by Dan Worth
‘I’m afraid so. Given the nature of the few documents that were decoded, the Meritarch Council has classified the finds as being of the utmost importance… and therefore off limits to civilians.’
‘What!? You’re dropping us from our own research project? What the hell did they find in them?’
Now she knew. Mentith’s arrival here did have an ulterior motive. She should have guessed from the moment his ship appeared in the sky. Despite his casual manner the War Marshal did not make courtesy calls. Just what was he doing?
‘I can’t tell you I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘I am sorry Katherine I know how much you’ve invested in this project, but I’m just following orders.’
‘You’re generally the one who gives the orders.’
‘Despite my high rank within our military I am not in overall command. I am still merely a soldier and as such am subject to the whims of the civilian government of my people.’ His tone had an air of condescension that irked Katherine.
‘When it suits you, you two faced…’ she began to snarl.
‘Please, Doctor…’
‘Well, given that your underlings tried to ruin my career last time we found anything of any interest…’
‘Katherine!’ barked Mentith suddenly. ‘This was not my decision! You’ve done good work here, you and Professor Cor, excellent in fact. Thanks to you we know far more about this ancient race than we ever thought possible. Your skills in co-ordinating the research of the teams we have in place here on the habitat are invaluable. I would be more than happy to continue to involve you in this aspect of the project, but I have been ordered to oversee the continuing excavation, retrieve all of the artefacts and return them to Keros at all costs.’
‘What does that mean, precisely?’
‘It means that these artefacts are of incalculable value and that theoretically, my government would be prepared to use military force to ensure their security. ‘
‘Oh, that. Are you going to demolish any more star systems in the process?’
‘Very droll. Look Katherine, it would be of immense help if you two could tell me everything about the find. But as of now, this dig is under military jurisdiction.’
She sighed and sagged a little inwardly. Though she distrusted Mentith, she realised that the old Arkari disliked what he was having to do to her, and he seemed to being honest with her as far as he was able.
‘Well,’ she said after a moment of dejected contemplation. ‘You’ll need to discuss this with Rekkid as well. Alright, come this way.’
‘Oh fuck off, Mentith!’ The cultured tones of Professor Rekkid Cor’s swearing echoed in the hollow space.
The vault was illuminated by the stick-on glow-globes that the Arkari research team had placed around the chamber. Their harsh white light cast jagged elongated shadows from the broken, tumbledown walls and the sagging ceiling that was held up by a number of micro field generators.
Approximately half of the chamber had been excavated. The remainder was filled with a tumbled mixture of collapsed ceiling material, broken storage cabinets and drifts of slim, rectangular, shiny objects that spilled from the cracked and distorted cabinets and mingled with the debris.
A number of Arkari archaeologists worked on the debris, like miners painstakingly working the face of a seam for gemstones. With delicate tools and infinite care they sifted and sorted the buried and jumbled objects, cataloguing and labelling each artefact as they slowly revealed more finds.
‘This is just fucking typical, we find something of historical interest and you morons shut down all of our research. Talk about déjà vu.’ Professor Rekkid Cor, Katherine’s senior colleague and friend, was understandably livid. This was not the first time that his research had been disrupted by Mentith’s intervention and the Arkari was almost visibly shaking with rage. He did not mince his words.
‘Professor, I think you’re being unreasonable,’ Mentith responded calmly. ‘Please try to remember that you were only allowed to work here at the behest of the Meritarch Council, whose primary concern was to determine more about the fate of previous civilisations at the hands of the enemy.’
‘Well perhaps our invaluable services in that regard would be more use if you would leave us alone and allowed us to do our jobs,’ Rekkid snarled sarcastically.
‘I gather that your search for Progenitor artefacts has not borne fruit as expected. This new project might fill some of the gaps in your research.’
‘That I can’t deny. The fact is, is that this place was systematically stripped of anything that they could take with them. We’ve explored whole buildings, or what was left of them. We didn’t find a single thing except here.’
‘Bad luck perhaps?’
‘Don’t you get it War Marshal? These records were meant to be found. Someone left them here on purpose when everything else was taken. This place… we think maybe it was some sort of administrative centre, possibly even of a military nature and…’
‘Perhaps if you start from the beginning,’ Mentith cut in.
Rekkid sighed and deposited himself dejectedly into a flimsy collapsible chair next to a similarly unsteady looking table strewn with papers, archaeological tools and shallow plastic trays filled with neat rows of the crystalline wafers, carefully labelled and awaiting cleaning, their shiny surfaces dulled by five million millennia of dust and dirt.
‘War Marshal Mentith, you are without doubt the bane of my existence…’ sighed Rekkid.
‘Please, Professor.’
‘Alright, alright…’ Rekkid scratched the ridge of chitinous plates that adorned the centreline of his elongated cranium. ‘Actually, Katherine is perhaps the one tell you, it was her team that first found this place.’
Mentith turned to Katherine, now busy examining a tray of recent finds. ‘Doctor? If you would.’
Katherine placed the objects she was holding back in their proper places, wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans and sat next to Rekkid in another fold out chair. Then she spoke.
‘When we first arrived here we were rather overwhelmed by the scale of the project. None of us had seriously considered how we were going start excavating on such a large scale, so we set up a few trial sites to see what we could find. We quickly realised that either the shock of the habitat’s destruction or simply the weight of years had collapsed most of the surface structures. During the first eighteen months we explored many as far as we dared and we learnt much about the architecture of the Progenitors. It seemed like these buildings have been grown. They were all constructed in one piece from the foundations upwards and somehow coaxed into graceful, delicate shapes by techniques that we can only guess at.’
She remembered. The awe she had felt as they had walked and crawled in suits among the haphazard topography of the ruins. Crazily angled walls and floors, broken archways and shattered stairwells lit by the narrow shifting beams of their torchlight, the terrible beauty of the desolation of this place, and the weight of the endless centuries that pressed upon her.
‘However, despite the progress we made, we still know little about the builders themselves. Each ruin we explored was utterly empty, not a single artefact was recovered during our exploration of the fallen buildings, which led us to believe that perhaps the habitat had been evacuated or abandoned before its demolition. We theorised however, that maybe artefacts might reside in forgotten cellars or basements, so I organised a systematic geophysical survey of this hemisphere, using the ships we had available to us to uncover any promising looking underground chambers. It took around three months for us to complete the survey in enough detail.’
‘And that was when you found this place?’
‘Yes, we found many other subterranean passages and buried chambers during our search. Many of the fallen buildings were still largely intact below ground level, although the shock of their collapse had caused many to cave-in like this one.’
‘So what attracted you to this one in particular?’
‘We noticed from our survey d
ata that this basement had been constructed rather like a bank vault.’ Katherine noticed Mentith’s momentary incomprehension - the Arkari had advanced beyond the need for currency some tens of millennia in the past. ‘What I mean is that chamber was heavily armoured by a dense metallic shell that was constructed independently from the rest of the building it sat beneath. Whatever it was built to contain was obviously something that was worth guarding well. We could tell that there was something inside, but we were getting too much interference from the shell to tell what it was. We assumed that the Progenitors would not have the need for material wealth given the level of their technology, and so we theorised that perhaps whatever the vault had been built to protect must have had some other kind of tangible value.’
‘You said that you thought that this building was of a military purpose?’
‘Yes, after surveying the outer surface of the habitat we realised that the building had been constructed above several elevator shafts leading to the remains of a small docking station on the outer surface which consisted of a number heavily armoured bays. This was unusual, since there are actually very few docking points on the outer surface. We assumed that most traffic must have entered through the heavily defended polar apertures, effectively using the entire sphere as a vast docking bay.’
‘Did you find any examples of Progenitor weaponry?’
‘No, all mountings examined so far appear to have been stripped.’
‘I see.’
Katherine thought that Mentith seemed slightly crestfallen at her answer. She continued: ‘Anyway, we started digging and reached the outer surface of the vault relatively easily. We then cut our way through the armoured shell using plasma torches. Even then it took us some weeks to burn our way through. We analysed the material and found that it contained a number of heavy elements as well as a few more exotic materials unknown even to your people. Here…’
She reached into a container beneath the table a produced a walnut sized chunk of the same blue-grey composite that Mentith had noticed around the entrance to the vault. Evidently the walls and ceiling he could see around him had been built within the armoured shell for purely aesthetic reasons. Katherine handed him the piece, it was surprisingly heavy and glassily smooth to the touch.
‘See,’ said Katherine. ‘That stuff is incredibly dense. We think that it’s similar to the base material that the sphere was constructed from. We’ve sent back a number of samples for analysis - could be useful if you could figure out how to manufacture it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Rekkid. ‘Just think of all the lovely armoured killing machines you could make out of that stuff, eh Irakun?’ The War Marshal ignored his jibe.
‘So,’ said Mentith. ‘You opened up the vault, and inside you found the wafers.’
‘There were huge piles of them scattered amongst the fallen debris. Some were still in their storage cabinets, but many were simply lying in random piles. We could tell that they appeared to be some form of storage media - each has an interface of sorts on either side - but we had no idea what they contained. One of the technicians managed to jury rig an interface, but the data was unintelligible to us, so we sent back the first few that we found for decryption.’
‘You have no knowledge of the contents of these devices?’
‘None at all.’
‘Good. That will be all. Doctor, Professor if you would care to accompany me to my ship.’
Rekkid got up from his sitting position. ‘Excuse me, War Marshal, but neither of us has yet agreed to any of this. You mentioned something when you arrived about some find the Commonwealth Navy want us to look at, but we have work to do here. You can’t just kick us all off the project and let your people take over. They wouldn’t know what the hell they were doing.’
‘That’s precisely what I’m doing Professor Cor. I’m under orders. You will hand over all of your notes and records and you will leave. Now. Your staff will be remain and liaise with our military intelligence division. I’m told that our own specialists are on the way.’
‘Great. Wonderful. Two years of work down the drain.’
‘I am sorry, but our government felt it was best if their own people handled this. Apparently they don’t trust you as I do.’
‘I hope it’s worth it Mentith. I really do,’ said Katherine. ‘But I think they’re making a mistake by taking us off the project.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. However…’ he shrugged his shoulders apologetically.
‘So, this incredible find that the Commonwealth Navy made, the one that’s apparently so much more important than our work here – where is it did you say?’ said Rekkid.
‘The Hadar system.’
‘Where?’
‘About as far away from civilisation as this place. Listen, I do have my own motives for sending you there.’
‘You do?’ said Katherine.
‘Yes. We’ve gotten word of very strange goings on at the dig site. It could just be rumours, but getting any hard evidence of what is going on or what exactly it is that the Commonwealth Navy have uncovered there is proving to be unusually difficult. I’d appreciate it if you’d act as my eyes and ears down there. Let me know if anything about the dig troubles you.’
Chapter 3
Ten thousand kilometres out from the sovereign world of Emerald in the Beta Hydri system, space twisted apart and spat out the battered freighter Profit Margin into the traffic control zone around the heavily populated planet. The light of the yellow sun played across the lifting body hull of the small tapered craft, highlighting the damaged plates around the aft section and the lines of carbon scored into the paintwork.
The craft banked with a few bursts from its manoeuvring thrusters and headed towards the shining distant dot of one of the planet’s two orbital docks. As the ship grew closer its occupants could see that the dock itself was surrounded by meandering streams of light; traffic patterns composed of hundreds of ships moving to and from berths within the vast structure as well as a beaded line that stretched from the dock to the planet, the space elevator that linked the dock to the surface.
Isaacs sat at the controls of his ship as he made the approach. Behind him loomed the reptilian form of Steelscale, his clawed hands gripping the back of the pilot’s couch to steady himself - the human seating arrangements being far too small to accommodate his reptilian bulk. The comm. system crackled into life, the bored sounding drawl of a traffic control officer cutting into the cabin above the background whine of the ship’s systems:
‘Vessel Profit Margin this is Emerald traffic control. We have you on approach, vectoring you to bay forty-five. Uploading waypoints now. Please observe port regulations.’
‘Roger that control. Locking autopilot to your waypoints, Profit Margin out,’ replied Isaacs, his hands moving automatically over the controls. Instantly the Profit Margin began to slow as rings of thrusters around her forward fuselage fired steadily to reduce her speed and adjust her velocity, angling the craft towards the mingling streams of ships. Isaacs sat back in his command couch and idly watched the hypnotic ballet of ships against the spectacular backdrop.
‘No,’ said Steelscale suddenly. ‘We must not dock with the station.’
‘We mustn’t?’
‘No we… have made other arrangements. Over there, near the station. You see the Navy vessel? Hail them.’
Isaacs peered towards the distant orbital dock. The silhouette of a Commonwealth carrier was faintly visible against the blue-green glow of the planet. The vessel was about two kilometres in length, though at this distance it appeared tiny compared to the growing disk of the much larger tiered dock. Isaacs scrolled through the contacts list his sensors had generated. The vessel was the Winston S. Churchill, one of the new Saturn class carriers, the cutting edge of Commonwealth naval power, sleeker, faster and more heavily armed than the older though far more common Jupiter class that had preceded it.
Isaacs selected the Churchill in his ship’s comm. system and began br
oadcasting a tight beam transmission at the carrier.
‘Uh, Navy vessel Winston S. Churchill this is the independent trading ship Profit Margin,’ he began a little nervously.
‘Receiving your transmission Profit Margin, how can we be of assistance?’ said the clipped businesslike female tones of the ship’s comms officer. Isaacs looked to Steelscale for some sort of clue as to his answer.
‘Tell them that their captain’s expected guest has arrived,’ said Steelscale. ‘Then transmit the contents of this.’ He handed Isaacs a standard data wafer, which Isaacs duly inserted into a port in the ship’s comm. and did as he was instructed. There was a brief pause and then:
‘Profit Margin, this is the Churchill. We are clearing you to dock. One moment whilst we communicate with Emerald traffic control.’ Another pause, then a new set of waypoints appeared on Isaacs’ HUD, leading away on a new course through the tangled threads of traffic.
‘Waypoints received Churchill, setting new course,’ Isaacs informed the carrier as his ship swung towards its new destination.
‘Roger that Profit Margin. Churchill out.’
There was little for Isaacs to actually do now, as the Profit Margin slipped quickly through the traffic patterns surrounding the port on autopilot. He watched the vast metal disk grow against the convex backdrop of clouds, water and continents. He could just about make out the armoured shape of the Churchill now. Long tapered launch bays jutted fore and aft from the oblong box that formed the midsection, engine nacelles hugging its sides and belly whilst countless defensive and offensive weapon turrets studded its hull, the deadliest of which –a more efficient copy of the K’Soth plasma weapons – was slung under the centreline of the great vessel.
Isaac’s was suddenly alerted by the warning tone of the Profit Margin’s sensors. Suddenly panicked he moved his eye over the virtual display of his HUD, now highlighting the Churchill with blinking red icons.
‘Holy shit,’ he murmured.
