Third Player Page 11

  The officer paled at the thought of having to carry out those orders, but acknowledged them anyway. Gulag turned again and entered the turbo-lift before any of the crew could see the fear he felt in his heart, show on his face.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Anderson asked Colmarrie and Brabazon. ‘Is there anything we can do to help the Dominator? Can’t we power-up the armament on this ship and blast through that outer shell or something? I don’t like the idea of just sitting here and doing nothing.’

  ‘I agree,’ Colmarrie added. ‘My people are trapped in that planetoid and I’m not about to sit and wait for whatever happened to the poor wretches on those wrecked merchantmen to happen to them. Is there nothing we can do friend Josh? There’s a lot of equipment on this vessel and that thing doesn’t appear to be aware that we’re here. Can we not take advantage of the situation?’

  Brabazon stared hard at the now blank screen of his laptop, thinking hard before answering. Gulag had told them he was going to board that planetoid to look for more answers to what had happened in this stellar graveyard. So there was no point in them also searching for solutions to ancient puzzles. Their time would be better spent looking for ways to free Dominator. He wasn’t sure if what Anderson suggested would achieve anything, but Colmarrie was right, they couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.

  ‘I’m not sure that there’s anything we can do,’ he answered cautiously, ‘but we can try. It looks to me like the main powerplant of the Gallagic was closed down in an orderly fashion. There’s no sign of an emergency shutdown, but even so, there’s no hope of resurrecting the singularities. From what I can tell from here, they were dissolved when the ship was closed down. Our only source of power is the shuttle and the juice available is strictly limited.’

  ‘The controls on Dominator have been locked by some other computer sending a tight beam from that planetoid. While on-board Dominator we were unable to jam or break the signal. But we’re on the Gallagic now and this ship’s not being jammed. Is there no way we can trace the source of those transmissions from here, and stop them? So returning control back to Dominator?’ Anderson asked still floating just above the workstation.

  Brabazon ran a hand through his thinning hair. The marine captain had a point. They weren’t affected by the jamming here and if they could get a few of the more sensitive sensors of this derelict operating, they could trace the source of the transmissions, even if they were sub-ether. Like the cliché — it was a long shot, but it might just work.

  ‘There’s a possibility we could do that, it’s certainly worth a try. Good thinking Anderson,’ he told the marine captain. ‘I really don’t think there’s much chance of us doing any physical damage to the planetoid, but breaking that signal is certainly not out of the question.’

  ‘Good, that’s a start at least,’ Colmarrie added. ‘What would you like us to do?’

  ‘Well you seem to have a good grasp of how this instrumentation works Colmarrie. So why don’t you give me a hand here?’ Brabazon suggested, beginning to route power from the shuttle to the relevant sensors on the ancient ship. ‘While we work on this Anderson, you can help by looking for power-packs we can use to augment the shuttle’s power. If this craft is anything like the others there may well be scout ships and shuttles in the hangars. I’m not sure what their emergency power-packs are like, but they might have some juice left in them. If you don’t have any joy there, try the lifeboats. If we are to break that transmission we’re going to need shed-loads of juice to achieve it.’

  Anderson immediately pushed himself away from the console and drifted toward the lift doors, nodding to the rest of his men as he went. They gathered up their equipment and followed their captain.

  ‘We’re on to it right now Josh!’ he said positively, glad to have something constructive to do. ‘Keep your comm sets switched on and we’ll call you as soon as we find anything we can make use of.’

  Snapping the face-plates of their helmets back down, the marines floated into the lift and departed. Brabazon and Colmarrie bent their heads to the workstations and began the desperate search for the source of the transmissions.

  Gulag strode down the umbilical corridor in his environment suit, a heavy automatic cradled in his arms, with a mixed platoon of mutant fighters and ex-Imperial troopers following close behind.

  They’d found nothing and nobody waiting for them when they opened the docking port. Not giving his team or himself time to become so scared they wouldn’t move, Gulag immediately set off down the tunnel, thankful that the planetoid also had artificial gravity, and it was set to the same level as that on-board Dominator. Although even this, was an indication that someone, or some thing, knew more about them, than they did about it.

  The tunnel was lit by fluorescent panels set at regular intervals along its length. The walls and roof appeared to be made of the same composite, resinous material as the interior of Dominator. This confirmed in his mind that the planetoid and his ships shared the same common ancestry, which made him even more determined to find answers to his many questions.

  After walking for ten minutes they came upon what was obviously some sort of personal transporter. Shaped like a large automobile, but missing wheels and a steering column, the transporter floated a few centimetres off the floor of the tunnel, suspended Gulag guessed, by electro-magnets or some other similar system. After carefully looking over the machine Gulag ordered his squad to climb into the seats provided. The transporter began to move, accelerating smoothly and quickly. In seconds the walls of the tunnel were flashing by at what must have been several hundred klicks per hour. Their host was obviously in a hurry to meet them!

  After several minutes the tunnel abruptly ended and the transporter floated into another vast cavern. An area of enclosed space filled, with what looked like, the spires and towers of a city, spread across the interior. Gulag guessed that this was part of the original space station. Perhaps the leisure facilities and accommodation areas that the captain of the Gallagic had spoken of. It was like some sort of huge enclosed shopping mall, with all the lights on. But, so far as he could tell as they sped between the massive towers, there was nobody home.

  The transporter finally crossed the cavern and sped into another passage which once again took several minutes to pass through. When they did finally shoot out into an even larger enclosed space every member of the squad uttered an oath of amazement. Lit by an artificial sun high above, there was an artificial world of hills, valleys, lakes and woodland. The heart of the planetoid was a lush, multi-coloured biosphere!

  The far wall of the enclosed micro-world was so distant it disappeared in the haze and small white cumulus clouds cast dark shadows across the landscape. At the centre of this enclosed world, dominating the landscape, was a huge construction that looked to Gulag like a massive cone with its pointed end reaching toward the roof of the cavern many klicks above. Surrounding the central cone were seven smaller cones spread evenly around its circumference, their spires also reaching heavenward. All the cones appeared to be made from the same resinous material as Dominator’s interior, except that this substance had a strange luminous quality that seemed to shift in colours across all the possible variations of the spectrum.

  To Gulag’s eye the massive construction looked like a vast temple, a place of worship. He also had a horrible feeling that he knew whom, or what the subject of adulation was—the Starweb. Beneath the beautiful exterior of this artificial world was a dark heart and as the nose of the transporter dipped toward the ground, it became obvious that they were being drawn straight into it.

  The transporter settled gently onto a well-tended lawn in front of what was obviously the main entrance to the temple. The doors hissed open and they cautiously climbed out. Gulag lifted the face-plate of his environment suit and sniffed the air. It smelled sweet and fresh, fresher than anything he’d known before. The polluted air on Dyason never smelt like this. A large bird of extraordinary plumage landed on the lawn in front of t
hem, cocked one eye at the strangers then flapped away, squawking in alarm.

  He turned and looked at the rest of the men and women in the expedition. Every one of them was looking at the alien landscape, spellbound by the beauty of what they saw. For the nature-starved inhabitants of Dyason, this place was the nearest they’d ever been to paradise. Their reaction was understandable, but Gulag couldn’t afford for them to lose their concentration. They had a mission to complete and the answers they sought were somewhere within that temple.

  ‘Snap out of it people!’ he ordered. ‘Concentrate on the job at hand, not what’s around you!’

  With somewhat wild eyes, the group turned and followed Gulag as he strode toward the towering entrance to the central cone, automatics at the ready. The entrance was massive, with a pair of ornate doors made of a crystalline material that shimmered in the light of the distant artificial sun. Each door stood over ten metres high and was set into an ornate frame embellished with what looked like letters and phrases. Gulag looked at Shalosk the systems engineer to see if he could make sense of the encryptions, but the analyst shrugged and shook his head. When, and if, they managed to get away from this pseudo-paradise, the scientists, historians and linguists were going to be busy for decades, unraveling the mysteries they were witnessing.

  As he approached the doors, they slowly and silently opened, revealing a dark interior. There was a clatter as the squad standing behind him released the safety catches on their weapons.

  ‘Tallok, you follow me with seven troopers and Shalosk,’ Gulag ordered the mutant fighter, whispering without even realising he was doing it. ‘Gouny, you secure the perimeter and see if there’s some way to manually override the controls on that transporter. We might need to leave in a hurry.’

  Gouny rounded up her people and set about securing the lawn outside the temple, the relief at not having to go inside the spire evident on her face. Tallok gathered four of his mutant fighters and three troopers, a nervous look on his distorted features. Shalosk checked his multi-recorder was running and sending information to his palm-tablet. Then, with a deep breath, he followed Gulag and the others into the interior of the temple.

  It took a few moments for Gulag’s eyes to adjust to the relative gloom of the interior, but when they did, memories from his previous incarnation came flooding back to him. He was aware in his previous life, of visiting a Terran place of worship—Winchester cathedral in England to be precise. He could just recall a feeling of awe and humility at the atmosphere of that structure. There was nothing like it on Dyason. Organised religion on the home-world had been suppressed for years, with all places of official worship turned into rubble long ago.

  The interior of the massive cone brought back those same feelings. There was no doubt about it, this was the interior of another cathedral, but one of a size never seen or dreamed of before. Light streamed in from panes of multi-coloured crystal set high in the spire, way, way above them. Like the stained-glass windows of a Terran church the coloured crystal was organised in such a fashion that they depicted various scenes and images. As far as Gulag could make out these images were of planets, moons and star systems. Once again cryptic lettering ran across the frame of the panes.

  Beams of light fell against a massive alter that dominated the centre of the temple. Made from more of the shimmering crystal, it reached from a solid circular base toward the distant tip of the spire. It was completely covered in ornate carvings which once more depicted scenes and images. Gulag thought he could see starships and humanoids entwined somewhere in the pictures and encryptions. Shalosk aimed his sensors and hastily began recording images of the temple.

  Cautiously, the group moved toward the altar and the massive doors silently closed behind them. A couple of the troops whirled round in alarm when they realised they were being closed in, but Gulag waved them on. The answers they were looking for lay ahead, not behind them.

  The boots of their environment suits echoed hollowly against the polished stone floor as the group moved slowly toward the altar. They walked down an aisle, one of several that ran toward the centre of the temple like spokes on a wheel. On each side of the aisle were rows upon rows of what appeared to be stone benches. ‘Pews’ was the correct name if Gulag’s memory of his previous life served him right. They looked like they would seat humanoids.

  Eventually, they reached the foot of the altar which towered above them. The troopers and mutant fighters craned their heads back in the helmets they still wore, to see the epicentre of the spire and cone hundreds of metres above them. They was no doubt about it, the temple was awesome. It possessed a cold beauty that made them feel small and insignificant. The question was, whom, or what, was the object of worship and where were the worshipers?

  ‘Are you prepared to repent for your sins?’ a voice said from behind them.

  Gulag whirled round to face the questioner, his face pale.

  ‘Are you ready to repent for your sins?’ the question was repeated.

  A tall woman with long dark hair and cold features faced them, her long dark robes brushing against the stone floor. The robes were bejeweled and ornate, reminiscent of a priest’s gown. She stood before them, full of authority and an undeniable menace, oblivious to their environment suits and heavy weapons.

  ‘Are you ready to repent for you sins?’ she repeated in a flat monotone, ‘Only through penance can you seek redemption and absolution.’

  Gulag’s mouth opened and closed in shock and surprise. Surely this was some sort of projection, an illusion? But she looked so real! There was no way she could be here, but she was!

  ‘Nimue!’ he finally whispered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The planet Heligsion

  Moss flicked the bug off the front of his image intensifiers and peered through the viewfinder. Down below them the strange crab-like creatures were still toiling away at the construction of the towering cones, which were going up at an incredible rate. Floodlights had been erected around the perimeter of the clearing, which indicated that the crustaceans’ vision was within the normal light spectrum. Knowing that the darkness and dense vegetation gave them some protection made Moss a little happier, but not much.

  They’d landed the assault ship in a clearing soon after sunset. Unfortunately, the clearing was several klicks away from the site of the construction and it’d taken them nearly five hours to hack their way through the Heligsion jungle to get to this spot. The sun would start rising again in just over four hours time and when it did, the protective darkness would disappear. Moss really wanted to be in and out of the nest by then.

  ‘What do you think?’ he mentally asked Jennifer who lay beside him peering through her own image intensifiers.

  ‘I can’t see any sign of perimeter guards, or any guards at all, for that matter,’ she thought back at him, absently pulling a bug out of the neck of her combat fatigues. ‘There doesn’t appear to be any other security measures either. It looks to me like they’re not expecting any visitors. On the face of it, we should be able to walk in, free any surviving Heligsion and get the hell out of there.’

  ‘It all seems a bit too easy to me,’ Moss replied cautiously, ‘I find it hard to believe there’s no security at all. But then I guess they think there aren’t any surviving Heligsion, except for the few they’re keeping prisoner. In which case they’ve nothing to fear from external attack.’

  ‘They’re in for a surprise then,’ Jennifer added. ‘What I can’t understand are the huge numbers of crab-things appearing from that cone where the Heligsion are being kept.’

  She pointed to the entrance to the smaller conical spire, where a steady stream of the creatures were filing out of the interior. They scuttled in line to a larger crustacean who waved its antennae at them, then they disappeared in all directions to commence work on different projects.

  ‘They’re obviously new workers come to work on the site, but where did they come from? Are fresh crustaceans kept in the same place as the He
ligsion survivors?’ she continued.

  ‘Well the only way we’re going to find any answers to these questions is to get down there,’ Moss replied taking one last look at the site. ‘The vegetation goes all the way up to a few metres behind the cone. That is our target. We’ll have to move up to there, then try and find a way into the place, without alerting the crusties.’

  ‘I agree,’ Jennifer confirmed, ‘but we’d better get a move on dearest. I’d rather not be caught out in the open when the sun comes up.’

  They crawled back to where the rest of the group were waiting for them in the undergrowth. Moss described what he saw and outlined his plan to them.

  ‘So Stan, you remain at the edge of the vegetation, well hidden and cover us as I take Bravo squad into the cone itself.‘ Major Stanfield nodded in understanding. ‘Doc, I’ll need you to come with us. We don’t know what state the survivors will be in. They may need on the spot medical attention.’

  ‘Do we know how many of them there are?’ Doc Patterson asked.

  Jennifer looked sadly at the seer Dauphne before answering, ‘Not many Doc. The scanners don’t give a precise number, but the total is probably in the region of one hundred, to one hundred and thirty. However, the total is going down all the time.’

  ‘We’d better pull our finger out,’ Patterson said.

  Moss saw Dauphne’s face blanch at the falling number of survivors being shown by their instruments. The next few hours were going to be a bloody mess, of that he was sure. What he wasn’t sure about, was whether the peaceful, non-violent seer could handle the bloodshed.

  ‘Dauphne have you been able to contact your people mentally?’ he thought at her.

  ‘No!’ she responded, a look of anguish on her face. ‘I cannot touch their minds at all. If it weren’t for your instruments I would say there weren’t any survivors.’

  ‘You know, you don’t have to come with us. You could stay up here until it’s all over. Nobody would blame you. Killing is what we do, what we’re trained for—you’re not. You don’t have to do this,’ Moss told her, trying to convince her not to partake in the fight, for the last time.