by Jamie Sawyer
There was no crew to be found at all, not even dead bodies. Nor any space for a crew; no seating, no stations. The layout of the craft didn’t seem to favour a manual crew at all. Maybe, I considered, the ship had been automated: a huge artificial intelligence, manned by a robotic crew.
The place was insulated from the wind outside and in the lower levels it was intensely silent. When an echo did sound through the empty halls, it sounded to me like a reproduction of the Artefact’s signal. No one else seemed to notice that, and I thought better of mentioning it. Probably just my imagination; the squealing in my head had died, and I was sure that this sound would too.
I followed Kellerman deeper into the hulk. We used flashlights and glow-globes embedded in the walls for guidance. Kellerman regularly consulted a hand-held data-slate that he manipulated clumsily in his protective gloves. Sometimes, when the terrain became especially rough, one of his people helped him – even though they were well-meaning, Kellerman would invariably bark his disapproval.
“How long has it been here?” I asked him, as we went.
“Likely many thousands of years. We’ve attempted carbon-dating techniques, but the materials used in the construction of the ship are highly advanced. If our premise is correct, just think about that for a moment. This vessel, as sophisticated as it is, was the product of a starfaring civilisation.” He shook his head. “It probably crashed when we were still monkeys in the trees.”
“Not too much further,” Deacon cautioned. “We should be getting back to the crawler soon.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Some of the lower corridors are crushed,” Kellerman answered. “The original starship must have been vast. I believe that it crashed in some tremendous catastrophe, and many parts of it were shorn off. During the long sleep, those elements have been claimed by the desert. Only a tiny proportion of the ship has been mapped.”
“Does the engine still work?” Kaminski asked. “We could use it to jump this planet.”
Kellerman scowled. “No, it does not. While we have met with some limited success in activating the control systems, repairing the main engine is beyond our capabilities.”
“Unsurprising, really,” Deacon pitched in, “when you consider what this thing must have gone through.”
“It did better than the Oregon when it came down,” Blake added.
“That it did,” Kellerman said. “But even so, I was concerned that the structural integrity of the lower decks had been compromised. That is where the engine is located. As a result, I have prohibited excavations past a certain depth. Some of the rooms have been cleared of debris and atmospherically sealed, to enable proper cataloguing of finds, but most have fallen into a state of complete disrepair.”
“We need to get moving again,” Deacon reminded Kellerman.
“I want to show the captain some of our discoveries before we leave,” Kellerman said. “It seems an awfully long way to come without showing the military expedition what we’ve found.”
Deacon just grunted.
We eventually emerged into a huge chamber, with a vaulted ceiling far above us. It was perhaps twenty metres tall and fifty or so across; easily the largest chamber I had seen inside the alien ship. It was also more ornate than most of the others. Huge, obsidian-black consoles rose out of the walls. The ground was pitted by larger hieroglyphs and scripted markings. Although everything was coated in dust, this room had clearly seen some recent attention from Kellerman’s people. Tracks and footprints marked the floor, criss-crossing at times. Kellerman followed one footprint path across the room, illuminating glow-globes in the ceiling. There was a jury-rigged lighting system above us: lamps trailed from cables, connected to a battered power generator.
Kellerman stopped. “Mr Peters, Miss Dolan – come here.”
The two researchers obediently obeyed – beaming, so pleased to be on an away-day from the station. In the middle of the room, assembled on a tattered plastic sheet, was a series of mechanical and electronic components, and Kellerman’s group assembled around it. The items had been reverently cleaned and labelled.
“Mr Peters,” Kellerman said with a wave of his hand, “you have the honour of showing the captain what we discovered in this room.”
“Of course, Doctor,” Peters enthused.
Peters placed a metal case down on the floor – something that he had brought with him from the crawler. He slowly opened the catches on the box, grinning as he peered inside. He lifted the contents in both hands, standing slowly, careful not to drop the item. He delicately tilted it. It was a bladed metal instrument, as long as my forearm. Cast from the same matt-black material as the rest of the starship – obviously conscientiously cleaned. It was covered in tiny, barely visible alien scripture.
Just an old relic, I told myself. But the thing radiated a malevolence beyond its physical presence: something that I couldn’t explain to myself, something that wasn’t logical. In contradiction, Peters just grinned and grinned; ignorant of my inexplicable reaction.
“We believe that this was part of the ship’s control unit.”
Peters was a young man but with a tired and wrinkled face. His hair was grown out, framing his dark eyes. He wandered over to one of the consoles and inserted the device. The lights overhead dipped, throwing the room into darkness. Kaminski and Blake started immediately but Kellerman held up a hand for calm.
“Please, don’t be startled,” he insisted.
A low keening sounded in the background. Then the chamber suddenly became illuminated again. The overhead glow-globes activated, but also the glyphs set into the walls and floor. The alien consoles around the perimeter of the chamber initiated. Soon the entire chamber was full of humming, operational machines and glowing iconography. The place was alive: I could almost sense the data-streams around me, as the machines communicated. That image of a ship navigated by a huge AI came to mind again.
I inspected the nearest console, watching as the machines powered up. Kellerman and his crew were in wonder at the living chamber, but I was less pleased. This felt wrong: as though we were messing with something that we didn’t understand, awakening something ancient and unknown. Blake and Kaminski seemed to share my sense of unease.
“This place safe?” Kaminski asked of no one in particular.
“We call the creators of this ship the Shard,” said Kellerman, “because that is all that is left of them – shards of their civilisation. Shards of a technically brilliant alien race. You have nothing to fear from them. Miss Dolan – please initiate the main console.”
“Yes, Doctor,” the other researcher replied.
“Kellerman – are you sure about this? Do you understand—?” I started.
“Just watch. Look at the walls.”
The walls were covered in the same insanity-inducing alien script that I had seen throughout the ship.
“Looks like a load of old chicken-scratch to me,” Kaminski piped up. “Same as every other …”
Kaminski’s words trailed off.
A bright, mercurial substance was flowing into the recessed patterns. Instead of beading on a flat surface, as real mercury did, the fluid poured into every groove and crenellation. Like a living, voracious thing – seeping, crawling up the wall, to the ceiling above, into the patterns on the floor.
“Don’t touch anything!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the chamber. I jumped aside, away from the grid as it moved beneath me.
Kaminski and Blake leapt back as well, but there was nowhere safe to move. It was everywhere now.
“It’s all right,” Kellerman said. “It isn’t harmful.”
It was like a tree, planting roots deep underfoot, throwing branches far overhead. A precisely detailed image covered every wall, the floor, the ceiling – filled the chamber. It glowed brightly, and I picked out thousands of tiny icons, each annotated in alien script. Every individual item swirled and shifted, moving with a life of its own.
“It’s a map,” I said.
<
br /> Kellerman smiled fanatically. “It’s a map of the Maelstrom. Welcome to the planetarium.”
Soon I came to recognise the various stars and formations that made up the Maelstrom. They were cast indelibly into my memory, but standing in the midst of the flowing and swirling display I had momentarily been disoriented. I spent long moments just pacing the planetarium.
“The Shard knew the Maelstrom very well,” said Kellerman. “We’ve been able to recover map data of the entire region – better than any astrocartography I’ve ever seen. Even better, the Shard once knew of a number of stable Q-jump routes through, and into, the region.”
Flickering silver strands – like a spider’s web – sprang from some worlds, linking to others. I traced some, and my touch caused the mercurial matter to flow red like capillaries. Each seemed, impossibly, to avoid the morass of black holes and gravimetric storms that blighted the region.
Is this finally it? I asked myself. An incredible prospect dawned on me. I turned to grab Blake by the shoulders, shaking him. My heart skipped a beat. The implications made me dizzy.
“Do you hear that, Blake? This thing can give us maps of the Maelstrom!”
Kellerman strode into the middle of the planetarium. Caressed some of the planets; the silver substance briefly changing colour in response to his touch. Blake just looked on in confusion, unable to understand my sudden enthusiasm.
“In theory,” Kellerman said, “it would be possible to use Q-space jump points – mapped out by the Shard – to travel right into the heart of the Krell Empire.”
“There’s the Quarantine Zone,” I said, pointing out the great rift at the edge of the chamber. “What is this star, in the middle?”
There sat a huge, pulsing star system – a sun surrounded by numerous bloated planets. A beating heart of mercury: actually shivering as though it was a living thing.
“I believe that is the Krell home system.”
I swallowed, trying to digest Kellerman’s words. My mouth was dry. I suddenly had a new purpose. This is a second chance – a new beginning. I let go of Blake. For the military, for the Alliance, the place had even greater implications. A fleet could strike at the home world – take the war to the Krell.
“Mr Peters, if you will,” Kellerman said with a wave of his hand. “Explain the rest.”
“I ran a code-breaker algorithm on one of the minor starship control units,” he said. I was only half-listening, still heady from what had just been revealed. “Then Dr Kellerman – the real mastermind here – was able to show that the scripture of this device matched one of the consoles over there.” He waved to a covered machine embedded in a nearby wall. “We really came across these by chance. We discovered that each acted as a key to activate certain functions of the ship.” He let out a long sigh. “There is still so much to be done here. Large portions of the vessel remain unknown to us. We’ve only managed to explore a tiny fraction of it.”
“Where are they?” Blake asked of Kellerman. “Whatever xenos built this ship?”
Kellerman scowled at the interruption. He didn’t seem to like it when my team addressed him directly.
“They are long gone. Dust, all dust.”
“But how do you know that?” Blake persisted.
“Because, as I say, the ship crashed thousands of years ago.”
“You said that it was carbon-dated as being thousands of years old,” Blake said. “That’s different.”
“The distinction is, at best, fine,” Kellerman replied. “I believe that the crew died in the crash. The conclusion is supported by all available scientific evidence.”
“You better hope that the Shard don’t come back, looking for their ship,” Kaminski added. “Because I’ll bet they will be mighty pissed to find that primitives like us have been poking around in the wreckage.”
“I’m quite sure that will not happen,” Kellerman said, with an edge of finality.
Blake and Kaminski exchanged loaded glances. I shared their concerns, but right now I didn’t care. I continued pacing the room, trying to take in everything that I was seeing.
“I think that you should tell the captain the best part,” Peters said with a boyish grin, indicating to Kellerman.
“We found the Key in one of the lowest chambers of the ship,” Kellerman resumed. “We’ve been able to decipher some of the alien language – some of the scripture on the walls. This was certainly a battleship, and I suspect that the Shard were once at war with the Krell. The device – the Key – has quite specific instructions.”
“What did you discover?” I asked.
“It has the same markings as those found on the Artefact, on some of the more minor alien relics surrounding the site.” His arms moved as he spoke, motors whining. “We have examined the Artefact from space. We have even run unmanned drones over the region that it occupies. I can show you the proof. Those markings are exactly the same. We can do it – we can activate the Artefact.”
Kellerman’s revelation perhaps didn’t have the effect on me that he had planned. I wasn’t interested in activating the Artefact – only using the star-maps. I couldn’t draw my eyes away from the walls.
“Just imagine, Captain,” Kellerman went on, trying to engage me, “harnessing the Artefact, understanding the signal and the influence it holds over the Krell. The Key will activate the Artefact.”
“Even more reason that Command should be made aware of your findings.”
“Haven’t you worked this out yet, Captain? With what little scientific apparatus I have here, don’t you think it fairly impossible that I could have reached the conclusions that I have?” He searched the faces of my squad. “Command hasn’t told you the whole truth about your mission. They have known about the Shard for a long time. My research has been built on the shoulders of giants.”
I frowned, continuing to inspect the alien display. I wished that I could memorise the Q-jump routes – an insane navigational network, spreading throughout Krell space—
“Helios is one of several sites of significant scientific interest,” Kellerman declared, frustration in his voice. “It is but one of several locations left behind by the Shard.”
And there it is, I finally realised.
Worst of all, for all of his insanity, I knew that it had to be true. There was no way that Kellerman could have done this on his own, no matter what other scientific support he had behind him. Alien devices, star-data intelligence, the discovery of the Krell home star system: it was too much. Too many questions. Maybe not even Kellerman can answer these.
“I’m telling you everything,” he went on. “All that I know. Ask yourselves this: would Command really have risked a Sim Ops team – really have sent you out here – if the site was of purely theoretical interest?”
Kaminski sighed. Blake just looked shell-shocked. You’re young, Kid.
I knew that I couldn’t trust Kellerman, but my intel on this planet had plainly been wrong. The Alliance knew of the worth of the Artefact. Knew of the worth of the station’s findings. Jostin’s words haunted me: “Imagine if that could be harnessed. Weaponised.” They had known, and they had sent us out here to bring Kellerman back. This was why he was so important. I was quite sure, then, that Command didn’t care at all about the two thousand staff, about the security team, about the credit value of Helios Station. They wanted Kellerman, and what he held in his head. My squad and I were just cogs in the machine, nothing more.
Deacon suddenly intruded on our conversation, tugging on Kellerman’s arm. His face was pale, respirator hanging round his neck, beard streaked with sand.
“I’ve lost communication with Farrell and Ray. We should get moving back to the surface.”
“It will likely be interference from the ship,” Kellerman said. “Don’t be unduly concerned. But you are right that we should be going.”
“We’re not going anywhere without the star-data,” I said, holding up a hand for calm. “Whatever Command has or hasn’t done, I need this.”
“We already have it, decoded and ready for onward transmission,” Kellerman said with a nod.
And with that, Peters deactivated the device. The humming sound ceased and the chamber darkened. The silver substance gradually drained from the cuneiform: shrinking rather than expanding. First the ceiling, then the floor, then finally the walls – retreating like a living organism, disappearing as quickly and as mysteriously as it had appeared. The intricate patterns were gone – the star-map impossible to divine from the random collection of marks on the wall.
But I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was a thing of beauty, but so much more. It had been such a long time since I’d felt it, that I barely recognised the emotion it stirred in me.
Hope.
Deacon led the way, and we eventually ascended to the surface levels again.
“Ray!” he barked, into his communicator. “This is Chief Deacon! Respond!”
When that didn’t work, he tried the same with Farrell. Both channels were empty static.
“Probably just a transmission problem,” Kellerman insisted. He was panting, taking tortured and clumsy steps in his exo-suit. Still, he refused any help from his researchers.
The exit came into view ahead, and I picked my way through the broken terrain. Slashes of bright light fell through the breach in the starship hull. Inside the vessel, it had been so dark that it took a moment for my naked eyesight to adjust to the new conditions. The temperature gradually increased as we went: outside, it was approaching high noon now. The desert was deathly still – whatever life Helios harboured, as basic as it was, knew to avoid the extreme midday heat.
Ray and Farrell stood together, heads bobbed as though in conversation. Ray was consulting a data-slate. Farrell manipulated the device and pointed to something. We were virtually on top of them before either of them even noticed. They stood just outside the hole in the starship hull, within the shade of the tent. The enclosure outside was still open, and the overhead suns so bright that they shone right through the fabric.
Thank Christo for that, I thought. No Krell.
