Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (6 page)

‘That has to be the result of a weapon of some kind,’ said Steelscale.  ‘That’s too accurate to be a natural occurrence, like an asteroid impact. It looks like someone targeted the centre of that city intentionally.’

‘Maybe this planet is dead after all,’ said Katherine.

‘Perhaps not,’ Mentith replied.  ‘Others may have survived elsewhere on the surface.  We should keep looking.’

As the
Glory
continued in its orbit, other devastated cities swept into view before disappearing over the limb of the planet.  Though they differed in size, each was similar to the one that they had first seen, both in their general topology and the fact that all had been struck by some sort of devastating weapon.  Some had been hit multiple times and in these cases, barely anything remained outside the limits of the overlapping craters.

‘I wonder what happened here,’ said Rekkid. ‘A global nuclear war?  Bombardment from space?’

‘Maybe the Shapers did this,’ said Steelscale.  ‘Perhaps this is the remains of another people who defied them?  Perhaps this is what awaits us when we return home to our own worlds?’

There was an uncomfortable silence as yet another blasted city rolled by beneath them.

Then, one of the crew manning the comm. system called out something to Mentith in the Arkari language.  Mentith replied in kind.  An audio feed began to play across the bridge.  It was faint at first, the sound quality poor and distorted.  Icons began to appear on the display of the planet’s surface, denoting the source of the signal as having just appeared over the limb of the planet below.

‘The signal is very weak,’ said Mentith.  ‘It is an old fashioned analogue radio transmission.  Systems Adept Radila is working to clean it up.’

An alien voice began to echo across the bridge.  The words were incomprehensible, the sounds strange and guttural.  But after a few moments the pattern of syllables began to repeat itself.

‘Must be an automated message,’ said Rekkid.  ‘But it’s in a language I’ve never encountered before.  Hardly surprising, considering that we’re probably the first people from our respective civilisations to ever come here.’

‘It could be a greeting, perhaps?’ said Katherine.

‘The signal is omni-directional rather than directed at us,’ said Mentith.  ‘It’s more likely to be a distress signal of some kind.’

‘Or a warning,’ Rekkid added.  ‘Maybe someone left it here to tell anyone who arrived to stay away.  Look at what’s happened to this place.  It’s clear that something bad happened here, something very bad indeed.  Maybe we should stay away.’

‘Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of choice,’ said Mentith.  ‘The
Glory’s
orbit is decaying.  In this low orbit we’re brushing the upper layers of the atmosphere.  It will take some days, but eventually this ship’s orbital speed will have been reduced to the point where it will fall to the planet below unless we can restart the engines.  We need to secure raw materials so that the ship’s manufacturing systems can replace its own damaged components, before we move the ship to higher orbit and repair the jump drive.  To that end, I think we need to establish a base on the surface.  We may be spending some time here and we need to know what we’re dealing with in terms of the environment, resources and so on.’

‘Are you saying that we might have to settle here?’ said Katherine.

‘I had considered that possibility, yes,’ said Mentith.  ‘If we cannot repair the ship in time, we may have no other choice if we wish to survive.  However, I also believe that we need to know what happened here and why Eonara brought us here in the first place.  The initial reports from the ship’s engineers are not good and it may be difficult, if not impossible to restore her to full functionality with the resources that we have available.  We need to know everything about our current situation.  I would greatly appreciate it if the three of you would head up the investigation as to the source of these signals.’

Chapter 4

Fully protected in their suits, Isaacs and Anna stood looking up at the
Profit Margin
, the nose of the sleek craft looming over them in the dimly lit bay.  Behind them, other members of the Hidden Hand were using heavy lifting gear to push the piles of mangled debris and bodies from the battle out of the shattered dock.

              ‘So,’ said Anna. ‘What’s your big idea?’

              ‘We need to get back to the core systems still loyal to Earth, right?  We need to tell the Navy what we know.’

              ‘That the Nahabe have found a way to detect the Shapers’ comms traffic and are about to join in the war.  Gotcha.’

              ‘We can’t transmit any of this information, because we don’t know how secure the hypercom network is, so we need to deliver it by hand, preferably to Admiral Chen, since we can trust her.  Thing is, we need to do that without being intercepted, or without giving away the location of this base.’

              ‘Warp signatures would be a dead giveaway, of course,’ said Anna.  ‘Okay, go on.’

              ‘I’ve been going through the inventory of this place, not to mention the specs of my own ship.  I found an engine stealthing kit amongst your stores.  God knows how you guys got hold of that, since it seems to be a piece of Black Ops kit, but I guess you have your sources.’

              ‘Shigs ‘acquired’ it for us a while back from some dodgy ship dealer types he knows.  We could never get the damn thing to work - it wasn’t compatible with any of our ships.’

              ‘It’s compatible with mine, being a newer model and all.  It won’t hide us completely, but it’ll make the jump drive signature much harder to spot from a distance.  It should allow us to leave this place without being spotted from the inner system.’

              ‘Uh-huh.  Okay.  We should talk to Maria and Farouk.’

              They made their way back into the warren of tunnels and chambers within Port Royal and found Maria in one of the noisy mess halls.  The brightly lit room stank of cheap, greasy food.

‘Yeah I remember that fucking thing,’ said Maria, half eaten burger in one hand. ‘So, your big shiny dick ship has come in useful after all, huh?’

              ‘Yeah, it has,’ Isaacs replied, ignoring the insult.  ‘Plus it’s about the only thing we have left that still flies.’

              ‘There is that,’ Maria sighed and ran a hand along her corn-rows.  ‘Listen,’ she said, above the noise of background chatter. ‘I think me and Farouk and the others can get this fixed up pretty quickly, since you say that your drive’s compatible. We can also maybe make a few tuning improvements along the way, but you need to consider the way that this thing works.’

              ‘Oh?’

              ‘Okay, this stealth device is basically a dampening tool. It smoothes out your warp signature, so that it blends into the background more gradually and removes any regular patterns from the wave.  Space-time ain’t totally smooth anyway, so this hides you within the low level chop, making you less obvious and even if they do spot you, it makes it harder to identify your ship type.  But there is a drawback.’

              ‘Go on.’

              ‘This thing creates a lot of heat.  We’re gonna need to swap out the heat exchangers as it is, but it’ll still produce more than they can cope with and it’ll be radiated into the hyperspace envelope. When you come out of your jump, all that excess heat will be dumped into space, making you more obvious, plus, you’ll have to limit the length of time that you use the stealth device.  After four or five hours, the temperature outside the ship will be raised to dangerous levels.  When that happens, the device will shut itself down and you’ll be easy to spot.  If you try to override the shut down you risk melting the drive.’

              ‘I see.  So what we have here is actually a stealth device that makes us really fucking obvious.  What a great invention,’ said Anna, scathingly.

              ‘No.  I think it’s still useful,’ said Isaacs.  ‘We just need to learn how to use it.  We can’t have it on all the time, just at the start or end of a jump.  I guess if you were moving around for long periods and didn’t want to get spotted you’d have to do it in short hops between safe spots.  Say, do a short jump to the sensor shadow behind an asteroid or moon or something, vent the excess heat, then jump again.’

              ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too,’ said Maria.  ‘You could move around pretty easily, as long as you planned your jumps out in advance.’

              ‘And as long as you knew where any interested parties might be.’

              Anna seemed distracted.  Cal saw her check the screen of her comm.

              ‘Okay well, we’ll let you guys get on with it then,’ said Anna and shot Maria a grin.  ‘Cal, come with me.  The Speaker wants a word with us.’

              ‘Sure.  Maria, can you and Farouk at least have a look at the thing as soon as you get chance?’

              ‘Mind if I finish my lunch before I take your ship apart, hotshot?’ said Maria and scowled at Isaacs.

              The Speaker, encased within his armoured sarcophagus, floated amidst a grove of small, purple trees in Port Royal’s lower arboretum.  The chamber functioned both as recreational space and part of the base’s air recycling mechanism.  The creature seemed to be inspecting the bright blue flowers that grew on the tips of the wiry branches – it held one delicately in the grip of a slender manipulator arm.  As it heard the two humans approach, it released the delicate bloom and turned to face them.

              ‘You wanted to see us?’ said Anna.

              ‘Yes,’ said the Speaker.  ‘I have here a copy of everything that we have learned of the Shapers’ communication methods and the means by which they may be detected.  You must give this to the Commonwealth, or to the Arkari.  It will be most useful to them.’

              The manipulator arm that had been holding the flower reached inside a recessed chamber within the Speaker’s armour and produced a couple of data wafers, proffering them to Isaacs and Anna.  Isaacs took them and eyed them thoughtfully.

              ‘You said so earlier,’ said Isaacs.  ‘What I don’t understand is how come we suddenly have this information to hand.’

              ‘Because of your help!’ exclaimed the Speaker.  ‘You two, and the warriors from the Order of Dead Suns, bless their departed spirits – your courage led to this discovery.’

              ‘It did?’

              ‘Perhaps I should explain,’ said the Speaker.  ‘You remember the boarding action that you undertook on the
Casilinum
, to gather information and bring back samples of Shaper parasites for us to study?’

              ‘How could we forget?’ Anna replied and shuddered, as both she and Isaacs recalled the shadowy halls filled with slavering beasts enslaved to the will of the Shapers that had once been the officers and crew of a Commonwealth warship.

              ‘The samples you recovered were taken on board the
Uncaring Cosmos
for study.  It was evident that though badly damaged, a number of the creatures were still partially active.  It was the assumption of the crewmembers assigned to study them that when separated from their controlling node – the one that you destroyed aboard the
Casilinum
- that these simpler creatures of the Shapers would attempt to seek out other Shaper creatures in the vicinity to try to find a link back to the main Shaper consciousness in order to receive further commands.’

              ‘And of course they didn’t find any, I suppose?’ said Isaacs.

              ‘We don’t think so.  Previously when we fought the Shapers it had been theorised that although they must be using some form of hyperspace communication method, they were able to make use of dimensions that my people, with the technology that we possessed back then, were unable to access, or that they were able to mask their signals in some way.  In any case, the war was over before we got a chance to test our theories and the Shapers were not encountered again for tens of millennia.  Now it seems that in the intervening period the Shapers have developed drive systems that make their ships incredibly difficult to detect, particularly at long range.  We believe that their vessels are able to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously and gradually phase between hyper and real space rather than jumping suddenly between them as our vessels do.  In addition, their methods of propelling themselves leave only the slightest of ripples in space time.  Even the Arkari with their advanced technology are unable to detect jumping Shaper vessels over distances of more than a few thousand kilometres.’

              ‘Yeah, I seem to recall the sneaky bastards caught us by surprise,’ said Isaacs. ‘Those damn ships appeared out of nowhere.’

‘Quite so.  However, it seems that those ancient researchers I mentioned were correct in their theories: the Shapers are able to access a dimension above hyperspace, and although it seems that they are not able to travel through it, they are able to make use of it for communications.  The crew of the
Uncaring
Cosmos
managed to jury rig modifications that enabled them to scan this higher dimension using the ship’s own hyperspace sensors.  It was soon realised that a number of weak signals were coming from the captured parasite creatures that you had recovered for their study.  When the Shapers attacked Port Royal in the Spica system, it became clear that the Shaper creatures were communicating with the attacking vessels.  Their signals were duly monitored and analysed.’

‘Right, so let me get this straight,’ said Anna. ‘The crew of the
Uncaring Cosmos
just happened to completely re-engineer their hyperspace sensor array, just like that?’

‘No of course not,’ the Speaker replied. ‘The Order of Dead Suns and many others in the Nahabe scientific community have devoted years of study to this subject. However until now it was difficult to test any of the theories on ‘live’ subjects.’