The turquoise queen, p.3
The Turquoise Queen, page 3
part #1 of Coalition Series
Natalie's relief on hearing this was palpable. Her mother saw it, and knew better than to protest.
"Alright you two," she said. "We'll book a transport first thing tomorrow. I better get started on the robots, lots of work to do before we go."
"Just don't take too long mom. You don't want to miss summer in the north hemisphere." Her voice was still loaded with concern. It was by design. The less she had to get into actual specifics, the better.
"You'll be ok?" Naturally, her parents were pointing all that worry right back at her.
"Of course I will. I got this. Just promise you'll go to Earth soon."
"Don't worry."
"First thing tomorrow."
They didn't chat much after that. Just said their goodbyes. She put away the communicator. The encryption hadn't been necessary after all. Still, one could never be too careful in a situation such as this. She'd managed to convince them without placing the burden on their backs. The burden of knowing what was actually going on. On Earth, they'd be as safe as an Earthling could be in the months to come. After that, who knew. It all depended on how well Erchtria's stratagems would play out. Natalie laid her head on the soft, welcoming pillow. Sleep came quick this time.
Farewell mirror
All Uljer heard was the engine roar, droning on without end. Eight fat tires dragging across the barren. They were inside a moving armor, a shield from all the outsideness that wanted them dead. A sun with jaws aflame, a wind blowing tiny shrapnel sand. And the many absences that make deserts so very uninviting to all that lives. "Urvasat doesn't want you boy," old man Dazr always said.
They were sitting together in that claustrophobic space. He was twelve high summers old, a young man. Dazr had brittle dermal plates and tired eyes. Nearly four decades, the deep blue of his teeth had faded pale.
Only that low rumble broke the silence. All the words they had to exchange, they had exchanged in the first few hours of their long trek. Now, just the rumble. It was good. All was well as long as the engine rumbled.
On they went, crammed in that anachronistic mode of transport. With its scratched carapace and tiny windows. Any other, more high tech vehicle would be too fragile. The sandstorms would blow it away, tear it to shreds and spit out the desiccated carcasses of those inside. Or too expensive, with high powered shield generators and redundant fusion cores.
The young man pulled on a thin plastic tube, its transparent surface dulled and yellowed by too much use. It came from a socket in the ceiling, attached to machinery overhead. He took the filthy looking thing to his mouth, drew a long sip of poorly filtered water, wiped it clean. The truck's water distiller needed fixing, soon.
Old man Dazr was the one driving. He did that through a console with maps and blinking lights, and a real-time camera feed from the vehicle's front and sides. Not much to see, just sand, more bleached white sand, and the occasional large pebble that needed dodging. The maps demanded attention more often. It was easy to get lost, and to get lost meant facing Urvasat at its worst.
Shadows changed from west to east. The armored land carrier rumbled on, wide and tall as to dwarf a person standing beside it. It looked lazy, to be so large, so slow, so very old. Such a beast would be a fossil in more civilized parts of the cosmos. But here on Urvasat, this backwater forgotten by its own children, the fossil lived on. Even as its moving parts creaked, as its skin shed, as the water recycled in its bowels tasted funny.
"Time for dinner boy!" Old man Dazr exclaimed, clicking together his dull fangs, satisfied to have something to pepper his boredom with. The shadows were gone, the sea of dunes turned blue and tombstone cold. Still warm and cozy inside the truck though. It deflected well the extremes outside, at least.
He pulled a lever all the way down, and the wheels ground to a halt. The engine kept running though, for it maintained the vehicle's other vital functions as well.
Uljer popped open a compartment on the confined space's left wall, plucked out two plastic bags full of a thick gray powder. Meanwhile, Dazr produced, from a heap of machinery stashed at the back, what looked like an old, over-engineered saucepan. He connected it, via cable and tube, to sockets in the wall. In went the contents of the bags. Water, heat and chemistry, over a few minutes, turned the powder to appetizing chunks.
The two savored the rations. Chewy texture, sweet and sour taste. Galxij were exclusively carnivorous, but flesh this was not. They took their time, wordless. The old man had spent months training him for this job. Begrudgingly answering his doubts, as if he didn't really want him to learn, but answering nonetheless. Now they were on the field, however, a bunch more tiny questions popped into Uljer's mind that he'd like to ask, novice to veteran. This was his first expedition to the Mirror. But he held them for later, allowing his mentor an undisturbed meal.
There were no landmarks, only rolling waves of shallow dunes, the color of bare bones as far as the eye could see. The color of Galxij dermal plates. They used global positioning satellites to find their way. It was a very straight line so far. Their trail was as ephemeral as knife cuts on water. Hours more passed as they inched towards their destination. Out there, the temperature rose ever more unbearable. And mortally low, at night.
Another delicacy drawn from a plastic bag. A different meat flavor, this time crunchy and slightly bitter. Again, they gave the food more attention than it merited.
"They say what the problem is?" The young Galxij was almost certain of what the answer would be, but the silence had finally grown too awkward.
"No."
"Nothing at all?"
"Just that the mining rig stopped responding. We're supposed to find out why."
They chewed quietly. Dazr had seemed a grim, bitter man since the day they'd met. It got worse sometimes, when they talked about work. Uljer had yet to understand why, or learn what had made him this way. But he had managed to extract occasional pearls of wisdom from that scarce source before. It was the closest thing to a wizened mentor available, so he made do.
"Is this normal? I mean, we should have heard from the people operating the rig at some point."
"Yeah, we should have. What does that tell you, boy?" Nothing more to say, no two ways about it. They finished eating, put the wheels to spin again.
Early the next day, the sand gave away. Shards of stone jutted out of it, the shores of an ocean. Not the tiniest shrub or lichen grew here. What life there was cowered many meters underground. The driver grew careful now. The terrain was not smooth anymore. The vehicle was sturdy, built for this. Yet, even in its natural habitat, a beast may still find death if it was not careful.
Though rugged and winding, the road was easy to see. It had been paved long ago, used many times a year by expeditions such as this. Yet Urvasat labored always to take it back, to heal this scar cut on its face by pesky inhabitants. A loose rock here, a roaring twister there. It tried, and sometimes almost succeeded.
Dazr wove his way across the tricky terrain with relative ease. He was an experienced desert dweller. Still, the voyage was boring no longer. His reflexes were somewhat tested here. Obstacles aplenty to dodge. Heat made the air tremble all around, turning everything in sight into a mirage.
Then came a full stop. A large boulder was blocking the way. With cliffs left and right, there was no way around. They must leave their moving oasis. Uljer wanted to do so at once. His mentor, who knew better, said to wait until late afternoon.
The two ventured into the gold tinted landscape, under the still scorching flames of a sun low in the sky. Uljer took a cumbersome seismic sensor from the heap of tech in the back of the truck, rammed the machine's sharp tip into the soil. It emitted a low hum for a few seconds, then reported back what it had found. The adjacent cliff walls were stable enough, the young Galxij declared. At that, Dazr affixed three shaped charges to the boulder, gave it a long look, thought a bit, added a fourth.
They returned to the vehicle, shifted the engine to reverse, put some distance between themselves and their handiwork. The explosion turned the large rock into tiny ones, sending them flying in every direction. The ones that stayed could be run over without problem. The journey resumed. They exchanged a brief look of relief. Almost there now.
First light the next day, the land went flat, then disappeared ahead of them, into a tall, sheer cliff, which went on for kilometers untold in both directions. What had once been the shore of a vast sea, now the Mirror's edge. Perched on that edge, iron black against the bleached earth and sky, a tower of machinery.
As if held back by portent, the truck felt slower as it neared the mining rig. A building made of many moving parts that should not be silent, yet were. At the pull of a lever, the vehicle came to a full stop, parked as close to the structure as safely possible. Yet the engine still rumbled. It would continue rumbling for as long as they were past the habitable zone.
The roadblock had caused an unexpected delay. Now, the sun was rising. They had only a couple hours to suit up and begin work. Flexible, heat dissipating fabrics to cover skin which was already tough and heat resistant by nature. Boots with insulating soles. Gloves soft over hard claws. Hats and goggles. It didn't take long to suit up. It made them look like astronauts on an alien world.
One had trained for this, the other had done this many times. Not exactly this, Uljer thought to himself. Dazr had described many expeditions to Mirror mining rigs, many things that could go wrong, and on occasion had. None of it had sounded like this. Whatever had happened, it was bad. The old man tried to look calm and confident, so as to not scare him, but it was see through.
They walked towards the structure, its stillness looming over them. All those gears that should be turning, drills that should be boring, conveyors belts that should be rolling. And beyond, below, into the flat horizon, the Mirror.
They entered through a small, thick hatch. It creaked long and horribly rusty. It was dark inside. The sun couldn't harm them in there. But they couldn't see its position in the sky either. A distraction would force them to spend the day inside. No way yet of knowing if that would be safe. No one knew why the facility had gone silent.
The passage was narrow, leaky pipes and cables running its length. Not of water, the pipes, for that was too valuable a resource to let leak. Those drops were of lubricating fluids, catalysts and the sort. Some toxic. The two repairmen kept their protective gear on going forward. First stop was the control center, at the top of the tower. There was an elevator, but no power. Only ladders to climb.
A few minutes later, they reached the top. They needed flashlights to do it. It was early morning outside, but in there it was pitch black, so that even two Galxij, with their prodigious night vision, had trouble seeing where they were going.
The control room was just as dark. Dazr scoured the walls with the flashlight until he found a crank with a large button next to it. He gave it a few turns, then pushed the button. Faint emergency lights went on in the ceiling, and the control panel came back to life.
The flashing symbols for danger and malfunction appeared a couple of times on the screens. The silhouette of a Galxij's flat, wide skull, split open by a lightning bolt. A gear, broken in three uneven pieces.
While Uljer examined the consoles, Dazr walked towards the nearest window. At the push of a lever, the blinds covering it were lifted, flooding the room with natural light. The window overlooked the Mirror's vast, flat, unforgiving surface. The glass had a downward inclination, allowing whoever was in the room to visually inspect the drills far below.
"I think I found the problem," Uljer said, gritting his deep blue fangs in disgust.
"Yeah, I think I found it too."
The pair looked down at the gruesome mess below. Shrapnel everywhere. Debris. Machinery and metal scaffolding, bent and torn. Scorch marks. Some sort of explosion had occurred. And three bodies. An unpleasant realization dawned on them:
"We'll have to go down there."
Seeing the sun, the two hurried back down the ladders and the corridor, to the truck. The hatch opened, letting in an overheated late morning breeze. The walk outside was brief but exhausting. In the dark cool of the vehicle's crew compartment, they took off the insulating suits. Hot vapor sipped from the cracks between their dermal plates. It's how Galxij sweat.
At afternoon's late hours, they set out again, but not down the cliff to investigate the wreckage. There were other, less sinister tasks to complete. Better to save the worst for last. First, a complete systems diagnostics. What was broken, what was not. That could be done from the safety of the rig's control center.
Main drill not operational. Obvious. Drill access elevator not operational. Not unexpected, but a major obstacle nonetheless. It was a drop of nearly three hundred meters to the Mirror's surface. They'd have to use the ladders. Maybe even rappel down, if those were destroyed too.
Conveyor belt, orbital cargo deployment module, cables and pipes, solar panels. Everything above the cliff seemed intact. The lights flickered and went out again. It took a few more spins of the crank on the wall to bring them back on.
"Everything up here's in one piece, so why is the power out?" Dazr mumbled to himself.
A few more checkups gave him an answer. The solar panels that should be supplying the facility were offline. That became the next item on the repairs list. Too far to go on foot in these parts, so, after a night of inspecting the tower, the duo returned to the truck.
At sunrise, the wheels spun again. Driving was one of the few things doable during daytime. So they drove to the rig's solar park. Running parallel to the conveyor belt, it was a short road, far better paved than the long, winding one connecting the facility to the habitable zone.
The conveyor was littered with the powdered rock it had been carrying when the power went out. It ended at the deployment module. That consisted of a cargo packaging machine linked to a large magnetic accelerator. Similar in design to a Sencris railgun, it was used to launch crates of processed ore into space, to be collected by transport ships in orbit. All automated, probably the most advanced piece of tech in a thousand kilometer radius. All quiet.
The road went on past it, reaching the rig's solar park. Dozens of durable, efficient solar panels, distributed in neat rows. It didn't take long to find the problem. All were covered by a thick layer of sand.
"A storm must have hit the area a little while after..." Images of the corpses down below completed Uljer's thought.
"What happened back there, have you ever seen anything like it?" He asked.
Dazr brought the truck to a stop, but it'd be hours before it was cold enough to work outside. The old man popped two ration bags open, started preparing a meal. Feeling more chatty than usual, he replied, conspiratorial.
"Dead Galxij you mean? Yeah, a few times. In case you haven't noticed, ours is a dangerous line of work. Dangerous and unfulfilling, if you ask me."
Lots of manual labor ahead, so they waited for dusk. Outside the vehicle's thick, insulating walls, it was noon on high summer. Only an emergency would merit a journey from the habitable zone here, on high summer. Through the slit of glass of a window, the two men stared at the cliff and, beyond it, at the Mirror. That constant presence, with its unnatural smooth surface, a facsimile of the world and sky above. "I remember the first time I saw the Mirror," Dazr said. "It was low summer then, you could almost survive the equatorial heat. I had two more Galxij with me. A veteran who was jolly because he'd always gotten lucky in his missions, and a youngling like you. We were there to replace the crew of another mining rig. Or maybe it was this same one, I don't know. The things all look and feel the same.
"Our road trip had been easy enough, like the one you and I had getting here. After half a year alone in that rig, the crewmen were jumping with excitement to see our truck. We chatted a bit, they gave us a few hints and tips, then they hopped on the truck and were on their way.
"I spent a long time just staring at it, that plain of liquid glass without end. It looked so beautiful back then. Work was hard, repetitive. And as the seasons changed, each dawn got more dangerous than the one before. But we managed just fine. Until Urvasat decided to teach me a lesson."
He looked away from the window. As the sun began to set, Dazr declared that it was time to get to work.
They each grabbed a broom and stepped outside. Uljer approached the nearest solar panel, started scrubbing it clean. Meanwhile, his coworker tried to figure out why they were covered in sand in the first place.
On the ground near the road, half buried, he found the metallic carcass of a walker form robot. Its mechanical arms were missing, its legs bent in awkward angles. Damaged beyond repair and cannibalized for parts. This, he said, was the robot which was supposed to periodically scrub clean the solar panels. Except it was broken and, from the looks of it, had been broken for a long time. With a loud swear, he sent the wreckage flying with a kick.
"This is ridiculous! This thing's probably been broken for years!" Startled, Uljer interrupted his work. The old man continued without paying attention. "Do you know what this means!"
Livid, he didn't wait for an answer.
"Those poor bastards down there had to come here every other night, on foot, just to scrub the panels clean. Risking death from exposure, just to keep the damned rig working, to make sure they wouldn't die of thirst because the blasted water recyclers ran out of power! All because the miserable assholes in the capital wouldn't send them a new robot!"
Earth and sky joined at the horizon to form a vast field of stars. Out here, without any city lights to outshine them, there were so many, so bright, above and reflected below. Dazr sat on the sand under their pale glow, panting, his tail curled up in a defensive position. So very tired and brittle.
"And now they're dead. And when we go down there to see what happened, it'll be because of something just as stupid!"
Uljer sat next to him, at a reasonable distance so as to give him the space he needed, and waited.
