“We do come from far away. Very good. As I said, I’m Dean,” I paused, putting a hand on my chest, “and this big man with a gun is Slate. We mean you no harm.” Slate lowered the gun beside me and tried to smile, but it looked forced and a little scarier than the gun. I glowered at him and he stopped, giving me a real smirk.
A few more squawks: “I am Suma. I mean you no harm.”
“That’s good. I was getting worried,” Slate said, noticeably relaxed in front of the short alien.
“Stay on guard. We don’t know anything about Suma here.” I whispered the words, but the alien got onto its wide feet, and I saw it was even shorter than I’d initially thought, no more than four feet tall.
“I stuck here. Want father.”
I clued in. This was a child. “How did you get here, Suma?”
It pointed the way we’d come. “Same way you did. Through the Shandra. The Stones.”
My blood turned cold at hearing the name. Shandra. It was as if part of me understood the word: an ominous portent of things to come.
“Slate. That name. The puppeteer guiding me through the caves. I think my Kraski blood led me there, and now I feel as though I know the name. Shandra.”
Suma’s eyes went wide when I said Kraski. “You not Kraski,” it said matter-of-factly.
“No, I’m not. But have some of their blood pumping through my veins.” Suma took a step back at that, like I was some sort of freak, hell-bent on stealing alien blood. “It’s a long story, and it was given to me freely to save my life. If we can travel through the Stones, let’s go. You can show us how it works.”
It squeaked a couple times, the translator not picking up what Suma said. “I cannot show you.”
“Why?” Slate asked, his jaw muscles flexing.
“Because we are stuck here.”
The thought of being stranded on this alien world turned my blood to ice. I needed to get back, to help my sister, but that outcome was probably already decided. I could only hope it ended with Mary and Magnus leading those people out of the cave, and back to their homes.
“How did you get here?” I asked Suma, who looked like an admonished child as it spoke.
“My father is the Gatekeeper on my world. I was playing with my brother, and I hid inside the Shandra. I somehow turned it on, and I came here by accident,” Suma said, and I was ninety percent sure Suma was a female of her species. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, in case I was wrong, or in case they didn’t have different sexes.
“Why won’t this one work?” Slate asked.
“The stone needs to be charged, and this one is too weak.” The translator was working almost perfectly.
“That means we need to find the juice to light this building up,” I said. “Do you know where we are? Are we still in Proxima?”
Suma looked at me, head cocked to the side, like she was trying to comprehend the name I’d just said. “I think this is one of the outer cities: a civilization that vanished thousands of years ago. My people haven’t studied all of the planets thoroughly yet, but I believe this is one of those abandoned.”
Thousands of years. I looked around at the hall we were in. To think a race of aliens walked them centuries upon centuries ago was mind-boggling. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them. “You’re saying the stone can transport us to any number of planets, and they all have a similar room where you appear and can travel from?”
“Yes. Some are buried deep on worlds that have no idea the Stone exists. Others have been destroyed over the millennia. My world is one of those in charge of keeping them active where possible.” The squeaks and squawks became softer. “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”
“Do the different drawings on the table represent different worlds?” I asked, excitement at the possibilities causing my hand to start shaking.
“Yes.”
I glanced over at Slate, whose gun hand was at ease. He leaned against the hallway, deep in thought.
“How do we power up the stone?” I asked.
“I don’t know. There has to be a backup system somewhere, because my people have been here and returned before. I’m not permitted to see the logs yet.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because… I’m still a child in their eyes.” She looked down, her snout wiggling in discomfort.
“Suma, we’ll find the power and get you home safe. Right, Slate?” I asked.
“Right, boss,” he said, giving me a determined look.
“How long have you been here?” I asked the smaller alien.
“Two cycles of Saaranla.”
“Is that long?” Slate asked.
“I’ve had to sleep once.”
I slung the pack from my back, getting a bottle of water out. I opened it and passed it over. She looked at me dubiously, big black eyes glistening in the dim light. “It’s water. Take it. We have more.” I did have more, but only enough for a couple days, tops. When she found a way to stick her snout into the bottle top and slurp some liquid up, I passed her an energy bar, which she told me tasted like Laaran. I took that to mean something bad, judging by her reaction, but she ate most of it before tucking the last few bites into a pocket.
“Thank you, Dean,” she said through the translator.
“How far have you gone?” Slate asked her.
“Not very. I was afraid I’d get lost, or that my father would track me. But that’s foolish. The Stones don’t keep track of destinations. He wouldn’t know where I’d traveled to.”
“Boss, let’s keep moving the way we’re heading. It has to lead somewhere, and if we aren’t expecting any baddies hiding out in the shadows, we can move quickly and not worry about noise,” Slate said.
I looked at Suma, hoping we could trust her story. Every instinct was telling me we could, but I’d been wrong before.
“Let’s move.” Slate grabbed my pack, taking the burden from me, and I was grateful for the respite. We’d only left the complex that morning a few hours ago, but it already felt like days.
We moved as quickly as we could. Suma’s short legs carried her quite well, and she had no problem keeping up with us. We kept going, checking doorways as we went along. Half of the rooms were empty; the other half didn’t seem to have a purpose we understood. If the race had vanished a long time ago, maybe they’d packed up and left the world in search of somewhere else.
Eventually, we came to a large door, with nowhere to go but back or through it. Beside it a smaller slab stood, probably a maintenance closet. The large door had a viewscreen on it, but with the power out, it was blank, so we couldn’t see what was on the other side.
“This has to lead somewhere important. It’s the first entry with a viewscreen, and it’s much larger than all the others,” I said. “Suma, what do you know about these people?”
“Not much. We study the worlds in school, but I didn’t see what diagram I touched. It was all an accident. If it’s one of the outer worlds, it’s rumored they ran from something, abandoning whole worlds, traveling far away, never to be seen again.” She shifted on her large flat feet.
“Adds up. It looks like these guys left of their own volition, but why?” Slate asked, reaching for the manual lever. “Do it?”
I nodded. “Do it.”
The door opened, and we were hit with a gust of wind, sour air pouring in from outside. I walked over, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. We had to be a couple thousand feet up. Huge buildings were erected into the clouds, with intricate pedway systems between them. The city went on for miles in all the directions I could see from my vantage point. I felt nausea creep upward from my toes to my head, before settling back in my stomach. It looked like something from a nightmare. The sky was dark, electricity shifting from cloud to cloud before shooting lightning bolts down toward the ground.
Slate closed the door to shield us from the blowing wind. “What now?” he asked.
Suma’s back was against the wall, and I remembered she didn’t h
ave an oxygen mask like us. “Suma, can you breathe?”
Her eyes were wide, and her snout frantically flailed. I slipped the mask off my face and hoped giving her oxygen wouldn’t do more harm than good. She breathed deeply through what passed as her nose but was still struggling to get enough air without a proper seal.
Slate opened the small door beside the entry. “It’s a closet. Bingo.” Slate rifled through piles of junk before he pulled out a mask, passing one to me.
“How does it work?” I asked, but Suma was already grabbing it and placing it on her face, twisting a cap on the bottom. It hissed and her panic subsided.
After twenty or so seconds, she removed the mask. “If we go outside, we will need these. The planet’s atmosphere is not stable.”
“There’s no tank on this thing. How does it work?” Slate asked.
She moved her lower arms in a gesture I took to be a shrug. “Look at your mask. Does it have a tank? Same principle.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, but it appeared a filter mask worked with a science that was beyond me. Or it was magic. Either way, I was okay not understanding it.
Slate, on the other hand, was playing with one, trying to comprehend the process.
“It’s the end of the line. Let’s mask up and go out there. The power source may be underneath us, a mile or so from the base of the building,” he said, looking at me for confirmation. When I nodded, he passed me one of the masks. “These look superior to the flimsy airline ones we have attached to us. Let’s use them.”
“What makes you think the power is under us?” I asked.
He pointed inside the closet door, where a paper blueprint hung above a shelf. It showed a few buildings, with blue lines coming from a source below that looked similar to the stones in the room we’d found earlier. It appeared to power a few square miles, each building having lines connecting to it. The image was detailed, and I ripped it off the wall, folding it up and shoving it into a pocket.
“Might come in handy. And here I thought you had some insight into alien technology,” I said, smirking at him. “How do we get down there?”
Slate started for the door. “Let’s find out.”
“Suma, do you want to stay here?” I asked the small alien female, who was already putting the mask back on. Her snout bent to the side inside the glass-encased mask, but she could still speak through her translator, though the squeaks were muffled.
“I will come. I may be of help,” she said.
The last thing I wanted to do was put her in danger, but if we didn’t power up this dead building, we’d all die here, so I didn’t argue with her.
Slate opened the door, the cool stale wind blowing against us again as we moved from the relative safety of the structure to outside. The lightning crackled, startling Suma, who grasped my arm; I patted her hand, letting her know it was okay. Even in the wind and eerily black sky, it was near silent out there, and that added to the strange feeling in my gut.
We were on a balcony that wrapped around the rectangular building. I walked around it, getting much more of the same vantage: miles of similar skyscrapers, all dark and dead, pedways connecting each of them. I pointed to a building next to us. “That has to be where we came from.” I ran a finger in the air, tracing our steps from the room we arrived in, across the pedway, and toward the door we’d met Suma at only a half hour ago. Out here, it looked like our journey so far had been nothing but a quick jaunt across a couple of city blocks. The sheer distance the city went on for, and the fact it was supposed to be abandoned, made me feel uneasy.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath of filtered air, calming myself. The only way to get back to New Spero was to power this grid up. I only hoped there was a way to do that below.
Slate was already walking in the other direction, his stride full of purpose. Suma walked along behind him, all four arms firmly at her sides.
“Dean,” Slate called, “I think I found the elevator.”
I hurried to catch up, focusing on them the whole time to forget I was so high up from the ground. I was worried vertigo would kick in and I’d be left clutching a wall, unable to help. I neared and saw the device he was talking about. It was a lift with four sides, but no visible cables. “What do we do with this?”
Suma stepped forward, pulling a small tablet from a pocket on the back of her uniform. “There is an energy reading still. Sometimes these civilizations ensured they wouldn’t get stuck, so they had backup systems in place.”
Slate looked at her dubiously. “They don’t consider the Shandra worthy of backup power?”
Suma just did her lower arm shrug again and continued. “I don’t begin to suggest I understand their reasoning. The lift appears to be controlled by these foot pedals.” She pointed with her top left hand to a spot where two metal squares were etched with different symbols on each.
We were all standing on the lift, looking closely at the floor, when Suma crawled over and pressed one of them. We didn’t have time to react as we started to move very quickly. I fell, pressure keeping me down on my knees as we lifted higher and higher. “Stop it,” Slate croaked.
Suma hit the same lever again, and we came to a stop at the next level. I stood up, this time getting a full view of the city. We were even higher, twice as high as we were, and even in the darkness, I could make out an ocean of lava in the deep distance. To the other side, mountains, as black as midnight, loomed like a bad omen. No wonder these people had left their home.
“I’m going to guess the other lever takes us down?” I hadn’t finished the question when Suma hit the lever, and we were quickly descending. This time, knowing it was happening, we were able to stay on our feet. I grasped the railing on the side of the lift, as did the other two, and I wondered if a harness system would have been safer.
As we lowered, I kept my eyes out for a structure we’d seen on the blueprint. There it was, a few standard blocks away, maybe half a mile in total. I only hoped we’d find a way to turn the power source on once we got there. I pointed toward it, and Slate nodded as the lift slowed and stopped at ground level.
We exited the lift, my legs and stomach both glad to be off the thing. The ground was made of a concrete-like substance, and considering how long it had sat at rest, there were very few breaks in it. Every twenty or so feet, I could see signs of something trying to come up through it. Nature always took over, unless you were on an abandoned alien planet. Maybe the lava and lightning were what constituted nature on this world. I didn’t intend to be here long enough to find out.
Slate moved with efficiency, Suma and I following along, me with my gun at ready, though I could see no sign of any threats. It never hurt to be prepared.
Suma began to slow, and I slowed alongside her. “Are you going to be okay?”
Her snout twitched under the clear face-plate of the filter mask. She squeaked a reply. “I’ll be fine. We don’t move this much at home.” I kept with her slower pace, Slate eventually noticing we weren’t right behind him. He slowed as well but kept fifty yards ahead.
There wasn’t much of interest down on this level: mostly just the bases of the skyscrapers, and some maintenance sheds. The living appeared to all happen above ground on this planet, or at least in this city. It wasn’t long before we made it to our target. The building, a squat, square brick-walled complex, looked out of place among the thin, cloud-high structures around it.
I ran a gloved hand along the smooth stone walls as we looked for a door. It all worked together: the traveling stones, the gemstones in the clear cylinder up top, and now this. My mind flashed to the stones we’d worn to stay on Earth while everyone else was lashed into the ships. It all worked together on a scale as large as our universe. One day, I suspected we’d understand it all. Today, I just wanted to find a door, get some power, and leave.
“Over here,” Slate said from around the corner. It was still quiet down on the ground, but the wind was blowing small debris around. Pebbles and small meta
l sheets clattered down the streets, reminding me the planet wasn’t so much different from our own.
Suma and I rounded the side of the building. Slate was there, pulling on the door. It wouldn’t move. I grabbed hold of what had to be the handle, and we both tugged on it, even putting our legs on the wall for leverage. Nothing.
“Keep looking for another way in?” I asked, but Slate was shaking his head.
“I’m growing tired of this place.” He lightly shoved me back and unslung his pulse rifle, red beam blowing a hole in the rocks. He did this a few times, until the opening was large enough to get through.
Suma had jumped and hid behind me. “You’re safe, Suma.”
She shook until Slate put the gun away. “What is that?” she asked.
“It’s a gun; a weapon.”
She tested the word, a strange sound through her small snout. “Weapon.”
“You don’t have guns where you come from?” I asked, curious that a race might be non-violent. No wonder she hadn’t seemed too afraid of our guns when we’d encountered her. She was just afraid of seeing pasty near-hairless aliens.
“We don’t have guns.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Boss, can we do this later?” Slate was getting into Rambo mode, and I was good with that. I closed my eyes for a split second, seeing Slate standing over Mae’s bleeding body. Target down. I shook it off and patted Slate on the shoulder.
“We can do this later. Let’s get some power.”
SEVEN
The inside of the power plant, for lack of a better term, was black. Our LEDs lit the way as we entered, guns raised against the off chance we were about to be ambushed. We stood at rest, listening for any sounds. All we heard was the wind dancing around outside the hole in the wall.
Slate motioned us forward, and Suma stayed behind me. I couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of the unknown or of Slate. Either way, I would try to keep her feeling safe. We were in a small room with lockers along the wall and a table in the middle of the room. I searched through the cubbies, finding uniforms and heavy boots. The material was thick on everything, but clearly made for something other than a human. I held one of the one-piece uniforms up, and imagined thin legs and a tail, with arms down to their knees. I guessed I’d never know for sure.
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