Splintered Suns Read online

  Blind in charge of a grav-hopper and laughing like a loon! he thought. And I’ve not had a drop—damn, must be a mood-altering psi-screen!

  Behind him Ancil was helpless with laughter, now and then pausing only to gasp, “The other way, Chief, the other way! …”

  Just when it seemed that the perpetual, blind guffawing would never end, normality abruptly returned. Pyke’s chest ached, his throat felt raw, but most crucially nothing was funny. He much preferred the feeling of sharp curiosity tempered with caution he was experiencing now as an immense, sheared-off ship section loomed before them. It wasn’t often that he got to be in on the ground floor of this kind of discovery and he couldn’t wait to soak up the detail.

  At a rough estimation, the ancient wreckage was about three hundred metres long, and lay canted over to one side. The far end was buried deeper in the dunes than the near end, which was a broken, sand-scoured cross-section sprouting substructural pipes and beams, tendrils and ribbons of synthetic material that had been weathered by the climate. As they glided in closer, Pyke could just make out faint markings on the sand-scoured hull, huge, vaguely glyph-like symbols in some lost language, the echo of the magnificence of a long-vanished empire.

  Pyke brought the hopper down on a wide stretch of disturbed sand in the lee of the raggedly severed vessel which loomed over them like a cliff of ancient detritus. Getting off the hopper, he stood with fists on hips, staring up at it, uttering a low “Wow” under his breath. He then activated his comm badge and spoke to Dervla, warning her about the psi-screen and its effects, and asked her to send Kref down in the other hopper.

  “Not me? Why’s that?”

  “Well, if we get jumped and need to exit sharpish, I’d feel a lot happier if you and Moleg are up at the shuttle-barge, prepped for a quick getaway if we need it.”

  “Not protecting my delicate, ladylike sensibilities by any chance?”

  He laughed as leeringly as he could. “Oh, darlin,’ as if!”

  “Right, I’ll get on with that, then. Oh, and I should warn you you’re about to get an unexpected visitor.”

  Pyke heard Ancil laugh and looked up, following a pointed finger. Outlined against the blue sky was a large figure seated on a pogo-stick-like contraption and gliding in a steadily descending trajectory which ended with a gentle landing not far from their hopper.

  “Like a boss,” Ancil said.

  Lieutenant-Doctor Ustril dismounted gracefully from her fragile looking transport, touched the controls on the control column and it sank down to settle on the sand.

  Pyke, still on the line to Dervla, said, “Yes, well, she’s just arrived so get Kref to shake a leg.”

  “I’ll do that very thing.”

  Kref was next to come floating down into the gully, grinning from ear to ear as he rode the second hopper down to a bumpy landing. As they all gathered before the half-buried vessel’s wrecked and shattered cross-section, Pyke heard a faint whine at their backs, frowned and turned—and was not really that surprised to see Dervla, borne by a grav-harness, swooping down to alight upon the soft sand. She gave Pyke a sly half-smile as she joined the others.

  All around them, disturbed sand could be seen stretching all the way to the half-buried vessel. The mingled tracks of Raven and her thugs led straight to a dark gap in the scratched and scoured bulkhead. Pyke offered Ustril the chance to go first but she declined, announcing that she had to scan the exterior before entering. Certainly, the Sendrukan was well provided for, with a headband-mounted optical cluster, a small touchscreen unit hanging from her neck and a handheld scanner with three short antennae.

  “Will this take long?” Pyke said.

  She glanced at the screen. “Actually, the scan is almost complete—the remote was quicker than I anticipated.”

  A faint buzzing grew louder as a small glassy sphere glided in from round the side of the wreck, docking perfectly with the three prongs of Ustril’s hand-scanner. She studied readouts on both scanner and the neck-slung unit, then nodded.

  “Good—I am ready to proceed.”

  “Anything of interest we should know about, Doc?” Pyke said.

  “Nothing especially hazardous. The camouflage barrier is maintained by eleven projectors fixed to the outer hull. There will be dataflow for the barrier coming from a hub somewhere inside.”

  “I see—disrupt the flow and that’ll lift the barrier.”

  “And the psi-screen.”

  “Great. Let’s get to it.”

  He led the way through the dark gap in the ruined section. Inside was a narrow, dim corridor without decking or ceiling tiles, metal ribbing over hard bulkhead. A few paces on they came to a T-junction with a framed ladder leading up. Pyke beckoned Dervla and Ancil forward and gave them the task of scouting the deck above. Ancil grinned and from an inner coat pocket produced a big-barrelled handgun whose finish was gleaming blue-black.

  “Right,” Pyke said. “And he keeps a skagging great hand-cannon for himself!”

  “Not just any hand-cannon, Chief,” Ancil said, proudly showing off his ordnance. “The Ashbless 49cal Naga, complete with hellfrost rounds. Stopping power—we got some!”

  Pyke gave Dervla an amused look, and she just sighed. “Easy does it up there, and if you and Howitzer-Boy spot anything important and/or weird, hold your position and call for backup. Meantime, we’ll infiltrate this level.”

  Dervla and Ancil both gave a thumbs-up then, with Dervla leading, they ascended the ladder. Pyke faced the rest.

  “Okay, team, I’ll take point; the good doctor will follow in my footsteps and, Kref, bring up the rear.”

  “No problem, Chief.”

  They moved forwards, weapons and hand-scanners at the ready. It was demanding having to step on or over the alloy ribs but they persevered, the Sendrukan most of all being the tallest by far. Pyke could not help noticing the absence of wear and tear; after a good number of millennia even the slowest corrosion would have rotted out all kinds of clips, bolts, fastenings and hinges, yet some surfaces and edges looked almost factory-fresh. When he put this to the lieutenant-doctor she said:

  “You’re witnessing one of the wonders of Arraveyne science, Captain, namely anti-entropic materials. Few civilisations have grasped this technology, the Sendrukan Hegemony, Earthsphere and the Indroma Solidarity being those I am certain about, and only then in small quantities.”

  “Anti-entropic?” Pyke said. “You mean it doesn’t wear out?”

  “No, just that natural processes of decay or corrosion do not occur due to a subatomic lock.”

  Rather than shrug, Pyke smiled. She went on.

  “It involves quantal regulation of how the atoms in these metals and alloys work, making them incapable of oxidisation or any other exchange, gain or loss of subatomic particles. However, such materials are still subject to the laws of macrophysics and can be broken or deformed or abraded …”

  “But they don’t rust or dissolve,” he said. “I get your drift.”

  “Glad to be of service,” Ustril muttered, now back to peering through her headset scope and punching data onto her screen module. Pyke shook his head and pushed on towards a closed door at the shadowy corridor’s end. The few hatches they’d passed opened on sliding rods, and this tall door was no different—Pyke unfastened circular latches on the left-hand side before pulling the large handle on the right. With a grating sound the door slid to the right, swinging out to lie flat against the bulkhead, revealing a sight that Pyke wasn’t expecting.

  From the outside he’d reckoned that the wrecked section was about three hundred metres long, its beam-width perhaps four hundred, and the hull about as high as the length. And at some point in the deep and distant past (most likely during or just after whatever crisis had forced the original ship down), some destructive force had been unleashed, whether explosive or implosive he couldn’t say. But some kind of fearsome power had ripped out the middle of this section of the ship, something spherical which sliced through bulkhead
s and spars and supports, leaving chambers, corridors and holds exposed, a massive spectacle of destruction which was quite apparent, even in this gloomy half-light.

  “Are you seeing this, Chief?” came Ancil’s voice over the comms. “Looks like something took a bite out of it!”

  A barren silence hung in the air, like the flat quietness of a cemetery or an abandoned battlefield. As if the world had just exhaled a long, weary breath and was deciding whether or not to draw another. The longer he stood there, the more Pyke could see that some light was coming from splits and fractures in the hull, yet there were other small indistinct light sources as well, like tiny lanterns scattered here and there.

  “Ans,” he said. “See those glowing spots dotted around?”

  “Oh yeah, we’re looking at one right now! Reckon our lady scientist would find it very interesting!”

  Pyke looked round to speak to Lieutenant-Doctor Ustril but she was already heading back the way they’d come. Following her, Pyke and Kref retraced their steps to the ladder and a minute later they had joined Ancil and Dervla in what was left of a large cabin. The unknown calamity had carved a ragged curve across deck and ceiling, laying the cabin open to the immense spherical emptiness at the heart of the wreck. There was a narrow section of floor still left, allowing careful access round to one of the corners where a body lay within an odd glow. It had a scrawny humanoid form with a hairless head and was dressed in a close-fitting dark grey outfit. Before anyone could speak, Ustril spoke:

  “Please would everyone keep their distance from this phenomenon? My probes are already detecting inter-dimensional boundary emissions …”

  Pyke nodded. “Yep, everyone hang back for a while, let the Doc get on with the scrutinising.” He turned to Dervla and murmured, “What’re inter-dimensional boundary emissions?”

  She shrugged. “Radiation of some kind … real question is the boundary between what and what—or even here and where?”

  The tall Sendrukan was crouched down, positioning her hand-scanner next to the edge of the glow, which was faintly greenish-yellow and emanated from a conical glassy peg positioned waist-high on the wall. Dark blood had spread out from beneath the victim’s back, still shiny, reflecting gleams and pinpoints—Pyke frowned as he took in other details. There were still a few decking plates in this corner, and there was a small stool with an oval container full of narrow rectangular objects. One of them was a book, its long pages lying open, partially drenched in the blood. And scattered around were what might have been personal items.

  Sentimental value, Pyke thought as his gaze was drawn back to the glassy peg sticking out of the wall, giving off that greenish radiation. It was like someone’s nest, a little island in the dimness. Just then Ancil, who he’d not noticed slipping off, appeared breathless and excited at the door.

  “Found another one, Chief, not far away—and there’s someone alive in it! Well, he’s not moving, though, just sitting there, but he ain’t bleeding …”

  “Don’t touch anything,” urged Ustril. “These glowing areas are enclosed by highly localised stasis fields. Careless activity could cause maiming.”

  “Everyone get that?” Pyke said. “No meddling, no twiddling, and no fiddling—I’m not cleaning up any sliced-off fingers!”

  Kref had been silent the entire time, but now he leaned in close and said, “Chief, this whole place is seriously weird.”

  Pyke arched an eyebrow. “Actually, old son, I think it could be a hair more serious than that.”

  Then, abruptly, the Sendrukan scientist was squeezing past to the door where Ancil was waiting. The big woman wasn’t very good at masking her emotions and it was easy to read the alarm in her face. He glanced at Dervla. “Stay here, keep your eyes peeled, in here and out there. See anything, comm me immediately.”

  “Hunch?”

  Pyke breathed in through his nose, noisily. “Not sure, but, y’know …”

  “Right, I’ll be here.”

  Ancil was already heading after Ustril, so Pyke and Kref did likewise. A dark side corridor led away from the huge gap, hatches lining walls to left and right. Ancil was waiting at the door to a cabin at the end, and he went inside ahead of them.

  “Kref is right, Chief,” Ancil said. “We’ve been inside wrecks and ruins before, but this one just feels extra spooky, like it’s a haunted ship—and then we find one of the passengers …”

  A short passage opened onto a small cabin where Dervla’s wrist-lamp gave the place a pale radiance. But the main illumination came from a shimmering bubble which occupied one corner. Inside was a diminutive humanoid creature like the other one, except that it was dressed in an amber uniform and sitting on a curved metallic chair. Its eyes were closed and its oddly elongated features seemed calm and composed. The Sendrukan scientist was resting cross-legged on the deck, her probes and devices laid out before her, and scanning this dormant denizen from who knew how long ago. Ustril was muttering to herself and, by her tone of voice, Pyke guessed that there was a bit of self-reproach going on.

  “Problems, Doc?” he said.

  She fell silent, while continuing irritably to punch data onto the screen unit. Then she said:

  “I was mistaken, Captain—these fields are not stasis fields.”

  “Okay, so do you know what they are?”

  “It is difficult to know the correct words,” she said. “The field maintains all elements within it … it repairs or repatterns to discongrous … no, it is an anti-discongruity field …”

  Pyke thought hard. “It repairs whatever is within the field? And it uses a pattern to work from?”

  Ustril nodded, eyes bright with intellectual fervour. “Local nodes in a plangent net …”

  “All those glowing spots we can see on the other decks, across that big gap,” Pyke said. “Each one is one of your nodes, yeah?”

  More nodding. “Anti-entropic materials are common to Arraveyne construction, but to see the invention of an exotic projective field like this—”

  “Right, right, but what’s powering these nodes?” Pyke went on. “Some kind of self-charging batteries?”

  “Embedded nanitic generator web,” Ustril said. “Provides power-trickles to sustain field.”

  Pyke gave a smile and a nod. Well, this is bracing, right enough! He turned to Kref. “Something that only you can do, Kref—head back to that other cabin and see if you can get that glowing spike out of the wall. Ans, you go with him, and be careful the both of you—I know what you’re like.”

  Ancil and Kref gave mock salutes and left. Pyke turned back to Ustril and indicated the possibly-comatose biped within the field.

  “Figure out anything about the sleeper here?” He peered into the glowing bubble. “Is it actually sleeping or is it just an immaculately preserved corpse?”

  From outside, along the corridor, came the sound of hammering.

  “I cannot tell,” said Ustril. “My devices are not powerful enough to pierce the field and scan for life signs.”

  “All right, then, another question—if this anti-rot field was fully powered, it would cover a much larger area, don’t you think?”

  “Certainly—these nodes are a post-construction, possibly post-crash augmentation designed to shield as much of the interior as achievable …”

  Just then Moleg’s voice came over the comm, interrupting the Sendrukan’s flow of words. “Captain, there’s a situation—large dense dustcloud, ground level, bearing down on your position.”

  “How long?”

  “Maybe three minutes, maybe less.”

  “Okay, keep tracking it.”

  Pyke looked at the Sendrukan scientist. “Grab your gear, Doc—we need to get the hell outa here.”

  Ustril looked downhearted at this, but gave no objection. Leaving her to snatch up her equipment, Pyke made for the door. Dervla was already there.

  “What’s the news?”

  “Hostiles incoming,” he said. “And probably a skag-ton of them, a swarm of those
scavenger bots heading for us with their pincers, drills and hooks twitching for any fleshy meatbags they can get hold of.”

  Instead of switching to general comms, Pyke yelled as he strode along the corridor. “Kref!—Ancil!—stop what you’re doing and get to the hoppers, now!”

  After that it was a frantic scramble along the deckless corridors, a hurried clamber down the ladderway and a dash back outside to where the hoppers were parked. Out of the corner of his eye Pyke could see the leading edge of a solid mass of scavenger bots pouring down the gentle slope from the wreck’s far end, down towards the foot of the gully, dust billowing in its wake.

  And that was when Dervla discovered that her harness had failed to activate.

  “I do not believe this!” she yelled. “Bargain-basement crap!”

  Pyke ran the arithmetic of passengers through his head and knew that something would have to give somewhere, and chances would have to be taken. Before he could speak, however, Ustril beat him to it.

  “Captain, I can carry Specialist Ancil with me, so that we can all escape.”

  “You sure? That thing looks pretty delicate.”

  “I can boost the repulsion output for a very short period of time, long enough to reach the shuttle.”

  There was no time to argue, and, anyway, Ancil had already gone over to Ustril who was helping him to stand up on the flimsy craft. Swiftly, Pyke told Kref to fire up one of the hoppers while he and Dervla took the other. It all cascaded into a hair-raising, nerve-jangling drama—Pyke and Dervla and then Kref made it into the air but Lieutenant-Doctor Ustril’s contraption remained on the ground while the bot-swarm encroached ever nearer.

  “Er, Doc, yer cutting this very fine …”

  “Do not distract me, Captain! All four cells must be reconfigured for burst output—this can only be done individually, am closing off the last and reconnecting powerlines …”