The Final Dawn

by T W M Ashford

  "And you can't just… fly around it?"

  Rogan scoffed at the idea.

  "Fly around a whole system? Do you think we're made of fuel or something? We've barely got enough to make the trip as it is."

  "Besides, we'll have the codes." Tuner sounded proud of himself. "There's a black market trader, goes by the name of Len Kroll. He deals with loads of dodgy smugglers, so he's got access codes and fake licenses spilling out of his ears. I reached out and made a deal with him before we escaped."

  "Oh yeah? And what sort of deal would that be?" Jack fell behind the two robots. Wait. Was he the deal, somehow? "No offence, but neither of you strike me as the particularly affluent type. You don't have pockets, let alone purses."

  Tuner's finger transformed into a three-pronged interface.

  "The most valuable resource isn't money, Jack," he said. "It's information. Charon is working on something big out there. Real big – and real powerful, too. No automata is allowed access to the full set of schematics – only those for the section they’re working on – but I snatched what I could from his central servers. It's not worth as much as a full blueprint, but it's more than enough to buy us some security clearance."

  "I bet this Charon guy was really happy about that."

  "Pfft." Tuner waved his hand and the interface retracted again. "He doesn't even know I took it."

  "Tuner? Jack?" Rogan beckoned them over from the other end of the alley. "Come take a look. We're here."

  They hurried over and collectively peered around the corner.

  "Tortaiga Square," announced Rogan, uneasily.

  The neon lights were back. So were the people. In the centre of what may have once been an ornate public square stood a circular bar at which patrons of various species drank from mugs and smoked from bottle-pipes. An automata with numerous dents in its chassis served them all from behind its counter, scooping up credits and dodging the occasional drunken projectile.

  Pubs, bars and other questionable establishments occupied every inch of the surrounding dilapidated buildings. Fire escapes groaned under the weight of their merry occupants. Signs on the fritz advertised cheap drinks and even cheaper company. Scantily-clad aliens danced in the upper windows. Electronic music blared out from a dozen different clubs. Streams of fairy lights and banners hung from one walkway to another.

  A fight broke out between two humanoid men a few floors up. The first man threw a few hard punches – none of which hit their intended target – and then the second tossed him over the balcony railing. He landed in the hard dirt with a sharp crack. Nobody paid his corpse much attention, save for the poor janitorial automata that hurried out to drag it away.

  "Oh, this place is charming," said Jack.

  "Let's not hang about," said Rogan. "Do you know where you're going, Tuner?"

  "Kroll's got an office on the third floor." Tuner scanned the balconies. "There it is – up there."

  He pointed up at a thick metal door on their right. A squat, grumpy-looking toad-alien in spacer-rags stood guard outside, clutching a rifle and glaring at passersby. A small, black sign hung from the wall. Tuner must have been told to look for the circular insignia when arranging the deal.

  "Okay. Make it quick." She grabbed Tuner's arm as he went to leave. "And be safe, all right? If something seems off, just leave. We'll find another way."

  "Are we not going with him?" asked Jack. "I thought you said the people round here would sell a stray automata for parts."

  Tuner shook his head.

  "Kroll said to come alone," he replied. "Don't worry. I can handle myself."

  He made a few sharp but unconvincing chopping motions with his arms. Rogan sighed.

  "Come meet us inside the archive when you're done," she said, before letting him hurry off towards the nearest flight of stairs. He was soon lost amongst the clouds of steam that rose from the vents beneath their feet.

  "Is he going to be okay?" asked Jack.

  "He'll have to be," said Rogan, turning back to him. Her face looked grave. "If we don't get those codes, we're done for. Now, then – how about we find out where this planet of yours is?"

  8

  Library of the Ancients

  The archive stood over on the other side of the square, beyond the bars and the rabble of their patrons. Even though the buildings surrounding it were hardly modern by Kapamentis’ standards, it was clear that this one was much, much older. The entrance lay at the top of a wide set of steps littered with rubbish, flanked by classical pillars that were chipped and vandalised. The traders hauling carts up and down the streets paid it no attention.

  "I'm surprised this place is still standing," said Jack, stepping over a smashed bottle. "The people round here don't seem like the reading type."

  Rogan laughed.

  "They can trash the halls all they want," she said, "but none of those drunks could ever break the servers. Not with their arsenal, at least. Besides, even pirates and raiders need to find out where they're going every now and again."

  "It's incredible," said Jack, marvelling at the juxtaposition between its classical stonework and the industrial metal of the neighbouring cityscape.

  "Wait until you see inside."

  Rogan pushed the doors. They opened with a long and laboured creak. Jack stepped through into darkness and waited for his eyes to adjust. All he could make out were the tattered, dusty remains of a carpet at his feet.

  "Should be here somewhere…" said Rogan, lingering in the doorway as she fiddled inside an electrical panel. "There – got it."

  A spark danced across the circuit breaker. Row by row, the dim, red lights of the archive bloomed to life.

  "Woah," said Jack.

  More columns stood inside the hall. Each was a dozen or so metres in height and boasted a circumference wider than Jack’s arm span. Only one had collapsed – it now lay as a pile of dusty white rocks in the corner. The rest ran in rows towards a large reception desk at the other end of the hall – the threadbare carpet beneath Jack's feet must have guided scores of erudite guests towards it, once upon a time. From either side of the reception rose the two wings of a curved staircase, leading to the balcony and halls above. Large bronze statues of slender, academic-looking aliens in grand robes stood in nooks along the walls. The dramatic lighting made everything look as if it had been painted in blood.

  "If only we could have seen this place in its heyday." Rogan frowned at the garbage and graffiti. "There was once a time when Kapamentis was full of these archives – Libraries, they called them. Held every known secret in the universe within their walls."

  "What happened to them?"

  "One day the race that built them were here, the next they were gone." Rogan shrugged. "Nobody really knows. Some say they were wiped out. Others that they all just upped sticks and left the galaxy. Come on. The data terminals should be further ahead somewhere."

  Jack followed Rogan through the empty hall. He glanced over his shoulder at the open door behind them. Nobody appeared to have followed them inside.

  A small rodent squeaked and scampered into a crack in the wall as they reached the stairs. They passed the bronze statues on their way up. Even in death, Jack felt like they were judging him.

  The floor above was no less deserted, and no less derelict. Part of the roof had collapsed. For a moment Jack thought he saw a tiny moon up in the night sky. Then another drifted out from behind it, and he realised they were only the large, spherical space stations he'd seen in orbit, reflecting back the ghastly, ghostly light of the city.

  "Keep up, Jack. Tuner could be back with the codes any minute. We mustn't dawdle."

  He followed Rogan down a broad and equally red-lit corridor lined with magnetically-sealed doors. Most had been broken into. The halls on the other side lay barren and ransacked. Glass cases were smashed and the floors covered in detritus. Whatever treasures the Library once held had long since been stolen.

  Something reflective on the floor caught his eye. He ben
t down and picked it up.

  It was some kind of bottle cap, discarded amongst a dozen spent rifle cartridges. He turned it over in his hand, watching as the faux-moonlight turned it from blue to silver, then ran a gloved thumb over it. Flat. Smooth like a pebble on both sides.

  Jack shrugged and pocketed it. He had to go back to Earth with something to show for himself, after all.

  He hurried after Rogan.

  "Here they are." She gestured towards the hall ahead of them. "Now all we need to do is find a console that’s still operational. Shouldn’t be too hard."

  Jack wasn't sure what he was looking for. A quartet of computer terminals formed a square in the centre of the dark room, facing inwards. More lined the exterior walls, though these, like the room itself, were in a far worse state of disrepair. Part of the easterly wall had fallen away completely. Rainwater poured through the damage, as did the occasional flash of headlights from passing cruisers.

  He peered out over the rubble, holding onto the remains of the wall with one hand and shielding his eyes from the rain with the other. Patrons staggered home from bars through the streets below. Traders pushed their stock towards the market. If he strained his eyes he could just make out the lights of Tortaiga Square further down. It was much easier to hear it than see it, even with the steady rumble of ships passing overhead.

  "This one," said Rogan. "It’s a bit busted, but it’ll do."

  She pressed a button on the front of one of the consoles. A flickering blue hologram about the size of Jack's living room wall burst up from the table next to it. It displayed a spinning, two-dimensional logo for a second, then glitched and vanished again. A smaller hologram shaped like a keyboard beamed out towards Rogan shortly afterwards. She frantically typed in a set of coordinates.

  The larger hologram returned when she finished. This time it showed a small, rather featureless planet.

  "Detri," she whispered.

  "Is this it?" asked Jack, joining her at the console. "Is this the planet you guys are headed for?"

  Rogan nodded. Jack could see the desperate glisten of hope and awe in her eyes. He'd never felt so moved by something artificial before. It was almost as if she were… well, human.

  "Way out in Dark Space, far from any fleshy colonies." She reached out to touch the hologram. Her fingers passed through the shimmering light without resistance. "It's not much, but it's home. Or it could be."

  "How would you live out there?" Jack studied the planet as the hologram rotated at a snail's pace. "I don't see any cities or settlements. Or is this entry out of date?"

  Rogan smiled.

  "Who knows how old this log is?" she laughed. "Tens of thousands of years, probably. But that's not why we can't see any automata cities on the surface. There aren't any. They're all on the inside."

  "The inside?"

  "Yes." Rogan gave him a cheeky wink. "It's a dead planet. The sanctuary is built within Detri's core. That's why nobody's ever found it."

  Jack felt his heart drop.

  "And you're sure it's there, are you? You're sure it's not just a story?"

  Rogan's face fell. For somebody made of metal she looked awfully young and afraid.

  "Why would we speak of it in whispers if it weren't true?" she replied.

  "You're right," he said, waving his question away. "I'm sorry. I'm getting homesick for my own planet, that's all. Budge up and let me have a go."

  Rogan stood aside so Jack could approach the holographic keyboard. As with the signs and billboards of the streets outside, the translation chip rearranged the alien letters and symbols into English.

  He typed in a single word: Earth.

  No results came up.

  "That doesn't mean it isn't in there," said Rogan, noticing the panic plastered across Jack’s face. "Different cultures have different names for the same planets. It could be that everyone knows it as something else."

  "How am I supposed to know what name everyone else gives Earth," he asked, throwing his hands in the air, "if nobody knows what or where Earth is in the first place?"

  "A fair point. Perhaps searching for a specific planet is the wrong approach to take. What's your system called?"

  Jack wracked his brains.

  "The Solar System?" he suggested.

  "Good grief. You humans – not a particularly imaginative lot, are you?"

  Jack waited with his stomach doing somersaults while Rogan contemplated a new strategy in silence.

  "How many planets are in this Solar System of yours?"

  Jack gave this some thought. It wasn't as easy a question to answer as it should have been.

  "Well… eight, technically," he replied, scratching the back of his neck. "Nine if you include Pluto. But if you include Pluto then you have to count the other dwarf planets too, which brings the total up to thirteen. I think. A couple of them are still disputed."

  Rogan sighed.

  "Out of the eight main ones, do you know which order they go in? In terms of rocky and gaseous worlds, I mean."

  "Sure," said Jack, cautiously. "There are the rocky inner planets – oh, and then the asteroid belt – and then the gas giants, the ice giants…"

  "There you go, then!" said Rogan, gesturing towards the keyboard. "Enter all that information into the machine – every variation of every detail you can think of. Do it!"

  Jack typed as many variables as he could into the computer. A second after he pressed Enter, the hologram brought up a floating diorama of a solar system. His heart fluttered.

  "Is that it?" asked Rogan.

  Jack looked closer, then shook his head.

  "It looks right at first glance, but it's not the same. See the fourth planet from the sun, there? It's way too large. Mars is smaller than Earth, not bigger. And the orbits of the seventh and eighth planets are far too close together."

  "Have another go. Maybe you missed something."

  This time the hologram showed a different solar system – one with only two inner planets, even though the four outer giants looked much the same.

  "That's not right either." Jack grew forlorn. "Are you sure this thing has maps of every system in the galaxy? What if I’m not even in the Milky Way anymore?"

  "Keep trying." Rogan peered down the corridor towards the stairs. "What's taking Tuner so long? I thought he'd be back with us by now."

  Jack thought back to his old science lessons and added every little detail he could remember, yet time and time again the console would conjure a solar system that was not quite right. The wrong placement of an asteroid belt, or twin suns instead of one. He didn't recognise any of the names the console showed him, either – though unless it said Earth, he didn't expect to.

  "This is hopeless," he sighed after entering his eleventh iteration of data. "The Solar System isn't in here. I guess it makes sense. How could anyone have a map of us if nobody's ever heard of humans before?"

  "Unlikely," replied Rogan, still on the lookout for Tuner. "They mapped the—"

  She was interrupted by the crack of a gunshot outside.

  Terror dashed across Rogan’s face. She sprinted to the rain-sodden hole in the wall and peered down at the street below. Jack followed quickly after.

  "Oh no," she whispered.

  One of the traders lay face-down in the filthy street, a wisp of smoke rising from the hole in her back. Beside her corpse stood a man in oil-stained rags. He looked mortified. The stocky beast pulling their cart had bolted from the gunshot, spilling credits and engine parts everywhere.

  Somebody was talking to the terrified man, but Jack couldn't hear them above the storm. Neither could he see any figures standing amongst the shadows.

  Then a billboard on the building across the street switched one advert out for another, and the whole scene was bathed in stark blue light.

  Jack gasped. A tall, gaunt figure in a long, burgundy robe stood a couple of metres away from the traders. He looked almost human, albeit one dug up after a few decades under the earth. His dark ey
es sank deep into his pale, waxy skull. His cheeks were so thin they were almost translucent. He tapped the knuckles on each hand with long, bony fingers that moved like stalks of corn waving in the wind.

  Three ratty, canine creatures guarded him. They stood upright and wore patchwork armour made of scrap metal and leather. That was about as sophisticated as they got. Their bodies were covered in matted hair and they snarled with long, salivating jaws. Jack put their height at about six foot, which put their lanky boss closer to seven. Each had a chunky battle-scarred rifle clutched in its clawed hands.

  Rogan scurried backwards out of sight.

  "Friends of yours, I take it?" Jack kept his voice to a whisper. "Wait – is the tall one down there that Charon guy you were telling me about?"

  Rogan shook her head. The apertures of her eye lenses were wide. If Jack hadn't known she was made of metal, he would have sworn she was shaking.

  "That's Gaskan Troi." She took another peek around the wall. "Charon’s right hand man and all-round grim piece of work. I once saw him disassemble an automata just for fitting a superconductor wrong. Charon put him in charge of the Iris project we were working on. You see those beasts lurking beside him?"

  "Pretty hard to miss them."

  "They’re Rakletts. They're as stupid as they are ugly – just as vicious, too."

  "Gaskan Troi," said Jack, savouring the alien name. "Well, better for a lackey to come after you than his boss – right?"

  Alarmed, Rogan shook her head.

  "Charon might be cold and calculating, but at least it's for a purpose," she replied. "Gaskan Troi is cruel for fun."

  A second gunshot rang out. Jack took another look outside.

  One of the snarling Raskett guards had fired his rifle into the air. If the intention was to frighten the surviving trader into talking, it worked. He pointed down the street towards Tortaiga Square with a trembling finger. Gaskan bowed towards the man in gratitude… and then had one of the other Raklett guards shoot him in the head.