Requiem (68 page)

They had
returned through the Atlas Gate only three hours before the device
was activated. More Yurrick vessels, housing their fill of alien
refugees, had gathered above the surface of Saranture. The odd
Ordonian ship could be spotted, carrying only those whom the
Yurrick deemed a small enough risk.

The device
stood at the edge of the city, an enormous pylon, inelegant and
barbarous. It stood erect from the moon's surface with metres thick
cables running up its length, bracing it against the wind. A cool,
blue light ran up the length of its central chamber and shot from
its apex into the atmosphere towards the Atlas Gate.

For the first
time in almost fifty years Saranture was cut off from its sisters,
Sol and Yeta. Upon its activation, the device had extinguished the
glowing, neon light that had slithered between the three massive
joints. It had forced those joints together into a single piece.
They melded perfectly together as if that was indeed their
preferred and natural state.

What probes the
Yurrick had placed in Sol for monitoring had been hunted down and
destroyed by Icarus. The Yurrick, and the refugees would have
nothing but predictions and estimates to go off. And so Sol died,
muted by the vastness of space while the Yurrick rushed and
scampered for some kind of solution, for some kind of silver
bullet.

The first night
back, Seline dreamed of the young boy she had tried to help. Donny
was facing away from her. No matter how hard she tried to get his
attention, he would not turn to face her. She placed her hand on
his shoulder and pulled but he would not move. She moved around him
to where his face should be but the back of his head followed her
around and around and around. She woke up in the dark of the night,
covered in a cold sweat. For the briefest moment she thought she
might be dead. But in the darkness, Sear's hand found her shoulder.
He squeezed gently. There was a throbbing in her head and the
suffocating pain in her chest was like a knife in her heart.

She looked down
at Sear, lying next to her. There was not enough light to see him
but she could feel him easily enough. She lay back, closed her
eyes, and drifted away.

The dream found
her again. She screamed at Donny to say something. She screamed
until the world cracked and shattered and fell away to nothing.

Her eyes pried
themselves open beneath the faint light coming through the window.
Sear had gotten up a few minutes earlier. He hadn't come back
yet.

Exhausted,
Seline lay without moving, counting her breaths and running her
eyes along the texture of the carpet. She read the words along the
cracked spine of the book resting on her night-stand. The book
Abigail had given her.

The Erebus
Sleeps with Night.

She turned her
face from the light and closed her eyes. She would forever be a
part of the myth of humanity – the despised, fumbling author of the
final chapter. She hadn't conjured it but she had invited it to the
dinner table. The tears were heavy. They slid uncomfortably over
her face and quietly dripped onto the sheets.

Footsteps came
from the other side of the door. They approached and receded then
approached again. There was a heavy knock.

Seline ignored
it. They knocked again.

'Who is it?'
she said.

The door
opened. Tialus walked in. The door slid shut behind her.

'I didn't say
you could come in,' said Seline, resetting her eyes on the
carpet.

'I didn't ask,'
said Tialus.

Seline sat up.
Pulled the sheet off and sat on the edge of the bed. She was
dressed only in underwear and a stained, white singlet. Tialus came
across the room and stood between Seline and the window. Seline
looked up.

'I know it's
not my fault,' said Seline. 'You don't have to try to convince me
of that. Just let me... just... you... you know what?' She stood
up. Straightened. 'Why don't you just leave me alone? I didn't ask
you to come in. I didn't say I wanted to speak to you.' Seline
stared into the darkness of Tialus's eyes, not searching, but
burrowing directly through it. The shadow was breaking under the
light she was forcing through it. Tialus looked away. Seline kept
her bare feet planted to the floor. Tialus turned towards the
window. She pressed the keypad next to it to reduce the tint.
Morning light flooded the room. Seline held her hand over her eyes
while Tialus spoke.

'I'm not here
to start a war, Seline. I'm here to apologise.'

'Apologise?'
Seline kept the venom in her voice.

'Not for the
decision I made but for something else.'

Seline could
think of a hundred different replies. None of which she let past
her lips.

'I have watched
you closely ever since Sear first brought you onto our ship, but I
am still at a loss how to describe what it is about you I find
so... fascinating. It has been my way and the way of most Yurrick
to disregard the persistent melodrama your species surrounds itself
in. Watching you has given me a better picture of the trivialities
you submerge yourself in: the fear of others' opinions if you say
the wrong thing, the longing for acceptance from a parent figure,
the refusal to confront uncomfortable memories. These problems mean
little to me, to most Yurrick, but to you... they mean everything.
Even if you won't admit it. This is what I have noticed in Sear
ever since he returned from Earth. He has acquired a distinctly
human capacity for worry.'

Tialus's skin
glowed from the light coming through the window. At that moment,
Sear's admiration of her seemed entirely justified.

'It is a weight
that I can only imagine and yet you carry on despite it, and for
that you have my thanks and the thanks of every Yurrick that still
lives because of you. Earth may be lost, Seline but Saranture is
not.'

By now, Seline
had sat back on her bed. The mattress was warming beneath the
sunlight. She sighed.

'I don't have
anything to say to you. I mean... there are words in my head but
they aren't the right ones.'

'You are a
woman of few words, Seline. Perhaps it is best we leave it at
that.'

Seline
nodded.

Tialus left the
window untinted and walked towards the door. It opened. She was
about to step through but stopped herself. She turned. 'Come what
may, Seline, you will always have a place here on Saranture.'

'Thank you,'
said Seline.

Tialus left
with the door sealing shut behind her.

Seline slid
from the bed to the floor. Her hands were shaking. Tears forced
their way out. She wiped them away but they fell, renewed once
more.

Stationed
before the closed Atlas Gate aboard the Yurrick's temporary
monitoring station, one of the operators was standing before the
holographic display, eyeing the various numbers and charts when
something caught his attention.

'There's
something changing inside the gate,' he said.

'What? How?'
asked the engineer.

'I'm not
sure.'

'Has the device
been deactivated?'

'No. It's still
operational. It's as if it's being overridden by something.'

'Overridden
remotely?'

He looked at
the screen. 'The signal doesn't look like it's coming from the
device. It looks like it's coming from the gate itself.'

'No, you're
looking at the wrong numbers.' The engineer pointed at the corner
of the screen. 'That's just the sign... well... that can't be
right.' She withdrew her finger. 'Why is it getting stronger?'

'Like I said, I
have no idea.'

'Hold on a
second... maybe... can you display the energy-signal output of the
gate before we closed it with the device?'

He pulled up
the window.

'Damn it. God
fucking damn it. Look at the signal. Can you see that? It's
identical. It's turning itself back on.'

'Why?'

'The why is
obvious. It must be Icarus. The how is the real question.' She hit
the comm link and dictated a message to Saranture's defence force
and to those stationed at the device.

Tialus was
standing at the observation window, looking into the central
chamber of the device when one of the interfaces lit up. The
research assistant opened the message.

'Ma'am, you're
going to want to see this.'

Tialus turned
from the window.

'It's from the
team stationed at the Atlas Gate,' said the assistant. 'They...
they think the gate is reactivating, ma'am.'

Tialus read
over the report. Her expression calm and detached as her mind
absorbed the information.

'How long until
it's back on?' she asked.

'The rest of
their data is still coming in... there.' the assistant pointed at
the screen. 'They're saying three hours before it's fully
operational again. Since the signal for reactivation isn't coming
from any of our systems they believe it's coming-'

'From Icarus,'
said Tialus. There was a flash in her mind of Icarus and its
blanketing sentinels above the planet Sceril. 'Why didn't I see it
before? That's why it was taking so long on Sceril. It wasn't
harvesting the Ordonians, it was investigating the ruins. It was
learning how to manipulate the gates. With the Ordonians out of the
way it had full access to the information.'

'So what can we
do? I mean, we've lost all control. The signal from the device is
completely blocked.'

'Tell the
engineers to try everything they can to manually stop the gate from
reactivating, everything short of destroying it.'

'That's
not-'

'Try it
anyway.'

'Right.'

'I want regular
updates on what they're trying and how effective it is.' She
stepped back from the console and looked out the window to the
internal structure of the device. Thick rods of plasma reaching up
the central chamber. 'Increase the power output on this thing. Push
it to breaking. If it fails then we've lost nothing but it may help
keep the gate closed a little bit longer. Contact the emergency
response teams. Have them begin preparations for the planet-wide
defences.' Tialus started towards the door. 'And make sure you get
the schematics for the prototype shields to the production
facilities. I want them producing as many as we can, as large as we
can get them.'

'Understood...
uh, where are you going, ma'am?'

'To meet with
the counsellors and the research teams. We need a solution and we
need it fast.'

An alarm blared
throughout the major cities and provinces of Saranture.

Seline looked
up from Abigail's grave. A coldness was anchored inside her
stomach. The message icon flashed in her optics. She opened it. A
warning from Saranture's automated defence system for all civilians
to find shelter in the underground bunkers and for the defence
force to begin their protocols for the defence of the cities.

She read the
message twice and closed it but she didn't move. She stared at the
sky expectantly as if something might tear its way through it at
any second.

There was a
sharp ringing in her ear. She almost jumped from the sound before
realising that it was only an incoming call. She answered.

'Sel, where are
you?' said Belameir.

'I'm at the
gardens.'

'You gotta get
your ass back to the labs. The Atlas Gate is re-opening.'

'… The device?
It failed?'

'Yeah.
Apparently.'

'Why the labs?
Shouldn't we be getting to the shelter?'

'No. Sear said
he wants you here. He wouldn't tell me why. He's talking with
Therin at the moment. They're about to join the counsellors and
some other researchers to discuss what to do.'

'Alright,' she
said. 'I'm on my way.'

'I'll see you
soon.'

Seline hung up.
She looked down at the grave. The dirt had begun to settle from the
last time she'd visited but it still looked fresh. She was tired in
a way she'd never felt before. Not from the lack of sleep or the
stress of the last few months but from staring at this grave for
the last five days. She was tired of being guilty, of being the one
responsible for consequences that could have never been foreseen
and for the actions of people she couldn't control.

The siren was
still blaring in the skies. She looked at the grave, one last time
then started walking towards the track leading back to the maglev
platform. Reinforced gauze was still wrapped tight around her legs.
She walked as quickly as she could.

In the frantic
hours that followed, Saranture had begun to prepare for the
arrival. The beginning tremors of an extinction event, shaking the
planet into life. The planet's skin crawled with the motions of
those tiny lives. While there was a sense of co-ordination and
deliberate effort in the movements, it was a thin veneer indeed. A
process of natural instinct more than anything else.

Sear and Therin
were still deep in discussion when they left their own lab where
they'd spent the majority of the last week conducting research into
the sentinel and the device. They headed for the lab rooms on the
building's far side where the council's discussions were already
under way.

'You're late,'
whispered Tialus as the door closed behind them.

'You would've
said that no matter when we arrived,' Sear replied.

One of the
research heads was talking, ignoring Sear's arrival. 'Our options
are very limited. Any modifications we make to the device will be
complete guesswork. If we make a mistake, which is likely, we could
bring Icarus through even sooner. We have to come up with a
different solution. We have to target Icarus itself.'

'We have no
weapons that can even scratch the surface of Icarus,' said one of
the others. 'We have no means of even standing up to a single
sentinel, save ineffective shields and dumb luck. Where do you
propose we even start?'