Embers: The Galaxy On Fire Series, Book 1

by Craig Robertson

  Then the fur ball spoke. “Uncle Jon, if I said you couldn’t shoot one of them you certainly can’t shoot me.”

  “Mirraya?” I asked, dumbstruck.

  “No, I’m a really smart predator who wants to strike up a conversation with you. Duh.”

  I slowly lower my gun. “But how,” I pointed to her clothing, “you … did it …”

  She stopped a meter in front of me and took a deep breath. Then, like wax melting in reverse, the fur ball transformed into Mirraya. A naked Mirraya that was.

  I cast off my backpack and tore my jacket off. Handing it to her I blurted, “Here, take this till we can get you some …”

  She took the jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Thank you, Uncle Jon. You’re so cute. But a bashful shapeshifter would be in trouble. We’re used to ending our changes nude. It’s no big deal.”

  “It is to me,” I mumbled.

  “What? The nerves of my ears are still remolding. What did you say?”

  “Nothing, sweetheart. Let’s get back to the ship.”

  Forty-five minutes later Mirraya came into the mess area, her head to one side, drying her hair with a towel. I was nursing my now familiar mug of cold coffee.

  “For some reason, I always need a shower after being another animal. Weird, eh?”

  I harrumphed quietly. It was all I had.

  “Uncle Jon, you look like a man with a question.”

  I shrugged. “One or two, if it’s okay?”

  “Of course. The shapeshifting thing freaks some people out. Go on.”

  Not me. No. I’m a big boy. I’ve seen it all. I’ve loved great women, killed monsters with my bare hands, and gazed upon wonders no one else will witness. NBD—no big deal—here, babe.

  “Why did you do that? Why did you not ask permission first? Why didn’t you warn me so I didn’t shoot you? How could you know it would work? Do you always take ridiculous, unnecessary risks? Don’t you value your life? Are you trying to scare me to death? Don’t ever parade in front of me naked again. I’m your uncle. I don’t need that.”

  “Ah, the last one was an order, not a question.”

  “Answer it, nonetheless.” I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the ceiling.

  “I realize I kind of dropped that bomb on you. But I had to act quickly. I couldn’t have you killing that animal just because it was hungry. I knew a show of force would work. Trust me, it always does, especially with you males.”

  “You,” I pointed at her, “turned into a male?”

  “Of course. If I had turned into a female it might have tried to mate with me. I wanted to scare it off, not explore new realms.”

  “Ah.” I covered my ears. “TMI. A little … a young woman shouldn’t be talking like that. You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “The Deft view the world differently than most. We must if we’re going to do what we do. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.”

  I peeked over to her. “You could say it anyway. It’d help. Seriously.”

  She folded her arms as if to say that was not going to happen.

  “Okay, just promise me this. Consult with me first. I might have just whacked the fur ball with the butt of my gun if you’d asked. I can’t have you get hurt.”

  She smiled. “You're sweet, Uncle Jon. I’ll try to ask permission before doing that again. And it’s not a fur ball. It calls itself a Sortom.”

  “Who does?”

  “The fur ball does. Most higher non-sentients have names for themselves. When I become one, I really become one. Sortom.”

  “I’ll enter the name in the ship’s log and tattoo it on my chest. Now, go get dressed. I want to check out one more site before we leave this crazy-ass world once and for all.”

  Ten minutes later we were rummaging through another set of crumbled ruins. They were as boring and uninformative as the others had been.

  “What are we looking for, Uncle Jon? This whole planet is one pile of rubble.”

  “A clue, my child. A clue.”

  “As to what?”

  I shook my head. “It still bothers me that the Adamant didn’t come after us. I got to thinking maybe it was because of where we were, not that the couldn’t find us.”

  She furrowed her brow. “That’s kind of silly. Why would the location stop them from pursuing us?”

  “I don’t know because I haven’t found the clue yet.” I swept my arm across the wrecked landscape.”

  That earned me a pissed off teenage girl look. Trust me, I knew them well from all my children, both human and Kaljaxian. The expression was unfortunately universal.

  In the end, we turned up nothing. I had Stingray take us to another once inhabited planet on the other side of the cluster. It showed the same discouraging outward signs. No artificial satellites, energy sources, or communications. She put us down near some crumbled signs of where a city once stood. The outlines still present suggested this had been a big city, unlike the town-feel of the other planet. The suggestions of foundations were larger and thicker, suggesting many storied buildings. The density of foundations and volume of rubble supported the idea that this was once a large population center.

  We worked our way in one direction, me scanning and Mirraya digging and turning stuff over. Again, there were no significant artifacts, just concrete and stone debris. Just as I was getting bored and frustrated, we came to what must have been the edge of the city. The destroyed foundations became less densely packed together and the heft of them declined, suggesting smaller buildings. Standing on a hillock I could see where the buildings thinned out to the point that the city seemed to end.

  “Uncle Jon, I haven’t seen a thing of interest. You’re certainly a more patient person than I am. There’s not even a sortom to argue with.”

  We’d seen no obvious signs of life, not even bugs. Every place had bugs. That I knew from bitter experience. Disgusting critters were ubiquitous.

  I stepped up on a foundation. I swept my arm away from the city and replied to her. “There’s nothing as far as the eye can see.”

  Funny. After I’d whipped my arm out like that, it struck me it was like I was scattering seeds. That’s when I looked at the landscape differently. Material scattered outward. There was a pattern. From any individual structure, the rubble pattern was larger debris closer to the building, smaller chunks farther away. It was an impact pattern, like when an asteroid strikes a planetary surface. Or an explosion, lots of explosions.

  “Stingray, please make a topological plot of the identifiable foundations and the debris near each one. Use the assumption that the rubble is distributed in a blast-pattern resulting from the destruction of each building. What is the pattern of the necessary detentions?”

  “I have run that simulation for ten thousand foundations and partial foundations. Your supposition that the rubble was distributed by an explosion holds in each case.”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I whispered.

  “I do not feel qualified to speculate in that regard, Form. However, I can run some numbers if you’d like, establish some broad probabilities.”

  “No. I would like you to pull up similar data on the last planet we were on and see if those buildings were similarly destroyed. Oh, is there any general pattern of blast direction here?”

  “I do not take your meaning, Form.”

  “Can you tell which direction the bombs fell from or the missiles struck from, for example.”

  “Ah. Yes. The explosions would have all been central in the structures themselves.”

  “Huh? That makes no sense. If a city’s being bombed, the walls fly every which way.”

  “You assume the city was destroyed as an act of war.”

  “Why else would everything blow up with such massive force?”

  “Perhaps the buildings were being razed for new construction that never took place.”

  “Possible. No, wait, I know something about this. If engineers are placing charges to bring a building down
, they cause a controlled implosion. They take out supports such that the walls fall pretty much straight down. There’s no collateral damage that way.”

  “True. The explosive devices could have been dropped along the building’s central vertical axis.”

  “Not very likely an enemy would be so precise.”

  “True again, Form.”

  It hit me. “The buildings were blown up from the inside by single huge charges.”

  “Why would an entire population place massive explosive devises in the center of occupied buildings?”

  “It wasn’t to get rid of the roaches,” I said more to myself. “They must have been very determined to keep something from entering the buildings, and that if they did, there’d be no one left inside to bother.”

  “That would require an act of mass suicide. Such a thing is unheard of. What would cause an entire population to choose to annihilate itself rather that surrender to their conquerors?”

  “A very scared population and a very scary enemy.”

  TWELVE

  The pattern of central explosions was not present in the rubble of the first world we explored. I was disappointed, but not surprised. It would have been too easy if the civilizations ended in a similar pattern when they were separated by such large distances. Wait. Were they separated by large distances, especially when the destruction took place? The cluster was about ninety light-years across.

  “Stingray,” I called out, “taking into account when you estimate the structures we explored were destroyed and the movement of the stars in the clusters, how close were the two stars at the time of the final events.”

  “In the range of fifty light-years apart.”

  That didn’t help. That was a pretty big distance with standard propulsion systems. “What were their positions in the cluster?”

  “Planet One was near the periphery. Planet Two was fifty light-years directly toward the center.”

  I rubbed my cheek. Was that significant? What did being closer in have to do with anything? Who the hell knew? There was one way to find out. We could travel inward in the cluster and see if anything changed. I said a private cheer for lab rats everywhere. What could possibly go wrong when you used yourself as a test subject to see if there was danger lurking in the unknown?

  I had Stingray put us in orbit around whatever planet she could locate that was roughly three quarters of the radius out from the center of the cluster. After my slight nausea, she said we were above such a planet. It was a binary planet. That’s one with moon basically the same size. Neither showed signs of active sentient life. Of course, they didn’t. This entire cluster was a burned-out cinder. I picked the planet with the most breathable air, and we set down where Stingray found the most likely signs of past habitation. It was funny. The old explorer kicked in briefly when I thought maybe I should name the planets and then begin taking detailed notes and collecting samples. Then I realized my species was extinct. Who was I going to report my findings to? Three people. Me, myself, and I.

  Mirraya was bored before we’d taken ten steps on the surface. She was a teenager, after all. In her defense, before us lay yet another uniform bleakness. One more dry, lifeless pile of ancient ruins. But there was a difference. There was a smell. It was faint and wafted in and out with what little breeze there was. It struck me that the second planet we visited had no scent aside from that of dirt. The first planet, the one with the furry balls and lemurs smelled like a jungle, so I hadn’t paid it much mind. Jungles smelled like jungles, dry ruins smelled like dry ruins. But that place smelled of … something. I couldn’t place it. What it didn’t smell like was a dry, deserted wasteland. It only looked like one. Mysteries were stacking up like cord wood. Great. I needed more to stress about, didn’t I?

  “Mirraya,” I asked her more quietly than necessary, “do you smell something off in the air?”

  She sniffed a few times. “No. What, do you?”

  “I think so. My olfactory sensors are set to maximum, but I can’t say what it is.”

  She grunted. “The Deft are famous for having a poor sense of smell. I’m afraid I won’t be of much help.”

  “Well, if you …”

  “Hey, I have an idea.” She started pulling her clothes off like she was on her honeymoon.

  “W … wait,” I stammered, “what are you doing? Didn’t I specifically say no more naked?”

  “I won’t be naked if you turn your back like a proper gentleman.”

  Girl had a point. “Tell me when you’re ready and when I can look at you again.”

  Instead of her voice, my response was a snorty whistle. I turned to see the oddest of oddities. She changed into the funniest creature I’d ever seen, which was saying a lot. She was kind of an anteater, but she had big wings, no hair whatsoever, and her tail was three times longer than it looked like it needed to be. Her legs, all thirteen of them, were stumpy paddles about a foot long. I couldn’t tell if they were for swimming or digging. Then, because my life wasn’t bizarre enough, the thing waved one paddle in the air at me and snorted insistently like a pig. Then the whatever reverse melted into a naked Mirraya. I whipped around and stared at the ground.

  After a minute she said, “You can look now, I’m decent.”

  “Define decent.”

  “I have all my clothing where it supposed to be and it’s all zipped, snapped, and laced up.”

  I slowly turned my torso. One eye was shut and my other was squinting almost closed.

  “What are you doing, Uncle Jon? You look like a frightened schoolboy.”

  “Maybe because, deep down, I am?”

  “Would you like to hear what I found out, or would you prefer to be silly?”

  “The first choice, please.”

  “I turned into a valtorper sal. They are native to an environment where there is little light and a lot of water. They have the most sensitive noses we know of. Anyway, I was able to smell what you were noticing. It was really clear.” She smiled with excitement. “I don’t know how you people do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Go through life as only one species, one animal.” She radiated joy and excitement. “To see the world as others do, to feel how they feel, it’s the best.”

  “Thanks for the update on my life's insufficiencies.” I rolled my hand in the air toward myself. “The smell?”

  “Oh, it’s rotting material, mostly wood, but there’s some animal matter mixed in. And there’s sulfuric acid, lots of sulfuric acid.”

  “Matter can’t rot in sulfuric acid. It might melt or dissolve, but not rot.”

  “Well, that’s what you smelled. I’m not a chemist.”

  She looked mildly miffed.

  “Which direction?”

  “It’s mostly from that way,” she pointed one of her long fingers, “about a kilometer away.”

  “I’ll lead the way.”

  Mirraya dropped in behind me and I set a quick pace. In a few minutes, we were close enough to the odor’s origin that I slowed down. That way I could scan the area better. The smell was getting unbearable. In all my years, I’d never smelled that particular kind of rank awfulness.

  “You stay here,” I said to Mirraya, “but stay sharp, especially to your rear.” I started to advance.

  “No way, Uncle Jon,” she replied. “I’m staying with you. Haven’t you seen those horror movies where the teen left behind is the first to die?”

  That stopped me. I pivoted to her. “The Deft have teen-scream movies too?”

  “Of course. We may not be humans, but we’re not simple.”

  All I could think was well I’ll be damned. Universal low-budget horror shows. Whodathunk it?

  I had her follow at two meters. As soon as I could see what the likely source was, I heard it too. It was bubbling, kind of like a low simmer. I swung us to the upwind side of the smell. Then we entered a clearing. It was not naturally occurring, because it was in such stark contrast to the dead forest we had been winding our w
ay through. I held a palm up to indicate Mirraya should halt while I stepped into the open. I raised my rifle and swung it from side to side as I advanced. At the center of the clearing was the origin of the stink. It was a pool of slowly boiling liquid. Two aspects made my alert level go from the ten to infinity. The pool of hot liquid was raised. Not a single thing on this planet had such a contrived, vital appearance. It had a corroded metallic rim maybe half a meter high. The other out of place object was a rock table at the side of the raised pool. No, it was an altar. A table would be lower and there were no chairs or bar stools to suggest anyone sat there. Plus, it was so close to the pool that one could only stand safely on one side.

  Okay, on an otherwise dead planet, there was an altar over a pit of boiling sulfuric acid. I couldn't imagine a more foreboding, uninviting image. Mr. Rogers was not about to step into the clearing and welcome us to the neighborhood. I inched forward. By then, I didn’t need to tell Mirraya not to follow. Her feet were frozen in the dirt where she stood, trembling.

  “Uncle Jon,” she said in a hushed raspy voice, “this place is evil. Be very careful.”

  I appreciated her heads up, but honestly, it wasn’t necessary that she told me. I could feel the malice where my bones should have been. I climbed up three rock steps and peered over the altar into the pool. In retrospect, I probably hadn’t needed to do that. I really shouldn’t have. Some things in this life you wish you could unsee. Against all mechanical possibilities and programed options, I covered my mouth and wretched. Yeah, it was a special kind of gut-wrenching bad.

  The simmering liquid was a pale golden color. The numerous bones bobbing in it were white. The yet to be melted bodies was still squirming, tortured and writhing beyond any concept of suffering. I thank God then and there that each body’s eyes were long eaten away. If those in torment had seen me and reached out for mercy, I think I would have died.

  Then Jon Ryan, survivor, charged back to take control. No matter how tough the souls were in that pool, they hadn’t been there long. Someone or something had cast them in recently, very recently. That meant someone or something would likely return soon. They would likely bring more sacrifices, because that was what this surely was. An altar, a pit, and dead people added up to only one thing. It hit me that it would be bad to be present when the orchestrator of this mini-hell returned. They’d thank us for saving them the trouble of lugging our two corpses to their little party.