by Barry Kirwan
“It doesn’t make sense!” he said. The noise of their own personal waterfall made it hard to concentrate.
“They’re going to bloody drown us,” Kat shouted, as she waded over to the inert Hohash.
“But why?” Pierre was trying to think, but the fluid was already knee-deep. “Suits! We need to put the suits on!” she yelled, already tugging the two EVA suits from their holding rack. Pierre grabbed one and tried to don it. With only one leg in, he lost his footing and fell over, so that the liquid poured into his suit, dragging him down. Kat’s hand hauled him up by the collar, and he managed to regain his footing. She already had both legs in hers and zipped it up to her neck, then helped him into his. The fluid was now waist-level. His suit had half-filled with the stuff, which he knew would be a real hazard if he didn’t remain upright.
They both snapped on their helmets moments before the fluid reached their necks. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as the whole ship flooded to the ceiling, leaving no trace of air. The gushing noise shut off. He heard only his laboured breathing, and the occasional creak from the ship’s hull. He switched on his intercom.
“You okay?”
Her breathing sounded scratchy, but he sensed she was more pissed off than scared. “Bastards! Just when you think it can’t get any worse.”
He nodded inside his helmet. Then he noticed the single red light flashing on the inside of his faceplate. He knew what it meant: his suit’s air cylinder was almost empty. He remembered he hadn’t had time to replenish his suit’s systems since his last sortie on Pietro.
She caught sight of his warning light. “Is that what I think it is?”
He laid his hand on her shoulder. “How’s yours?”
“About twenty minutes. Look, isn’t there some way we can shunt air from my system to yours?”
He shook his head. He saw another red dot flash, meaning his air was almost gone. He had maybe twenty seconds.
“Listen, Kat –”
“Dammit, Pierre, I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t want to watch you asphyxiate in front of me, you got that?”
Pierre stared at her. He thought of the last hour. Any last requests, she’d said. He couldn’t have wished for more. His eyes etched every contour of her face. He sucked in one last breath, feeling the canister’s resistance telling him he was out of time. “You won’t have to, Katrina. This’ll be quicker.”
Pierre raised his hands to his helmet, and flicked open the seals.
Chapter 6
Ghost Town
Micah and his three companions stood atop the jagged, wind-carved ridge, scanning the pale ruins of the spider city in the basin below, cradled by beige bluffs and cliffs. What was left of the hexagon-shaped city had been bleached white. Blake had said that in the Hohash rendition of events, there had been vivid colours just before the Q’Roth invasion. The colour had faded because the spiders had been slaughtered. Nothing remained of them, except the few Hohash mirror-like artefacts which had once served the spiders, and now cohabited enigmatically with humanity’s refugees – the rest of the Hohash had self-destructed when their masters died.
He could barely feel the tangerine sun even now where it hung at noon under a mauve sky. A silver moon, mountainous rather than cratered, and twice the size of Earth’s, dawdled near the horizon.
Inwardly, he sagged – could this really become our home? His former excitement at being on another planet had quickly waned in the bleak landscape and coolness of the sun. Yet he knew it was the only option at the moment. Try to make this work, he told himself.
The city resembled a giant tray of upside-down crockery which someone had dropped, shattering pieces whilst retaining the original pattern. The area around the city, in contrast, was luminous: quartz in the sand and rock, Kostakis had suggested. All except three of the city’s Moorish spires had broken, snapped in two like sticks of white candy. The resultant image was of a skeleton picked clean by vultures, its bones cracked open by hyenas to extract the marrow.
He tried not to think of Earth’s demise. Lately he’d been dreaming of people he’d known, mainly from work or the few stores he used to visit. They never said anything, just watched him with a deadly earnestness, waiting to see whether humanity would survive or not. The way they looked at him made him feel responsible, yet he didn’t know what he could do. He shivered. So many people had nightmares these days, that no one ever asked anyone else if they’d had a good night’s sleep.
“Magnificent!” Kostakis bellowed, spreading his arms wide. “An archaeological treasure. A gold mine!”
Micah was searching for a different, more tragic word. It ailed him to be reminded how weak and defenceless humanity was – the spider race was obviously vastly superior, yet they’d been culled as easily as a harvester reaps wheat.
“So sad,” Sandy said.
Thank God you’re here, Sandy! Micah knew why he needed her around: she centred him. He’d had leadership thrust upon him, and without her grainy black and white vision, her seeing-it-for-what-it-was counsel, he’d be like a man cast adrift in an asteroid belt. He turned to face the others. His analyst-trained mind clicked in for a few moments as he considered the best way to lead this team. Know your people, he’d read recently in a flash-book lent him by Blake. Sandy wasn’t a problem – they’d both worked together for Eden Mission back on Earth, albeit in different areas, and had been thrown together by events.
Kostakis, the hefty Greek professor whose dual reputations for being a genius and a philanderer had rivalled each other on the gossip nets back on Earth, seemed paradoxically selfless. Micah guessed the goatee-bearded scientist had been so long at the top of his scientific game in the field of Gaiatics – the study of Earth as an organism – that he didn’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore. His approach to everything, in stark contrast to Sandy’s, was optimistic to the point of being puppyish. Yet like almost everyone else here on Ourshiwann, he’d lost all his family members and friends. Micah presumed he was one of those rare people who found light even in the dark. Or maybe this was heaven for a scientist, every sunrise bringing a plethora of discoveries to ponder.
Jen – he’d heard Kostakis call her that – was a different story. Her physical shape – a slightly dumpy mousy blonde with a tendency to show her cleavage more than most women did, and bright green eyes that spent a lot of time looking sideways at people when they weren’t looking back – belied the facts. She’d come through when Earth had most needed it – she’d commandeered a Q’Roth ship, and nuked a legion of Q’Roth warriors during the final retreat. There was also a nasty rumour that she’d killed a man named Hendriks with her nanosword – the like of which no one except Ramires had ever seen – in order to enforce a command decision on Eden. Given that she’d rescued a quarter of the population, Blake had understandably given her a command role. And if there was going to be a battle, Micah knew which side he wanted Jen on. He had a hunch that someone like Jen could make a difference.
His eyes re-focused – the analysis had only taken a matter of seconds. He cleared his throat. “Our mission is recon. A platoon of Blake’s men did a basic security sweep this morning – no life signs. Our job is to look for advantages – water, food, shelter, weapons.” He felt more upbeat now he was taking command. “So, let’s go down and explore an alien city! Jen, you’re sure you can drive that thing?” He jabbed a thumb at the all-terrain eight-wheeler behind them.
“It’s Jennifer to you. No problem, just make sure your head-strap is tight.”
Frowning, he approached the muscle-bound hummer ‘rhino’. He clambered up into the front passenger seat. Jennifer gave him a look but said nothing. Kostakis seemed happy enough to sit in the back next to Sandy.
Jennifer shoved her foot down and the vehicle raced toward the precipice. Micah fumbled to get the Velcro belt fastened across his forehead just as the ridge’s edge in front of him disappeared, and all he saw was the city and the sky. The vertigo was heightened by the insane engine s
cream as the wheels spun in mid-air. A sickening feeling in his stomach barely had time to register before a bone-cracking jolt pounded his coccyx and spine as they hit the incline. A whirlwind of dust and rocks hurtled past at a sixty degree angle. His seat juddered too much to even think about shouting Jesus Christ, slow the fuck down, for fear of shattering his teeth. In a minute that felt like ten, they skidded onto level ground, tearing at a muscle in his neck as Jennifer swerved the vehicle to a screeching halt. Pebbles peppered the back of the hummer. The rhino purred.
He tried to calm his breathing, unclipped the headrest and turned around to Sandy. The last thing they needed was for her to have a miscarriage, not that anyone except him and Vince knew about her pregnancy.
“Are you okay?”
Jennifer cut in. “Of course she and Dimitri are both okay. Inertial dampers work in the back, in case of med-evac, but not up front. Wanna trade places with Dimitri?”
Sandy gave the barest of nods to indicate she was fine. Micah shook his head. He stared across the flat plain, the city glinting in the distance. “Let’s go,” he said, then added, remembering a line from an ancient Western vid his father used to watch, “we’re burning daylight.” Given the twenty hour day-night cycle here, it seemed appropriate.
They skirted the perimeter for an hour trying to find a way in that wasn’t blocked by fallen spires and debris. They stopped at a juncture where, as usual, oak-tree sized chunks of snapped white columns barred their way. “This’ll have to do.”
“Finally,” Jennifer muttered, cutting the engine.
Micah knew he was in charge, but Jennifer unnerved him. She’d been captain of one of the four ships; he hadn’t. He recalled another tactic from Blake’s manual: pre-emptive strike coupled with evade. “I suggest we split into pairs, and meet back here in two hours.”
“Are we done?” Jennifer said.
He cleared his throat. “Sandy and I will take the left side, it’s West I think, and you and the Professor –”
“– will see you in two hours,” Jennifer said, disappearing out of her side door to the ground below. “Don’t be late, and don’t forget your VHF radio,” she shouted, not turning back. Kostakis popped the side door and leapt out, loping after her.
Sandy grinned at Micah from the rear-view mirror. “That went pretty well, don’t you think?”
He noticed Jennifer had taken the ignition keycard with her. Yep, real smooth.
* * *
Jen felt she’d been superimposed onto a cartoon alien world. So clean: no dust, no decay, and no bodies. It was so different to how Dublin had been, both times: the first, after it had been nuked in WWIII; and the second, after the Q’Roth had counter-attacked, just before she’d stocked her ship with its human cargo. Carnage, charred buildings and corpses whose smell she could never forget, and dust she didn’t want to ingest because of what, or who, it might contain. The anger simmered inside her, stoked up recently after she’d found out that her brother Gabriel, whom she’d thought dead since the end of the War ten years earlier, had been alive all that time, only to be murdered by the Alicians days before the invasion.
Images from WWIII popped uninvited into her mind like holo-spam – her time in the gangs after the sacking of Dublin and most of the Eastern coastline, running guerrilla incursions against the enemy. She’d learned to trust her colleagues with her life, up until she discovered her team leader had been collaborating, leading them on doomed raids. That had been the first time she really felt she’d killed someone – because it had been personal – even if she’d rewired a drone to do it for her.
She gnawed on a knuckle, remembering why she was here. She wanted to crack an Alician neck, but that wasn’t likely. The Alicians or Q’Roth could arrive in space and eliminate mankind from a safe distance, without warning. That was what rankled her most, their casual brutality. She needed to find a new weapon, one that would surprise the Alicians; something to even the odds. She kicked a piece of debris, sending it skittering into a plaza. Where would she find a weapon here, on a planet of pacifists who’d made no attempt to save themselves? She should be with Vince and Ramires, not out here looking for hidey-holes.
She observed the alien landscape with a cool disinterest as she and her lover stalked their way past bland buildings interspersed with coiling paths and plazas, some square, others round. They came across starfish-like mounds, wide as houses and raised at the middle, and every fifty metres or so stretched diamond-shaped structures pointing to the sky. None of these had any obvious access or purpose as far as she could fathom. The city had obviously been planned according to a complex mathematical topographical construct, but she’d need to survey it from above to work it out. There was little decoration except an off-white shuriken motif, three concentric circles with sharp barbs peeling off the central disk, tattooed on every structure. She noticed that they were all slightly different, in the number of barbs, or their length or angle. Numbers or names. Dimitri carried a small omni-recorder, so they’d be able to download the data later and review it.
“Nothing higher than two storeys,” she said, to break the silence.
“Yes,” Dimitri said, “but look closer: no brickwork, it’s made of extruded material, the same density all the way through.” He squatted down and hefted a piece of rubble as white on the inside as on the outside. “This piece has been lying here for a thousand years, yet there’s no sign of decay. It’s as if it was broken off yesterday!”
Some part of her scientific mind wanted to be as enthralled as Dimitri, caught up in discovery, but her guard was up. She had no explanation as to why there were no signs of spider carcasses, dust, or of broken Hohash mirrors. She found herself staring into the dark shadows, half-expecting to see a giant furry spider-leg protruding. Her mother’s side of the family had always been a little ‘touched’, seeing ghosts, reading Tarot cards and the like. And here was a ghost town, a whole race slaughtered in a matter of hours. The fact it had been a thousand years ago didn’t dampen her sixth sense’s acuity. She walked on.
She had to admit the architecture was elegant: coiling ramps instead of steps, and low buildings so the sky loomed large. After ten minutes, she’d seen roads that were flat and open, and others that fed into smooth glossy tunnels passing between the ubiquitous buildings she assumed were dwelling places. She’d half-expected to see massive webs, but of course these creatures could simply have looked like spiders, rather than being similar to arachnids back on Earth. They stopped in a plaza with a set of poles around ten metres high, spaced evenly apart by about a metre. Jen glanced sideways at Dimitri, but he shrugged – a gesture she’d never seen Dimitri use before. He laughed in response to her surprise.
“Maybe they’re for spider gymnastics,” he said.
“Trust a Greek to suggest an Olympic function.” Jen replied, trying to disguise her lack of enthusiasm.
“Do you realise,” he said, casting his gaze panoramically around the square, “how fabulous it is to know that there is so much here I do not understand?”
She stared at him, remembering the first time she’d seen him lecture in a vast auditorium. His energy, his zeal for knowledge, had hooked her from the start. She pointed to an oval doorway into one of the buildings. Her foreboding had passed.
“Time to increase our ignorance,” she said.
They stepped inside. Darkness enfolded her. She held her breath and slipped her right hand into a pocket, gripping the smooth nanosword hilt. As she passed through the squat, round portal, she had to duck her head. The short tube opened up into a kidney-shaped room, about five metres across, with four metal hoops suspended from the ceiling. It was light inside, though there were no windows – somehow the opaque walls transmitted light from outside.
She couldn’t tell where the walls and ceiling and floor ended – the room had the appearance of having been blown like a glass bubble. She had a hunch, though she couldn’t explain why, that it was a bedroom, or some form of restorative room. She turned arou
nd to see Dimitri enter and straighten up.
“Fantastic! I do believe all their buildings are extruded or grown from the same material. Very impressive, very practical! Imagine the durability, the low maintenance!”
She nodded, then turned and took the access tube to a larger room, twice the size of the first. Six squat, metre-wide circular tables formed a ring. Each table or stool, made of the same bland white, non-reflective material, contained a central funnel heading underground. She drifted a finger across the nearest table – it looked smooth but was sticky to the touch, like brushed steel. She knew it meant the material was molecularly complex. She’d read back on Earth about a new research project into organic polymers with DNA-like coding, the idea being you could grow objects based on an inherent memory structure. The theory was, she recalled, that if you could do this, then objects and even buildings would retain their shape longer, since they ‘remembered’ what they should look like. She reckoned the spiders had mastered it.
“Polyphasic mnemonic plastics,” she offered.
“Exactly! That’s why I love you my darling! So clever, so quick, and so concise!” He reached over and took her hand, gently spinning her into an embrace as if they were on a dance-floor. She’d always been surprised that someone so large could dance so well. He kissed her fully. She opened her mouth to his, in case his tongue wanted to enter – maybe sex would be a good idea, she thought, a tonic for her dark mood. But no. He was overwhelmed by his first love, scientific curiosity. She envied him.
