Exiles (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book One)

by Dan Worth

  ‘My thoughts also.’

  ‘Something has united them. They have ceased to fight among themselves as they have done for millennia. Now they move with a single purpose. ‘

  ‘Do we know why?’

  'Alas, no. Our intelligence services were unable to determine this,’ she paused. ‘We did send reconnaissance missions to the core. None of them returned, so to speak.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Many came back, but the ships and their crews were… changed, infected - slaves to their will. We had to destroy them before they reached any of the worlds within the Sphere. To allow them to re-enter our society would have been disastrous.’

  ‘We must do something. We can’t just sit here and wait for them to reach us.’

  ‘Yes, I will take this to the Council. They cannot possibly ignore this threat.’

  ‘I fear some may, they are reluctant to even involve us in the affairs of our galactic neighbours.’

  ‘Perhaps they are right. Would it be proper if we were to charge in, dealing out death and justice in an arbitrary fashion? How can they grow if we do everything for them? No, the Commonwealth must defeat the K’Soth on their own. We shall merely act as a safety net, so to speak.’

  ‘It’s just that sometimes I fear that the Council members are too smug and secure. They need to face up to grim reality and gain some perspective.’

  ‘Yes, it is easy to feel secure here, isn’t it Irakun? Five hundred light years inside the most advanced and heavily defended volume of local space. But what is that in galactic terms? Very little I’m afraid. We are but a speck that has flourished in an eye blink and can vanish again just as quickly. Those we face are far, far older than anyone else still abroad in the galaxy. They are as uncaring and as implacable in enslaving or destroying younger species as we would be curing a disease or rooting out a troublesome swarmer nest. It is only their dwindling numbers that prevent this now.’

  ‘Quite, but something from our all too brief history may yet be our undoing.’

  ‘Ah yes. I take it you are referring to the Fulan system?’

  ‘Yes. I was wondering if you had any further advice as to our reaction should an incursion occur.’

  ‘No Irakun, I still agree with you. In the event, we shall deploy the fleet and crush them before they have a chance to establish themselves. If Fulan becomes a base of operations for the Banished Ones then it is not just the Commonwealth and the K’Soth who may suffer, we may not be able to contain them.’

  ‘You think they are still strong enough, even after all this time?’

  ‘I do, and I will personally sanction the use of all means necessary to nip any incursion in the bud. I will take full responsibility for my actions.’

  ‘What of the Council? How will you explain the deployment of our fleet to the other Meritarchs?’

  ‘Perhaps it is time they knew the truth about our sordid past? The last time this occurred only a few were told and all were sworn to secrecy. The others were not told anything, no matter how much they asked us.’

  ‘All of this trouble, because of a couple of academics who should know better.’

  ‘Cor always was a fool, leaving the Sphere to live in the squalor of the Commonwealth,’ said Beklide scornfully. ‘It defies all reason.’

  ‘The files we have paint him as something of a renegade.’

  ‘Perhaps he is. Perhaps he’s just too caught up in his work to realise what he’s being used for.’

  ‘Well, would we? We know of the Shapers’ activities because we never keep our gaze from them. Blink, and the Shapers take advantage of our momentary blindness.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Beklide. ‘In dealing with this, we may have to blink. It will occupy our fullest attention I fear.’ She gestured at the playing youngsters. ‘Look at them, the blissful ignorance of youth. I am old, Irakun, I have seen and done much and lived a long and healthy life. I would like my descendants to do so as well.’

  ‘But if they come.’

  ‘Not if Irakun, when. Then, nothing is certain.’

  Chapter 21

  With the help of the students from the university, Katherine and Rekkid carefully dismantled the cracked wall stone by stone. To preserving the wall’s inscription they labelled and recorded the original location of each part in turn as they worked in order that the wall could be re-assembled or rebuilt exactly at a later date. Rekkid’s original plan to make a small entrance in one corner proved unworkable. The wall was so fragile that it threatened to collapse when they removed even a single block, so in the interests of safety they dismantled a section of the wall floor-to-ceiling to create an entrance.

  Katherine had once again chosen Bibarat as her assistant and the young Dendratha had eagerly agreed. It was whilst the two of them were painstakingly removing one of the heavier blocks that a shadow fell across them - a Dendratha shape was blocking the light from the illumination that had been erected to aid their work. Katherine turned and looked up from her work.

  Ekrino looked down on her and smiled. ‘Hello Doctor,’ he said. ‘I see you and the Professor are making good progress.’

  Katherine stood up and brushed some of the dirt from her trousers. ‘Your Grace, how nice to see you again. Did you have a pleasant trip from Erais?’ Ekrino nodded. ‘Well, Rekkid and I believe we may have found what we were looking for all along.’

  ‘The twelve priests?’ asked the old Dendratha excitedly. Katherine nodded. ‘Excellent, excellent, however I gather you were unable to interpret the inscription on this wall?’

  ‘Yes, that true I’m afraid, though we did make a record of it for future study and this wall is being dismantled in such a way that we can reconstruct it later. However, without any other source of reference it’s an almost impossible task I’m afraid.’ Ekrino looked downcast. ‘There was something I want to know though,’ she added.

  ‘Please, feel free to ask.’

  ‘If this chamber does contain the priests, why would they be sealed away in secret like this? It seems strange given their prominence in your religion.’

  Ekrino looked thoughtful. ‘Our religion’s history has not always been free from strife Doctor,’ he said. ‘In its infancy, we were regarded with a great deal of suspicion by those who followed the old ways, those who worshipped only the suns, and though it shames me to admit it, there is some evidence that sacrifices were part of the earliest ceremonies.’

  ‘Yes… yes we found bodies buried in the grounds that displayed signs of violence inflicted on them. Master Kukadis was most upset as I recall, he didn’t want to acknowledge the fact at all. He and Rekkid had something of a row.’

  ‘Kukadis may not like it but it is true, alas. It was one of many reasons why our people were persecuted at first. This place was raided and defiled several times. It is quite possible that the priests were secreted away to prevent their remains from falling prey to tomb robbers or vandals. It seems that the passage of time has erased their true location from our records and our collective memory, although it may explain the absence of the earliest documents from our records. The Book of Maran was of course copied by hand and added to and revised repeatedly over the years and so has changed gradually over time. It is now written in a different tongue to the original.’

  ‘That would make sense. We’ve encountered similar scenarios on Earth where the tombs of the wealthy or powerful were hidden to prevent them from being pillaged. It wasn’t always successful, though some lay undiscovered for thousands of years.’

  Ekrino looked at Bibarat, who immediately averted his gaze and fixed it on the floor. ‘And who is this young fellow?’

  ‘Bibarat, your grace,’ muttered Bibarat. ‘I… I’m a student at the University.’

  ‘He’s been very helpful,’ said Katherine. ‘He shows great promise in his field. His enthusiasm is quite refreshing compared to the attitude of some others I could mention.’

  Ekrino smiled at Bibarat, who smiled weakly back
. ‘Good, I’m glad to hear it. Well I shall keep you from your work no longer Doctor. I shall go and bother the Professor if I may. Do you have any idea where he is?’

  ‘In the adjacent chamber with Kukadis I believe,’ she pointed. Ekrino thanked her and shuffled away, leaning heavily on his staff.

  It was some time before the team had created a stable entrance large enough for the less agile Dendratha to squeeze through. This completed, they took torches and stepped gingerly over the threshold.

  The chamber beyond was low ceilinged and uneven. Their initial assessment had been correct - flickering torchlight revealed a natural cavern that had been worked by hand tools into a more usable space. The dry air was stale, un-breathed by living things for millennia. It reeked of age. Rekkid shone his torch beam into the utter darkness of the chamber’s recesses, revealing the wall niches, within which lay ancient Dendratha remains.

  Katherine and Rekkid examined the bodies, or what was left of them. Curled in the circular niches they had decayed long since, until all that remained were fragile skeletal remains clad in the remnants of ceremonial robes. The large, heavy skulls grinned at them from the darkness, paper thin skin stretched tight over bone. Mummified lips curled back in grotesque smiles.

  Most were buried with symbols of their status: rods of office tarnished with age, religious scrolls now little more than piles of dust and fragments of ribbon. Plaques and chiselled inscriptions underneath their resting places seemed to denote the identity of the cadavers but, like the script they had found on the wall outside, they were unreadable. There was little doubt as to who these remains were though, that much was obvious.

  Rekkid returned to the entrance and called for Kukadis and Ekrino to come and have a look. The two Dendratha eventually managed to squeeze their aged frames through the entrance and looked in amazement at what the team had uncovered.

  ‘Professor, Doctor, I must congratulate you on your discovery,’ said Ekrino, in a state of some excitement. ‘I would thank you on behalf of our faith but I doubt whether I can adequately express our true gratitude. Even Master Kukadis here is impressed and I dare say that’s a rare thing!’

  Kukadis smiled weakly at Ekrino. ‘Perhaps I was wrong about you and the Doctor, Professor,’ he confessed grudgingly. ‘It seems that inviting you two here wasn’t an entirely bad idea after all. No doubt Primate Makallis will be overjoyed at your find.’

  Katherine wasn’t really listening. She had noticed something about the bodies.

  ‘If I may ask,’ she heard Rekkid say to Ekrino. ‘What are your plans now regarding the remains? Since they are within the temple do you still plan to re-inter them?’

  Katherine noticed that the priests were not buried uniformly. They were all lying at different angles relative to the wall.

  ‘Well we will have to reconsider,’ replied Ekrino. ‘Perhaps we might make this tomb into a shrine instead. I shall consult with my brethren in order to resolve this in the light of this wondrous find.’

  The priests were all lying so that they faced towards one point. They were all looking at a pile of rubble in the far north-western corner of the room where the ceiling had partially collapsed some time ago.

  Katherine walked over to it and began pulling stones out of the way. Rekkid noticed what she was doing.

  ‘Katherine? What have you found,’ he called out.

  ‘Look at the priests Rekkid. What do you notice?’

  ‘Nothing. Look what…?’

  ‘Come and stand here.’ He did so. ‘Now look at them.’

  Rekkid shone his torch on each of the priests in turn. He swore. ‘They’re all looking at me! Well not at me, this corner of the room. Bibarat, give us a hand here with these rocks, Master Kukadis, if you wouldn’t mind enlisting a few more of your students to help?’

  ‘I wonder what’s behind here?’ Katherine mused. ‘Another chamber perhaps?’

  ‘Probably. This rubble didn’t show up properly on the scan we made, I expect that the jumble of surfaces gave off some odd returns. No wonder we missed it initially.’

  With the help of the students it didn’t take long to move enough rubble out of the way so that Rekkid and Katherine could step over the pile of rocks and into the next chamber. They helped one another to scramble over the treacherous mound of loose stones and then had the students pass their torches to them. They shone their light around the new chamber. It was cylindrical and unusually smooth and bare except for a circular steel plate bolted to the floor. This was pitted and brittle with age, but the plasticised plaque affixed to its centre was still readable. It was marked with rows of characters, regular geometric shapes that both Rekkid and Katherine had seen before many times. They were Arkari.

  ‘This chamber was sealed by Order of the Meritarch Council of the Arkari. Dictum 233, Article 3, Section 7. A31775.4.32 Unauthorised entry to this facility is prohibited by Arkari law,’ translated Rekkid. ‘A31775, that would be about ten thousand Commonwealth standard years ago. Shit, my people were here about the time the Dendratha formed their religion. The images in the temple weren’t just a coincidence. We have to see what’s inside!’

  ‘Rekkid, are your sure that’s such a good idea?’ said Katherine warily. ‘What about…’ She was interrupted by the chirping of Rekkid’s comm. He answered the noisy device.

  ‘Rekkid here.’

  ‘Rekkid, it’s Steven,’ the signal was poor, a result of their location deep underground. ‘You should come upstairs right away, Captain Spiers says that the Darwin has finished its survey and he wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Steven, can it wait? We’ve just made several amazing finds down here I…’

  ‘He says it’s important. He says he has to speak to you right now.’

  ‘Very well,’ replied Rekkid. ‘I’ll be up in a moment.’ He shut off the comm. and put it back in his pocket. ‘Katherine I’m sure this can wait, it’ll still be here for us later I suppose. Are you coming? It seems like the Darwin found something of interest.’

  ‘Better than this?’

  ‘Steven seemed to think so.’

  They returned to the surface. Katherine for one was glad to be free of the oppressive, airless gloom they had endured in the temple’s basement for so many hours, though she was anxious to return to their finds. They found Steven in a small side chapel where he had set up their communications equipment on a small table at the rear of the room. Shafts of coloured light from the stained glass windows cut through the half light, highlighting the dust in the air as it danced in the beams.

  The three of them sat around the small screen of Rekkid’s computer as he made contact with the Darwin. After a few brief seconds Spiers’ bearded face appeared on the screen.

  ‘Hello Captain,’ said Rekkid cheerfully. ‘I hear you too have had a most productive day. We ourselves have just uncovered evidence of Arkari interference in this planet’s history ten thousand years ago.’

  ‘Really?’ said Spiers. ‘That’s fascinating. Well…’ he gave a short laugh. ‘I apologise if it seems like I’m stealing the show here Professor but wait until you see this.’ Spiers’ image receded to the corner of the screen. The rest was now filled with a rotating globe of Maranos that showed the geological composition of the world as well as the topology of the surface. ‘We did a survey of the planet’s crust to determine its composition, to see if it would give us any clue as to events in its history and hence tell us how it got to be where it is.’

  ‘Yes, the conundrum of how Maranos came to rest at the Lagrange point.’

  ‘Quite. Well what we didn’t expect to find was this.’ As Spiers spoke a series of geometric shapes appeared inside the globe - slim cylinders that probed inwards towards the planet’s core. Two fat tubes a hundred kilometres in diameter pointed inwards from the poles, two slimmer ones pointed inward from opposite points around the equator, whilst another, much more slender, reed like structure penetrated the planet from a point on the equator situated half way between them. The cyli
nders terminated where the depth range of the Darwin’s instruments ran out, but dotted wire frames indicated their extrapolated shapes.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ said Katherine.

  ‘An interesting question Doctor,’ replied Spiers. ‘Simply put, we don’t have a clue. What we can be certain of is this: They are definitely artificial, and their size would seem to preclude them being constructed by the current inhabitants of the planet. Perhaps they were by the same people who built the rings, or maybe the Arkari? We don’t know as yet, but that’s where you come in. Anyway, the polar structures are buried under the seas, and our analysis of the sea beds indicates that although they have been buried by millennia of silt, they are almost perfectly smooth where the structures reach the surface. The two larger equatorial structures point directly at the rings we found orbiting the two stars. Furthermore, you are sitting right on top of that third, thinner equatorial structure, and I mean right on top: it’s tip breaches the crust exactly where that temple stands.’

  ‘Rekkid, that sealed entrance we just uncovered…’ said Katherine excitedly. ‘Maybe that’s it. My god, we wondered if we’d find any other evidence of the ring builders on the planet.’

  ‘Maybe. Captain, we just found a hidden entrance to some underground facility hidden in the bowels of this building, perhaps that’s it?’

  ‘It seems possible, yes.’

  ‘The entrance was sealed by my people approximately ten thousand years ago,’ said Rekkid. ‘We are going to attempt to open it.’

  ‘Well I wish you luck. I’m at a loss to explain the purpose of these structures.’

  ‘What are they constructed from?’ said Katherine.

  ‘As far as we can tell.’ said Spiers apparently examining another screen. ‘They are made from a super dense artificial composite similar to the ring material. It isn’t as dense though, or else it would inflict unusual not to say destructive gravitic effects upon the planet’s crust. But its construction is far beyond the capabilities of any technologies that we are familiar with.’