Far From Home: The Complete Series (25 page)

This invader was different from the others. Standing close to him and seeing his blue and green eyes, Moonwatcher did what any primitive mind would do, faced with such a being. He knelt in front of him.

Moments later, the rest of the village followed suit. The Star God had returned.

* * *

None of the other crew of the
Sophie
survived their encounter with the natives. None had matched Lukas in stature, in appearance of strength and vitality. In a society built around hunter-gatherer culture, size mattered. Brute force mattered.

It didn’t hurt that Lukas had dealt pure lightning from his hand, either.

However he didn’t rest. He investigated the giant black mountain from all sides. It took days for him to find the small slit in the base of the structure. Mere inches in length.

Lukas hunkered down in front of it, his head cocked to one side. He ran a finger down the length of the slit. It grew in front of him. He stood back up, and watched as it spread upward across the face of the pyramid, until it stopped at a height of thirty feet. Then the slit opened to create a doorway ten feet wide. There was no sound, no vibration. The walls of the mountain might as well have been made from oil.

The L’ucrah who had been following him around the whole time went crazy. They didn’t know what to do. The Star God had opened the mountain with a simple movement of one finger. And then, cool as a cucumber, Lukas stepped inside and the mountain swallowed him whole.

* * *

WE ARE HERE it boomed in his head.

“Who are you?” he asked in the darkness. His voice echoed over and over.

WE

“I do not understand  …”

YOU ARE PRIMITIVE

“Not as primitive as some.”

THE TINY CREATURES WHO SWARM LIKE ANTS OUTSIDE HAVE NO CONCEPT OF TIME AND SPACE. THEY CANNOT KNOW OF THE
REALITIES
OF REALITY. BUT YOU ARE DIFFERENT

Lukas felt with his hands. They touched nothing. No air stirred within the dark chasm of the mountain’s insides.

WATCH

A holographic display appeared before him, out of nowhere. The mountain showed him how it had arrived on the planet, long ago. Showed the simple life of that world coming to worship the structure. Thousands of years stretched past, and yet the mountain waited. It had been placed there, and now it waited  …  but for what?

It did not tell him.

“I still don’t understand.”

The silence stretched out, dragged. Then in the same voice inside his head, it answered him.

YOU WILL, it said, and then the insides of the pyramid lit up.

* * *

Lukas came to realise that operating the many functions of the device - he’d found himself calling it that, in the end - required only the use of one’s mind. The initial communication with it had been more of a test than anything else. As he responded to it, the device mapped his brain. Tested it. Seeing what could be made of such a simple ball of mushy grey matter. Lukas wasn’t sure how long he spent inside the mountain. It might have been days, weeks. Even months.

The device provided food for him in the form of a blue, clay-like material. It had no taste to speak of, yet it seemed to hit the spot. Water ran from an opening in the ceiling into a wide basin three feet up from the floor. From this he drank and washed, as it was continuously replenished and refreshed. When he drank, it was cold. When he washed, it was warm. He slept flat out on the floor, his hands resting on his chest as he contemplated his circumstances.

Every day the device opened up to him. However the true purpose of its existence was a persistent mystery he could not break. He learned how to control the weather using the device. With this power he brought the rains to the simple village of the L’ucrah, and watched from a holographic display as they partied with joy at the answering of their prayers. For them it was a time of posterity. The Star God had spoken to the Black Mountain, and the rains had returned. The L’ucrah’s fields became green and lush. There hadn’t been a golden age like it for thousands of years. Far back, beyond the generational memory of the people.

THEY ARE CRUDE. THEY HAVE NO BOUNDARIES

“I can teach them,” Lukas offered.

By way of answer, the mountain opened again.

* * *

Somehow, he knew their language. Perhaps, he thought, the device has planted it there within me.

He spoke to the village elders directly, told them the bidding of the mountain.

“You will not fight amongst yourselves. You will not commit murder or seek to harm one another,” he said. Lukas thought back to some of the teachings that were implanted within him when he was created. Every replicant was taught a moral code in the rapid succession of their growth. Now he called upon it to show him the way. “You will not steal, you will love one another. You will  …”

And so it went. On and on, until he was finished, and he was sure that the elders had understood.

“What will become of us, should these rules be broken?” the oldest of their kind asked him.

Lukas looked away then, away from the crackling firelight. Out there, in the darkness of the night, lay hidden the giant mountain.

“You will suffer,” he said, his voice a flat monotone sound like electric coursing through a wire.

But this did not stop them testing him. They fought. They killed each other. They went on with life as they always had done. And when they did, the rains would not come. The Black Mountain that controlled the weather would not work in their favour. The great mists and clouds that shrouded its peak would dissipate, and the people would know  …  they had done wrong.

Apart from isolated incidents, the desires of the Star God were followed without challenge after that, and life was good. The L’ucrah forgot their primitive roots. They cast aside murder and sacrifice. As a people, in the shadow of the Black Mountain, they washed their hands of bloodshed.

Lukas continued to learn from the mountain, well into his old age. And then one day he simply disappeared for good. Some said he went back into the mountain one last time  …  and never returned. Whatever the case they were mindful of his final words to them. “One day others, like me, will come. There are many Star Gods,” he said. “But I do not leave you alone. I will always watch over you.”

The L’ucrah went on as if he were still there with them, watching from afar. They did not know the lifespan of the Star God. For all they knew, he still existed.

And over time, he was not merely a ghost spoken of in stories. The Black Mountain became The Star God, their protector, their ruler. A giant presence that obstructed the sun for hours each day with its sheer size alone. The rain-bringer.

Lukas, the Star God and the Black Mountain were one and the same; something more powerful than the L’ucrah. Something from another place, another time, sent to watch over them.

It had the power to sustain them, or destroy them. And for as long as the L’ucrah obeyed its laws, it would ensure life continued as it should.

* * *

The holo display faded away, and the lights came up.

“Wow,” Greene said.

“How did we get this though? How was it made? The recording I mean,” Olivia Rayne asked.

Chang leaned forward on the table. “I think  …  and I know this sounds off-base, but I think it was pulled direct from his mind.”

King nodded. “So it stored him.”

“Stored his memories, yes.”

Greene frowned. “I don’t get it. How did that massive machine know you’d want to learn about him? How did it know to give you those
specific
memories?”

Dana answered this time. “Because it read our minds and knew we wanted that information. It’s like it expected us.”

“Maybe it did. He told them we’d come one day, and maybe he told the device to expect us too. Perhaps it already knew that from reading his mind,” King said.

“Yes.”

“And were there any star charts or data like that from
Sophie
? Anything to help us get an idea of where to go in this galaxy?” King asked.

Chang shook her head. “Sorry sir. Nothing. They just arrived here and crashed.”

“Captain, before we go too far into discussing all of this, I want to mention something else,” Greene said.

“Oh?”

“We’ve gotta bit of a situation. Our first estimates of ships stores and supplies might have been wrong.”

She rubbed her head. “So what are we saying here?”

Commander Greene looked from one to the other, then back down at his data tablet. “Well, there was anomalous data on the system. When we conducted a count in person, we realised the two sets of data were wildly different.”

“How different?” Chief Gunn asked.

Greene’s face became grim. “A lot.”

“Talk me through it,” King said.

“Well, we’re re-counting now, to ensure accuracy, but we’re in a lot worse shape than we thought. From my own calculations, we have little more than a month’s worth of food before we have to resort to processed rations. Whilst we could survive like that, we have to think about the repercussions on morale, on the well being of the crew,” Greene said. “Our figures show we’re also running low on Ditaron for the core.”

Chief Gunn picked up on that point. “Whilst we aren’t reliant on fuel, we still require some means of rejuvenating the main core. Unfortunately, on this ship, Ditaron was the ore chosen with the necessary attributes. All ships are different, depending on the class of core installed. But the
Defiant
is an old bird. She’s one of the last Union ships using the stuff  …  or she was.”

King sat. “Will it be easy to come by? Naturally abundant?”

Gunn shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve asked Lieutenant Chang to look into possible sources. We need at least a hundred kilos of pure Ditaron to function for another couple of years.”

“Does it pose any imminent problems?”

“You mean how long can we shoot through space before the wind dies?” Gunn asked.

King smirked. “Something like that.”

“Four months. Six at best, if we conserve power. If the system had been up to date, I would have had a new shipment put on board six years ago, when Captain Singh was alive. As it is, we can only hope to find some,” Gunn said.

“Understood. So, the priority here is food.”

Dr. Clayton raised a hand. “If we’re to be stuck out here, on our own, keeping the crew fed and watered is essential. I can only do so much. I can’t counter malnutrition.”

“Well, I don’t want to starve either, Doctor,” King said. “Commander, what do you suggest?”

“The surface. They have food stores that I’m sure would tide us over until we could locate something more suitable,” Greene said.

Lieutenant Chang frowned. “But suppose they had a shortage themselves. They’d starve instead, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, but they could always grow more. We can’t,” Greene said.

She shook her head. “That’s not right, surely  …”

“I’m looking at options, Lieutenant,” Greene snapped.

“Commander -” King warned.

“No sir. Sorry. Somebody has to look at ways of feeding this crew. It’s an option. I’m no more in favour of it than anything else. I’m just laying all the cards on the table,” he said.

“I understand that Commander, but I’m not about to leave a civilisation starving to feed my own people,” King said.

“There
is
a directive that sanctions such action,” Greene said. He raised a finger for quiet before Chang could cut in again. “Again, I’m just pointing out … Directive 401 dictates that we should take from an inferior race what we need to survive if it will ensure our own survival, and the agenda of the Union in general.”

“I’m well aware of the Directive,” King said. “And I’ve never heard of a single commanding officer ever invoking it.”

Greene was silent.

“But suppose we had to,” Banks said. Everyone looked in his direction. “What if things were so bad, and we were so desperate, we had no other choice?”

King always regretted these moments. She thought it akin to telling a child about death for the first time. She’d asked the same questions when she was junior officer.

“We may have to. It is not my policy, everyone. It’s something the Union worked out long ago. And it’s there for a reason. To keep us alive. That’s all it’s about,” she said. “As your Captain, if I had to make that decision  …  I would. If it meant keeping you all alive and kicking? Sure.”

Everyone was silent. The ship hummed beneath them.

“And would I regret it?” King looked down at her hands. “Yes. I would. But I’d do it anyway.”

She got up, laid a hand on Greene’s shoulder.

“However, I don’t think it will be necessary to do that on this occasion. My good friend here is just doing his job, weighing options. If he had to make the decision to invoke Directive 401 I’m sure he would, too.”

“Thanks Captain,” Greene said. “And it’d weigh on me too. But like you, I’d still do it.”

“So, apart from resorting to cannibalism at some point in the near future, or starving altogether, what else is there?” King asked.

Dana Oriz spoke up. “Captain, if I may?”

“Of course. Take the front.”

They swapped places.

“As you all know, I’ve spent some time with the L’ucrah. And both myself and Lieutenant Chang have been investigating the inside of the mountain. It looks like along with crewman Lukas’s memory, it also preserved the original transmissions from the
Sophie
,” she explained.

“Right. So can we play those?”

Chang nodded. “They’re all in the computer system now.”