An Obsidian Sky (14 page)

*

‘My dearest
Julian

‘I know that
you have not heard from me in some time. You must be very worried.
But you should not fear for I am very safe, and my every need is
taken care of. I’m sure that mum is terribly worried about me. But
I want you to let her know that I am perfectly safe.

‘I have gone
away to a very special place, a place where I am very special (at
least they tell me so). They say that there will be a war at home
before long. I hope that you are all safe. I cannot talk with you
in any other way at the moment for I am currently in deep-space and
away from the satellite link-ups. I wanted to tell you sister, that
I am going to help change the world. It is going to be a world with
no war and no fear. Imagine that. A world where we could dance
among the heavens, like we always dreamed of, without fear, without
thought. I wish you were here, I really do. This station is so
massive that I get overwhelmed just by thinking about it. We all
call it Ascension. When it is finished it will provide the world
with a new leading light. There will be nothing to stop it.

‘Blue Dawn,
that’s the AI, has been so very kind to me. She has made sure that
everything that I could ever want has been taken care of. I have
already worked for two whole days. They say that I am the perfect
candidate and that in just a few days they will be ready to use me
in their projects. I can’t wait; the excitement is really starting
to make me bubble.

‘I am so sorry
for cutting this letter short, I am sure you are desperate to hear
more from me, but I have an early start tomorrow. I will write a
letter every evening, just to let you know that I am safe. I hope
that you are all well and I hope that soon, when all these
political tensions are over, you can come and visit me amongst the
stars.

‘Your ever
loving sister, Persephone.’

*

This was the
first sheet of paper. Behind it were two others. The writing upon
them was less legible and appeared smudged as if through the
spilling of water. But I knew in my heart that it was smudged by
falling tears. I looked up and saw the busy bustle of the CIC, men
and women rushing to respond to the orders of Aeniah. Each of them
was covered in a grey hue. All of them appeared to be in a very
sickly condition. Aeniah and Sean appeared to be the only spritely
individuals left. I turned my thoughts away from them and focused
upon the second letter. I read the letter in my head.

*

‘My dearest
Julian

‘I have heard
the terrible news. War is on the horizon. We all knew that it was
coming, but I still can’t believe it. None of us know what is
happening. There is a rumour that the Earth has been hit. My God
Julian I hope that you are all safe. The news reports say little,
we no longer have any accurate reports. Carvelle, the man who
conceived of Ascension, says not to worry, that there has been
little actual fighting; that they would never use such terrible
weapons upon one another. But I don’t believe him.

‘Julian, I
have dark news. I do not want you to worry, as you have other
concerns no doubt, but I have nobody else to confide in. There is
something deeply wrong on Ascension. There is something deep within
its bowels that they are keeping from us. I do not think that they
know what it is, but it is making the population sick. Carvelle has
told me that I am unique. That I will be a saviour in a time of
war. He offered me the choice, to work on the genetics project or
become a part of it. His words had such a great impact that I
joined up immediately. There are several other women and men who
have also signed up, they are all very friendly. In fact at times
it seems as though we are the only ones who are not sick.

‘But I do not
mean to suggest that there is anything truly wrong. It is probably
just me, well you remember what I was like. I have been so jittery
since getting here that I have frightened myself half to death.
Never fear, Ascension is the most comfortable place that I have
ever lived in. Did you know that the station even has highways,
with full sized vehicles?

‘We get doses
for the genetics project tomorrow. Carvelle tells me that all of
the stations population will reach a state of apotheosis soon,
where we will have the powers of a god to use for the benefit of
our people. Dawn disagrees; she urges him to be more cautious. I
never know what is going on between those two, but they seem very
close. They dote upon all of us in the project as though we were
their children.

‘I must go
soon because they have told us not to be tired for our exposure to
the meds. My next letter will be in a couple of days, they say that
I won’t be up to much for a while. Since I know that you must be
struggling terribly I have included what I have earned on Ascension
so far. I know it is not much but I’m certain that it will
help.

‘Your ever
loving sister, Persephone.’

*

The bustle in
the CIC was still growing and Aeniah was shouting for a status
report. The final letter lay in my hand and the excitement of
learning more about Persephone’s fate was too much. With little
effort I folded away the second letter and unfolded the third. The
letters began to flow throughout my mind as they lifted off the
page.

*

‘Julian

‘My dearest
sister something has gone wrong. I hurt everywhere. It was not so
bad the first day, but now I am in so much pain. I turned on the
news today and heard of the most awful events. We are at war. My
God, it never ends. It seems like history will just repeat itself
again and again. They say that they have dropped the bombs. My God
I hope that they have not fallen near you. We have heard that the
colonies were lost in an instant, that all the fleets have been
destroyed, that communication satellites are gone.

‘There is
panic everywhere here. Some of the sections have been cordoned off
because of the civil unrest. We keep hearing more and more reports.
None of them are pleasing to hear. They have shut off the media
networks for now. But don’t worry, Ascension is self sustaining, it
was designed for us to live completely free of the old world. At
least that is what Carvelle says. But I don’t trust him. I don’t
trust anyone, not anymore.

‘I don’t know
what they have done to me but it isn’t good. All a feel is pain. My
head hurt so much today that I did not stop screaming until I was
sedated. I heard some of the nurses saying that something is going
wrong, that all is not as it should be. They say that the Equinox
project has gone wrong, that we were losing something.

‘Julian I do
not feel myself. I see things that simply should not be. I see a
world between worlds, a world that
does not exist
. There is
something draining me of who I am. I know that I should be afraid
that the world is at war, but I struggle to care. I am just so
drained. What the hell is wrong with me? It is like I am losing
some part of me, some part of me that regulated what I used to
think. It is like I am being imprinted with something else.

‘Five hours
ago the power in one section of Ascension went off. They say it was
a technical difficulty but I know that
they
did it. The ones
that want me, but I am not ready for them yet. Some of the Equinox
subject’s who were ahead of us in the cycle say that they have been
assaulted, raped. It is the people that do this to their bodies.
The modifications, they tell me, are doing it to their souls.

‘The Equinox
project, the drugs, the gene plasma, it is evil. We are to be
vessels. We are like cows to be milked and when we are no longer
useful, to be killed, of this I am certain. But I will not let that
happen. Blue Dawn says that she will protect us, that our fears
about Carvelle are unfounded and that if they have substance she
will protect us. Many of the older Equinox subjects are allying
themselves to her and not Carvelle. I believe her. She cannot be
corrupted, for she must be pure.

‘Until the
next letter, goodbye.

‘Persephone’

*

With this
disturbing conclusion I finished the final letter. I wished that
there had been more. I thought about what Persephone must have gone
through. Worse, I wondered what she would have endured after that
final letter. My eyes misted at the thought of so much suffering.
Blindly I shook my head, wondering if she had survived. In my heart
I knew that she would probably be dead, but a part of me continued
to hope that she was alive somewhere on the station.

I rubbed my
eyes to clear them and began to take in my surroundings more
clearly. Knightly appeared to be about to deliver his report. I was
desperate to find out what had gone on. My gaze flowed across the
room and settled on each of the faces of those in the CIC. All were
ashen and some had skin that was almost translucent. A guy in the
corner, positioned besides an oval screen in front of me, was
whispering under his breath, but I could not hear what he was
saying. Ignoring the growing unease that I was feeling I quietly
shuffled over to where Knightly was giving his report.

‘When you
first went missing, everything was fine. There was nothing strange,
Ascension seemed deserted,’ Knightly was explaining with a shaken
voice. ‘There was nothing the matter, ships systems reported no
unusual activity and we were beginning to mount our rescue
attempt.

‘We used
shaped charges upon the docks bulkheads, but to no avail. I sent
out a recon team to explore the rest of the docks to see if there
was any other way round. But we lost contact with the recon team.
Hours later they came back, but there were not the same. We left
them in isolation whilst the medics tried to find out what was
wrong with them.

‘The next day
we sent out another recon team, the same thing happened. We lost
contact for five hours that time. Later that day we heard the sound
of gunfire. It was our recon team. They were shouting at the ship,
tearing at it with their hands. We had to turn on the ships
defences. They were butchered in moments.

‘I ordered
that all current operations were to be suspended and to seal off
the ship from Ascension. Sensor readings had been picking up some
very strange results coming from the dock and I was keen to keep a
physical separation between us and the station.’ Knightly was
beginning to sound nervous now. The true horror of his situation
was clearly beginning to unfold.

‘The medics
took me to see the recon team that was in isolation. They just
stared off into the distance. They kept repeating the same thing
over and over again. They made no sense. At four fifteen I was
given an urgent call to come to the temporary isolation wards. The
plastic sheeting was covered in blood. I looked...’ his voice
cracked and he paused. Drawing in breathe he continued. ‘I looked
through one and saw Emily. She had been butchered, you couldn’t
even see the red cross on her uniform. Her face. Her face had such
a look of torture.’ Knightly broke up. He covered his face with his
hands trying to stop the others from seeing his pain.

Aeniah touched
him on the shoulder, ‘I know, I know. You and Emily were
close.’

‘Interesting,’
Blue Dawn mused as much to herself as for anyone else’s benefit.
‘The infection took much longer to take hold when Ascension was
first brought online. It seems 77-x must be growing in intensity,
this confirms my fears about the colonies. To infect an entire
planet seemed improbable, but now...’

‘Now listen to
me!’ I interjected. ‘Blue Dawn what exactly is doing this? What the
hell
is
the artefact? What went wrong? Tell us!’

‘George,’ she
said, ‘you are in danger of asking questions to which I have no
answers. I believe that the angels may be your best source of
information on those questions. But I will tell you what I know.’
She paused taking in a deep breath. A penitential look covered her
face. She suddenly seemed much older.

‘Before what
you call the Resource Wars, a man named Samuel Carvelle began to
undertake a study into the possibility of freeing ourselves from
the bonds of nature. You see Carvelle discovered something that
even I have not been privileged to know. He found something whilst
conducting research on the colony Hercula. This discovery led him
to publish a paper on the possibility of something that he termed
Ascension. His paper marked a revolution in our understanding of
the world around us. He discovered a plane of existence which he
termed The Promethean Layer. An un-original title perhaps, but it
was the closest summation of what he had found.

‘The
Promethean Layer is a plane of existence from which all energy is
derived, a dimension filled with pure energy the majesty of which
you cannot imagine. It is an energy that we cannot possibly
understand in human terms. He theorised that if a person was
somehow able to draw upon the energy in the Promethean Layer, then
they would be able to project it in some useful way. For example if
one were cold they could produce heat. If one were disabled they
could float upon a cushion of air. The paper produced a revolution
in scientific thinking and brought about such technology as Blue
Clarity and the Quantum Bomb.

‘A decade
after the discovery of the Promethean Layer the United World had
met with some limited personal gains. The majority of our society
carried around a Blue Clarity generator. Long term studies
concluded that exposure to the radiation of these devices
strengthened ones DNA. This strengthening prevented genetic
degradation, the primary factor in aging. Furthermore it was
discovered that human cells could actively absorb this radiation
and use it to fight off disease.