“Please tell me you’ve found it,” he said as he joined them.
“I think so,” said Tuner, straining against a rusty metal hatch. It was round, made from a dark, copper material a couple of inches thick, and hidden in a nook between two sections of stone wall. “Somebody give me a hand.”
Jack stepped forward to help. Rogan smirked and gently pushed him to one side.
“Seriously. Do you want to get inside or not?”
Tuner stepped back so Rogan could get a better grip on the hatch. The metal groaned but it wouldn’t budge. Then something important snapped inside. The hatch swung open so fast, Rogan nearly tore it off its ancient hinges.
“Yeah, that’ll do it,” said Klik, staring wide-eyed as Rogan brushed her hands free of dust. Rogan smiled politely and gestured towards the open tunnel.
“You first.”
Klik shrugged and climbed in. Tuner went next, getting a boost up from Rogan. She stopped Jack as he went to follow suit.
“Now that the girl isn’t in earshot…” she said, nodding down the dark tunnel, “…be careful, all right? Hopefully the Krettelians mean well, but they’re also desperate. Desperate people do stupid things.”
Jack nodded. “I know. This whole deal has stunk from the start. But I won’t let my emotions get the better of me, I promise.”
“Okay.” She nodded disappointedly, as if she hoped he’d turn around and walk back to the ship. “Head on in. I’ll smack this thing shut behind us.”
Jack jumped up, grabbed the lip of the protruding pipe, and swung himself inside. The dying light outside did little to illuminate the tunnel, but his helmet did what the setting sun couldn’t. There was enough space to walk upright – just about – and, if he stretched out his arms, Jack reckoned the tips of his fingers would brush the curved walls. Not that he wanted to, of course. A curious, slimy mould had eaten away much of the pipe’s brittle metal coating. God only knew how disgusting the place smelled. His helmet filtered it out, but he had no idea how Klik put up with it.
Did she even have a sense of smell? She didn’t really have a nose, come to think of it, just a pair of minuscule nostrils…
He shook his head. In his nervousness, even his thoughts were rambling.
Rogan climbed in after him. She swung the door of the hatch shut again. The echo of the resulting clang ricocheted down the pipe like a pinball.
“Do you know where we’re going?” asked Jack.
Klik bobbed her head uneasily from side to side.
“Sort of. Well, no. But I know the pipe will take us there eventually. I’ve only ever been at the other end, so…”
Everyone watched her expectantly.
“I’ll get my bearings once we’re further inside,” she added, shrugging exasperatedly.
“Lead the way.”
They followed her down the tunnel in single file – Klik, Tuner, Jack, and then Rogan bringing up the rear. Their footsteps were not subtle, especially those of the two automata. Jack winced. He was reminded of a town crier waking up citizens with his bell.
“Nobody above ground is going to hear us, are they?”
“No way.” Klik shook her head up front. “Too much earth and rock between us and the Mansa. And besides, we’re probably under the old city right now. If anyone’s going to hear us, it’s the resistance.”
They carried on without speaking – not in silence, for the clanging of the tunnel ruined any chance of that – for another ten minutes without encountering anything save for more sections of identical, dilapidated piping. The sight of a T-junction ahead brought Jack far more excitement than it should have.
“Which way?” he asked.
“I…” Flustered, Klik froze in the middle. “I don’t know.”
“Look at the mould,” said Rogan. She squeezed past everyone and pointed at the floor of the pipe. “That way—” she indicated to the right “—is covered with it, from floor to ceiling. Nobody’s been through there in a long time. But there are tracks going off to the left – patches where the mould hasn’t grown back yet.”
“So that must be the way to the base,” said Tuner. “Boy. Without you, I’d have been lost down here for days.”
“Yes,” sighed Rogan. “I believe you would.”
They followed the pipe to the left. Jack suspected they were climbing steadily higher. They came across no other junctions or crossroads – at least, none large enough for any of them except Tuner to squeeze through – and after perhaps half an hour of cramped, monotonous walking in pitch-black darkness, arrived at the tunnel’s end.
“Woah,” said Jack, climbing out of the pipe and up onto a rickety drainage platform. “Would you look at that…”
They emerged into a giant subterranean hall. Stonework and brickwork grew out in arches and aqueducts from the cavern walls. Giant water wheels made from ancient, rotten wood stood frozen in time, waiting for a stream that would never again flow. Some had collapsed after centuries of disuse. The same squelchy, furry mould that consumed the pipes had attacked most of the cavern, too.
“Incredible craftsmanship,” Tuner agreed, clambering after him. Jack helped pull him up.
“Thanks,” said Klik. “We’d repair everything and put it to use, only it would mean giving ourselves away to the Mansa. Sucks, but oh well. There’s no water anyway. On a brighter note, I think I know the way to the base from here.”
“Klik?” said a commanding voice from the walkway above them. Jack jumped. “Is that you?”
A Krettelian guard hurried down a flight of creaking metal steps, her rifle aimed in their direction. Like the drainage platform and plumbing system, the walkway had been added long after the aqueducts were built – yet still an age before the rest of modern Ankhir. When the guard saw who had entered, she relaxed.
“Thank goodness.” She warily checked the pipe behind them. “We heard about the Mansa supply ship. Sek thought you’d be back days ago. He’s been worried out of his mind.”
“We got held up,” replied Klik. “Ankhir is in lockdown, same as the rest of Paryx. Had to go through the desert, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Satisfied that nobody had followed them through the tunnels, the guard rose to full height again. “Well, you’re here now. I’d better take you through. Follow me.”
Jack’s hand subconsciously darted to the Solar Core hanging from his hip. Without it, he had nothing to bargain with. Until they gave him Earth’s coordinates and a way to get there, the Core would stay right where it was.
He hoped he wasn’t pushing his luck. Then again, was there ever a time when he wasn’t?
The Krettelian guard led them out of the cavern and through a series of narrow corridors. Many of the bricks had crumbled away from the walls. A train of miniature bulbs, sort of like fairy lights, ran along a thin wire stapled to the ceiling. Many of their filaments had blown.
They arrived at a thick industrial door. The guard had to turn a circular valve-handle to unlock it, and it groaned as she pulled it open. They stepped through into the rear of a room Jack quickly recognised as the resistance command centre.
“Father!” said Klik, sprinting past them.
Jack watched her leap into Sek’s arms, saw Sek’s normally hard expression soften with relief. A good few seconds passed before he seemed to realise who else had entered the room.
“I was worried we’d lost you when they brought the convoy down.” He said it facing Klik, but Jack suspected the words were meant just as much for the artefact hanging from his hip. As if to confirm Jack’s suspicions, Sek added, “Did you get it?”
“Let me ask you something first.” Jack crossed his arms and fixed Sek with a stare. “You didn’t tell the Mansa we were coming, did you?”
“Jack?” Tuner looked up at him, his head tilted at a concerned angle. “What are you doing…?”
Sek’s expression following Jack’s question was a good enough answer by itself. Furious didn’t quite cover it.
“Of course not! Ar
e you seriously suggesting I would put my own daughter’s life at risk like that?”
“No, I don’t. But someone did. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I was in that supply ship for half an hour before they noticed me. And sure, maybe they put a tracking device on the Core, or something. But I’m not buying it. If that’s the case, why didn’t they shoot down the Adeona the moment we re-entered Paryx’s orbit?”
“They would have had ample opportunity to intercept us while we crossed the desert, too,” Rogan agreed. Even for an automata, her posture had stiffened.
“Exactly. That tells me they haven’t got a clue where the Core is. And if there was even a chance they were tracking it, you’d have never let me bring it back to your base, Sek. With all due respect, you don’t look that stupid.”
“Thanks,” grumbled the impatient resistance leader.
“Which leads me to think that either there was some super secret alarm system that your chummy intel provider conveniently forgot to mention in the files he gave you… or somebody tipped the Mansa off just as I was making my escape. Either way, something’s not right here. I’m not handing anything over until I know what’s going on.”
“This is a conversation I really wish we’d had back on the ship,” said Rogan. She took a step back towards the door. The guard who’d escorted them inside moved to block it.
“Nobody knew about the mission who isn’t in this room right now,” Sek snapped. “Please, go ahead. Which one of us are you calling a traitor?”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” came a dry, menacing voice from the rear of the room. “It was me.”
Sek’s face fell, his fury suddenly doused. Everyone spun around to face a dark and dusty corner to the right of the door through which Jack, Rogan, Klik and Tuner had entered. Something about the voice set Jack’s teeth on edge. It was hauntingly familiar.
Tuner let out an angry cry when he saw who it was. Perhaps Jack would have done the same had the shock of seeing the terrifying figure step out from the shadows not rendered him mute.
His high-tech armour was mangled and twisted, as if fused painfully with the body beneath. Its colour was a dark, crimson red. And his helmet, sleek and expressionless, was etched with white scratches and battle scars.
“It can’t be,” whispered Rogan.
“Nice work, Jack.” Charon unholstered his pistol and aimed it at Jack’s head. “Now, the Solar Core. Hand it over.”
12
The Benefactor
Rogan bolted for the door. The Krettelian guard who’d escorted them into the command room stood blocking her path, her rifle gripped menacingly in her insectoid hands. Rogan raised her arm ready to cave the guard’s head in, but Tuner pulled her back just in time.
“You could take her out,” he hissed, “but what then? Are you planning to fight through the rest of the resistance, too?”
Rogan lowered her arm but continued to stare the guard down. In fairness, the guard looked just as bewildered by the situation as the rest of them.
Jack continued to stare at the gun being aimed at his face, and the crimson-clad maniac wielding it.
“The Solar Core,” Charon repeated, holding out his other hand. “Give it to me.”
Sek staggered away from Charon, shaking his head.
“Why?” he asked. “You’ve been funding our movement for months. You even gave us the plans and intel we needed to steal the Core. Why would you try and sabotage your own mission?”
“Own mission?” Jack snapped at Sek. “You’ve been working with this madman the whole time? You’ve had me working for him?”
“I didn’t try and sabotage it.” Charon ignored Jack’s comments and replied to Sek, but kept his gun and faceless helmet trained on Jack all the same. “Or at least that’s not what would have happened had this idiot not taken so long to steal the damn thing. I sent the Mansa attack ships a warning close to half an hour after Jack snuck on board. Clearly the reputation far exceeds the man.”
“It wasn’t as if there were signposts,” Jack said through gritted teeth.
“My daughter was on their ship!” Sek slammed his fists on the table. “You could have gotten her killed!”
“Unlikely.” Charon’s helmet twitched. The tick looked involuntary to Jack. “Had Jack been quicker, they would have been out of the Penin system long before my message arrived. And it was their ship that decided to shoot down that attack ship, not me. Still, I shouldn’t complain. They got the job done, didn’t they?”
“What’s going on, father?” Klik slowly edged around the table towards Sek, hunched over and afraid. “Are we still getting that Core thing or not?”
“I suspect that we are not,” said Sek. He put his arm around Klik and pulled her behind him, shielding her from Charon. “Don’t worry, darling. It’s going to be all right.”
“You still haven’t answered him.” Jack remained frozen to the spot. Charon’s opaque helmet continued to stare back at him. “Why go to all the trouble of stealing from the Mansa only to go and bloody tell them about it?”
For the first time since drawing his gun, Charon turned his head. He glanced over Jack’s shoulder at Rogan and Tuner, who were still cowering near the door behind.
“Did those automata used to belong to me? Naughty. Oh well. I no longer have any need for them.”
He turned back to Jack.
“I need a Solar Core for a… project I’m working on. A sun is the only energy source powerful enough for it.”
“The Iris,” said Jack, nodding carefully. “Yeah. I’ve heard of it.”
“Of course.” Another side glance at the two automata. “I imagine you have. Gaskan told me you were a curious one. He told me a lot before you killed him, in fact.”
“Actually, that was me,” said Rogan.
If Charon heard her, the comment went ignored.
“As I’m sure you already know, the Mansa Empire is the only civilisation in possession of the technology required to capture a star,” he continued. “There was no question of asking them for it, which left only one other option: stealing it. But I couldn’t do it myself. Far too dangerous… and far too much risk of the theft getting traced back to me.”
“So this whole time, that’s all the resistance was to you.” Sek’s face twitched with barely suppressed rage. “A patsy. A fall-guy. You never had any interest in helping our cause, did you?”
“Afraid not. But there was no way your people could ever steal a Solar Core on your own. You couldn’t even get your daughter off-world without my help. I needed the resistance to take the blame for the theft… but I needed somebody else to do the actual stealing for you.”
“So glad to have been of service,” said Jack, grinding his teeth together. He balled his hands into fists.
“You were the ideal man for the job. Capable of escaping a Raklett battlecruiser, but evidently not so capable that you’d think too hard about what you were being asked to do. And I had the perfect incentive to get you on board.”
“You tricked me.”
“Not exactly.” Charon bobbed his head towards Sek. “I tricked them. I only misled you. Do as I say, and I have every intention of honouring the arrangement.”
Jack’s heart went from hammering like a snare drum to skipping a beat. He swallowed hard.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“When Gaskan reported in to say he’d captured a human, I refused to believe him. A human? Out in the galaxy? Surely he had to be mistaken. There are no humans out here. Earth is too far away, too far forgone to join the galactic community. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder. Had those brainless apes found a way?”
Charon paused.
“But then Gaskan sent me the medical scans he took of you, and I knew…” He shook his head disappointedly. “I knew that it was you who made it out here, and you alone. Still, you could be useful… with the right leverage. I knew that you’d be desperate to get back home.”
Jack struggled to get the right words
out.
“So what? What do you care about one human being from a doomed, backward rock like Earth?”
“Because that’s where I’m going. And that’s why I need the Solar Core, so for the last time – hand it over.”
“What?” Jack stepped forward; Charon stopped him sharp with a quick shake of his gun. “Why? What the hell do you want Earth for?”
“That’s hardly the question you should be asking right now, Jack.” He beckoned for the Core. “Here’s a better one: are you going to come with me?”
Jack’s hand reached into the pouch by his side. Of course he wanted to travel back to Earth. And yet he hesitated.
“Don’t do it, Jack,” Tuner cried out. “Don’t give it to him. Who knows what he’ll use it for?”
“If the prospect of going home isn’t compelling enough,” Charon said in an exasperated tone of voice, “here’s a question that’s a tad bit more immediate. How much do you want to be shot in the face?”
Jack quickly pulled the Core out of the bag. Its dull chrome shell glowed in the dim candlelight of the command room. Charon snatched at it with his free hand.
“Sensible answer,” he said, before shooting the guard by the door instead.
The shot had been quiet – a noise-dampened laser bolt that burned through the Krettelian’s chest and left a charred, bloody stain on the door behind. Her body slid down to the floor.
Everybody screamed. Klik threw herself under the table. Charon yelled for silence, aiming his gun at each one of them in turn.
“Damn you!” Sek looked ready to tear Charon in half. His eyes bulged and his mandibles snapped violently. “I’ll make sure you pay for this!”
“Oh, I doubt that.” Charon stepped backwards towards another of the command room’s heavy metal doors. “When I sent that alert, I told the Mansa it was the resistance who’d come to steal from their supply convoy. I needed them to blame somebody else – somebody obvious and easy – so they wouldn’t dig too much deeper into what happened to their missing Core. They’re a proud bunch, the Mansa. They’ll want this wrapped up pretty quick.”
Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2) Page 10
