“Do we tell them?” Aileena said. She sat down in the chair next to the console, letting the gel take her weight.
“I… don’t know. Is it even our place?”
“It’s just, I mean it’s so obvious in hindsight. Can you imagine doing that?”
“Doing what?” The door to the bridge had slid open and Michael had stridden through. Behind him was one of the carts. The shuttle bay wasn’t far, but the little automated vehicles were a little too convenient.
“We know what happened,” Aileena said. “Back then, when the ice started.”
“Oh,” Michael took the seat opposite her. Mellok just sat on the floor, his legs folding. “And it’s not good news I’m guessing?”
“Not really,” Mellok said. “The Merydians, they did have ships. Lots of them. When the asteroid hit, it killed millions, but millions more died as the power began to fail. It seems the effect we encountered grew out of where the asteroid hit. Slowly.”
“You know the tower? Supposed to hold the best and brightest? Yeah, that’s rubbish. They left Michael. They built the tower to survive the ice age they knew was coming yes, but when the power started failing, they abandoned that idea. Boarded their fleet and left. Looks like the Sword was the last ship supposed to leave but didn’t make it out of whatever the growing power-draining effect is in time,” Aileena said, taking over the story effortlessly.
“That’s why it crashed into the mountain,” Michael said.
“That’s why it crashed into the mountain,” Aileena repeated in agreement. “The people in the tower? The first ones? They were the people deemed not worth evacuating. Looks like they fired off one last probe into space, a plea for their people to come back and save them. Which is where the star child thing comes from.”
“So what? They just left them there to die? These people have been waiting for the people who abandoned them to come back and save them all this time?”
“Yes,” Mellok said. His feathers shifted, taking on a green hue. “It seems that someone worked out how to use the crystals for power, actually managed to get the tower working. That can’t be a coincidence. This ship wasn’t built to run off a crystal, Kestok had to remove the normal reactor to fit it. These crystals have to be linked to the power drain in some way. It’s only logical.”
“Wow, so uh, this is going to suck, huh? I know I’m supposed to deliver truth or something like that,” Michael said. “This is a hell of a thing to have to drop onto a people though. Sorry, your monster is a big rock and your people left you to die.”
No-one replied. No-one said anything. Instead, they simply sat there, in silence for a moment, wondering what to do next.
Chapter Twenty-Six
They had decided to keep the revelations quiet, at least for now. There would be little point unsettling the Merydians, not until they had checked out the asteroid that had cast the planet into its frozen malaise. The three of them had agreed they needed to take a look at the rock, to at least prove their theory. Michael wasn’t looking forward to having to explain that there was no monster, no epic battle against evil. Just cruel, brutal nature. A careless universe throwing its rubbish out into the galaxy like a burger wrapper tossed through a car window. All they had to do, was find the thing.
“Everyone ready?” Aileena said. She was sat in a seat at the front of the bridge area, not dissimilar to her position on the Seeker. The Sword’s bridge was laid out differently from the control room on the smaller ship. It was a single flat surface, lacking the ramp descending to a lower level. In the centre was a chair, a large console before it, the obvious position for the ship’s commander. The room itself was oval in shape, the other consoles and chairs running around the edge. The two piloting consoles were placed at the narrow end of the room.
“As I’ll ever be,” Michael replied. He had sat himself into the commander’s chair. Michael had no illusions of himself as any kind of leader, no matter Mellok’s constant chattering about prophecy. He couldn’t resist though, sitting in the centre of the massive bridge was fulfilling a thousand childhood dreams. “Where do we even start though?”
“Same place as you search for everything when you have a starship,” Aileena said. Her voice was faint, carrying poorly across the large room. “You go up. Clive, can you link us with the engineering bay?”
“That is no problem,” said the buzzing cloud. It was still unsettling, like a swarm of angry bees was talking to you. “Just a moment.” The cloud swirled, the microscopic machines reforming their shape. The face changed, taking on the features of Kestok.
“Oh, hello. This is weird. I can see all your heads, just floating here,” Kestok said. The cloud had risen into the air. They expanded outwards, rendering Kestok’s head massive, several feet across. It reminded Michael of the Wizard of Oz, but he kept the reference to himself.
“Everything looking good, Kestok?” Aileena said. “This thing isn’t going to fall apart is it?”
“No, everything’s fine. She’s old, but she was built to last. The Sword will make it to the atmosphere no problem.” The floating image of Kestok turned, looking at something unseen. “Don’t touch that Skorra, it’s live.” It bobbed listening to inaudible words. “Live means it’s electrified. Touch that and your fur will stand on end. If you survive.” The image turned back. “So, yeah, we’re good.”
“Uh, huh, sure sounds it,” Michael said. “Where’s Meggok?”
“Checking out the galley. Apparently, this ship has a massive one. Huge, for hundreds and hundreds. I’ve never seen him happier. I’ve got notice here, that a gel-chair is in use down there.”
“It seems, knower, that we are all set,” Mellok said. He had tucked himself into his own chair, to the left of Michael. He had stretched out the coat he had been wearing, creating a layer between him and the chair, memories of pulling slime from his feathers still haunting him. Mellok was still finding clumps within his plumage.
“Well, set condition two throughout the ship then,” Michael said.
“What?” Aileena turned in her chair. Even at this distance, Michael could make out the look of confusion on her face.
“Yellow alert? Nothing on that one either,” Michael said, rubbing the side of his head. “They both mean, just like, be ready. You know?”
“That implies we aren’t always ready?”
“Fair point,” Michael said. “Let’s go then.”
The ship lifted upwards, slowly at first, rising above the crevasse below. Across the ice, innumerable claws were raised, clacking ineffectively at the ship above. They had gathered slowly as the ship had hovered in place, climbing out from beneath the snow, or scuttling up from the ravine. Several had gotten too close to the wash from the engines, melting from the impressive heat. The Sword tilted, its nose pointing upwards slightly. There was a second of silence as if sound was being drawn into the ship, absorbed like water. It returned with a roar, the massive engines at the rear of the ship screaming to life.
Pale blue light flooded from behind, startling amounts of energy and heat plucked from nothingness in all defiance of physics. The engines were shaped as four enormous cones. They shifted like irises, closing tighter, pushing the beams of energy into more focused streaks. The Sword accelerated, racing up into the air, a dagger thrown into the heavens. Clouds flew past, white streaks quickly fading into nothing as the ship stabbed through them.
It took but a few seconds, the thrust pushing the gleaming leviathan out, beyond the sky and into the stars. It levelled out, settling into an orbit around the planet, choosing a geostationary spot above the mountains that housed the tower. The planet beneath it twinkled, a near-perfect ball of white. All aside from one tiny circle, a pinprick of green.