THE PYLON
Gretchen flinched away from a sudden, titanic plasma blast. The air erupted with blinding flame and a whirlwind of shrapnel. She lost her balance, teetering at the edge of the platform. Both Piet and Hummingbird lunged forward, gloved hands seizing her arms. Only then did she realize the burning cloud was passing through the two of them without harm. Eons in the past, the technicians at the consoles were strewn about like matchsticks. The mighty Hjogadim Lord burned like a torch while the golden serpent suddenly, violently, escaped from its physicality. The great hall, to its farthest corners, boiled with unforeseen catastrophe.
Anderssen blinked tears from her eyes, trying to focus on the present. Meanwhile, Piet had torn away her utility rig and was digging through the pockets.
“I saw her stash it… back in the ship,” his voice rasped over the comm. “It must be here somewhere!”
“It is gone,” Sahane barked in amusement. The Hjogadim gestured towards the shaft. “Cast into the abyss.”
Piet glared at the alien. “Then you will serve in her place.”
Sahane nodded and rose to his feet, helped by one of the other Templars. To Gretchen it was plain that something in the Hjo had found surety at last, banishing his chronic fear. “What will you have me say?”
Confused, Gretchen eyed the Europeans, Hummingbird, and the alien. A message? To the dead? No… to those sleeping below? But they cannot hear us-not without a Voice-uh oh…
Piet paused, squaring his shoulders, and then recited: “That we await their coming and are prepared to aid, as did their servants of old. That we pledge true service, where so many failed them before. That we have need, for a great peril will soon return.”
Sahane’s snout twitched in amusement, but he nodded.
Out of the corner of her eye, Gretchen caught a glimpse of a thin blue-black furred shape shrouding the pilot like a ghostly cloak. How could anything have survived that plasma blast? She turned in amazement to get a better look. But the apparition was already gone. The ghost-world was fading now, consumed by the chaos of ancient battle. Too many fleeting events to leave a lasting mark on the substance of the consoles or the time-worn floor. Only one last glimpse of the Lord Serpent wicking through the air as a burning ribbon. Then it plunged into the cowering body of a still-living blue-black technician.
In a last burst of memory, the slim, now-radiant alien escaped over the edge of the pylon.
A vampire, Gretchen realized, falling back into the waking world, her limbs clammy with shock. A parasite of some kind, that… something like that was in the tablet! It was controlling me, guiding my mind! Xochitl was right- and there are hundreds of thousands more of them, down there, in the abyss… the deities of the Hjogadim.
“I will say these words, to the Gods,” Sahane announced, breaking her train of thought. The priest made an elegant, human-style bow. “If you give me leave to do so.”
The three Templars shared a glance and nodded, almost as one. Piet gestured with his assault rifle, pointing Sahane towards the nearest console. “Waste no time, then.”
Gretchen watched curiously as the Hjo paced deliberately to the largest, most centrally located console and then pressed fingertips to forebrain, a swift, mumbled litany on his lips. What is he?… Anderssen felt suddenly the fool. Her ghost-sight quickened, and she saw the air around Sahane come alive with flickering glyphs and signs. His masks are on overdrive and-spouting nonsense? They must be trying to decipher the control systems… but are too new to understand these older mechanisms.
Despite the confusion of symbols, the subaudible hum in the floor changed pitch. At once the consoles flickered awake, glowing with dappled green and gold. The air in the enormous chamber stirred. Long lines of lamps began to shine among the abandoned cradles. Anderssen crawled to the nearest panel and felt it becoming aware under her hands, waiting for guidance. She realized that despite the echoes of destruction reverberating in the ghost-world, the gargantuan machine around her was intact and functioning.
Automated maintenance, she guessed. Little bots or nanites always working to clean and fix and repair… gathering up the bodies of the dead, taking them away to be properly disposed of… A frown creased her forehead. But not by the great doors? Wouldn’t they… ah, but everything there is in a great untidy pile. Collected by the automated janitors, for something else, something larger to take away. But it couldn’t? Because the doors were locked tight, sealed… She suppressed an automatic reaction to look around the platform for the corpse of the last technician, the one that had sealed the doors, trapping himself inside, and then expired in due time. Not here, not here… some chamber where he’d cached a bit of food and water, until he knew the tomb was forgotten and no one would return.
So, treachery. Battle and slaughter in the midst of the great undertaking. Millions of stasis racks, all empty. Storage for the bodies drained of guiding flame. Waiting for their masters-their operators?-to return…
Gretchen’s tongue awoke. “I don’t think you want him to do anything with that console, Lojtnant Piet.”
The pilot turned, politely curious.
“His race views ours as slaves and toys. I do not think the honorable Lord Sahane will treat us kindly once he’s figured out how to work the controls of this fortress.” She forced a grin. “I think war-machines will come and we will all die. And then he will be in control of this place, and all that it contains.”
Piet stared first at her, then at Hummingbird, and finally at Sahane. Gretchen was woefully aware of his sudden confusion, and fear, and the absolute depth of his ignorance. If a penny will not do, then a pound must suffice. She coughed wetly. “We don’t have much time, but I think I can deliver your message to his Gods-to the Vay’en who are sleeping far below us, in the singularity.” Another cough, this one unforced. “Even without the bronze tablet.”
Sahane’s eyes were black as ink, his long face unreadable.
Piet blinked at Gretchen, and then eyed Sahane suspiciously. Nodding, he raised his weapon. “Away from the console, creature.”
The Hjogadim moved back, slender hands raised.
“And him, too, get him away from everything,” Gretchen said, feeling her weakness returning, indicating Hummingbird with a tilt of her helmet. “You mustn’t trust him at all.”
The Templars were quick to action. They forced the nauallis away, to the top of the steps. Hummingbird went without complaint, though his eyes were fixed on Anderssen, his entire body tensed.
No, old Crow, I won’t tell you what I’m going to do. Not now, not ever again.
She suppressed a start of alarm when the still-open secondary comm channel squeaked in her ear. Oh oh, not much time left! Rubbing her gloves together, Anderssen placed her hands on the console.
The control surfaces gleamed like water under her touch. The glyphs swam to and fro in her unsteady vision. She closed both eyes, letting her mind grow quiet, feeling the pattern of the ancient machinery radiating against her outstretched hands. Somewhere here…
“This is truly a construct of the Vay’en?” Hummingbird’s voice was reasonable, quiet, and far distant from her hurrying, busy thoughts. “A curious turn, to find the Hjogadim here in such numbers…”
“I do not know of these Vahyyyen,” Sahane replied testily. “My people built this fastness long ago, for our signs and symbols are everywhere. Even the passage-signs are in archaic Hjogadim, just as you might read in the Perfect Path. You trespass! This female of yours cannot have the first conception of how to-”
Gretchen moved along the control surface, following fragmentary memories, until a collection of glyphs under her hands suddenly felt incorrect.
A constellation of meanings, she perceived, where specific arrangements of the glyphs equal actions. Not verbs and nouns, but hieroglyphs. Like in the transit core outside. She adjusted two of the outermost symbols, letting them flow under her fingertips into their long-accustomed, proper orientation.
A rippling groan permeated the air, rising up from the floor below the pylon. Everyone tensed, but nothing happened immediately. Anderssen craned her neck over the edge to see that the endless rows of cradles had tilted upright. Their restraining wings were unfolding. Ready for the next fifty thousand passengers!
“I did that,” she said idly to the onlookers. Then she returned to letting her awareness expand and hoped against hope to grasp the meaning of these… That is odd. Two whole sequences of the controls were suddenly and clearly out of joint. These feel… stuck. She tried to move them back into what was so-obviously their proper configuration. Intermittent thought-images from her gold-tinged dreams surfaced, colliding with the glyphs on the
