The rest of the chamber was filled with an enormous drift of bones, plasma-scored metal, and the desiccated corpses of thousands of inhuman creatures. Fifteen minutes after the marines had signaled the all-clear for the immediate vicinity, the Prince, Gretchen, and a very nervous Sahane stepped out of the cargo elevator and crunched their way across a slope of crumbling bones to a platform facing an exit door.
There Xochitl stopped, panning his helmet light across the ossuary in grudging wonder. “Battle,” he commented, eyes drawn to the shattered limbs and broken armor thigh-deep in the bay. “But not here… these bodies were dumped.” His gaze traveled upward, the light picking out the angled shape of a monstrous crane hanging over the chamber, and beside it another, and another. They were folded up against the ceiling like a resting spider’s knobby legs. The Prince turned to Gretchen. “What kind of entryway did you choose for us?”
“Garbage disposal,” Sahane said, his alien voice thick with bitterness. He knelt and lifted one of the cadaverous skulls. It was long-snouted, with a tapering jaw, and a mouth filled with rows of crushing molars aft and shredding incisors forward. Some remnant of a pelt remained, preserved by vacuum, apparently a mottled black or dark gray. “For discarded husks which could not be properly cremated.”
Looking over his shoulder, Anderssen nodded, unsurprised. I will send Professor Griffiths in the Comparative Languages Department a thousand roses, should I ever see Imperial space again!
She wanted to handle the bones, but wondered if the ambassador would take offense. A skull much like that of a Hjogadim, though larger in cross-section. Perhaps only a difference in nutrition, but if I could look at the whole thing, it might turn out to be a genetic difference. Maybe the old Hjogadim were a different sub-species. Wouldn’t that be interesting!
Curious, Gretchen moved off across the midden, her fingers brushing lightly across the most exposed of the corpses. Most of them seemed morphologically similar, though there were other, more alien-seeming races among the dead. Has the history of these others been wholly lost? Is this where they became extinct? How long ago did all this occur?
She stopped, going to one knee, and pulled out her field comp.
“This is your suitable entrance?” Xochitl crunched over to her, his voice a harsh rasp. “How far are we from a control structure? From whatever mechanism manages the entrance to the Barrier?”
Anderssen flashed a wintry smile up at the Prince. Her field comp had flickered awake and she was scanning one of the better-preserved skulls with her sensor wand turned to short-focus x-ray. “I am not sure we can enter the control spaces of this device. But I believe that he can.” She indicated Sahane with a tilt of her helmet. “If he chooses to lead us there.”
Looking back at the alien, the now-familiar sense of disassociation stole over her, filling her chest with pleasant warmth, drawing her mind far from her body, which seemed to recede below her. Standing in this ancient place, her eyes filled with glorious Sight. The snap and glare of plasma guns, the screams of the wounded and dying dinned against her ears. A swirl of faint ghosts washed over her, as the ancient Hjogadim struggled and died, slaughtering each other in the corridors and control spaces. Then machines came, bearing the dead, laying them in ordered rows in the disposal bay, even as the tide of battle washed on to other shores. In her vision, a solitary Hjo-in comparison to the others, seeming almost solid-moved among the dead, giving some kind of last blessing. His skin and armor were anointed with the same glyphs and markings as Sahane bore.
Watching the-priest?-passing among the dead, Gretchen became peripherally aware of a golden tinge tainting her sight. Tentatively, her fingers moved, drifting to touch the bronze block. They stopped short, encountering an aura of heat, almost hot enough to scald.
“We had best move on-if we are to stay,” she said, forcing herself to focus on the Prince. “If you intend to carry through with your purpose…”
“I do,” Xochitl said, his face pinched and pale.
He’s removed his mask again. Only a frightened man remains in Huitzilopochtli’s place.
“Sahane- tzin, what do you say to this?” Xochitl asked.
The living Hjo’s face greatly resembled that of the long-dead priest walking in Gretchen’s golden vision, a ghastly mask of suppressed horror. His limpid gray-black eyes fixed on Gretchen for the first time. “ You know what this place is… how can this be? How can a toy know what I-one of the Guided Race-do not!”
“There are legends,” she replied carefully, “and fragments out of the past that still endure. Not all fantastical tales are false… but all that I know is that this whole enormous structure”-she extended her arms, taking in the entirety of the Chimalacatl and the singularity-“is the work of your people. Are you not pleased to look upon their greatness?”
“I despair,” Sahane croaked, voice thick with emotion, “to find myself amid this ruin and find the greatness of my people is ash!”
Xochitl seemed confounded. His face went blank. Gretchen caught a fragment of his helplessness, but made no move to enlighten him.
Sahane favored them both with a contemptuous stare. “Apes! Such skills as tore suns from their orbits and compressed matter into ultimate annihilation, such skills as made this… this mausoleum… are lost to us. This place, it might as well have been made by the gods themselves! By the Living Flame which Guides! We are so petty now…” His voice trailed away into a disgusted, lamenting mumble.
A flicker of emotion lighted Xochitl’s face. He scrutinized Gretchen warily. “Team one, to me.” The Prince ordered half of his men forward. “Team two, secure the ship. Doctor Anderssen, you help the Esteemed Sahane here find a command structure!”
With the heavy black assault rifles of the marines at her back, Gretchen reached up to place a gentle hand on the young Hjogadim’s armored wrist. “Lord Sahane, let us go further on. Is this not a cathedral of your caste? Has not the place of it been lost to your line? Have a care here. So many lie untended.”
She led the Hjo onward, picking their way out of the disposal chamber through a triangular doorway. As they passed through, Gretchen caught sight of a faint radiance shining in the metal. After all this time there are still glimmers within the material. What marvelous alloy could this be? Or are there bioluminescent organisms trapped within?
“Ah!” The pale gleaming strengthened rapidly, becoming a floodlight of gold. Glyphs inscribed beside the entrance swam and cavorted in her sight, a vision now drenched in brassy light. On the floor, on the walls, as high as their hand lights could reach, meanings leaped out, indicating direction and time and purpose in an ever-dancing overlay to the solid world. Murals began to emerge from the plain-seeming walls, showing the edifice of a great civilization-towers piercing cloud-streaked skies; endless multitudes moving below, in enormous cities. Thousands of races were represented and not one of them seemed to be placed above the others, though the massive Hjogadim were well represented.
Oh boy, Anderssen thought. Is this how the structure functions? Or did the ancient Hjo see the world this way all the time?
“Keep moving,” Xochitl gritted. They stepped out into a leviathan hallway, stretching off far beyond the reach of their lights in either direction. Only a few meters from the doorway, a row of diamond-shaped compartments was visible at floor level. The Prince, curious, advanced to the closest one-his marines pacing him ahead and behind. As their lights moved, Gretchen bit her lip, seeing another row of compartments above the first, and then another, and then another…
Xochitl rapped on the closest door, then shone his light inside. “It’s like glassite. Sealed, but empty.” He stepped away from the dark, silent chamber and swung with the beam of his lamp off into the distance, following the wall.