Cemetery Planet: The Complete Series (10 page)

9.

“Next stop, Zone 6. Doors open on the left. We at Cemetery Planet hope you find your visit pleasant and memorable. Thank you for riding, and have a nice day.”

The maglev train’s automated message shook Harvey from a disturbing slumber. He couldn’t stop thinking about the stories and legends of Zone 6. He never believed them, and always found himself laughing at the very idea. Now he believed. Now he knew to stay away. Yet here he was, riding in a tube at nearly the speed of sound, directly into the mouth of peril.

Finding Lea was his only concern. And that one, single-minded goal allowed him to overcome his terrible fear. He knew he’d find her out there. He knew it as true as the nights were long and gloomy on that planet.

When the train stopped finally and the vacuum tube airlocks hissed opened, he, in his all-too-uncomfortable exposure suit, stepped into a wisp of low fog. He was reminded of the being that kidnapped Lea, and the way it seemed to form from nothing. He refused to back down now, refused to listen to that voice of reason. The trip from here was still extensive, so he rolled out a PMD from the loading area and rode through dozens of swirls of delicate vapor. In the eddies he swore he saw faces, human forms, soaring above the headstones. But he dared not look too long.

He programmed the PMD’s navigational systems, though his own memory served as the best guide. He’d never forget where the lifepod had crashed.

Grave upon grave. Tombstone upon tombstone. An endless portrait. The final resting place for countless souls. The headstones melted into the background as he rode the narrow path, keeping his eyes down.

Then the proximity alarm came. He slowed the PMD to a stop, looked up, and spotted the lifepod, its cylindrical nose concealed by dark brown topsoil, a trail of bent and broken gravestones marking its crash path.

He studied the ancient and gothic graveyard. Stone slabs of all sizes, from a few centimeters to several meters in height, and of various shapes—curved arches, prismatic steeples, conical stacks. The surface of an asteroid in the far reaches of space would have paled in comparison to this barren sublimity.

To the left, spires were tossed one on top of another. To the right, archways crumbled and stood half-fallen. Straight ahead, large domed tombs were the dominant feature. And, in the center of it all, stood the grave he came here to find.

He approached the site from the side, as if he could sneak up on it somehow. As if the spirits couldn’t sense him coming. Then, mustering up his courage, he jumped to a stop directly in front of the grave. Kip Broders. Died in 2031. The holomemorial was an ancient model. He could tell by the trip switch. It was visible in the loose soil, and looked pretty beat up. But it must have worked. He’d triggered it before, and now, heart racing and forehead dripping, he stepped onto the pressure plate and closed his eyes, awaiting the unknown.

Nothing happened. Only the whistle of the wind, the multitude of stars in the night sky. No Kip Broders.

He stood on the switch again, this time harder. Still no response. He tried again, then again, all with the same result—nothing.

“Where the hell are you, Broders!” he shouted to the sky, to the headstones, to anyone or anything that would listen. “I’m here! You wanted me here, so I’m here!”

The dense air whipped up more eddies of haze into strange and ethereal shapes, yet nothing indicated to him that there was an intelligence there. And, worse, no indications of Lea.

“Come out and show yourselves, cowards!” his frustration and fear boiled over into rage. “Come on! I’m here…I’m right here! Come out and face me, dammit! Come out and—”

He stopped short at the abrupt sense of something skirting in the darkness, slipping from behind one headstone to the next. His pulse pounded in his ear and he instantly felt like fleeing, then his thoughts returned to Lea. He swallowed the fright and chased the phantom.

He headed into an area of large shrines and casks above as well as below ground, tightly organized like a maze. Several times he thought he’d lost the thing, then he’d see a fleeting glimpse here, a shadowy trail there, and keep running, deeper and deeper into the tangle of tombs.

Out of breath and dizzy, he came upon a courtyard of sorts, with a handsome little fountain, benches, and covered areas. The oddity he’d been chasing seemed to have disappeared without a trace, and he was ready to give up when he spotted a large portico—the entrance to a structure that appeared to be, at least partially, built beneath ground.

The entryway was quite massive, with tall columns bathed in white and three levels of steps leading up to a gigantic door. As he got closer and saw more detail, his nerves spiked at the sudden awareness that the door was open slightly. Deep down he knew this place, knew what was behind this giant slab of stone and steel.

His suspicions were confirmed the second he peered inside and saw the inscriptions on the marble facings, the elegant decor, vaulted ceilings, and dusty chandeliers.

He stepped back in disbelief. Yet he recalled the rumors of another mausoleum complex in another, now abandoned, part of the planet. Of course he knew of the several smaller underground vaults, many of which dotted the globe. This one was different. This mausoleum looked almost as big as the one at the visitor station. He could tell by one look at the building from the outside, and his view of the nearly endless corridor inside made it clear.

Then he was stricken with the singular sense that he was led here for a reason. The door to the mausoleum was open for a reason—Lea. He tingled with anticipation, and with the sense that she was inside this place. The thing that took her…it lived here, haunted this murky dwelling. Harvey felt that if he went any further, he might not ever get out alive. He had no choice. His desperation to find Lea took that option away from him, and now he acted on pure instinct. He took a step inside, and decided not to look back.

10.

The state of disrepair in the ancient crypt appalled Harvey. He never would have allowed a complex under his supervision to go to hell like this. It was obvious there were no cleaner bots. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, since the power had been out for quite some time.

He took a few slow paces into the unknown, then reacted with a start to a strange and altogether too unnatural sound from deep in the underground structure’s bowels. Low and relentless. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it, and decided to change his mind. He made an about-face and strode, steadily and swiftly, to the exit. The moment before he was ready to step foot outside, a tremendous rumble forced him back. A metal grinding noise echoed in his ears, and the heavy slab of a door swung closed with a
SLAM!

He pounded on the metal until his hands were bruised, yelling for someone, anyone to open the door again. Then he noticed his rapid heart rate and high respiration numbers on the visor display, and went into a tailspin of terror over his air supply. Cut off from the PMD, and from any alternative air, he was looking at this place as his tomb. It was a matter of hours until his last lungful. He faced the mausoleum again, faced his fear. Maybe, if he was lucky, he would find something in here, some kind of life support system he could utilize. He knew it was only wishful thinking. The place was dead. No power for centuries. No life support. No air. No chance for survival.

With that desolate thought lingering, Harvey witnessed an amazing thing. So wondrous, he felt like he was dreaming. His eyes stung at sudden illumination. He threw up his hands and shielded his view and heard another rumble, this time from above.

His helmet display started crunching numbers, showing him the results. He didn’t need the computer to tell him what had happened. He knew that sound. He’d heard it droning on and on for so long. Inexplicably, the life support systems had kicked on, right along with the lights.

He used the new illumination to finally get a good look at the place. Certainly a manmade wonder of its time. He had no idea when it was built, so he stepped close to a plaque near the main entrance.

Masoleum Number One. Dedicated on this day, May 23, 2525.

2525. That meant it was one of the first structures ever built on Cemetery Planet. A three hundred year old building with three hundred year old technology. He wasn’t sure whether he should trust it. His visor display, though, told him otherwise. Acceptable levels of nitrogen and oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide. Humidity 35 percent. Temperature 22 degrees Celsius. No airborne contaminants. Optimum conditions. All green. Since when did he believe the damn computer? But, in the interest of saving his suit’s air supply, he decided to take a chance.

He clicked the lock on his neck seal and the helmet popped off with a quarter-turn twist. He took a small breath. His lungs didn’t explode. So far so good. Another quick gulp and he was breathing with ease. It was a little musty. The damp, dusty old smell made it marginally unpleasant. Soon enough his nose grew accustomed to the stench, and he found himself taking off the suit altogether.

After the initial period of surprise, his inquiring mind began reflecting. Clearly, someone or something was aware of his arrival. It was also quite evident that these entities didn’t want him dead, at least not yet.

“Hello?” he sent a rather meek message echoing down the long corridor “Lea?”

“HARVEY!”

His knees buckled at the sound of Lea’s voice. He called out her name again, and before he knew it, started sprinting, as fast as his wobbly legs would take him. The grave markers on the walls blended in a haze, the hallway stretched in front of him into infinity.

Lea called out for him again and again, and Harvey kept running. He came to a stairway leading down and her voice grew louder. Instinctively, he followed the sound.

It was a forgotten mausoleum. A place he scarcely knew existed. He was amazed at how deep it went, marveling at its breathtaking enormity. And the deeper he descended, with each new level down, the sound of Lea’s cries for him grew that much louder, that much more distinct. He was getting closer, but how far down must he go?

As he bounded down the staircases, another sound began to overtake Lea’s voice. Crunching and churning and rumbling. Then he realized—this sound, this mechanical, industrial sound had been there all along, in the background.

The rumbling got so bad the ceiling and floors were fractured in places. His instincts turned against him. They told him to get out of there. However, Harvey was eternally curious, and that inquisitiveness kept him moving forward, into a place with no graves along the walls. The vast crypt had ended, and a new type of vault had begun. Dark stone, shiny in the ambient light up ahead, the same direction from which the terrible noise was originating.

He knew he should have turned back. The signs of the mausoleum were long gone. The light, airy environment had given way to a murky, dark atmosphere where the walls closed in on Harvey with every step. Lea’s shouts had long since been overtaken by the deafening mechanical sounds—the shrieking of grinding metal, the clanking of heavy parts, the turning of giant gears.

Every reason for his being there had vanished, and every alarm of common sense rang inside his head. Get out! Get out now! That was the message from his conscience, unequivocal and unrelenting. But he kept going. He wanted to know. He had to know what was making this terrible commotion on what was supposed to be a lifeless, abandoned planet.

The passageways closed in on him at every turn, and he had to stoop under the low hanging stalactites. Then he saw, up ahead, a red glow so terrifying it made him want to stop in his tracks. Still, he kept going forward, like iron to a magnet, as the awful rumbling and clanking grew louder and louder. The fiery glow increased in brightness, until the cramped surroundings opened up to a vast cavern. Harvey tripped and fell to his hands and knees. Perched precariously over a towering cliff, he overlooked the oddest sight he’d ever seen.

A massive factory floor. Steel framework conveyer belts twisting and bending, crossing and extending far into the distance of a gigantic underground chamber. It wasn’t the immense scale of the operation that had him trembling in terror. It was what he saw on the conveyer belts, a vision so fear provoking, he went numb from head to toe.

Bodies. Human corpses. Mostly skeletons, and many just heaps of bones. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Hell, when he considered the vastness of the operation, he calculated probably hundreds of thousands were involved. All these remains, placed with care in an intricate system of transport, moving them to God knew where. But somewhere, and for something. Harvey could only guess. Whatever it was, he knew it couldn’t have been good.

His first thought was DeepSix. What kind of fraudulence were those cheapskates up to? What he noticed next made him abandon that theory and revert again to complete terror. He knew what it was by the scaly, oddly-camouflaged skin, and the cold, calculating way it moved. The alien cyborg. The very same one that had tried to murder him.

Initially he cursed himself for not disassembling the damn thing. Then he saw another one of the beastly robots, and another. Suddenly he was seeing all kinds of them, milling about the conveyer, stationed at several different positions along the line, managing the operation and keeping it functioning like clockwork.

He watched this activity from his ledge, with a sweeping view of it all. Straight below him, some commotion caught his eye. That’s when he saw the most terrifying sight yet. Three alien cyborgs were directly below his position, investigating something and deliberating between each other. Then one of them looked straight up, and met stares with Harvey.

He jerked back from the edge. He’d been spotted. But maybe not. To be sure, he peeked over the ledge once more, and froze at the sight of one of the androids, halfway up the vertical cliff face, reddish eyes, filled with malicious determination, fixed on Harvey. Its massive claws dug into the rock, permitting it a speedy climb. Only seconds until it would reach the top.

He scrambled backward and scuffled to his feet. Before he made it just two strides, he heard the unmistakable sound of motion in the gravel behind him. And a strident screech, reverberating through the subterranean cavern, told him the immense and powerful machine was only meters away.