustled through the interior, barely acknowledging the newcomers.
“Hmm,” said Nightrick, watching two borrrians crawl over towards the metallic object in the center of the room. They held scanners of some sort in their slimy appendages. On Earth, they called the creatures slugs for their mucosal appearance. A trail of thick goo leaked out from behind them as they moved about the room. “These people aren’t laborers, I take it.”
“They’re scientists,” said the Dread Lord, gesturing towards a sphinx fidgeting with a light screen. The avian cocked its head for a moment before approaching. Like the rest of his species, he stood about a head over Nightrick and had the same hard physique that came naturally to his kind. The alien’s head looked almost human, which to the doctor’s eyes fit quite unnaturally on the lion-like body. The creature’s feathered wings, retracted, just slightly protruded from behind him.
“Dr. Nightrick,” he said, extending his thick hand. “My name is Dr. Oro Mudaw.”
Nightrick took the hand firmly in his own. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a sphinx who speaks our language as well as you do. I’m impressed. Our tongue is hard on your kind.”
“Only to lesser minds. I’ve always been very interested to meet you. I suppose you could say that I’m an admirer of your work. The Forge was ingenious, really. I never calculated its possibility when I was designing the Solar Spear.”
Nightrick furrowed his brow slightly. “Ah, so you’re the person I can thank for destabilizing our star.”
The sphinx smiled. “No hard feelings, I hope. As your kind say, ‘all’s fair in war.’”
“It’s love and war, but I suppose that’s true enough,” said the doctor, turning his attention to the roped off metallic object resting to the left of him. “So I take it this is the technology you mentioned, Francis? It looks like a satellite of some kind.”
The Dread Lord stared at the object for a moment. “Not a satellite. It’s a probe. We’ve taken to calling it the Anomaly.”
“I hope there’s more to it than that or you’re wasting all of our time.”
Dr. Mudaw cleared his throat. “It’s not from this universe. It’s not even from this dimension from what I can tell. The spatial geometry of the construct makes no sense.”
“It came from the gods,” said the Dread Lord. “The Transcendent.”
“And you know this how?” asked Nightrick, trying to make sense of the structure in front of him. Every time his mind decided on an orientation, the probe seemed to shimmer into a new arrangement.
“I convened with them when our crew first crashed on this planet. We were marooned a few miles away, over the Great Summit. I went out on my own to look for help, hoping to find some way off of this desolate world. After some days of wandering, I found this place and learned the truth of our universe.”
Nightrick frowned. “And that is?”
“We’re mere rodents, fighting for scraps, compared to what lies over the horizon. For a short time when I first happened upon this temple, the probe returned to life. I spoke with the gods. They were… disappointed in the progress of our universe. Thousands of years ago, before the Age of Man, the Andalarian Empire was on track to transcending the material, physical plane that we exist in. In those days, they developed close ties with the Transcendent, who were their only true peers. It was hoped that in due course, the Andalarians would bridge the gap between our dimension and theirs, allowing both to exist in a duality befitting the di
vine, beyond anything that your mind could comprehend. On the eve of their civilization’s ascent, for some reason lost to time, the Andalarians disappeared from our galaxy. In their wake, the lesser lifeforms like ours were able to rise from their primordial ooze to forge some semblance of empire, though a travesty compared to what existed before them.”
“And what exactly did these ‘gods’ tell you to do?” said Nightrick, turning from the probe as his head began to pulse.
“Little. They cut short our conversation when they realized that I was not in fact Andalarian. What I did learn is of no concern to you, Doctor, at least not yet. For now, I want you focused on how to reactivate this instrument and wield it, that we might use it to bridge our universe and theirs.”
Nightrick turned to face his captor. “To what end?”
The Dread Lord wheezed. “Why, to become a god.”
Off in the distance, the two rocky worlds seemed to almost touch as they raced around the gargantuan metallic construct that encompassed their star. The structure looked like a frame, floating thousands of miles off of the actual surface of the plasma. Katherine Denova spared the behemoth one last glance before turning towards her navigation coordinator on the deck of the Eternity. “Where are we?”
The navigation officer slid her fingers across the display in front of her, zooming the map in. “According to the star charts, we’re in sphingian space, Commander. We came out somewhere near their wild region. The planets and stars in this sector are still mostly untouched.”
“Not entirely true,” replied the commander, looking back towards the partially encapsulated star. “They’re setting up a Dyson Sphere in this system. They must mean to begin settlement in the near future. Once they’ve harnessed that star’s energy, they’ll be able reformat all of the terrestrial space surrounding it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the navigation officer, swiping another salvo across the screen. “So far we’ve picked up no signs of life in the immediate vicinity, but I’ll keep you posted if that changes. The engineering department has been buzzing since we dropped out of warp space. I believe Lieutenant Commander Tang would like a word with you at your earliest convenience. It sounded important though. As she so eloquently put it, ‘you nearly ripped the fucking ship in two.’”
Denova sighed. “She’s just being dramatic. I’m sure the ship is holding together… er, mostly together, just fine. I’ll go have a word with her though. We need to get the reactor back online so we can jump to human space as soon as possible. Sitting here like this is just asking for it.”
The commander turned and walked through the entrance to the bridge, the heavy blast doors sliding aside at her approach. Walking down the reflective corridor to one of the numerous tube systems snaking throughout the ship, she rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes. After waiting a moment at the platform, one of the officer transport trams pulled up along its track. She entered the vehicle and punched the code for the reactor bay into the terminal sitting in the center of the cart.
“Turing,” she said, sitting down on one of the plush chairs nearby.
“Yes, Commander?” replied the entity, projecting its brilliant green visage up through the AI terminal adjacent to the routing computer.
“I need a full systems report on the condition of the Eternity. I don’t want Tang ambushing me with more bad news when I arrive. Better to hear it now where I can vent without anyone else catching the show.”
“As you wish,” replied the AI, gesturing towards the lone display screen hanging at the front of the cart. A large diagram of the Eternity appeared on the overhead, with pulsing red sections highlighting the extent of the damage. Red flashes shown all over the dreadnought, with a particularly distinct ring of damage seeming to circle the ship’s equator.
“Well look at that,” said Denova, leaning back in her chair. “She wasn’t kidding, we did nearly rip the ship in half. How long will the repairs take?”
“To return the ship to one-hundred percent? A year or two in a shipyard, Commander. No repair crew in the galaxy could hope to patch up this much damage with onboard supplies.”
“Goddammit,” she said, shifting over for a closer look at the screen. “Well what about fixing the reactor? If we patch it up appropriately, will the ship hold together for the time being?”
“Most likely, though we have sustained significant damage. Any more fighting and the Eternity will be destroyed. If Lieutenant Commander Tang manages to get the reactor back to fifty percent and the hull workers can patch some of the more severe chassis damage, the ship will be mobile and retain its utility as a command platform for the time being.”
“Good enough,” said Denova, standing as the tram came to a halt in its terminal within the reactor bay. She walked out of the vehicle, across the empty boarding platform, and straight through the metal door leading into the lieutenant commander’s office.
“We’ve forgotten how to knock, I see,” said Tang, looking up from the report she’d been scanning. “Glad you were finally able to make some time for the reactor you nearly obliterated with that little stunt.”
Denova crossed her arms. “That little stunt saved everyone onboard this ship. It was jump or die.”
“Well, there’s still plenty of time left for it to be jump and die,” said Tang, turning her display screen around so that Denova could get a look at it. “See this? This is the part list needed for just the reactor repairs. The only good news I have for you is that we have enough extra armoring on hand to repair a large amount of the hull damage.”
“And let me guess, the bad news is that you don’t have the parts you need for the reactor?”
Tang nodded. “Yes and no. We don’t stock our dreadnoughts with this kind of damage in mind. When you thrash a reactor this badly, you’re usually scuttling the ship. It’s honestly a miracle that it’s still in one piece. We’re very lucky and very unlucky in terms of where we exited warp space.”
Denova frowned, consciously unclenching her jaw. “And why is that?”
“You saw that Dyson Sphere the sphinxes are building? They’ll have what we need on one of those two scaffolding worlds that they’re using for the construction. All we need to do is convince them to loan us the parts.”
“They’ll launch all of their materials into that star before they willing give us anything that resembles help.”
“Then the only other option is we steal the parts and jump before they can react,” said the engineer, leaning back in her chair. “I’ll lead a team down to the surface and see if we can find what we need.”
The commander nodded. “Fine. I’ve already deployed a couple of our probes for recon. If it turns out that those worlds are uninhabited, as initial scans are suggesting, then you can go. Take a small group, be surgical, and above all else, be fast about it. Even if there aren’t any sphinxes here, I’m sure we’ve already tripped an alarm by entering this sector.”
“Most likely,” said Tang, swiping a command into her datacuff. “Their main problem is going to be the same issue they face trying to reinforce their fleet on Dawn: their military has withered from the Plague. At the moment they’re barely fielding enough crewmen to man the ships defending their inner empire. They’ve even pulled most of their automated vessels back to bolster the defensive grid around their core worlds. Sending a full fleet here to defend abandoned rocks isn’t going to be near the top of their to-do list right now. That having been said, they might spare some ships if they realize who’s onboard this dreadnought and how damaged it is. But don’t worry about all that, Commander. No one knows sphingian technology better than I do. Looting their installations is my specialty.”
CHAPTER NINE
The massive temple seemed even larger once everyone had left for the day. The stone walls, lit mostly by harsh synthetic light projected from a series of alien tube lamps, shone brightly as Dr. Nightrick pushed his dark blast goggles down over his eyes. He paused for a moment, swiveling the Tesla rifle along its tripod, before le
aning over and flicking on the power siphon. The coils running the length of the instrument began to glow as electricity surged through the cables and into the gun’s capacitor. Dr. Mudaw hovered overhead, propelled by his large wings, scanning the metallic probe in the center of the room. All around the complex, the lights flickered wildly, finally cutting out and plunging the chamber into darkness. As the power surged, the instrument discharged, firing a large arc of lightning into the Anomaly. The alien probe glowed for a heartbeat, stimulated by the pulse, before fading again as the power dissipated. After a few moments, the generators around the temple kicked back on, relighting the room.
Dr. Mudaw landed, tucking his wings behind his back. “It stabilized in three dimensions for one-point-two-five seconds that time. It appears that once the probe receives enough power, it’s able to normalize dimensionality. How they managed to build a device capable of that is well beyond me.”
Nightrick pushed the blast goggles back up onto his forehead. “It’s irrelevant anyway if we can’t find a better way to power the device. We’re literally at the energy threshold here. We blew half the lights in the temple this time.”
The sphinx nodded, looking up at the running lights still smoking overhead. “So we did. If we try to push any more electricity out of that arc generator, we’re liable to fry ourselves when it explodes.”
“It’s primitive anyway. It’s more of a handheld than an effective generator. We need to find a better way to power the Anomaly or studying it is going to be borderline impossible. There’s no way of taking an accurate reading of that thing while it keeps shifting around.”
“True. There has to be something on this backwater wasteland with the capacity to supply the energy we need. I’ve heard talk of a shipyard not far from here. Perhaps somewhere in that desolation there’s still a working reactor we could use.”
