“So, it’s kind of a funny story. I promised Michael I would replace the pile of rags he was using for a real bed. Honestly, though, I had no idea where I would start with that. That’s when something switched on in my head.”
“You had an idea?” Skorra said. She was still sat on the cart, her bushy tail dangling off the back of it. A pair of goggles were sat upon her head, the strap tucked behind her tall ears.
“No, I mean something actually switched on. A function of the Sword I didn’t know about until I needed it. Like the shield. This,” Clive said gesturing at the room behind him like a showman announcing an act, “is the constructitorium.”
“The what?” Skorras face scrunched up, her feline nose wriggling. It was a face she often pulled when trying to puzzle something out, normally a question posed by Kestok.
“Constructitorium.”
“We’re not calling it that,” Kestok said. “More importantly, what does it do?”
Clive looked crushed. “Oh, well. It makes things.”
“What things?”
“Anything. You remember that station we shut down? The one making all those part-built ships?”
Kestok nodded. It was hard to forget, the ancient relic had swept the planet below with an energy wave, disintegrating what it touched and reforming it into random ship parts, an old and broken component of a once impressive shipyard.
“Well, it’s like that, but not as advanced. We can put things in, the machines recycle them, then pop out something new. So, if we put some scrap metal in…” Clive thought for a moment. His image vanished, his cloud of nanobots reforming near one of the strange-looking devices. “Here we are. We put some metal in this one, the machine breaks it down, rearranges all the bits, then spits out what we ask it to. There’s even this thing.” Clive vanished again, reappearing across the chamber. “This thing lets us break down and repurpose biological matter. Imagine the possibilities!”
“I’d rather not. That sounds disgusting, frankly.” Kestok strolled towards the nearest machine, his hands running over it. “So how variable is this? If we put in say, iron, do we just get iron out?”
“Yes, there’s no changing of the elements themselves, it’s just reshaping them, but still, extremely useful.”
“There’s no doubting that. Just one more question though?” Kestok arched his back as he spoke, stretching his muscled frame. “Think we could make one for me and Meggok as well? The Merydian beds are the worst.”
The Seeker shuddered, fire pouring over the control room glass. The last time this had happened, the Seeker had been in free-fall, threatening to crash. Now it was controlled, a flashy display, but harmless. Michael was shocked the atmosphere reacted like this at all, he somehow hadn’t expected it, the flatness of the world confusing him.
Flat. He kept thinking of the thing below as that, a flat planet hanging in space, but that wasn’t strictly true. The seas, continents and the wall of ice were just one facet. The object was massive, the spires trailing from the bottom of the squashed world reaching out into space. They looked faintly threatening, a mass of jutting angular shapes crammed together. It was like the object was fighting against itself, a tangle of daggers strapped to the bottom of a world. Everything about it felt sinister, like a warning intended to cross any language barrier. Michael realised his second thoughts were useless now, the Seeker committed to its descent.
“You ever think,” Michael said. “That maybe we’ve not made the best decisions?”
“All the time,” Aileena said. Michael hadn’t expected the admission from her. “The trick is to just go with it. Own your mistakes, do something about them.”
“I might have to steal that for the next speech I’ll have to give.” Michael felt the gel forming around him. The gravity plating that controlled their momentum failed close to a large gravity source, and the shaking of the ship was starting to get noticeable. The gel was doing its best to keep the ride comfortable. “Well then, let’s go own this mistake.”
Chapter Five
Orson rested his hand on the sidearm at his waist. He wasn’t a timid man, not by any measure, but meeting new prospects always made him nervous. They were trying to run a fine line, making enough noise and trouble to attract new members to their growing organisation, but keep low key enough to fly under the Council’s radar. The sheer size of the Council helped, news took a long time to work its way from system to system, messages travelling by courier ships, but there was always the chance that the Council would get wise and try to sneak someone in undercover. From what he had seen, subtly and subterfuge weren’t exactly the Council’s style, but it would be stupid not to assume a large galactic empire wouldn’t have an intelligence service of some kind.
Orson had met his share of intelligence operatives in his time in the air force. His transfer to NASA had come as a relief, no longer having to deal with politics and backstabbing. After making two trips to the international space station, Orson had retired, intending to live out his life in a small Florida condo. Spending his days soaking up the sun and listening to Jimmy Buffet records whilst he sipped at the kind of drink worthy of a vibrant umbrella. Then the Council had arrived, and Orson had been called back to service.
The creature before him would have been strange to him, during his brief retirement. Now it was normal, the staggering array of life in the galaxy wholly unsurprising. It was interesting how quickly humanity had adapted to having aliens walking amongst them. Some people had resisted it, their perceptions clouded by science fiction movies. More than one conspiracy theory about the aliens had sprung up, about how they were conquerors and that this was the first step towards them harvesting the humans for meat, or implanting their young into human chests, or both. Orson wondered what those people thought now, his stolen records proving those theories at least somewhat correct.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet us, Knower,” said the lead alien. He bowed as far as his frame would allow. His body was a mottled green rigid shaft, held upright by a small set of insectoid legs at the bottom. Thin arms emerged from the opposite end, whilst the creature had a pointed head tipped with mandibles. Its eyes were obsidian orbs, constantly darting around the room. It wore a short leather jacket that barely covered a third of its torso. Behind were two creatures of the same species, identical to Orson aside from the pattern of mottling on their shells. They reminded him of stick insects he had kept as a child.
“It’s my pleasure. Always good to meet people interested in our cause.” Orson kept his hand on his weapon, the posture hidden by the table before him. His ship, The Gallant, wasn’t large and lacked a meeting room of any kind, so Orson had asked for the aliens to be escorted to the mess. He had been using the kitchen table as a planning area, and papers were scattered over it. Two marines stood at his flanks, the once vivid red of the Council trooper armour sprayed a dull green. The colour change was partly a refusal of what the Council stood for, but it was also practical. Bright red armour worked well when you were trying to project fear, letting people know your soldiers were on every street corner, but not so well when you were trying to maintain some level of secrecy.
“And interested we are!” the lead alien said, his fingers waving as he spoke, the digits weaving amongst each other. His voice was an odd sort of low drone, and it took a moment longer than usual for the translator in Orson’s ear to catch up. “Ours is a people with little love for the Council. They harvest our world’s forests, scouring the land of life, our kind forced to cut down the trees in which they once lived.”
“You have my sympathies.”