Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1) (30 page)

“So what
do you think is here?”

“The
Skins have their fairytales,” he continued. “Evil monsters who can devour minds
and gobble up worlds. Most of it is mythological trash, but I believe there is
some truth in it. The story of the destruction of the star Vasudeva is true enough.
Though the flux points have all collapsed and we cannot see it first hand, we
know that there was once a young and vibrant star, and that it was destroyed.
Think about that. The power to destroy a star. Whoever they were, the aliens
who lived here had technologies that far outstripped our own.”

I
breathed slowly.

“As the
legend goes, after they blew up Vasudeva, their command ship escaped,” he
continued. “The stories become a patchwork at this point, but all of them point
here. They fled with all of that knowledge, and all of that technology. For the
longest time, nobody knew where. But we know, don’t we boy? They came here, to
this little world. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not the power to destroy worlds
I’m after. To get to that point they would need advanced manufacturing, a grasp
of energy physics well beyond our own and a host of technical and scientific
disciplines that would make life easier throughout the Protectorate and the
Collective.”

“So why
terraform it?” The question that burned in my mind slipped out through my lips.
“If you knew this is where they went, why move the colonists out here?”

“Well,
yes, that was unfortunate. It complicated things,” he paused to take a breath.
“Originally, we had decided to terraform this world as an agricultural center
to help support mining operations we plan on developing in this region. We
didn’t come across the final clues that pointed to this world until after the
terraforming had begun, horrible timing really. I came out here in hopes that
maybe something remained. Our scans showed evidence that there may have been a
network of unnaturally formed underground tunnels up in the mountains, and I
set my prospecting crew to start scanning the area for mineral deposits. I had
a bit of luck when they found the chamber.”

“What
about the people who were here—the aliens?” I pressed. “What happened to them?
Did you just kill when you terraformed the world?”

“Ha!
Don’t be absurd,” Growd waved his hand dismissively. “They were long dead
before we got here. Maybe their numbers were too few, maybe they died of
disease, or infighting. The aliens were already weak, maybe the Draugari clan
that used to hunt in this sector found them and wiped them out.”

“How do
you know they didn’t move on?” I pressed. “The records said that the
Terraforming crew found no active technology on this world. If you didn’t find
any technology here, what makes you think they were here at all? The keys could
have been wrong, you could have misread the signs.”

“The
evidence we found is irrefutable.” He answered coolly. “We’ve found stone
carvings, magnetic imprints, alien debris, and all sorts of other clues. Clues
left by the aliens themselves calling their brethren home. All of them are
signposts pointing back to the safety of this little world as their haven. They
were here. There is no question. The symbols in the cave prove it. And we both
know that the map they left in that cavern pointed to a location here on this
world. They may have died off here a few hundred years ago. They may have gathered
what is left of their people and moved on. What happened to the aliens doesn’t
matter. What matter is that they are gone? The symbols on that cave say they
left something behind, and I will find it.”

“And if
you’re wrong?” I asked. “And nothing is here, or what if they come back?”

“We’re
hunting for treasure here boy,” he responded. “Wealth and power. Fortune and
glory. Nothing is for certain. But, if there is a chance, some slim chance,
that they hid one of their vessels, or a cache of their technology here on this
world, then I will move moons to find it.”

“And you
think I will lead you to it?”

“Drop the
act,” Growd answered. “I think you are as curious as I am, why else would you
come back here? Besides, the choice is pretty clear, if you don’t help me, I
will kill your pilot friend and torture the girl.”

“Pilot?
Loid?” I asked. “He’s alive?”

“For now,
yes,” Growd answered. “Talkative fellow, he told us all kinds of interesting
things. He told us that you were the only one who knew the way, that you would
be back, and that if we tortured the girl, you would do anything we asked. So
now, let’s get to it.”

My mind
raced. Loid had said I was the only one who knew the location. Clearly, this
wasn’t true. Loid himself knew. He had run the simulation and left us the
location on the map. What was his game? Had he been lying to buy himself time,
or did he have a plan?

I
realized that it didn’t matter. I thought of Ju-lin, Loid, and the burning
question of what lay hidden. Growd was right. I would help him.

“Sir,”
Commander Teigan approached, he was holding his arm up to his ear.

“Yes,
what is it now Teigan?” Growd barked back as he continued to focus on me, his
lips were pursed tightly together as he waited eagerly for my answer.

“I sent
my pilots into high orbit to conduct long range scans.”

“And I
told you not to waste the fuel,” Growd, slowly and deliberately, turned to look
at Teigan. “I don’t think you understand our arrangement,
you
work for
me
.”

“The girl
was right,” Teigan answered, ignoring Growd’s scowl. “There are well over 200
vessels in high orbit, Celestrial and Draugari, they are engaged as we speak.
We need to evacuate.”

“What?”
Growd’s eyes widened. “Evacuate? That’s absurd. Soon we’ll have the most
advanced technology in the galaxy in our possession. What are a few dozen
fighters? Commander, prepare to scramble your ships for colonial defense if
needed. Keep four in the air and have them ready to escort my shuttle.”

“Yes
sir,” Teigan said coldly as he looked at Growd. He began to turn, looked back
and glanced at me, and left.

“You,”
Growd nodded at the nearest armed MineWorks guard. “Have my shuttle prepared,
we’ll leave immediately. Hovers would take too long.”

Finally,
he turned back to me.

“You see,
if there was nothing here, than why are the Skins rushing to find it? Why is
there a Draugari fleet?” Though his voice was calm, his eyes looked anxious as
he turned his attention back to me. “What will it be? Torture the girl, kill
your friend, and wait for the Skins or the Draugari to come down and bomb us to
dust, or join me in the shuttle and lead me to our salvation?”

I took a
deep breath.

“It’s
really not a choice boy,” he bared his yellow teeth as he smiled.

“Let’s
go,” I responded.

Chapter
32.

We set down the Carrack a few hundred meters from the
bladestones, smoke still filled the air as I watched from the command deck.

“Tren and Jen’tek,” I ordered. “Go and retrieve them.”

“Retrieve?” Tren asked. “You mean Capture? You want to take
them alive?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I know it’s unusual, but we’re far from
home, the whole mission is unusual.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Tren grunted as he got to his feet
and turned to leave. Jen’tek grunted in agreement as he got up and followed him
out.

Once they had left I stepped up passed Kel, who was still
resting in the pilot’s seat, to look out over the surface of the world. It was
easy terrain, flat, trees, plenty of good stones for cover. The blaze from the
fire was gone, and the bladestones were now blackened with soot and char. As I
stared out into the distance I saw two shapes moving. So small, so frail.

“Evolution was not kind to them,” I said quietly.

“What?” Kel asked.

“Look, there, the humans,” I pointed out the viewport. “They
are so small, so weak, and so stupid. Unarmed and running toward us. Running
toward the enemy. How are there so many of them out there? How do they
survive?”

“Maybe they survive
because
there are so many of them?” Kel suggested. “Our
people understand the value of breeding, only those who prove themselves the
strongest and wisest are given the honor. The humans breed at will like
mar-rats. It’s disgusting.”

I grunted in agreement as I watched the two humans continue
to run toward Tren and Jen’tek. As they grew closer, Tren fired twice and the
first one fell, the second continued running forward! Tren shot again, and the
second dropped to the ground.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Growd’s
shuttle was a luxury model, designed to carry over a dozen passengers in
stately comfort. Though two guards maintained a close eye on me as we boarded
the shuttle and settled into our seats. Growd ordered them to holster their
weapons by explaining that I “was not a captive, but rather a partner from here
on out.”

As soon
as we were on-board I was led to a comfortable seat next to an older woman, she
had deep set eyes and dark brown hair peppered with stands of gray.

“Lexin
Piter,” she offered her hand. “So you’re the navigator that Growd’s been
looking for?”

“Navigator?”
I asked. “If you call it that.”

“Enough
Piter,” Growd grumbled as he approached and handed me his Slate with a detailed
map of the planet. “Piter here is our archeologist.”

“Xenologist,”
she corrected him.

“Treasure
hunter,” he countered. “And a mercenary one at that. I hired her to piece
together the clues that led us to this little rock. She did her job well. Just
like you will do yours.”

He nodded
to the map of the world floating on the Slate screen.

I slid my
fingers of the display, spinning the image of the world until I was looking at
the northern pole. A minute later I had the image zoomed in to the spot that
the map had indicated.  The high resolution scan showed what looked like the
mouth of a cave that had collapsed in a landslide.

“Take
us,” Growd said as he handed the tablet to the pilot. “You four, unpack the
sonic imaging kit, prepare the laser drills and have some explosives on hand,
we need to get through it as quickly as possible. Also, order four of the
fighters to join us as escorts.”

“Sir,” a
tall man in a flight suit who I took to be the copilot responded. “Shouldn’t we
leave the fighters to defend the colony in case the Skins or Draugari break
through?”

“Priorities,”
Growd waved his hand dismissively. “Just do as I say.”

The other
man nodded as he followed the pilot to the cockpit. A minute later we were
airborne flying toward the site.

The trip
from the Downs, which was located near the equator, to the northern pole would
have taken hours in a land-based hover, but as our shuttle’s thrusters engaged
and I saw the landmass sliding below us in a blur, I was realized that in the
shuttle the trip would take mere minutes.

“So,”
Growd said conversationally as he leaned back in his seat, looking across at me
thoughtfully. “Elicio isn’t it? You sure fell in with an interesting lot. The
McCullough girl will have some legal trouble to sort out, ship theft is a
serious charge. And we will most likely turn Loid over to the authorities. He’s
wanted for smuggling by a minor colonial legal authority near Orion. It’s not a
serious charge but he will be put away for a few years, long enough.”

A pretty
young woman came up the aisle with a tray with two drinks, Growd took the first
and immediately brought it up to his thin lips and took a long and savoring
sip. I took the glass as she offered it, but didn’t drink.

“Of
course, whatever we find down there will be the physical and intellectual
property of the MineWorks Corporation,” he continued. “I can’t cut you in in
that. But I don’t see why this has to go badly for you. With Loid’s legal
trouble that still leaves us with, what I believe we can call: an abandoned and
derelict vessel. Legally, we’ll have to leave it on the landing pad for three
weeks before we can declare it abandoned, but at that point, the law says that
anyone can claim it as salvage. And I, as colonial governor, can issue you
official documentation of salvage to give you ownership free and clear. Though
I’d get it repainted if I were you, the figurehead is a bit gaudy. So, how
about this: once we have finished this little trip, we will put you up in a
comfortable room, and fill your account up with a respectable credit balance.
The three weeks are up, you can claim his ship and the sky is yours. How’s that
for a deal?”

While he
was talking, my mind was racing as I searched for an opening or opportunity to
take over the shuttle. I had to protect whatever my people had hidden. I had to
save Ju-lin and Loid. I had to figure out how to get the colonists to safety
before the Collegiate fleet overcame the Draugari fleet and buried the colonies
in flames. But I saw no options. There were a dozen crew and guards on the
ship.

“Sounds
fair,” I was certain he knew I was lying.

“Excellent,”
he thrust out his hand. “A deal then?”

As I
shook his hand I was fairly sure that he was planning on having me killed the
second we gained access to whatever lie buried ahead of us.

“Coming
around now,” the pilot’s voice broke in over the speakers. “We’ll be setting
down at the site in two minutes.”

I sat
quietly, looking out the window as we made our approach. The area was rocky and
the soil was thin and barren. As the pilot struggled against the crosswind on
his approach, I realized that whatever the terraforming had seeded in the area
had already died and blown away.

“What a
wasteland,” Growd commented casually as he leaned over beside me. “Still, the
scans show that these stones have abnormally high lead content, and there is an
unusual concentration of
Tevarite
which
would shield the area from any orbital scans. A Thar’esh command ship or
weapons cache could be down there, buried for centuries.”

I looked
over at him, the corner of his lips twitched.

“All that
technology, ready to be reverse engineered, used, sold, it’s the dawning of a
new age my boy, and you’re here to see it.”

I glanced
over at Piter, her face was an expressionless mask.

He patted
me on the back as the shuttle set down with a jolt. As it did, everyone in the
cabin of the ship went into motion. The four survey technicians immediately
opened the rear-bay doors and began hauling equipment, two of the four armed
guards that came with us went down the ramp as well, I watched out the portal
window as one of them walked around with his gun at the ready, surveying the
area. The guard circled out of sight.

“It’s
clear,” one of the two remaining guards nodded to Growd.

“Good,
let’s see what we’ve got,” Growd got up, nodding to me.

I got up
and followed him out. The two guards fell in behind me, weapons at the ready.
Apparently the hospitality ended when we left the ship. I looked up and saw the
four Falcons circling overhead.

I
squinted against the afternoon sun as we walked down the ramp, the dry wind
whipped across my face. Growd slipped on some mirrored sunglasses and walked
forward. We were standing at the side of a large crag, boulders were piled
against the southern side of the ridge.

“Piter,
what do we have?” Growd asked.

“There is
a cavern beyond the rubble,” she said as she read her scanner. “It’s large,
can’t tell what’s in it, but there is definitely an open air space, the walls
are sheer.”

“Sheer?”
Growd’s eyes raised.

“Yes,”
Piter answered. “It doesn’t look like a natural geological formation, someone,
or something, carved this out.”

“Clear
it,” Growd nodded.

At
Piter’s direction, the two other engineers opened up a case containing what
looked like a steel-plated backpack with a large, stubby laser attached. As I
watched, the second engineer slid the backpack on and took the laser in hand.

“Digging
through the rubble would take far too much time,” Growd commented as he handed
me a pair of thick sunglasses. “The laser-mining drill will handle it quickly.
Put these on.”

I slipped
the glasses on as the engineer leveled the laser at the pile of rocks and
flipped on the power. Though the beam itself was invisible, I immediately felt
the heat radiating off of the stones. As I watched, a meter-wide section of the
stones toward the top of the pile began to lose their shape, and melt down into
the stone below. The engineer made slow and steady passes, left to right and the
stones continued to melt. After about ten minutes. He’d carved through four
meters of rubble. He powered down the laser drill and stepped aside.  The air
stunk heavily of sulfur, but the drill had done its work. I stepped forward to
get a better look and saw the darkness of a cavern beyond where the wall of
stone had stood.

The stone
had melted into slag and was spilling out from the mouth of the cave, black and
smoking.

“Now
we’re getting somewhere,” Growd said as he squinted into the darkness. “Cool
off a path, we need to get in there.”

Without
question or hesitation, the engineers returned to the ship and came out with a
long hose and attached it to the shuttle’s water system.  The first spray of
water sent huge plume of steam and further spread the sickly sulfurous scent.
As the newly melted stones began to cool, they cracked loudly. After a few
minutes, the water had ceased to evaporate and began trickling down the hill to
our feet.

“That’s
enough,” Growd ordered.

As the
steam cleared I could see that beyond the newly-made hole there was a square
corridor about six meters wide and high carved cleanly at a downward angle. A
clean and level floor led down into the depths.

“We can
get in how it is. Piter, you two guards, and you, kid, come with me. Everyone
else, work on expanding this entrance to the full size of the passage, we need
to make sure that we can get out whatever the aliens left in here.”

“It’s
deep,” Piter commented as she looked down at a scanning device she was holding.
“It opens up about a half-mile into a large chamber.”

“Perfect,”
Growd said as he took a flashlight from his belt in his left hand and a laser
pistol in his right. “Let’s go.”

Growd and
Piter went first, running quickly over the first eight meters of recently
melted and still-cooling stone. Once they were on the other side, he signaled
me across. I went, with my two guards close behind. The stones were still hot.
By the time I reached the other side the hard rubber on the sole of my shoes
was soft and malleable.

As we
crossed into the deeper cavern it was clear that this was the place. The walls
had been cleanly carved through the bedrock and there were shapes carved along
the wall.

“See now,
look at that,” Growd, Piter, and the guards shone their flashlights over the
image. It took up the entire wall from top to bottom.

The
carving was an incredibly detailed relief of a battle near a ringed planet.
There were ships of all sizes, fighting, exploding, or broken and drifting. As
I leaned forward I could make out the tiny shapes of bodies floating out in
space near one of the damaged ships. From my human perspective, the bodies
looked ill-proportioned, with shorter torsos and elongated arms.

“I wonder
how long ago the battle took place. Asymmetrical designs, heavy weaponry. I’ve
never seen ships like these, but they are all same style,” Piter said
breathlessly. “This isn’t a war between civilizations.”

“A civil
war,” Growd commented and took a few steps down the tunnel, moving his
flashlight to the other side of the wall. “Here is a damaged fleet passing
through two sides of a flux point. Survivors.”