The world warped around Leela as she reached out towards Tycho, but in the next breath he and John were gone, replaced by rows of ice-speckled pews. Her feet landed on a slick floor and she tumbled badly. It was pure luck that she didn’t crack her skull open on one of the pews. A wave of nausea rolled through her, but she kept it in as she surveyed her surroundings. It was the domed temple again with the icy sphere in the centre, though in this time the sphere had cracked some time in the past and was lying on the ground split in two. Remembering the vision she had seen upon touching it, Leela’s anxiety spiked, but when nothing happened she moved closer. The plinth that had supported the once-floating sphere was of some grey stone, with a hole in the centre that extended beyond Leela’s vision. Next she went to the Sikhaan refectory where they had found the first terminal and found the terminal already turned on, the screen idle on a Sikhaan message log.
“Tycho, can you–?” She started but realised that she could not feel her Ghost anywhere around her. Her breathing quickened.
Without Tycho or John, she could not understand what the message contained, but she recognised the same symbol repeated without pause for lines and lines. She would find no help there. She was stepping away from the terminal when she heard a sound from somewhere in the rectory. In the blink of an eye Leela had hidden herself away, her experience of exploring the abandoned parts of Earth paying off. There the noise was again; a rustling, followed by a distinct sniffing sound. Leela kept quiet and waited. The sound of trunk-like feet could be heard throughout the rectory as the creature stalked through the space, smelling the air as it went. Leela chanced a glance when she felt it was safe and saw that it was one of the feral Sikhaan that they had seen the previous time they had come to the temple. This one was alone, but she remembered well enough that it had not been so the last time.
Did they see me enter the rectory, or did they just hear some noises? Why is it here? Leela thought while the Sikhaan continued exploring. It was taking its time and looking in all the alcoves and adjoining rooms, and it would inevitably find her if it kept going, and what then? They had been aggressive the last time, but who could say for sure if that was still the case this time? But testing it would be dangerous; if it was, she would have to face them all alone. She reached for the grip of her pistol but did not release it. She just wanted to be ready.
With a grunt, the Sikhaan stepped out of the central room where Leela was hiding and she decided that now was the best time. If it was being so meticulous, sneaking past it and hiding where it had already explored would be her best bet. She waited a second longer then dashed from her space with silent steps, glancing down the corridor the Sikhaan had gone but seeing nothing until she collided with a wall of fur and leathery skin. She looked up into the face of a Sikhaan she had not seen enter the rectory behind its partner and the alien barked something in its crude tongue before it reached out for her.
But Leela was quicker than the Sikhaan and drew her pistol before pressing the barrel against the stomach of the alien, then pulled the trigger once, twice, thrice. Even muted by the Sikhaan’s flesh the pistol was horribly loud in the rectory and so were the cries of the wounded alien as it collapsed to the ground, its cupped hands pressed over the gunshot wounds. Leela stood for a moment, catching her breath and staring dumb-founded at the stricken creature, before dashing through the door the Sikhaan had come from. Behind her she heard the barks of the Sikhaan she had hoped to avoid, but much more chilling was the barrage of barks and cries from the vicinity of the temple. In her panic Leela could not count them by ear, but they sounded like far too many and they had the temple surrounded. She needed to leave, and fast. Leela ran as fast as she could towards the open doors of the temple, pushing past the doors as the Sikhaan behind her stepped out of the rectory and barked in her direction.
The area beyond the Sikhaan temple was a field of debris, the cavern struck by an ice-quake sometime in the recent past, and the feral Sikhaan had been combing the debris-field when their scouts had chanced upon her. They were scattered throughout the area but converging upon the lone stranger in their midst and Leela looked around her in a hurry, hoping to find somewhere to flee too. Across from the temple, and across the debris field, was a tunnel that seemed to lead up and away, and she knew she had precious little time to look elsewhere so she holstered the pistol and set off, running through the debris field as fast as she dared with her eyes focused on the ground in front of her to avoid stepping in traps or holes.
All around her were the barks of the Sikhaan as they pursued her, using their four arms to lever themselves over chunks of debris or kicking it aside with their legs. Leela focused hard on her running and tried to ignore the barks getting closer and closer, until she was approaching the mouth of the tunnel and saw three of the aliens ahead of her, cutting her off from the exit. With a split second decision she drew the pistol again and fired at the aliens in front of her and the aliens yelped as bullets whizzed by them or struck them in the legs, but they did not drop like the one in the rectory had. Focused as she was, she did not see a Sikhaan to her flank hefting a rock till it was too late and she felt a sharp pain in her right hand as the rock struck her, almost knocking the pistol from her grip. Leela did her best to take it in her stride, but she was surrounded. She considered bringing out her Light but even as she reached for it, a mass of fur and muscle barrelled into her and brought her to the ground. Before she could make any meaningful resistance, the aliens crowded around her.
“Get off me, no!” She screamed but the aliens paid her no heed, and she doubted they would have even if they had understood her. Food must be scarce in the frozen planetoid and she was a gift they could not overlook. Before she could shout again, too panicked to think straight, one of the Sikhaan kicked her. Their trunk-like legs were surprisingly powerful and the wind was knocked out of her. The other Sikhaan did as their fellow while Leela raised her arms to protect herself from their assault, but even that was of little help as one of their kicks pushed her arm and the next hit her on the nose. The shock of the pain and the blood galvanised Leela and she used her pistol as best as she could from her position, firing into the legs of one of the aliens. As it howled in pain and the others dove onto her right arm, she focused all of her Light in her left hand. Unlike the Guardians of the Last City, Leela rarely used her Light as a weapon, but this was already the second time since arriving at the planetoid. The form and method mattered little, just that it was there. The Sikhaan never saw it coming. Leela’s Light glowed in her hand, then a spark jumped from the sphere of energy to one of her fingers. With a shout she made a fist and pounded the ice beneath her. In the blink of an eye a mass of Arc Light was unleashed from her hand and burnt all it touched, scorching several of the Sikhaan and scaring the others. Such was the release of power that the arcs reached the ceiling far above them. The survivors leapt from her, freeing her, but even as she rose she tumbled to the floor again when a tremor rolled through the floor.
Ice-quake. The tremors returned before she had finished the thought and the Sikhaan barked in panic as they realised it too. With a deafening crack, a section of the ceiling far above them got loose and tumbled, end over end, onto the cavern floor mere metres from Leela. One of the aliens had not been so lucky and was now a red smear underneath the boulder. Cracks in the floor spread in all directions and the first boulder became a starting pistol for the rest of the cavern to begin collapsing. In the distance the Sikhaan temple cracked in two as the floor below it broke and fell away and the cracks from that collapse hastened to join the ones spreading below Leela. Any remorse she felt at destroying the Sikhaan temple was replaced by dread as the cavern continued collapsing and Leela hurried to her feet and onwards to the tunnel. For a brief moment she saw the trunkless figure of Ra’Sikhaan among the breaking ice-field, but she forced herself to focus on her own survival. The Sikhaan were running off and barking in their primitive tongue, giving her space to escape. Every step and every breath hurt from the kicks, but she had felt fatal injuries many times in the last decade, and these did not fit the bill. There was another crack behind her as another part of the floor gave way, paving the way for the final collapse of the cavern. The moment she felt the tremors flow through the floor beneath her again, she leapt with all of her strength as the floor fell away, cracking apart at the entrance to the tunnel. She caught the jagged edge of the ice with her left hand then slammed against the newly-created cliff, knocking the wind out of her again and nearly dislodging her hold. She held on for dear life but still felt herself slipping while pain and cold began to spread through her hand.
The barks and cries of the Sikhaan in the cave intensified for a moment as they tumbled into the abyss or were struck by the collapsing ceiling, but then silence fell, broken only by chunks of ice dislodging from the new equilibrium above her. Leela started as her hand slipped another inch and she decided it was now or never. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up for all she was worth until her feet found footholds in the broken ice and she could get herself the rest of the way onto the edge. She lay for a moment gasping for breath and just listening to the silence that had fallen. If the ice beneath her broke again, that would be it. When it didn’t, she sat back up with a gasp of pain. Blood was running down her left arm and her hand was painfully cold. A quick inspection revealed a cut that had gone through the material of her suit and into the flesh of her hand, drawing blood and opening it up to the frigid air of the planetoid. She did her best to wrap the hand against both the loss of blood and the cold, but she would need help to finish it. She needed Tycho.
The cavern where the temple had been was gone, replaced by a pit that stretched in all directions beyond the tunnel. She had not heard the floor impact below, so it might still be falling or she might have just missed it in her determination to escape. She glanced around a second time to look for Ra’Sikhaan, but the trunkless creature was nowhere to be seen.
In that moment it struck her how close she had come to death. First to the Sikhaan, then to the collapse of the cavern. Death was not new to Leela, being a Lightbearer as she was, but this time Tycho would not have been there to bring her back. She could well have been lost in the depths of the planetoid, never to be found again, and the thought chilled her more than the cut in her suit. Tycho and John would have searched for her in vain, and they would have had to save the Last City on their own. She would just be gone, yet another unmarked grave within the Walls.
Wary of further collapse, Leela got up and walked into the tunnel. As she walked, she thought of the ‘first Leela’, the woman that had died to then be brought back by Tycho to become the woman she was today. She knew nothing about that woman, not even her name, for Leela was a name Tycho and she had decided upon together. Leela knew that losing all of one’s memory was a misfortune shared among all Lightbearers and that seeking out that life was taboo, but she could not help but wonder. How had the first woman lived? How had she died? During the Collapse, or in the chaos after? If there was a way of learning this, Leela knew it would not be in the planetoid. It would be on Earth, somewhere close to where Tycho had found her body. When she found her Ghost again, she would have to ask him.
The ice-quake was felt throughout the planetoid as the tremors reverberated throughout the superstructure, destroying buildings and dislodging huge chunks of ice. The spherical vehicle that John had found swerved between the falling chunks with surprising agility until they swerved into a tunnel and out of the collapse.
“The quake has gone through the entire planetoid,” Tycho said from his harness in John’s vest, “we can’t trust any maps anymore, and anywhere could be dangerous.” He had not agreed to John’s offer of the harness before knowing he could extricate himself whenever he wished.
“I’m used to that.” John said grimly and drove a semi-circle around a pit that had opened in the floor of the tunnel into an abyss. He wanted to keep the vehicle handy and operational as long as he could, but with conditions like these that would be a short time.
“Take a left here.” Tycho called out as the tunnel forked. A moment later the rumbling began to fade and they were left in the cold silence. A while later the tunnel widened into a row of buildings, each damaged by the quake. Chunks of ice dislodged from the ceiling had smashed through some, while others had collapsed under the stress of the tremors themselves. But a scan revealed a connected terminal in one of the buildings so they parked the Sikhaan vehicle in the shadow of the relevant building. A sign above the main entrance had broken away from the wall and blocked the entrance, but John lifted it out of the way without even a grunt. As they passed, Tycho scanned the Sikhaan text on it. Utility Complex 07-C. No Admittance Without Administration Escort.
After the shift the two of them had found themselves without Leela. Tycho had been about to fly away to look for her when John had managed to calm him down, reasoning that Leela was a capable individual who could be on her own for a bit until they could find her, and that she could be anywhere in the planetoid so searching by foot was impractical. They had arrived in something that looked like a Sikhaan office building, one that still had functional terminals. There were several messages of dubious worth, but one had a more utilitarian connection to the network from which Tycho could draw a map of the connected terminals, one of which was supposedly connected to a scanning array. After finding one of the spherical vehicles, the duo had been en-route to the facility when the ice-quake had rolled through.
“That escort might have been handy.” John spoke in a whisper and pointed at the imprint of a Sikhaan foot in the ice-dust on the floor.
Tycho hooked John into his comms-circuit usually reserved for Leela. “We can’t be sure that they’re aggressive.”
If John was surprised at the radio link then he gave no sign of it. “Better safe than sorry.” He replied and drew his knife.
The interior of the facility had been badly damaged at some point in the past. The walls had buckled inward and dumped debris in several corridors and in other places the metal had corroded so thoroughly that John dared not tread on it. For a while they heard only the creak of metal and ice as they explored, but then a chorus of barks and whines could be heard throughout the facility. John ducked inside a doorway and tried to close the door, but the metal creaked so much that it would have given them away.
“The translator couldn’t catch that,” Tycho said over the link, “so they weren’t speaking proper Sikhaan.”
John nodded and glanced down the hallway before proceeding. If the Sikhaan ferals were here, they would have to oust them. Tycho was unsure where the man drew the line between the tribal and the feral Sikhaan, if even such a hard-cut line existed, but they needed to find Leela and her safety overrode any concern Tycho might have had for the fallen aliens. They advanced down the corridor in tense silence, on alert for any signs of where the ferals had gone. A dangling light fixture around the corner gave Tycho a start when the changing shadows looked like a looming alien for a moment, but it was a false alarm. A chunk of ice had smashed through the ceiling some time in the past and now filled up half the corridor. John must have heard something that Tycho had not, for he dashed to the boulder and hid behind it as a shape walked along the corridor, revealed by the swinging light to be a Sikhaan wielding a club made of bone. It carried a rough sack over its shoulder in one arm, leaving the two suckers free. It passed within metres of them without noticing then turned the corner they had just passed themselves. When John was satisfied that the Sikhana had left, he continued into the chamber it had come from.
To Tycho, the room beyond the corridor reminded him of server-rooms from Earth; banks of devices blinking in the gloom left behind by the damaged lights. It was incredible that they still functioned and had a source of power despite operating without maintenance for what must have been decades if not centuries. Several terminals crowded the room in states of disrepair, of which only two seemed to function. The problem was in the opposite corner of the room from the terminals they were seeking; a Sikhaan was sat on the floor swathed in ragged cloth, its feeders immersed in the contents of a basket. Something like a bird’s nest had been assembled on the floor beneath it, albeit made of textiles and scrap metal. Behind the Sikhaan were smaller specimens with trunks that were much less developed.
“On any other day I would be thrilled to examine an alien species’ parenting in detail, but not now.” Tycho said.
“Sometimes a protective mother makes for the most dangerous opponents.” John said and reversed the grip on his knife.
“We can’t kill children,” Tycho said, “can we?”
“Focus on the terminals, I’ll handle the nest.” John said and gently pulled Tycho from his harness.
Tycho wished Leela was there and went to the terminals, flying low to the ground to hide among the piles of rubble that the nesting Sikhaan had never removed. He had no desire to watch John work, so Tycho did as he had asked and focused on the terminals. The two functional machines were next to each other and had no appreciable lag or damage. One was a messaging terminal like the others they had found, but the other one, not coated in the same pearly spherical shell as the messaging terminals, was what they had come to find. The grey terminal was connected to a series of probes and sensors spread throughout the planetoid and would be able to scan for objects from a pre-determined list. With Tycho’s tinkering, it did not take long before an item had been added to the list: Human. Another item on the list caught his attention; the Stellar Sling. The Barrier Generator was also listed, but Tycho saw little reason to search for an object that surely hadn’t moved.
Tycho heard a commotion behind him and a grunt from John and Tycho kept himself from looking. The Sikhaan were unfortunate to have nested in the same room as the scanner that they needed. A moment passed and he heard a bark from one of the adjoining corridors; the Sikhaan that had passed them in the hallway had returned and was now charging at them. This time, Tycho could not keep his gaze away as John stepped into its path and stopped the charge dead, one hand around its throat and the other ripping the bone-club from its hand and throwing it aside. The Sikhaan gurgled but continued to fight by lashing its trunk and free appendages at John’s face but the cyborg was unphased. The alien was lifted bodily and carried to the edge of the room then dumped onto the nest. To Tycho’s surprise the nesting alien was still alive and immediately embraced its companion, cuddling its trunk and examining it for wounds. The two Sikhaan clung together with their offspring while John stood out of arm’s reach with his arms crossed.
“There’s no rush, Tycho, these two won’t be any trouble.” John said over his shoulder. The knife from earlier was in his belt now, unused.
Tycho returned to his work with relief, but when he looked deeper into the system he found a problem; the terminals were undamaged, but the power source they were connected to had not been so lucky. It had ceased generating and the terminals were down to reserve batteries. A quick look into the functionality they had come for indicated that there would only be power enough in the batteries for a couple uses at best, and Tycho could see no way of charging them again. He wanted to hurry up and scan for Leela, but would John agree?
“John, there’s a problem.” Tycho said.
“I’m listening.” John replied without taking his eyes off of the Sikhaan who were still huddling.
“The system’s on reserve power, we might not be able to use it more than once.”
When John did not reply, Tycho continued. “I don’t know what the aliens used this system for before, but it’s set up so it can find an object anywhere in the planetoid, the Stellar Sling among them.”
“But if we search for the Sling, there might not be enough power left to search for Leela.” John replied, voicing Tycho’s thoughts before he could.
John was silent for a moment.
“If we find–” Tycho started, unsure where he was going.
“Without Leela I can’t shift away if needed,” John said and looked at Tycho, “find Leela.” With that, he returned to watching the aliens.
Tycho turned back to the terminal without a word and engaged the scanning function to look for Human. Groans and creaks echoed throughout the building, but nothing caught fire or exploded, which the Ghost took as a good sign. Once while exploring the eastern DMZ, Leela and he had found an array of pre-Collapse machines hooked up to a network that appeared to be in pristine condition, but the moment they were turned on, the entire facility went up in a ball of flame. Leela had been incinerated so thoroughly that Tycho had had to reconstitute her fully.
Tycho brought himself back to the present with a shake. The Sikhaan terminal had produced a data package meant to interface with another device so Tycho improvised and extracted the package into himself for now. To his surprise, the terminal had not shut off; the batteries still had juice. So Tycho worked as fast as he could to run the terminal through another scan, specifically for the enigmatic device they were hunting. The moment the data package arrived, Tycho bundled it up and took it. Power was fading fast and functions were blinking out one by one while the actual hardware of the terminal sparked and fizzled. Tycho wanted to move away from it on instinct, but his eye caught something; a single message-log that floated in the network, perhaps shaken loose from some protocol that had withheld it and was now free for the briefest instant as the same protocol had lost all power. He snatched it up, and then, in the blink of an eye, the terminal was dead; no more power. Tycho’s scant connection to the network showed him a cascade of failures that ran up and down the stricken planetoid. It would appear that in this time, the Sikhaan network was down and out for good.
The data packets from the surveillance system would need careful handling, but the log he had retrieved in the final seconds was just there.
From:/: Archival Scholar 05, Hib’Snit
To:/: Greater Heart, Mil’Na
Subject:/: Ra’Sikhaan
Archival Scholar 05, Hib’Snit extends Greetings.
Greater Heart requested Information from Archival Scholars on Activites of Ra’Sikhaan Cultists. The requested Information was given promptly. Hib’Snit has since found there is more Information that Hib’Snit themselves considers Pertinent to deliver to Greater Heart. This Information concerns not the Cultists, but Herald 01, Ra’Sikhaan.
Mythology of Sikhaan considers Ra’Sikhaan an Entity of the same Age as Great Arro, but Hib’Snit researched the Information in Detail and found that the Entirety of Face-to-Face Encounters with Ra’Sikhaan have been after the Great Quake and that the Appearance and Actions of Ra’Sikhaan have differered greatly from Mythological Accounts.
Hib’Snit is but a Humble Archival Scholar, but it is Opinion of Hib’Snit that Ra’Sikhaan has a Connection with the Progenitor that is yet Unclear and any Designs it has for Sikhaan are not to the Benefit of Sikhaan. Moreover, many Encounters have led to Deaths among Sikhaan. Hib’Snit beseeches Greater Heart to exercise utmost Caution in any Dealings with or about Ra’Sikhaan.
:/:End of Log:/:
Tycho drifted away from the terminal and over to John’s side. “John, I think you should see this.”
John glanced at Tycho then returned his attention to the Sikhaan. “Not here.”
Tycho nodded, and the two of them left the nest behind and headed for the exit.
Tycho sent the message-log over the radio link and John leaned against the ice-boulder to read it. Tycho could judge when the man finished it by when his expression changed.
“So Ra’Sikhaan has a connection with the W’rkcacnter.” John said and picked up a chunk of ice from the floor.
“The sender certainly thought so.” Tycho responded.
“All the more reason to get rid of it, then.” John replied and stepped away from the boulder, shaking ice-dust from his hands. The chunk he had picked up had been crushed.
Tycho resigned to sitting in John’s harness while he focused on the data from the utility terminal. He envisioned the two data-packets before him, one that led to the Sling and one that led to Leela. The data had been intended for an entirely different receiver and format, and so he could not know for sure what would happen the moment he tried to interface, whether the data would work, resist or be irretrievably corrupted. If he integrated Leela’s data first and it failed, he might glean enough from the failure to prevent the same errors in the Sling data, but then they would never find Leela. But if he reversed their positions, the Sling would be out of their reach.
John’s voice took him out of his quandary. “Tycho, we have a problem.”
Tycho mentally filed the packets away for later and followed John’s gaze. In the courtyard they had passed to enter the building stood a figure with milky-white eyes and a gash in its face. Ra’Sikhaan was staring at them with its usual silence, giving no hints as to its intention or purpose, but it was clear to Tycho that John was preparing for a fight.
“If it’s here, at least it’s not following Leela.” Tycho said.
“Small comfort.” John said and replaced his knife with the revolver. Tycho could not help but think of the last time John had shot Ra’Sikhaan with the revolver; the wounds had looked grim but then vanished in moments.
“We both read that terminal message,” John said and glanced at Tycho, “this thing is dangerous and malicious, and quite possibly older than any of us.”
“I find it difficult to believe that it’s the same creature after so long.” Tycho said. Out in the courtyard, Ra’Sikhaan had not moved. Its white eyes were still fixed on them.
“Regardless, we have more important things to focus on,” John said and checked the drum of his revolver, “we need to get past it. Hold on, Tycho.”
Tycho attached himself to the harness and looked at the creature. Its skin looked unhealthy and sallow in the light, but then Tycho thought that if it truly was centuries old, perhaps that fit.
John reached into his pack and seemed to reconsider before pulling out a grenade. In a smooth motion John pulled the pin and chucked it at Ra’Sikhaan, where it landed at the creature’s feet. It looked at the spherical object at its feet for a moment before John raised the revolver one-handed and fired, the bullet striking the grenade with a ping that was swiftly followed by an explosion as the grenade went off. Mist and ice-shards flew in every direction but John shielded Tycho with his body as the cyborg took off at a sprint in the direction where they had parked their vehicle. For a moment there was nothing to see of Ra’Sikhaan, but then the mist parted as the creature retaliated with a strand aimed at John’s neck. John rolled under the strike then back to his feet as he kept running for the vehicle that was just around the corner, but the strand that had gone ahead of him stopped and split into a net that came back along the path the strand had initially travelled. With a shouted curse, John ripped Tycho’s shell from his harness and chucked him through a hole in the net.
“Get the motor running!” John roared as the net closed around him and the strands cut into his skin.
Tycho flew as fast as he could for the vehicle. It did not have the capability for remote access, so he practically had to hover above the engine to do his work, but glanced behind him as the ancient engine began to awaken.
John was still restrained by the net. Ra’Sikhaan was moving, walking towards John with its two right arms still present. Its left side had partially unravelled as the strands needed to restrain the powerful cyborg took more and more of its form, but still those milky-white eyes persisted. John was resisting, but struggling. The net of strands was coiled around him and dragging him towards the advancing Ra’Sikhaan while restricting his arms. But as the two drew close John grunted and pushed against the net to free one of his hands. In the blink of an eye the muzzle of the revolver was against Ra’Sikhaan’s head and John pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the cavern, followed by more shots until the drum was empty and Ra’Sikhaan’s head was a pockmarked mess. But still those eyes persisted, and a moment later the head was reformed as though John had never even fired. The net constricted further and John grunted when he lost his grip on the revolver and it dropped to the ground. Ra’Sikhaan’s right arms now split into strands as well but they were clearly not intended as a net, for the strands coiled around themselves and tightened till they had taken the shape of a blade. John’s eyes went wide and he struggled in its grip but to no avail; the strands were simply too strong. Without a sound, Ra’Sikhaan reared back to strike.
“John!” Tycho cried out and flew between them before unleashing as much Light as he could. Ghosts channeled Light for their Lightbearers to use, but they still had a little of their own. It had no aspect as such and Tycho had only intended for it to blind and confuse so that John could escape. The strand-net loosened and John freed himself but Ra’Sikhaan was not blinded, but rather focused on Tycho. The strands swirled and caught his shell, stopping any escape attempt dead in the water. The strand-lance untangled into loose strands that added themselves to the net, obscuring any view of Tycho except for the Light shining through. Tycho struggled but could not move an inch, so tight was the net around him and without Leela he could not phase away. He was caught, but not worried, for Ghosts are nearly indestructible to mundane means. It only struck him that Ra’Sikhaan was not mundane a moment later when a peculiar feeling came over him, something he had heard about but never felt himself. For the first time since he had been born, Tycho wanted to cry for help, but the tight net prevented him.
The roar of an engine broke the silence as John powered the Sikhaan-vehicle into the melee. Without a word he brought up the revolver and fired it one-handed, snapping the cords of the tangled strands and releasing Tycho. John struck out and caught Tycho before either Ghost or alien could react and pushed the engine as hard as he could. In the blink of an eye they were away, Ra’Sikhaan a fading image behind them.
“Tycho, how did you know what to do?” John asked and glanced behind them.
“Last time we fought it off, it was only when Leela used her Light. I can’t project as much as she can, but apparently it was enough.” he said, shuddering at how close a call that had been for both of them.
Leela had only walked out of sight of the collapsed temple-cavern when the tunnel sloped downwards into the depths of the planetoid. At the time she had been fairly certain that it was a different direction from the one Tycho and she had taken on their first time through and an hour’s trekking later she was still sure, but much less so when it came to where she was now. The tunnel had continued its downward journey, branching only briefly to adjoin with other residential caverns, but they had all been devastated in the ice-quake. She was sure that she had caused it, but she could not worry about the ramifications beyond those that would impact their hunt for the Stellar Sling. Lightbearers often used their powers for combat, so why shouldn’t she? That said, she refrained from further experimenting with her Light on her descent; it had been sheer luck that she had not been flattened in the first quake.
Instead, her thoughts revolved around her encounter in the temple-cave. Those Sikhaan, feral or not, had intended to kill her. It was not the first time she had nearly died, nor would it have been the first if she truly did, but she did now know where Tycho was, and without Tycho it truly would be a final death. Falling into the broken depths below the temple cave would have been a greater problem, for her body would be missing and with a missing body, there could be no revival. Leela had not faced the concept of true death for many, many years. Even if she knew that she had already died at least once to become a Lightbearer, the thought of a final, real death was more chilling than she had anticipated. As she walked, the way she saw it was twofold; first that she must be more careful, and second that she must find Tycho and the sooner, the better. She could only wonder at how worried he was at her absence.
An indeterminable time later the tunnel sloped off before widening into a residential cavern bigger than the others. Like the others, many of the dwellings had been destroyed by the tremors, but not all and in this cavern dwellings had been built on the floor rather than into the rock-face and these had fared better. Towering above the dwellings was a structure taller even than the temple she had escaped earlier. It had clearly suffered damage in the quake, but not so much as to topple the entire edifice. Leela’s curiosity was piqued as she exchanged the confines of the tunnel for those of the abandoned streets.
The dwellings were larger than she had expected and so the walk to get to them was longer than she had thought. With each step across the barren outer ring, she felt acutely aware of being under watch, but she could see no movement around her. It seemed to her that she had often felt observed since arriving on the planetoid, and did her best to smile at the thought. Perhaps I am growing paranoid. But then, if a primeval being as old as the Traveller was involved, perhaps she was right to suspect. And if Ra’Sikhaan was around, she would have to be careful. It had already attacked her once directly, and then again in the cavern with the tablet. When she arrived at the edge of the dwellings and escaped the barren stretch before the streets she found that they offered little comfort, and instead now the sense she had had on the approach was heightened and expanded to all directions around her. Every closed door and every darkened window was a possible threat and gripping her pistol offered only a meagre relief.
“Hello!?” She turned and shouted at a point when the sensation grew overpowering, but only her own echo answered her. A door was ajar, but when she charged through, pistol raised, she found only dust. With a sigh she did her best to calm down and to look around her. The dwellings here reminded her of the one she had explored in the temple cave, but far grander. Everything was larger and more ornate. Like the first place, there was a workshop built into the first room but this one held far more tools, and the tools themselves were a world apart from the ones before. Sikhaan letters had been carved into the handles, and ornate scenes decorated the faces of the stone that had been used. It resembled the black sphere that she had found in the smaller house, but here used as a material for a tool rather than, what she had assumed, an object of worship. A terminal stood on the other end of the room from the workshop, but the screen was dark and no amount of poking, prodding and shouting from Leela made any change in it and she was left to assume that it had lost power.
As Leela left the rich dwelling she found the central structure looming above her and the residential area. It had not moved, but somehow it being out of her sight for a moment had pushed its enormous size from her mind. A while later she left the nerve-wracking streets and arrived at an open area before the outer walls of the structure. The wall at ground level did not offer any entry until Leela had trekked along it for what felt like an hour. There was an open corridor into the structure’s interior and across from the entrance was another dwelling that stood apart from the others. It wasn’t until Leela looked at it a second time that she noticed something; she recognised the scrawl above the entrance. She was unsure what it meant, but she was sure she had seen it in one of the terminals they had examined. The structure would not move in her absence, she decided, and headed for the open door of the dwelling.
The interior was much like the previous house she had seen in the district. Though ravaged by time, it was obvious that care and resources had gone into crafting the space. Leela quickly found that, whatever the letters above the door said, it was important or personal enough to be repeated several times in just the front room. There was a terminal, similarly engraved with the familiar-yet-unknown phrase, but like the previous terminal this too was dim. Beyond the front room a stairway led up to the first floor which was open to the outside in a horizontal window and sparsely furnished, save for a rusted, broken device in the centre that looked like a telescope to Leela, and a door. Back on the ground floor was another stairway, but this one descended into a space built beneath the house. Once Leela was sure she had not been followed, she drew her pistol and walked down the steps. Despite the centuries of abandonment the steps were undamaged, built from some type of white rock that absorbed the sounds of her footsteps. They led to a room similarly built of the white rock, square in shape and containing only a single plinth built in the centre of the room. Around the plinth was a curtain of scintillating crystals that reflected Leela’s flashlight in a lightshow worthy of any dance-house in the Last City. But Leela’s attention was focused squarely on what had been placed on top of the plinth itself; a tablet of the black stone on which Leela could see letters, both of Sikhaan and of what John had called the Jjaro script. The crystal curtain parted as Leela approached the tablet, expecting the screech of an alarm or of some trap. Her instincts told her the tablet was important but without Tycho or John she could not say how. With utmost caution she lifted the tablet from its plinth and expected the klaxon that followed, but it was weak and within moments the noise had faded away, leaving the mysterious room in silence. No bulkheads slammed down and no hatches revealed hidden weapons. So Leela put the tablet safely away in her pack and left the basement to return to the street with her prize.
The temple structure towered above her and invited her with open arms, so she accepted the invitation. Anything could be hidden in the many shadows of the residential streets, as well as within the temple itself, so she did her best to watch out for ambushes. The outer wall was composed of a smooth, black stone until some four metres above ground where it had been carved into a multitude of thinning strands arranged in a spherical latticework far above. The scale and craftsmanship was staggering, as well as the fact that the structure still stood despite the many quakes the planetoid must have experienced through the ages. The interior was open to the ‘sky’ and reminded her of the temple from the earlier cavern; a raised platform was attended by rows and rows of pews carved from stone and a sphere of some ice-like material hovered above a plinth in the centre of the platform. But this sphere was not alone, for a figure stood by its side, carved from the same white stone as the basement Leela had just left. The figure was humanoid, its featureless head shorter than the apex of the sphere. Its arms were outstretched in an imperious manner before the sphere and in one hand it carried a set of metal scales that had withstood the corrosion of time and in the other a sling, similarly made of the uncorrupted metal. Symbols had been inscribed at the base of the statue, but to Leela they did not match the Sikhaan writing, but rather resembled the other language they had found on the stone tablets. Leela stood for a moment, trying to piece the significance of it all together, before putting it off for another time and moving further into the temple, but she only found more Sikhaan writing and dead terminals. Leela sighed and sat down on a bench within the temple building. She was tired and nervous and her hand was beginning to ache, as well as growing cold through the cut in her suit.
Leela missed Tycho so intensely that it ached. The sensation pressed on her chest and made her feel the cold more intensely. She needed to warm up somehow if she was to survive till she found Tycho, and the damaged Solar suit was not cutting it anymore. The fact that, if she died of hypothermia here, she would be in the open and easy to find was of little comfort. After a moment of thought Leela jumped to her feet and stormed out of the temple back towards the residential district beyond its walls where she headed into the house where she had found the tablet. On the first floor she tried the door that she had left unopened before. An egg-shaped piece of furniture stood in the centre of the room beyond, furnished with an expansive piece of fur that reminded Leela of shag carpets. To her great surprise and delight, when she reached for it she found that it had not frozen solid. It was not warm, but it was still pliable. So Leela did her best to close off the way she had come, then climbed into the egg-shape and laid the shag-carpet on top of her. She was not warm, but the carpet and the Solar circuit in her suit took the edge off the brutal cold of the ice-cavern, and Leela soon found herself nodding off.
Ever since her resurrection she had been visited by dreams, and the ones tonight were no different. She saw visions of what she had always presumed to be her former life, but they were silent. She saw people that she must have known and places she must have visited, but there were no sounds, no names. A first-person silent movie with no captions. Once she had kept a dream-diary, but as the years went by and the dreams began to repeat themselves she had stopped.
She awoke from her nap still covered by the ancient fur. She was still cold and her hand hurt, but the fur had kept her from freezing. With great reluctance Leela climbed from the alien bed and sat on the floor, wrapped in the alien fur. She ate some of her provisions then looked at her injured hand. The wound had closed or frozen shut, and a purple bruise was spreading across her skin from where the ice had pierced her hand and when she tried to make a fist, even just bending her fingers made her hiss with pain. If Tycho was here he would be able to heal it in a moment, but till then she would have to make do. If need be, she could stay in this house for a while. The bed was big enough, as well as comfortable given its extreme age, and the temple was a good, central landmark. She wanted to go looking for John and Tycho, but without a mode of transport and no knowledge of their location, it would be a fool’s errand. But as she sat there and pondered how to find her companions, she heard a sound. She sat still and focused her hearing, and there it was again. With the fur around her shoulders, Leela stormed out of the house. A voice was calling her name from within the walls of the central temple. On any other day she would have gone without a second thought, but with the phenomena she had experienced in the planetoid and the presence of the mysterious Ra’Sikhaan, she was wary. With one hand on her pistol and one holding the fur around her shoulders, Leela ran to the corner of the entranceway and looked inside the grounds. A figure was standing with its back to her, someone that resembled John but Leela could not trust it. As she considered how to proceed, the figure raised its voice and called her name again. Something lifted from its shoulder and turned towards her, and in the instant that her connection to Tycho was restored, her doubts were lifted. Whatever its mysterious powers, the W’rkcacnter would never be able to mimic that.
“Leela!” Tycho shouted as he hit her on the clavicle, pressing his shell against her in lieu of an embrace.
“By the Light am I glad to see you, Tycho.” Leela replied and hugged him.
“I have never been more afraid for you, ever.” Tycho said and looked up at her.
“I hoped you were with John,” Leela said and looked at the approaching cyborg, “at least then you would be safer than me.”
“Good to see that you’re safe, Leela,” John said, “we would never have found you without Tycho.”
“He’s a resourceful little light.” Leela said and hugged him close again.
They retreated to the house where Leela had slept and sat down in the alien bedchamber with the alien fur spread out beneath them, the room lit up by Tycho applying healing Light to Leela’s cut. In a moment her hand went through a burst of sharp pain, then a tingling sensation and then the bliss of warmth again. With John’s help they even properly patched the hole in her glove.
“That’s such a relief.” Leela said as she flexed and tested her fingers.
“I saw Ra’Sikhaan again while I was on my own.” Leela said and looked at Tycho. “After the shift, I was back in the cavern temple on my own and was discovered by a group of aggressive Sikhaan. I fended them off but then the quake nearly killed us all. Ra’Sikhaan appeared in the middle of it all, but only briefly.”
“I guess that means we didn’t kill it back then,” John said with a sigh, “it always seems to show up during quakes.” John scratched his chin. His suit did not cover all of his skin, but the cyborg showed no signs of the cold.
“When the Sikhaan attacked us, I detected an energy field that I could not identify, but it permeated the space until Ra’Sikhaan disappeared. It could be the source of its abilities, but without further analysis there is no way to say for sure.”
John nodded. “Have you been inside the temple structure, Leela?”
She nodded. “The terminals inside are dead, though it appears to just be a loss of power.”
She glanced at Tycho with a smile. “Not that I would have been able to read any of it without you two.”
“The quake seriously damaged the electricity grid,” Tycho said and floated back to his customary place at Leela’s shoulder, “in the utility building we found, all the terminals were running on reserve power and we didn’t have the kick to restart the generators.”
Leela thought back to the surge of Arc energy she had unleashed on the feral Sikhaan, but thought it best not to run the risk of destroying the entire network with a power she couldn’t control.
“But if there’s any Sikhaan written down, we can start there.” John said and stood up.
“There’s not just Sikhaan.” Leela said and took out her pack.
“Could you elaborate?” Tycho asked.
Leela took out the tablet she had found in the basement. Even through the faceplate she could see John’s eyes widening.
“That’s the Jjaro script.” John said.
Tycho displayed the scan he had taken of the previous tablet, and while the scripts were similar, the contents of the two were obviously different.
“There’s Sikhaan on it too.” Tycho said and hovered closer to scan the second tablet. John leaned in too, so Leela waited in silence as the two worked. In the blink of an eye, the two had become excited and shared a look between them.
“What’s going on, what have you found?” Leela asked.
John looked her in the eye and she saw an excitement that was difficult to square with the stoic man she had come to know. “A Rosetta Stone.” he said with an air of reverence. The name meant nothing to Leela.
“It’s a translation aide,” Tycho supplied and displayed a hologram of the translated Sikhaan text, “that tells you how to translate the other language into Sikhaan.”
“A Jjaro dictionary.” John said, still sounding like he had found a pile of Glimmer the size of a mountain.
“A partial dictionary,” Tycho said, “and since it goes through Sikhaan first, the translation to any human tongue will be awkward, but it should get the gist across.”
Leela looked at the hologram Tycho was projecting.
imperative that progenitor sleeps still / progenitor wakes then order cracks / uplifter cannot restore but will not leave progeny without barrier /
From there the text continued but turned into the dictionary that John had mentioned. The tablet’s creator had clearly wanted the reader to bridge the two languages.
Tycho jittered as though shaking himself. “I’ve incorporated the dictionary into the translator, so we should be able to read this Jjaro script, at least partially.”
“There’s some inside the temple, along the base of a statue. I don’t know what it says, but I am sure it wasn’t Sikhaan.” Leela said.
“Let’s not waste any time.” John said and practically leapt to his feet. Leela and Tycho followed John’s rapid pace and headed towards the temple when Leela stopped at the threshold into the structure.
“Wait,” she called to the others and ran back to the house, pointing at the sign above the door, “what does that say?”
Tycho joined her while John continued into the temple.
“This might seem impromptu,” Tycho said as he scanned the sign, “but I want to trust John.”
Leela looked at Tycho in surprise. “So do I, but why this now?”
Tycho was silent for a moment as the scanning finished. “We needed an old Sikhaan scanning device to find you and there were wild Sikhaan living in the building. He could have killed them so easily, but he didn’t.”
Leela nodded. “When we found that first tablet he did the same. I think he’s our only chance of pulling this off, but even so, I want to trust him too.”
“Good.” Tycho said and projected the translated sign.
Greater Heart, Mil’Na.
“We’ve seen that name in the terminals.” Tycho said.
Leela nodded and pulled the fur tighter around her shoulders.
They found John walking amongst the pews inside the temple, eyes fixed on the Jjaro script that ran along the base of the statue. Only the briefest glance in Leela’s direction indicated that John was aware of their presence.
“Tycho,” he said, “it’s a devil to translate by hand, would you?”
Tycho floated past him and around the statue, scanning the script as he went. Leela kept an eye on the silent temple. The pair of them seemed so excited that they could well have missed a threat lurking in the shadows.
After a moment had passed, Tycho began to read the translation out loud.
progeny arose in progenitors shadow / but progenitor was cold to their prayers / uplifter came to progeny and gave them the knowledge of the progenitor / the beast / uplifter gave progeny gellon and rallot so that progenitor would not become beast again /
“Some of the terminals referred to ‘gellon’ and ‘rallot’. They’re the sacred Sikhaan names for the Barrier Generator and the Stellar Sling, respectively.” Tycho said.
“Do you know what any of that means, John?” Leela asked.
John was looking up at the statue. “I can’t say for sure but I can guess at some. Only the Jjaro could construct a barrier generator capable of containing a W’rkcacnter, so that must be ‘gellon’, and so the ‘uplifter’ must be the Jjaro that came and gave the Sikhaan, ‘the progeny’, these ‘gellon’ and ‘rallot’.”
“‘The progenitor’ would be the W’rkcacnter then.” Tycho said and floated back to Leela’s side.
“The first part about them ‘arising’ follows the murals and texts we found on our first visit.” Leela said and looked at Tycho.
Tycho nodded and recited the text they had found in the cavern-temple. “We Came– It when We were but Larvae, Unfit to– dust. In Its– were Made into Us.”
“There was more, but we thought the text referred to the Traveller.” Leela said.
“Your god.” John said.
“The Traveller is no god,” Leela said and looked at Tycho, “though it is very powerful and mysterious. It has never, to our knowledge, demanded sacrifices or worship or any kind of reward for the help it gave mankind.”
“It stayed on Earth to protect humanity from the Collapse and nearly died for it.” Tycho said.
“We thought that perhaps the Traveller had come here first,” Leela said to get them back on track, “before it came to Sol proper. We’re so far out, it might have gone unnoticed.”
“Then you found the W’rkcacnter.” John said.
Leela had no reply to that.
John turned back to Tycho. “Now that we can read it, what did the first tablet say?”
The hologram was displayed against the wall and showed the tablet they had found in the Stellar Sling’s first storage location. Word by word the Jjaro script was overlaid by the translation.
progenitor will slip gellon / beast will break gellon and destroy progeny without fail / beast must meet the star / star is new gellon / rallot will send beast away /
The trio stood and chewed on the message for a moment.
“That settles it.” John said and looked at Leela, who was not as confident.
John pointed at the hologram, specifically the second sentence. “‘beast will break gellon’, the Jjaro knew that the barrier would not hold forever. Its escape was inevitable. You cannot be to blame, Leela.”
Leela looked at the words. She wanted to believe John, but the image of the burning City and the dead Traveller was not so easily dispersed.
“‘Rallot’ will send beast away’,” Tycho said, “rallot is their name for the Stellar Sling.”
John nodded. “Without more information this is just guesswork, but I think the Stellar Sling is a device meant to replicate a tried and tested Jjaro method of W’rkcacnter containment; throwing it into a stellar core and sealing it there.”
John gave no sign that he was aware of how absurd a sentence that was and Leela could not help but chuckle.
“But how do we operate this Stellar Sling?” Tycho said.
“I wish I knew,” John said with a sigh, “the first time I made use of Jjaro technology for something like this I had an AI helping me, or rather I was helping it.”
“An AI helped you?” Tycho said with surprise in his tone, “the only AI I know of would rather blow you to pieces than help you.”
“To be fair, Durandal was not always helpful, but they pulled through in the end. Even if I knew how to reach them, I doubt they would want to get involved in this.” John said.
“Can we meet this ‘Durandal’ once this is all over?” Tycho said with clear excitement.
Now it was John’s time to chuckle. “Sure, if you can travel to the galactic rim. That’s where they were headed last.”
“Oh.” Tycho said simply.
“I can tell you some stories afterwards,” John said and looked back up at the statue standing next to the sphere, “once this is all over.”
“Now we just need to find the Stellar Sling before the W’rkcacnter escapes again.” Leela said. It was true that they might be able to shift again and again to keep trying, but they had no way of knowing where the Sling would be with each shift, nor if it would be functional. It was clear to her that each Shift came with changes.
“I can help with that.” Tycho said, sounding sheepish.
The Ghost turned to John. “When I used the scanning device, after I had located Leelea I noticed that it had enough power left for another cycle; two searches.”
John looked at Tycho in silence.
“I searched for Leela first in case it broke or ran out of power, but when I found that I could search again I looked for the Sling.”
The hologram of the tablet winked out and was replaced by a rough map of the interior of the planetoid. The plaza and the palace above the W’rkcacnter’s chamber was there, as was the maintenance shaft that they had travelled through the first time. And there, adjacent to the enormous cavern that housed the barrier and the creature within, was a second cavern. It was smaller, for sure, but if the scale was accurate then it could still house the palace above and then some. An orange dot pulsed in that adjacent chamber. So close to the W’rkcacnter, yet so far from the three of them.
“You could have told me that.” John said, but Leela did not sense any anger or reproach.
“We want to trust you, John,” Leela said and came to her Ghost’s rescue, “it will just take us a little more time.”
“Lucky for you two, time is one thing I have in abundance.” John said and looked at Tycho. “And if the location was taken at the same time as we found Leela, I wager it’s still there. There’s no one left to move it about, unless the ferals could manage it.”
“On that,” John said and looked back at Leela, “there’s something you should know. We encountered Ra’Sikhaan on our way here. This hurts to say, but whatever that thing is, it would have overpowered me if it hadn’t been for Tycho.”
“He’s a resourceful little light.” Leela reiterated, but the surprise in her tone was real.
“Not without risk for me, I might add,” Tycho said and looked at Leela, “Ra’Sikhaan can drain Light. If John hadn’t paid the favour back, that would have been it for me.”
A tremor rolled through the floor beneath them, but it was gone before it could cause any damage.
“Let’s hurry.” Leela said, and John and Tycho nodded.
Cookbook Overload 