Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (31 page)

              ‘I wish I could be so optimistic, Katherine,’ said Steelscale.  ‘From my knowledge of our history, our leaders usually climb over a pile of corpses to get to the top.’

              Rekkid had stopped in an aisle at the far side of the library from where they were standing.  They saw him remove a crate from its space on the shelves and then set it down on the floor before opening it and lifting out a heavy volume.  Carefully, he opened it at a random page, gave a cry of excitement and then waved them over.

              As they reached him, Rekkid held the book up for Katherine, Steelscale and the drone to see.  It was a beautifully illuminated work.  It had been printed rather than hand written, but each page dripped with delicate decoration.  The borders of the pages were a riot of colour, still bright after a hundred centuries and pages of text alternated with colour plates depicting the scenes described.  The text itself was in both the native language and that of the Progenitors.

              ‘Looks like you’ve hit the jackpot, Rekkid!’ said Katherine, excitedly.  ‘This is wonderful!’

              ‘Yes it is! There’s a whole section of shelving here devoted to religious works.  With these we can fully understand the language of these people.  Finally, we can get to the bottom of what happened here!  There are hundreds of historical works in this room, and we can read them all!’

              ‘It could take months, but...’

              The ship cut Katherine off.

              ‘No,’ it said.  ‘It will not.  I will have more of these drones sent down to the surface.  They will be able to scan these works for you, assemble a dictionary of words and thus translate the volumes in this library. 

              ‘Well, that just takes all the fun out of it,’ said Rekkid, only half in jest.

‘They will take care of these ancient tomes, I promise you that,’ said the ship.  ‘The work will take days, rather than months.  We could do it in hours, but...  I wish to preserve, not destroy these works.  They are very delicate.’

              ‘Very well, send down more of your pets and let’s get to work, shall we?’

              Katherine was looking over his shoulder.  Rekkid turned and saw that the ghostly figure had returned.  It was standing in the entrance to another tunnel that led out of the library.  There was no telling how long it had been there.  It appeared to be watching them. It beckoned once more to follow.

              ‘Clearly, this isn’t all that there is to find down here,’ said Steelscale. ‘It wants us to continue.’

              ‘He’s right,’ said Katherine to the others.  ‘We haven’t found the source of those signals yet.  This isn’t over yet.  Let’s go.’

              A broad passage, illuminated by lights that had partially failed and flickered forlornly, led off from the library for a couple of hundred metres before it turned left sharply, continued for another hundred metres or so and came to an end at another large and as yet unlit chamber.  They began to hear the faintest of sounds.  At first it was barely audible, but all of them could hear what sounded like deep, unified breathing which echoed down the dusty passage towards them.  As they approached the end of the passageway it grew louder until, standing in the darkness at the edge of the chamber, they looked at one another nervously as all around them the as yet un-guessable vastness of the hollow space echoed to the sound of breathing.

              ‘What is this place?’ whispered Katherine.  ‘What the hell is that sound?  It’s like we’re inside the ribcage of some gigantic beast, listening to it breathe.’

              ‘The chamber is roughly spherical and around three hundred metres in diameter,’ said the ship.  ‘There is a great deal of machinery in here, everywhere in fact, and there are life signs also.’

              ‘I can’t see a thing!’ hissed Rekkid.  ‘Life signs, you said?’

              ‘Yes,’ said the drone, as was about to explain further when the lights suddenly blazed to full.  Having become accustomed to the gloom of the tunnels, the three archaeologists now squinted against the sudden intense glare and gasped in amazement at the scene that now greeted them.

The passageway had come to an end at the level where the chamber’s great, domed ceiling curved downwards to meet the rising edge of the bowl shaped floor.  Radial banks of glittering, organic looking alien machinery rose from the floor and descended from the ceiling like stalactites, the huge assemblies skirted by access gantries.  It was from this machinery that the rhythmic sounds of breathing were coming.  Amazingly, it was still active and suspended within it could be seen hundreds of white pods, hanging like pale fruit amidst the alien growths, wrapped in tendrils of shining silver.  Some of the pods glowed from some inner light source that rendered them near translucent.  Looking closer at the nearer glowing pods, the faint outlines of figures could be seen inside them.  Others were not lit from within and their contents could not be seen.

At the centre of the chamber, a thick pillar of machinery joined the ceiling to the floor, tapering towards its mid-point to form an elongated hourglass shape.  Slightly below the mid-point hung another pod.  This one was completely transparent and much larger than the others and it was embedded within a mass of root-like structures that cradled it.  A humanoid form could be seen within.  It was impossibly old.  Wizened and wasted to the point of resembling an unwrapped mummy, its long, wispy hair and beard flowed over its chest and shoulders and shone like spun silver in the brilliant light along with the lines and feeds that snaked about its form and pierced its flesh in a dozen places

Cautiously they walked down the concave slope of the floor between the towering machines towards that near skeletal figure, the sounds of respiration loud in their ears from all sides.  Stopping at the foot of the pillar they looked up at the wasted form.  There were no signs of decomposition and as they looked closely, they saw the figure’s chest rising and falling weakly with every sound of inhalation and exhalation that filled the chamber.

Looking up into the age ravaged face, it was clear now that this figure was the same one that they had followed deep into the bowels of the earth, though the image they had been shown was of this unfortunate being as it had once appeared, not as it now was, emaciated by ten millennia of living death.

It was then that the ancient being opened its eyes and tried to speak.  The mouth quivered at first, dry cracked lips moving for the first time in perhaps centuries.  It was apparent that the pod must contain audio equipment, because the faint sound of the creature’s voice began to emanate from somewhere inside the pillar.  Even with such amplification, it was barely audible, like the rustling of dry leaves or the trickling of desert sands in the wind but, as they listened closely, the sounds of alien syllables could be discerned within the parched whispers.

As Steelscale moved closer to the creature to get a better look, the translation pendant that he wore picked up the alien sounds and started to convert them into the K’Soth language.  The device began to utter a tinny stream of guttural sounds.  Steelscale cradled the pendant in one great clawed hand and looked at it quizzically.

‘He’s praying,’ he said. ‘He’s thanking the gods for their arrival...  how is it possible that this device of mine is able to interpret this unfamiliar language?’

‘Because it’s not unfamiliar, I can understand it too,’ said Rekkid.  ‘He’s praying to us, no less, and he’s praying to us in the language of the Progenitors.’

The creature gasped as if exhausted by the mere effort of speaking and slumped forward in its restraints.  The bird-like chest continued to rise and fall in shallow breaths.

‘Ship,’ said Katherine to the drone.  ‘Get a medical team down here as quickly as possible.  Tell them that we’ve found a survivor.’

Chapter 20

The Delta Pavonis system had been, until only a few scant weeks ago, a relatively secure system in the Commonwealth’s heart.  Now, with the Commonwealth split in two, the inhabitants of these wealthy planets found themselves on the front line of a new war.  Nineteen light years from Earth, the Delta Pavonis system had been colonised relatively early on in the history of human interstellar travel.  Though the star was older than Earth’s sun, it had long been suspected that it would nurture a system of planets even before direct imaging from powerful telescopes revealed a family of worlds not too dissimilar to that from which humanity had sprung.  The colonists who eventually arrived found a system that resembled a snapshot from the Solar System’s future.

              New Hatti, the third planet, was a hot, desolate world of shifting sands and scrubby vegetation.  Once it had been verdant and earth-like, but the parent star, its ageing core growing heavier with iron, had grown hotter over the last billion years and had gradually turned the continents of New Hatti into vast deserts separated by seas swollen by the melted ice caps.  It was a harsh, unforgiving world, but one which held great mineral wealth, and the teeming seas sustained a hardy population in towns and cities that sprawled along the coasts in the higher latitudes.  The original population of settlers, drawn mainly from North Africa and the Middle East, had adapted to life in their new home with aplomb, since its environment was almost exactly the same as the one that they had left behind them on Earth, though even they thought twice about venturing into the searing equatorial regions without good cause.

Further out, two gas giants shepherded families of moons that held primitive single celled life-forms, flourishing in the star’s increasing luminescence. The system was also home to a number of commercial shipyards feeding off the bountiful supplies of heavy metals and the abundant manufacturing in the system.

              Four light years away to the east lay the densely populated Beta Hydri system, another keystone of the Commonwealth and a wealthy commercial centre centred around the garden world of Emerald and its carefully managed cities of glittering skyscrapers.  Now a line had been drawn between the two systems.  South of the line lay a great gulf in space, a darkness pierced by only a few scant stars.  To either side of this gulf, towered clouds of stars and at its far southern end, the brilliant blue-white sun of Achernar shone like a baleful eye.  All systems south of the Delta Pavonis-Beta Hydri line were now considered to be either partially, or wholly within the hands of the enemy.

              Now, as the forces still loyal to the Commonwealth prepared for their counter-strike, vast fleets of warships and transports had begun to gather in both systems as Navy and Army assets, previously scattered across the systems newly liberated from the K’Soth Empire, completed their hasty redeployments across hundreds of light years, regrettably leaving those worlds to their fate. Around New Hatti in Delta Pavonis and Emerald in Beta Hydri, huge formations of destroyers, frigates, carriers and other smaller warships jostled for space with lumbering army troop transports swollen with thousands of men, armoured vehicles and assault craft.  Each day, more ships arrived, fresh from their abandoned peace keeping duties.                The
Churchill
had arrived in Delta Pavonis three days earlier and had slotted itself into a parking orbit in the busy skies high above New Hatti.  The carrier had launched early from her berth in Batavia Port and made her way out of the Solar System, proceeding to Delta Pavonis at best speed completing final not critical repairs whilst on route.  Once she had arrived she rendezvoused with the two modified Thea class recon cruisers, the
Appleton
and the
Dulles
and the Nahabe gunsphere
Shadow in the Void
that had left the Solar System several days earlier as an advance guard.

The carrier had arrived early and without incident. However, she was now delayed.  The plan had been to take on replacement crew and ships in Delta Pavonis to replace those lost in the battle for Earth as well as extra supplies.  In addition, the carrier and its accompanying vessels were to remain in the system until their final orders were received, detailing the target and other specifics of their forthcoming mission.  Neither of these had yet materialised.  The sudden influx of vessels and personnel into the system was causing delays and a degree of confusion in both securing the necessary crew members and completing the security screening now necessary for all personnel transferring between ships.  Plenty of the replacement crew were still waiting in various locations throughout the system to be transferred to the
Churchill
.  In addition, a number of recon flights despatched into enemy territory had failed to return and although this confirmed the presence of the enemy in the locations to which vessels had been dispatched, it failed to give any indications as to the likely strength or composition of the enemy and whether or not the recon flights had been anticipated and ambushed.  Finding an enemy that didn’t want to be seen was a problem, especially when they could avoid detection entirely without the Commonwealth being able to use the very technology that they now wished to test.  It was a frustrating situation.  Cartwright had informed Chen that he was unwilling to send her blindly into a hostile system for fear that she would be flying into a trap. Until a suitable system could be reconnoitred successfully, the
Churchill
and her small flotilla would have to await their orders. 

Meanwhile, Chen grew ever more restless.  She was eager to be under way and impatient with the delays.  For McManus however, the journey from Earth and the delays in Delta Pavonis had given him a chance to get to know his new ship.  He made a point of visiting different areas of the carrier, introducing himself to the crew, casting an eye over their performance, swapping stories and listening to what they had to say.  What he saw and heard impressed him.  Chen certainly ran a tight ship and her crew were loyal and dedicated.  Many had served with her aboard her previous command whilst others had joined her later, but all of the officers and specialists had been hand-picked by her.  The
Churchill’s
crew were a breed apart, used to long missions far away from bases or human worlds.  As a unit, they were independent and self reliant, used to solving problems on their own.  As people, they had come to rely on one another utterly, even more so than usual for a ship’s crew.  As such, it had made the recent losses harder to bear.  To some, it had felt like they had lost family, rather than colleagues.  Nevertheless, morale remained high and most were eager to take revenge for their fallen comrades.  McManus began to feel very much at home.  During this period he made himself invaluable to Chen, giving her regular updates from the repair crews and the ship’s engineers, chasing down missing personnel and untangling the mess of transport requirements to get all of the ship’s new complement aboard.