The Dying Light (24 page)

5

COEI
Daybreak

‘955.01.21 EN

1390

From a distance, Hintubet’s bloody, red light was insufficient to allow the courier’s basic sensors to gather much detail about the double-jovian system: a blurred, over-magnified image of two red balloons tied together by a twisted silver string was all Roche could see, little different from the pictures the Box had procured from the orbit of Gatamin. No doubt the probes dispatched earlier would be sending remarkable pictures to the
Ana Vereine,
wherever the ship was, but only as the courier drew nearer did Roche have the chance to appreciate the uniqueness of her destination.

Individually Kukumat and Murukan might once have been unremarkable gas giants, both roughly a quarter the mass of Jagabis; together they formed a dynamic partnership as mysterious as it was fascinating. The most obvious detail separating the pair from the other planets in Palasian System was that it followed a retrograde orbit around Hintubet. Planetary scientists generally agreed that the pair had probably arisen out of a near collision between two previously independent worlds, one natural to the system and the other an interstellar wanderer. Although no actual collision had occurred, each planet had captured the other, and the shared momentum of the two had cast the pair into an entirely new yet stable orbit.

Under normal conditions, Kukumat would have been a brilliant, white-streaked yellow. Storms considered enormous even for a gas giant raged from equator to pole, the constant flashes of lightning through the thick, turbulent atmosphere casting weird strobelike patterns across the face of the planet. Now and then Roche imagined she could sense a pattern forming in the inconstant light, as though some unfathomable machine at the heart of the planet was trying to communicate with her.

Murukan, though only marginally larger, was radically different. Regardless of the light that fell upon it, the gas giant presented a deep, bloody red face. Instead of the thin streaks and whorls boasted by its brilliant neighbor, Murukan possessed massive upwellings of heavy gases, spewed high into the atmosphere by unknown processes deeper within. These upwellings bloomed like flowers at their peak, spread in overlapping petals that changed color and smeared laterally as the gases comprising them slowly reached the apex of their explosive rise, then began to descend.

Roche didn’t doubt that the extreme atmospheric activity of the two planets owed much to their proximity; on close examination she could see tidal bulges many kilometers high sweeping across the face of each planet as it rotated with respect to the other. It amazed her to think that the situation was stable at all. But it was, had been for hundreds of thousands of years, and would have been for many more had not the Gauntlet arrived to change the system irrevocably.

By the time the courier managed to locate Mok—the single moon of the double system—the system’s other unique feature had attained a tantalizing prominence. KM36 was an ion bridge linking the magnetic fields of the two planets. Although the link itself was constant, it arced—and was therefore visible—only once every thirty-six minutes. Each arc lasted approximately seventy seconds, and Roche was fortunate enough to catch an entire event broadside-on, from the best possible perspective. The ion bridge looked like a lightning bolt strung out between the two planets, flickering and snapping almost too quickly to follow in close focus, yet undulating like a plucked wire in slow motion from a distance. Its light was so bright it cast a shadow on Mok, lending it, briefly, a silver-white face.

Watching it, Roche was reminded of why she had joined COE Intelligence in the first place. It hadn’t just been to escape from a difficult upbringing, but for sights such as these.

And perhaps, she thought, that was enough to explain the dream....

* * *

She was standing, cold and wet, on the foredeck of an oceangoing vessel made entirely of stone. The mass of the ship was so great that she felt no movement beneath her as it cut through the choppy waters, and the surety of its progress made her feel as safe as though she were standing on solid ground.

The stars above were as icy as the wind, however, and although the spray from the waves never struck her, she was soaked to the skin and trembling.

“Are you frightened?” A man’s voice came from behind her, scented and hauntingly familiar.

She turned. The man, clad in white, his skin ashen and dry like dust, stood at the starboard rail of the foredeck.

“No,” she said, clutching herself. “I’m cold. Aren’t you?”

“No. But we could both be lying,” he added, the glint in his yellow eyes like the lightning in Kukumat’s alien skies.

“I am neither cold nor afraid,” came a second voice, this time from the port rail. “But I
am
here.”

The newcomer was dressed in red; his complexion was ruddy, his skin moist. A fat-petaled flower protruded from a buttonhole of his greatcoat. And again, a familiar odor, but this one different from the first.

They know each other,
she thought, with some surprise.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” the red one said, as if answering Roche but looking at his white counterpart.

“Although I suspect we have less in common than I once thought,” said the white man.

“Appearances can be deceptive,” said Red.

“Perhaps it’s time to end the pretense,” said White.

“Do we have any choice?”

The red man nodded ahead of them. “We’ll find out when we get there.”

The brief exchange had changed them: the one in white had become paler, his skin drier, while the red one had begun to exude blood. And the smells, once disparate and only vaguely familiar, suddenly merged to become something all too familiar to Roche. Now she could smell death; she could smell
war...

The two men faced each other, a silent but tense confrontation. They retained only the shape of Humanity, now; the essence of their true beings was almost too much even for that.

Roche backed away until her spine made contact with cold, wet stone. Two huge masts towered above her like giant antennae, visible only as silhouettes against the sky. The tremendous momentum with which the prow cut through the waves remained unchecked, only now it seemed a matter for concern.

She looked again at the two men and realized just how alike they really were. Despite their differences, they could easily have been mistaken for brothers. Or even twins...

* * *

The anxiety induced by the dream had stayed with her upon waking. No matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t shake free of it, and she longed for Maii’s gentle touch. The epsense adept could have soothed her, eased some of the dread and foreboding that filled her. But the reave was far away, left behind on an unfamiliar station, captive of a man who had somehow outthought them all.

For a moment, she felt despair. How had she come to this?
She
certainly wasn’t responsible. It must have been COE Intelligence, or the Kesh, or the Sol Apotheosis Movement, or...

No. There was no point assigning blame. She just had to keep moving, to do her best to rectify the situation and find a way out of this mess. Find a way to rescue Maii and Cane and—

“Morgan?” said Haid.

She turned from the image of the double-jovian at which she had been blankly staring, and faced Haid. It was only when she did that she realized it had been the third time he had called her name.

“You okay?” he said.

She nodded, but felt it was unconvincing. “What’s up?”

“We’re detecting radio emissions.”

Immediately focused, Roche took a step toward Haid. “Where from?”

“Mok. They spike every time the ion bridge flares, as though someone’s using the discharge to cover emissions.”

She concentrated on his explanation; it made sense. “Any idea who this ‘someone’ might be?”

Haid shook his head. “The transmissions are coded to look like static, and I can’t translate them without the Box’s help. If I had to guess, though, I’d say it’s the outriggers talking among themselves.”

“And the two spines haven’t moved?”

Another curt shake of the head. “They’re still in orbit around Murukan.”

While still some distance from the jovian pair, they had detected the muted navigation beacons of two outrigger spines—spindly structures comprising little more than intrasystem engines and fuel tanks shaped like bare-boned trees with lots of branches for waldoes to cling to. The spines appeared to be undamaged, but, apart from the beacons, showed no signs of life.

Roche had never encountered outriggers before, but had heard the stories of whole tribes of people crossing the gulfs between stars on the backs of such flimsy vessels. Their only protection was an “all-suit,” essentially a miniature spaceship in its own right within which each member of the tribe would spend his or her entire life. Although outriggers came from many different Castes, they were a society completely unto themselves, separated from the rest of the galaxy by the time-debts they accrued by traveling at relatavistic velocities; some had wandered so far and for so long that they were rumored to be thousands of years old. Outriggers earned a living mining systems considered uneconomic for prowling mines or other large-scale automated means. That explained what they were doing so far out from the primary of Palasian System, where solid bodies were few and very far between but the total mass of unexploited minerals was considerable.

Beyond that, Roche knew little. What the spines were doing so close to a large planet—the sort of gravity well outriggers normally avoided—remained a mystery.

Similarly, there had been no repeat of the distress calls that had brought them to the double-planet. She was resigned to traveling closer to find out what had happened.

“How long until we reach Mok?” she asked Haid.

“One hour.”

“Okay,” she said. “Show me the pictures we’re getting.”

Disisto chuckled quietly from behind Roche. “It’s probably not going to be what you’re expecting.”

“How do you mean?”

“See for yourself,” he said.

Disisto was right. The little moon was highly unusual: in size barely a thousand kilometers across and consisting of dark-hued dusty rock, with no atmosphere and a relatively low specific gravity. There were craters, Roche observed, but these looked suspiciously regular and similar in size, as though they were holes or tunnel-entrances rather than ancient impact sites. Between them stood odd protrusions resembling curved spikes or giant hairs growing out of the rock—as though the moon were covered in a large-scale version of Velcro. Each of the “hooks” was over ten meters high.

“Weird,” she mused. “Are they artifacts?”

“Unknown. I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Haid stared intently at the images filling most of the available screens and tanks. “There’s no movement, so the chances are they’re not alive.”

“They might once have been,” said Disisto. He was still on the couch where Haid had strapped him hours earlier. “The sun’s changed; the difference could’ve killed a photosynthetic plant, for instance.”

“The light would always have been poor out here,” Haid said, shaking his head. “My gut says that they were made, but I have no idea what purpose they’d serve.”

“Or even who made them,” said Roche.

“Exactly,” Haid agreed. “Those ruins are
old.
They could be the remains of a Transcended civilization, or even a dead High Human. You looked into the history around here, Morgan. Any records of such a thing in this area?”

“No, but it wouldn’t hurt to look again.”

“The chief was hoping the ruins might contain something related to Primordial Humanity,” said Disisto. “An old base or colony, perhaps, with records intact. We have so little information to go by with respect to Humanity’s origins. Any scrap at all could be helpful. If we’d known it was something like this, we would’ve come much sooner.”

Haid looked back at the security chief. “I didn’t know you were such a history buff.”

Disisto shrugged. “Work with the chief long enough and it rubs off, I guess.”

Roche didn’t respond. His casual banter hid the underlying tension between them. Neither had forgotten their last conversation, when he had maintained his allegiance to Linegar Rufo. She couldn’t afford to forget, though. Although she knew he meant well deep down, that they were forced to work on opposing sides made it all the more frustrating.

“Congreve Station?” Roche prompted Haid, keeping them on the subject at hand.

“There, at the pole.” One image ballooned to reveal a low, blister-shaped installation near the moon’s equator. “It’s cold. Looks like no one’s touched it for years.”

KM36 chose that moment to flare. White light radiated from the screens as the ion bridge crackled into life.

Roche and Haid watched the instruments for more signs of concealed signals coming from Mok.

“Almost nothing, this time,” said Haid. “Just one pulse at the beginning.”

“I saw it. Like a warning tone, telling everyone to shut up.”

Haid looked over at Roche. “They know we’re here,” he said.

Roche nodded. “But we still need to talk to them anyway.” She pointed at a rough map of the moon’s surface. “According to the instruments, the pulse came from that crater.”

The image showed a black hole leading into the moon, not far from its equator.

“Deep,” commented Haid. “Could hide anything.”

“No different from the others, though. A simple jaunt to look wouldn’t hurt.”

He glanced up at her. “And who gets to do the honors?”

“I do, of course. Unless you fancy an EVA with your new implants?”

Haid smiled. “Well, I’m game.”

“Yes, but you’re not stupid,” she said seriously. “You know I’m the best choice.”

Haid nodded. “But you
are
going to try talking to them first, right?”

“There’s no point. They’re obviously in hiding; they’re not going to want to talk to anyone, no matter what we say. Best to go knocking and see if they’ll let us in.”

“And if they blow you out of the sky?”

“Then they’ll become targets for retaliation.”