by Worth, Dan
‘Pardon me, sir. But do these gentlemen have the same level of clearance as myself with regard to Naval intelligence concerning the Shapers?’ said Chen, addressing Cartwright.
‘Yes, they do.’
‘Sir, I have been shown the intelligence given to us by the Nahabe regarding the massive Shaper dreadnought seen heading for the Commonwealth. I take it that this is what you are referring to?’
‘Yes it is. That, and the fact that we have not pinned down what we believe to be the bulk of the enemy fleet, hence the need for us to also seize the anti-matter production facilities in Chittagong. We need to deny them access to it, but we also need something to hit them with. You used up almost our entire stock of AM warheads, Admiral Chen. We’re going to need a lot more. Colonel Igawa, is there anything you wish to ask me about your operation?’
‘Not at this time, Admiral. Thank you,’ Igawa replied. ‘All I ask is that I be provided with detailed schematics of the facilities to be targeted, so that I and my men can formulate in detail our plan of attack in order to seize them intact. I don’t mean just maps, I need engineering schematics too. We don’t want to place a shaped charge near the wrong piece of equipment where anti-matter is concerned, after all.’
‘You’ll have them,’ replied Cartwright.
‘Sir, do we know where that ship is?’ pressed Chen.
‘No, Admiral Chen. We do not. We may have a hope of locating it once we are able to see further. A lot rests on this operation, hence it was deemed to be worth the gamble. Now, are there any more questions? Myself and Colonel Igawa will be going over the details of the operation to seize the Chittagong system for the rest of the day. I would suggest that you three do the same with regard to your own orders. You have been cleared to discuss this with senior officers and they will need to brief their men accordingly, but the information regarding the names and locations of the exact systems in question goes no further than those present at the briefing today.’
‘Sir, I have one question,’ said Chen. ‘What if we fail?’
‘We are exploring other options in the event that one or more of these two operations is not successful. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that, Admiral Chen, in case of capture by the enemy. However I don’t think I need to tell you that failure at this juncture would do grievous harm to our fortunes in this war.’
‘What Admiral Cartwright means to say, Admiral Chen,’ said Shale, ‘is that failure isn’t really an option.’
Chapter 33
The Shining Glory’s sickbay was in total confusion. As the medical adepts clustered around Ushild still tried in vain to revive him, the power began to die again, plunging them into flickering gloom as backup systems failed simultaneously. There was a deep boom from somewhere else in the ship and the sickbay shuddered from the impact or explosion or whatever it was. The Arkari characters that spelled out the words ‘I am alive’ still scrolled across every nano-form surface in the room. In places, the characters actually stood out from the walls as if embossed on their surfaces. A series of warning alarms began to chime, accompanied by calm automated messages in Arkari informing the crew of individual system failures.
‘What the hell is going on!?’ cried Rekkid. ‘Mentith?’ he called out, hoping that the comm. link to the bridge was still open. There was no reply.
‘Seems like shipboard comms are down,’ said Okanno, without looking up from Ushild’s body.
‘I just gathered that,’ Rekkid replied. ‘What about our guest? Is he...?’
‘He’s dead, I’m afraid,’ said Okanno, and sighed. ‘The strain on his already unnaturally old body was too much. Both of his hearts failed with massive haemorrhaging. Whether he would have lasted for much longer once we removed him from that machinery on the planet is something that we’ll never know, but whatever the portal was doing to him, it killed him.’
‘But why?’ said Katherine. ‘Why kill him?’
‘You two are supposed to be the experts on ancient alien technology,’ said Okanno, holding up a holo-projection showing scans of Ushild’s body. ‘Tell me, do you think that the Akkal made these implants all by themselves?’
‘No I don’t,’ said Katherine. ‘Particularly after what Ushild told us about the Akkal scavenging Progenitor technology.’
‘Perhaps it was accidental? Perhaps the portal was genuinely trying to talk to him and inadvertently killed him?’ suggested Steelscale.
‘Perhaps. I think that the portal detected the presence of Progenitor technology other than itself and tried to communicate with it and in the process killed Ushild, but it may have re-awoken Eonara,’ Rekkid replied and pointed at a nearby wall alive with repeating script.
‘You think she’s trying to regain control of the ship?’ said Katherine.
‘Possibly. We need to get up to the bridge and find out what the hell is going on, not to mention where we are now.’
‘Good idea, Rekkid,’ said Katherine. ‘Let’s go.’
It was almost half a kilometre from the sickbay to the bridge of the Shining Glory, and with the internal transport network down, Rekkid, Katherine and Steelscale had to make their way through the interior of the ship on foot. The going was not easy. With the ship’s systems reacting wildly to whatever the portal, or Eonara, had done to them, the chaos that had resulted hindered their progress. In places, the artificial gravity had ceased to work, resulting in areas of weightlessness, or gravity many times greater than that which the occupants of the vessel were used to. In one chamber, it had reached such extremes that the unfortunate occupants along with everything else in the room had been crushed flat. Steelscale was the first to pass the open door, and even he reeled at the sight within, the patterns on his scales cycling wildly to indicate shock and revulsion. He stood, blocking the entrance so that others did not have to see the mangled remains within. They then proceeded onwards with caution, keeping alert for any signs that such an occurrence lay in their path and making sure that they did not blunder into it, for to do so would mean a similarly grisly fate.
In other places, the nano-form interior surfaces of the ship had gone berserk, creating waving forests of bizarre fronds and pseudopods as well as jumbles of geometric shapes that had extruded themselves from the floor, ceiling and walls to such a degree that crew members had become trapped by the strange growths and the three archaeologists were forced to detour through side corridors and adjoining chambers to reach their destination. In addition, the power to the ship’s systems was still fluctuating wildly, plunging areas into total darkness and jamming automated doors and locks that had to be forced open or detoured around. Everywhere, the same message was repeated over and over in Arkari script: I am alive.
Eventually, after almost an hour of painfully slow progress, they finally arrived at the ship’s bridge to find it in uproar. Mentith stood in the centre of the chamber, directing crew members who were frantically trying to regain control of the vessel. Some of the holographic displays were functioning, showing views from the ship’s external cameras, whilst others displayed random, nonsensical patterns or more instances of the repeated message.
Mentith saw the three of them enter out of the corner his eye and turned to greet them.
‘Ah, good. I was about to send a party down to fetch you. I am pleased to see that you appear to be unharmed. We are getting reports of a number of casualties across the ship. How is the patient?’
‘Dead, unfortunately,’ said Katherine. ‘Whatever’s happening to the ship, it killed him. Okanno and his team did their best.’
Mentith absorbed the bad news without a word and simply sighed in exasperation.
‘What is going on, War Marshal?’ said Steelscale. ‘Where are we?’
‘A very good question,’ Mentith replied. ‘From what we are able to determine amidst all of this chaos, the portal’s AI was awoken by the presence of our ship and activated the device. The patterns of data across the ship’s internal systems would seem to indicate that it at least part
ially succeeded in re-activating Eonara’s AI core. She appears to have some level of access to the ship’s systems and succeeded in taking us through the portal, but it looks like she’s now having problems controlling the vessel and for whatever reason has not disconnected herself. The ship’s own AI is also not communicating. We are unable to control the vessel ourselves as we have been locked out of many systems, so we’re largely dead in space once more until we can resolve this.’
Mentith nodded towards the ship’s liquid metal cat avatar, frozen statue-like in the middle of the bridge, motionless save for occasional ripples that ran up and down its surface.
‘We felt something, an impact or an explosion...’ said Katherine.
‘Yes, we seem to have struck something shortly after we exited the portal. There is some superficial damage to the lower side of the ship’s bows, but we can’t access the external cameras on the underside of the vessel so we can’t see what it was that we hit. I’ve sent some crew members down to the lower decks to try and get a look, but so far I haven’t heard back from them. We do appear to be in the middle of some sort of nebula, however. There’s a lot of debris out there.’
Mentith pointed to one of the active displays showing views from the ship’s cameras. Instead of the blackness of space, the image showed vast knotted clouds of dust and gas that obscured the more distant stars.
‘This nebula is not marked on the ancient Progenitor map that you recovered from the archives on Bivian,’ said Mentith. ‘This system was shown as a binary with two yellow dwarf stars of equal size. One is still present and we have emerged in its vicinity, the other has been destroyed.’
‘Destroyed? That makes no sense,’ said Rekkid. ‘I thought dwarf stars weren’t massive enough to collapse into supernovae? Also, why is one still remaining?’
‘I suspect it may not be a natural occurrence,’ Mentith replied. ‘This place was a junction point of the Progenitors’ gate network. It would be a valuable strategic target.’
‘Do any of the gates remain, other than the one we just exited?’ said Katherine.
‘Unknown,’ Mentith replied. ‘Our sensors are inoperable.’
At that moment, an additional display came alive. Mentith expressed satisfaction at the news that his men sent to the lower decks had met with success. The image was a feed from a camera pointed out of a view port, looking down from the ship’s underside at an angle. The curve of the hull was clearly visible, along with a long gouge where something had struck it. That something filled the rest of the image. It was the blasted, half melted remains of what had once been a ship, lit harshly in the glare from the nearby sole remaining sun. Only about half of the vessel remained. It had once formed a sort of elongated star shape, but now the bare, melted edges of exposed decks and ship’s innards formed a twisted honeycomb along what had once been the vessel’s centreline. The outer hull, once gleaming and golden, was dull and pitted by intense heat and the ravages of millions of years in space.
‘It’s a Progenitor ship,’ breathed Katherine. ‘The remains of one, at least.’
‘There’s something else too,’ said Rekkid. ‘Look closely at the vessel, there are structures fastened to it.’
Sure enough, a rudimentary base of interlinked modules had been attached to the exposed decks along with what at first glance looked like a couple of primitive looking engine blocks. The bell-shaped nozzles of chemical rockets jutted outwards from them in clusters.
‘That doesn’t look like Progenitor tech to me,’ said Rekkid. ‘I think someone was trying to salvage that ship.’
‘The Akkal?’ said Katherine.
‘Very possibly.’
‘We should get over there and take a look,’ rumbled Steelscale. ‘I’d rather risk my hide out there, than sit around waiting for this ship to kill me with systems malfunctions. Besides, we may discover something useful.’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ said Rekkid. ‘War Marshal, what do you think?’
‘Assuming we can persuade the docking bay to open, yes,’ Mentith replied. ‘We may indeed learn something useful. You should bear in mind that our external comms are down. Take one of the scout ships. That way, if Eonara decides to suddenly head off without warning you may have a chance of catching up with us before she maroons you here.’
With an Arkari pilot in command, the sleek scout vessel slipped out of the partially opened docking bay of the Shining Glory. It had taken another hour to reach the bay from the bridge. Once aboard the scout, Katherine and Rekkid had donned Arkari made space suits. Steelscale would remain aboard the small vessel and use the craft’s own comm. system to remain in contact with them. The lack of space suits suitable to his massive K’Soth frame prevented him from exploring any further, and with the Glory’s systems down, it was impossible to manufacture one suitable for him.
As the scout descended towards the waiting wreck, her pilot used the vessel’s sensors to sweep the surrounding area before probing the ruined vessel beneath them.
‘I’m picking up a lot of debris,’ said the pilot, a young female Arkari called Kurano, in fluent, but accented English. ‘A lot of it nearby looks artificial, but there are a great number of asteroids in this system. There are three belts in the inner system and what look like the iron cores of gas giants in irregular orbits further out. I would guess that the three inner belts are the remains of rocky planets and the atmospheres of the gas giants were boiled away when one of the suns detonated.’
Kurano brought the ship to a stop relative to the drifting wreck.
‘The other artificial debris?’ said Katherine.
‘Other ships, I think. See for yourselves,’ said Kurano, and displayed a holographic image of distant wreckage. She zoomed the image in for a better look. There were more fragments of golden, star shaped craft and darker, more jagged shapes that stood out against the lambent glow of the nebular gas.
‘Progenitor and Shaper vessels,’ said Katherine.
‘There are over a million pieces of debris larger than this vessel within ten thousand kilometres,’ said Kurano. ‘It’s no wonder that we hit something when we came out of the portal. I suppose we’re just fortunate that it was only a glancing blow, otherwise the damage to the Glory would have been much more severe.’
‘There must have a great battle here, long ago,’ said Steelscale, softly. ‘I doubt that we can scarcely imagine the scale of it. Entire worlds blasted into ash, even perhaps a sun torn asunder.’
‘Who won, I wonder?’ said Rekkid, deep in thought as he pondered the image before them.
Kurano was studying the data that the sensors had returned on the wreck. Her brow furrowed as she pored over it.
‘I wouldn’t advise venturing inside the vessel itself,’ she said. ‘The structure is unsound and liable to break apart, plus I’m reading a number of localised radiation sources deep within the craft. The danger to Professor Cor and Doctor O’Reilly is too great, not to mention the risk to this vessel. We should dock with the structure that has been attached to the wreck rather than explore the vessel itself. Maybe we can find out what went on here without needing to enter the wreck.’
‘Agreed,’ said Steelscale. ‘We should proceed with the utmost caution. Even with the Glory above us, help is not liable to come quickly given the problems that the ship is experiencing.’
Rekkid and Katherine nodded solemnly in agreement as the scout vessel edged closer to the primitive looking base that had been bolted to the remains of the massive, ancient warship.
Getting aboard proved to be surprisingly easy: initial scans revealed that the base’s radioactive power source was still active and did not appear to have malfunctioned or leaked. One end of the small base contained an airlock and the scout vessel angled itself accordingly, and then clamped itself amidships to the lock, the nano-form surfaces of the vessel’s own docking assembly reshaping themselves to fit over the unfamiliar lock. After some experimentation, they succeeded in releasing the outer door, the catches and mechan
isms that held it in place still in good condition after ten thousand years.
Katherine and Rekkid checked their gear and then made their way from the scout into the bare metal interior of the airlock. Closing the outer door behind them, they worked by torchlight to activate the inner doors, and after locating and translating the controls, succeeded in gaining access to the base itself. The doors slid back with a smooth mechanical motion and they stepped inside. Rekkid checked his suit’s readouts.
‘Atmosphere’s breathable,’ he said. ‘Looks like this place is still safely sealed up. Artificial gravity is still working too.’
‘It might be worth keeping our helmets on though,’ Katherine replied. ‘After all, we don’t know for sure how secure this place is and besides, we ought to make sure that whatever killed the crew isn’t likely to kill us. Look:’
Through a door into the next room they could see figures seated around a long table. The room had served as a mess or meeting room. The figures slumped at various angles. There were ten of them, all dead. They were Akkal. Still dressed in their military issue fatigues, their ancient remains had been perfectly preserved by the sterile environment. Cautiously, the two archaeologists stepped forward into the room and stood gazing at the corpses. The corpses gazed sightlessly back at them. Everything was covered with a fine layer of frost.
‘There’s no obvious cause of death. No wounds. No sign of a struggle,’ said Rekkid. ‘It’s like they all sat down here together and decided to die.’
‘You might be correct, look,’ said Katherine and pointed a gloved hand at the table, where pitchers of water still stood amid opened packets containing some kind of pills. Rekkid picked one up and peered at the writing on the plasticised container.
‘Highly toxic nerve agent. Lethal dosage. Ingest only as last resort,’ he translated.
‘After the portal closed, they’d have been stuck here. They didn’t have any means of interstellar travel and there are no habitable worlds in this system. They must have been starving to death. Look at how emaciated they are,’ said Katherine. ‘That isn’t just the effects of the ravages of time on their bodies. These people knew that they had no hope of rescue and were facing death. They decided to meet it on their own terms.’
