The Hightower’s communication net blasted out a series of codes and messages that Apollo had supplied him with. The seconds crawled by in agonizing slowness until the first confirmation reply came through.
He eased back into the command chair and let out a sigh of relief.
Might live long enough to meet another god after all.
His moment of relief was quickly replaced by a sense of wonder as visual images flickered to life on his screens.
In the distance the crescent of a beautiful blue and green world jumped out from the blackness of space. Even from the Hightower’s distance, it was apparent the planet glowed with the warmth of life. Clouds swirled above continents in a way that for a moment reminded him of the stormy clouds of Lodias, yet less menacing than those of the gas giant that rose and set above The City.
“It’s true,” Mik whispered to himself. “All of it. There really is another world, a world built for us.”
He looked for clear signs of higher orders of life, but saw nothing on the night side of the planet that gave off any visible light. The ship’s sensors picked up a number of satellites in orbit, including one particularly large station of some sort, but these showed no signs of activity.
He sent another message with additional verification codes embedded along with a request for landing instructions.
The Hightower’s voice-comm crackled to life.
“Yes, yes, I see that you’re human. And those are the correct codes. Set a course for the largest orbital station and dock. You can catch a shuttle there that’ll bring you down to the surface.”
Mik replied with a simple acknowledgment, somewhat surprised at hearing what sounded like a normal human voice. Who was speaking? It sounded like an older man, but he hadn’t been told about a human population already living here. Was there a third branch of humanity hidden on the new world?
He mulled over that possibility as he guided the Hightower toward the planet on the trajectory he’d been given.
The view of the station grew steadily on his screens as he neared, and once again he found himself surprised. The station looked…old. Not just aged, but like old tech. Boxy and patched together, it looked nothing like the shiny and sleek godships of Faraway or Apollo, or even the fighting ships that Tower had created.
A series of flashing lights led him to one of the docking ports on the planet-facing side of the station. The port was different from the type they used in Cityspace, but the Hightower had adaptive features that allowed it to mate with nearly any sort of hatch, similar to what the godships used. He entered the command for the ship to begin the process and waited for the indicator to signal that the docking was complete.
He felt a moment of trepidation at the thought of leaving the ship behind, even though, technically, he wasn’t leaving the ship completely behind. The mental interface implants he’d been been given after Talia opened the vault to the ancient Earth technology would allow Mik to be able to maintain control of the Hightower from the surface, at least in theory. The test runs had never included any situation like this.
When he stepped through the airlock into the station, he saw that the interior matched the exterior. Old. The air was thick and stale, the smell dank. There was no one to greet him, just another set of flashing lights leading him further into the interior.
After a few turns he caught sight of a servitor robot slowly rolling down the passageway. He stopped to inspect it. The machine didn’t respond to his presence. It was an unfamiliar model, but the impression of age permeated it as well. The Fixer in him wanted to take it apart immediately—first to greedily examine the technology for what secrets might be revealed, then to piece it back together exactly according to specs, cleaned and polished.
He reached out and touched the aging robot, resting his fingers on the aging metal. “I wonder what kind of sights you’ve seen, little bot,” he said. The servitor rolled on, not acknowledging Mik’s presence.
He left it behind and continued down the corridor.
At length the flashing lights led him to another airlock. This one had a chart next to the hatch with a schematic of the shuttle he was about to board, although he was surprised to find he could only understand about every fourth word of the writing beneath it.
Even the words are old, he told himself.
The airlock opened before he could finish inspecting the schematic. He stepped inside the chamber, hoping the shuttle was in better shape than the station.
It wasn’t.
I guess this is real religious faith, trusting my life to an unseen god.
Mik made his way through a narrow passageway to what appeared to be the bridge. There were five seats, their surfaces cracked and faded. He selected the best of the lot and strapped himself in.
Before he could even scan the controls in front of him, the shuttle disengaged with a clunk. Through the scratched and fogged glass of the canopy above the bridge he watched the station retreat as the shuttle fell away.
The spacecraft was silent at first, then began to shake and creak from the stresses imposed by the thickening atmosphere. Mik had taken the Hightower into the upper reaches of Lodias’ atmosphere on training runs, but had never piloted a vessel from orbit through a thick atmosphere to the surface. Skyra’s thin blanket of gasses just wasn’t the same.
He gripped the arms of the seat as a fiery glow wrapped itself around the shuttle. It was disorienting, being surrounded by such unfamiliar technology. Outside of the grimy UnderWorks, everything in The City worked so seamlessly, as if the marvels of technology were conjured by thought itself. This shuttle was not like that. It was if all the principles of physics and engineering had been stripped bare and had to be subdued like some wild animal.
The groaning and shrieking of the outer hull intensified. The turbulence built to a peak before finally easing off, and Mik realized he’d been holding his breath. The light filtering into the bridge shifted, and he glanced up to see clouds stretched across a clean blue sky.
The same voice as before crackled over the comm system, laughing.
“Ease up there, friend. This ship’s a tough old bird. She’s made this journey hundreds of times.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mik grumbled under his breath. He’d fixed enough aging machinery to know that being old didn’t necessarily infer any special powers of durability.
Yet the shuttle did not break apart or crash upon the surface. The landing was surprisingly gentle, even. Mik waited for the systems to shut down, then unbuckled himself and made his way to the outer hatch. He very nearly blundered on through before catching himself with a start. Gods, I really am rattled. He shook his head and punched the comm button by the hatch.
“Um, whoever I’ve been talking to, I guess I should have asked this earlier, but do I need an environment suit?”
Laughter echoed up and down the corridor. “Only if you’re not a human being.”
Mik took a deep breath and opened the hatch.
He flinched as the light from outside poured in. He stepped out onto the ramp, squinted, then shielded his eyes as he looked up into the sky. The star that warmed this world shined with an intensity that struck him like a physical force. He’d never seen anything so bright in his life.
He breathed in, and was momentarily disoriented. The air smelled like…he couldn’t place it. He had no reference to compare it with, but the word that finally came to him was alive. The air was rich, thicker than the endlessly filtered air under the dome.
He took another breath and his body responded hungrily, as if the air itself was pure nourishment.
He looked around at his surroundings. The shuttle had landed on a field of compacted soil. Beyond the landing area was a sea of high grass stretching to the horizon. And then his gaze fell upon a solitary man walking toward him through the waist-high grass.
The man’s face broke into an amused grin as he neared. He was thin, wizened, shirtless, his skin browned, as if he’d lived his entire life outside under the rays
of an alien star. He stepped up to the base of the ramp and held out his hand. “Welcome.”
Mik took the strange man’s hand, and was surprised at the roughness of it. This was not the smooth flesh of an acolyte or administrator. He was gripping the hand of a working man.
“Thank you. I’m looking for Apex. I think he’s expecting me.”
“You’re looking at him, kid.”
It was several seconds before Mik realized he’d been staring, open-mouthed, words caught in his throat.
The old man threw back his head and laughed.
“Not what you were expecting, eh?”
Mik bowed his head, and fidgeted as his mind raced through the proper forms of respect he was taught as a child. Which was the correct obeisance for meeting the builder god? Not that Mik had ever been particularly observant, but still, this was one of The Seven, the one who held their future in his hands. He dropped to one knee. “Apex, I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you…”
“Oh, get up. Stop groveling. I’m just a man, taken apart and screwed back together with some quality hardware.”
Apex reached down and pulled Mik back to his feet. “And who are you, exactly?”
“My name is Mik, of the Tralee line. I’m a Fixer for The City. I work in the UnderWorks, repairing the systems that keep everything operating…”
“I know what a Fixer is, Mik. So the situation was so urgent they had to send a Fixer to the new world, eh?”
The gentle teasing in Apex’s voice pulled Mik back into focus. The god had him seriously off balance. Apex’s appearance and manner were so different from what Mik had experienced during his first encounters with Tower and Maelstrom.
“Oh, and I’m the admiral of the fleet.”
“Well. That’s quite a job profile. You must be a man of many talents.”
“More a matter of necessity, sir.”
Apex’s demeanor subtly shifted. The joviality was gone, replaced by a serious determination. “Yes, when the new code came through from Apollo, along with the first data packets, I figured it might be something like that. How bad is it?”
“Bad. If you accessed the reports, you know we lost Tower and Faraway. Triton is presumed dead. Maelstrom is…different now. We’re trying to rebuild the fleet. The City is in a very vulnerable position if the Otrid return.” Mik felt some of his confidence returning. Even if Apex didn’t exactly appear as Mik had expected, he was suddenly sure that this was, indeed, the builder god. He recognized the effects on his blood riders that only the proximity of one of The Seven could induce. The feeling of strength lifted his mood and filled him with renewed determination.
“Also, Apollo wanted me to give you this,” Mik said, pulling a small data capsule from his pocket.
Apex raised an eyebrow. “It couldn’t be sent with the other data?”
“No sir. He said to hand it to you personally, or if that wasn’t possible, see that it was destroyed.”
“What’s so important that it couldn’t be transmitted?”
“Apollo didn’t tell me, sir. Your eyes only, he said.”
Apex took the capsule from Mik’s hand and closed it in his fist. His eyes shifted focus, as if studying something far away, and Mik realized with a start that the builder god was drawing information from the data capsule directly through his hand.
“Well now. Ambitious,” Apex said after a brief pause. “This is going to take some pondering.” He fixed a gaze on Mik, and there was a new intensity in his eyes. “Follow me.”
Apex turned without waiting for a response and headed directly into the tall grass. After a moment’s hesitation, Mik followed. He noticed for the first time there was a faint trail winding through the wild plants, heading toward the setting sun.
They walked in silence for a while, although it appeared to Mik that Apex was having some sort of internal debate with himself. He stopped occasionally for no apparent reason, as though some profound thought had just occurred to him. His body language, from behind at least, gave the impression that his mind was focused elsewhere.
Mik gave him the privacy of his thoughts and enjoyed the strange sensation of walking through untamed plant life. He’d been in the hydroponic gardens of The City, of course, as well as the parks, but all of those facilities were very neatly maintained and organized. There was no room for wild disorder under the dome.
But here…
Mik turned his open hands forward and let the tops of the plants caress his fingertips as they walked through the sea of grass. It was an entirely new sensation for him. Mik had never given much thought to what it would actually be like to live on the surface of a world. He’d spent his entire life in enclosed spaces. In theory, he knew a migration to Apex’s world could happen, but now the reality of it struck him with unexpected force.
He looked ahead to the horizon and felt as if he might lose his balance, so great was the distance compared to the vistas he’d known his whole life under the dome. The glare from the sun made his eyes water. He held up a hand to block the light, and almost walked into Apex, who had stopped, and was watching him with amusement.
“Never occurred to you to bring along a hat, eh? I guess that’s to be expected. Do people even own hats in The City?”
“They’re mostly ceremonial,” Mik grumbled. He found he was over-dressed for a long hike on this world, and his face was covered with a fine sheen of sweat.
“Then it looks like you’ve discovered the first business opportunity on this planet,” Apex said. “But you should embrace the warmth. This world orbits in the temperate zone of a yellow G2 star with the same radiation profile as old Sol. That’s Earth’s star, in case they don’t teach that anymore. Finding the right world around the right star wasn’t easy, believe me.”
They walked for a while longer, and Mik noticed a gradual change in the topography. Earlier, from the landing site, Mik had seen nothing but high grasses stretching to the horizon. He saw now that that had largely been an illusion. They were walking down an incline and the grass was thinning out on all sides. He could see low trees off in the distance. And beneath the trees…animals?
Apex followed his gaze and chuckled. “We’ll leave the bison be, for now. There’ll be time for that later.”
Dazed, he continued after Apex. The trail they’d been following was more visible as it wound through scrub brush and between stones.
At last their path opened up into a shallow depression. As they descended, and stone cliff faces rose around them, Mik realized they were walking toward the bottom of a crater.
He stopped to take in his surroundings, and saw now where they were headed. At the far side of the crater was a large opening in the cliff face leading underground.
They continued toward it, and as they neared, more details emerged. It appeared to be a natural cave, but the walls had been cleaned up and smoothed, and he could see the faint glow of lights from deep within.
Several of the old-tech servitor robots like the one Mik had seen on the orbital station moved in and out of the opening on unnamed tasks. But there were also robot types Mik had never seen before, crawling and slithering across the ground.
Apex gave a casual wave in the direction of the cave. “Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourself at home.”
Mik found that he wasn’t surprised at this revelation. He had seen the grand spires inside Faraway’s godship, and Apollo’s ship seemed even more grandiose yet, but nothing about Apex so far had indicated that he was a god wrapped up in comforts and pomp.
The servitor bots turned toward Apex as he approached, and after a brief hesitation, went scurrying off in different directions. From the uniformity of their reactions, Mik suspected that Apex had used some sort of implanted communications hardware to control them. He’d seen Talia order around machinery in a similar fashion.
The thought of Talia sent a jolt of sadness through him. He wished she could be with him now, and he tried to imagine how she would react to this wide open world, this fresh new home
for humanity. The last time he’d seen Talia, her shrunken figure wrapped in the machinery of The City, had been heart-wrenching. A part of him that he’d been unsuccessfully trying to ignore wondered how much longer she could survive the strains placed on her.
“You look a little ragged,” Apex said, eyeing him closely. “How are you holding up?”
“A little sore,” Mik admitted, looking away so that Apex couldn’t see the emotions he knew were visible on his face. “And a little winded.”
“That would be the gravity. Skyra’s quite a bit smaller than this world. I’ve been wondering how long the acclimation process would take for people who’ve been living on a small moon for so many generations. That was several steps ahead on my world-building list, but here we are.”
Five of the servitor robots that had been dispatched a few moments ago returned, bearing chairs, a small table, and food and drink.
“We’ll rest here for the evening. Grab one of those chairs and settle in.”
Mik collapsed into the wooden chair. Its sharp lines and flat surfaces were deceptive—Mike found the chair to be amazingly comfortable. He let out a breath of exhaustion. From the mind-bending stress of Divine Space to the grasslands and crude comforts of a new world, his life had grown increasingly interesting.
Mik was still gathering his strength when one of the robots approached with a plate of food. It held a small loaf of bread and some fruits, not all of which he recognized.
He picked up a round, bright-orange colored fruit and bit into it, and twitched in surprise as the juice erupted from inside. It was an intense flavor he’d never encountered, and Mik had the fleeting insight that it might take an entire lifetime to learn all the secrets of this world.
He watched as Apex ripped a chunk from his loaf of bread and dipped it in a small dish the robots had brought that contained some sort of oil, and he did the same. The bread tasted richer than any he had ever eaten before. He wondered if the food on this world was truly that much better, or if his current state of hunger and fatigue was driving his impressions.
After Mik finished eating, he looked up and saw that Apex was watching him intently.
Gods and the Stars (Gods and the Starways Book 2) Page 12
