Текст книги "Precipice"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

10

February 23, 2267

Quinn nudged the Rocinanteout of warp speed a few million kilometers from the Class-M planet he and Bridy Mac had been sent to scout. Checking the proximity sensors, he said to Bridy, “Looks like we’re all alone out here.”

“Good,” she said. Her attention was fixed on the readout from the ship’s sensors, which were scanning the system and its third planet. “No radio activity on the planet’s surface,” she said. “I’m reading a lot of metallic debris in orbit.”

“Satellites?”

“I think so.” She adjusted the settings on her console. “Some of them have nuclear cores, but none of them is active. No signal activity.”

Pointing at the planet’s two small moons, Quinn asked, “What about those? Any signs of life?”

“Negative,” Bridy said. “Airless rockballs.”

The impulse engines thrummed as Quinn piloted the Rocinanteinto orbit. “I’ll keep clear of the orbital junkyard if you want to take a closer look at the surface.”

“Already starting my sweep,” she said. “Looks like all but the tropical latitudes are glaciated.”

He settled into a steady orbit a few hundred kilometers above the highest satellites. Locking the course into the autopilot, he asked Bridy, “What about life signs?”

“Mostly concentrated in a band around the equator,” she said. “The southern coast of the planet’s largest land mass has a decent variety of plant forms and a few groupings of humanoids large enough to register on sensors. And it looks like the oceans are teeming, even under the ice sheets.”

Quinn reclined his seat. “Maybe I’ll do some fishing.”

“Stay on task for once, will you?” She tapped more commands into her console. “Based on the distribution of refined metals and residual topographical features, I’d say this planet used to have hundreds of major population centers. It might have supported a population of as many as two billion people.”

Despite his efforts to remain aloof, Quinn found himself curious about the planet. “What happened to ’em?”

“No idea,” Bridy said. “A war. Maybe a natural disaster or a virus. No way to tell without going down there.”

“Never my favorite answer,” Quinn said.

Bridy relayed a set of coordinates to Quinn’s navigation screen. “Let’s start with an aerial recon of the deserted cities. I want to get a sense of how long ago this civilization collapsed. After that we can head for one of the larger settlements on the southern coast.”

“Your command is my to-do list,” Quinn said.

He plotted a course through the ring of dead satellites and readied the ship for atmospheric entry. The massive orb of the planet filled his cockpit canopy. Seconds later, a pale orange wall of superheated gas formed ahead of the Rocinanteas it made its swift descent. Turbulence shook the small cargo vessel, and the ship’s spaceframe groaned in protest. The planet’s curved horizon quickly flattened as Quinn dived toward its surface. His ship shot like an arrow through a gray mountain of clouds, and he leveled the ship’s flight.

Glancing at his instruments, he said, “Comin’ up on your first point of interest.” He pointed to starboard. “That side.”

“Can you take us down to two kilometers?”

“Sure.” Quinn eased the ship’s nose downward, dropping them to a lower altitude within seconds. “How’s that?”

“Perfect,” Bridy said. “Give me a slow circle of the area.”

Quinn guided the Rocinantethrough a shallow banking turn that took them around a massive urban ruin. The crumbling remains of once-majestic skyscrapers were overgrown with plant life; some structures appeared to have collapsed only recently, cutting wide swaths across the lush vegetation that was reclaiming the former city.

In a hushed voice he said, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

Bridy nodded, apparently recognizing the quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.” With her gaze still fixed on the decaying metropolis, she replied, “Yup.” She looked at Quinn with a somber expression. “Let’s move on and see what the next site looks like.”

“You got it,” Quinn said.

Over the next few hours, they saw dozens of former cities, all in various stages of decay: conquered by wilderness they had once displaced, swallowed by seas they had once kept at bay, buried by a desert’s inexorable march, or ground into dust by continent-wide sheets of ice nearly two kilometers thick.

“I’ve seen enough,” Bridy Mac said as they cruised over a moonlit coastline dotted with the disintegrating tops of sunken towers. “Set course for the largest humanoid settlement. Rig for silent running and make our altitude ten kilometers.”

“On it,” Quinn said. He entered the changes into the helm and relied on his instruments to guide him as night fell and made it impossible for him to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. “I take it I’ll be doin’ the talkin’ if we decide to go down and meet the locals?”

“As usual,” Bridy said.

One of the reasons she needed him as a partner was to skirt Starfleet’s all but sacrosanct Prime Directive, which forbade its officers from making contact with or interfering in the affairs of pre-warp cultures. As a civilian, Quinn wasn’t bound by the Prime Directive. To preserve their cover as traveling merchants and prospectors, he was responsible for initiating contact with species that would be off-limits for Bridy, who was still a Star-fleet officer, albeit on detached duty.

“Okay, we’re in position,” Quinn said.

Bridy ran another sensor sweep and studied the accumulated data. “Looks like they’ve built on the remains of an old city. Livestock, natural fertilizers in the soil, diverse agriculture … it’s a pretty large farming community. I’m also reading a lot of small sail-powered ships along the coast.” She smiled at Quinn. “There’s your fishing spot.”

“I’ll dust off my rod and reel.” He folded his hands behind his head, leaned back in his chair until it was almost horizontal, and stared through the canopy at the flickering stars. “We gonna hover up here all night? Or go down and say hello?”

The lithe brunette shut off the sensor apparatus. “Fine, let’s go meet the locals. But this time keep the ship ready for a quick liftoff. I don’t want a repeat of that mess on Cygnar.”

The mere mention of that planet made Quinn wince. He would never forget the ambush with which that world’s primitive reptilian natives had greeted him and Bridy several months earlier. “Don’t worry,” he said, massaging a phantom pain where a dart had pierced his ribs. “Running away’s my specialty.”

McLellan watched the shadowy details of a gutted city rise to meet the Rocinanteas Quinn piloted the ship to a landing on a mostly level patch of rubble-strewn ground surrounded by four ancient brick walls with no roof.

The ship hovered over the landing site for a few seconds, extended its landing gear, and made a smooth vertical descent. With a mechanical whine the wingtips folded into their landing configuration, up and inward over the bulky warp nacelles, which together were as massive as the ship they served. Quick spurts from the directional thrusters kicked up dust and vapor beneath the ship, which submerged into the cloud and settled to the ground with a soft tremor of contact. “Nicely done,” McLellan said.

“Years of practice,” Quinn replied, switching the ship’s systems to ready-standby and activating its exterior floodlights. Beyond the walls that surrounded the ship, several humanoid shapes were approaching. “Looks like we drew a crowd.”

“Do they have torches and pitchforks?”

“Not that I can see.”

She got out of her chair. “Then let’s go say hi.”

Quinn followed McLellan aft to the gangplank. She pushed a button, and the ramp descended with a whirring of motors and a hiss of hydraulics. Curtains of white vapor billowed downward and spilled to either side of the ramp, blanketing the ground with fog. Quinn walked outside, taking the lead.

Stepping off the ship behind Quinn, McLellan saw him undo the leather safety strap on the holster of his stun pistol. She kept her own compact phaser tucked out of sight under her shirt, in a sheath attached to her belt.

They waited underneath the thick aft section of the Rocinante’s main hull, which was shaped like a narrow wedge. The exterior of the ship was a mottled dark gray with pale splotches from years of crude repairs at various alien shipyards. The cockpit was covered by a dark-tinted canopy.

A group of six humanoids clambered through gaps in the walls around the Rocinante. The first ones through reached back to assist the others. Once they were all inside the gutted structure, they stepped into the glow of the Rocinante’s floodlamps.

The entourage consisted of what looked like four males and two females. Tall and thin, they had slender limbs and six long delicate digits on each hand. Their chins and foreheads were prominent and squarish, their noses were broad, and their large ears protruded horizontally from their heads. All of them wore simple clothing that looked as if it had been made by hand.

At first McLellan thought they were albinos, but as they moved closer she saw they had pale gray complexions. All six of them had long straight hair the color of white gold.

Their most striking feature, however, was the single lidless multifaceted eye that ran the length of each individual’s brow, between the nose and forehead.

The female leading the group stepped forward, paying no heed to Quinn, and addressed McLellan. With a subtle forward bow, the female said, “My name is Naya Parzych. I am the cynosure of Leuck Shire. Welcome to the planet Golmira.”

Not wanting to give offense by trying to deflect the woman’s attention to Quinn, McLellan mimicked the slight bow and replied, “Thank you. My name is Bridget McLellan, and this is my friend and business partner, Cervantes Quinn.”

Dipping his chin, Quinn said to Naya, “Ma’am.”

McLellan said, “Our species calls itself human.”

Clearly picking up on the cue, Naya replied, “We refer to ourselves as Denn.” She cast a disapproving look at Quinn’s sidearm. “If you’ve come in search of plunder, I doubt we have anything worth your trouble.”

Quinn raised his palms. “No slight intended, ma’am. It’s just for self-defense. Doesn’t even have a kill setting.” His words seemed to calm Naya, so he continued. “You and yours seem pretty calm for folks meeting alien visitors.”

The group’s other female stepped forward and spoke with quiet contempt. “You’re not the first offworlders we’ve met. Or the second. Or the third.”

Naya glared at the younger woman, who backed away half a step. Looking back at Quinn and McLellan, Naya said, “On behalf of my daughter, Ilka, I apologize. However, her frustration with offworlders is one shared by many of our people.”

McLellan folded her arms. “May I ask why?”

“Previous visitors to Golmira left when they learned we had no resources worth exploiting,” Naya said. “Our carbon fuels and fissionable elements are long since depleted. Some aliens came in search of special crystals but found we had none. Others were looking for worlds to colonize, but with so much of our planet covered in ice, and the rest barely arable, we must not be worth the effort it would take to make us habitable.”

Quinn smiled. “Sounds like they just didn’t know a good deal when they saw one. I mean, sure, your planet’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but to folks who know what they’re doin’, it’s a garden spot waitin’ to happen.”

Naya frowned. “I don’t understand.”

McLellan tried to cut her partner off. “Quinn, maybe we—”

“If you folks are willin’ to trade with offworlders, I’ll tell you who to do business with: the Federation.”

Wrinkles creased Naya’s high forehead. “The what?”

“The United Federation of Planets,” Quinn said. “Hundreds of worlds, dozens of species, all workin’ together in peace. They’re pretty far from here, but they got ships and people comin’ out this way all the time now. I’ve been dealin’ with ’em for years. They’re the most honest business partners I’ve ever had.” Shooting an abashed glance at McLellan, he added, “Present company excepted, of course.”

With a glare and a smile, McLellan replied, “Of course.”

The Denn behind Naya murmured among themselves. She looked over her shoulder at them, then turned back. “I have no reason to doubt your word,” she said to Quinn. “But I have to ask, why would a civilization so advanced that it could repair a world in such dire condition as ours want to do so? What do we have that would make such an effort worthwhile?”

It was to McLellan’s dismay that Naya’s question made Quinn flash a broad grin and reply, “That’s an excellent question. Let’s all go discuss it over dinner.”

It was the strangest farming village that Quinn had ever seen.

The walk from the Rocinanteto the center of the hamlet was short. Along the way they passed patches of grain that sprouted from the gutted foundations of crumbled buildings. Broken chunks of what looked like steel-reinforced concrete had been used to build everything from low property walls to sturdy small homes.

Half of a lone skyscraper jutted up in the middle of the fallen city. Its upper portion had apparently fallen away, but there was no sign of its debris. Quinn surmised that any usable materials had long since been scavenged. All that remained now was its metal skeleton, denuded of façade and windows, emptied of contents, and festooned with fruit-bearing vines.

Cresting the horizon were the planet’s two moons—one full, the other a waxing crescent. They bathed the pastoral but decidedly post-apocalyptic landscape in a pale blue glow.

Naya, her daughter, and their entourage led Quinn and Bridy inside a squat but solid-looking house of stone and wood. Its main room was appointed with simple wooden furniture, and a small fire crackled in a nook along the far wall. Thick candles flickered brightly from numerous wall sconces, and oil lamps hung from the ceiling, suffusing the room with golden light. The smooth cement floor was the only clue the house had been built atop the foundation of something now gone.

As Bridy and Quinn entered, a handful of other Denn looked in their direction. Ushering the two humans forward, Naya announced to the room, “Please welcome our guests, Bridget and Cervantes, and set the table for them.” To her daughter she added, “Please go ask the landgraves to join us.” Ilka slipped out the door while Naya led Quinn and Bridy into the dining room.

“Please, sit down,” Naya said, motioning the humans toward the closest chairs at the dining table. “My brothers and nephews will bring us food and drinks momentarily.”

“Thank you,” Bridy said, taking a seat.

Quinn settled into the chair next to hers and nodded at Naya. “Much obliged, ma’am.”

Moments later, a procession of young men carrying plates of food and pitchers of beverages entered through a swinging door. From the kitchen behind them wafted the aroma of cooked meat, pungent spices, and something sweet. A bite of woodsmoke also lingered in the air.

In less than a minute, the long table was covered with food, plates, cutlery, and linens. Quinn was impressed. They might be funny-lookin’,he mused with a wry half smile, but they lay out a hell of a spread.

He expected the half-dozen men to sit down and join them, but instead Naya’s male kin all retreated back into the kitchen. So that’s how it is here,Quinn realized. Good to know.

After quickly perusing the offerings arrayed before him, Quinn reached toward a bowl of what looked like meat stew.

Under the table, Bridy kicked her heel into his shin. He jerked his hand back to his side and whispered to her, “What?”

Her voice was hushed but sharp. “Do you see herreaching for the food?”

At the head of the table, Naya sat with her hands folded in her lap. No drinks had been poured, and no food had been served.

“Sorry,” Quinn said, feeling more than a little ashamed of himself. His mother had taught him proper manners when he was a boy, but it had been a long time since he’d actually needed to put them to use.

He heard the front door open. A steady patter of footsteps followed. Ilka had returned with five other women, all of them adults like Naya. Their hair colors ranged from pale copper to silver, but otherwise they looked much the same as their hostess.

Naya stood as the women fanned out on either side of the table, so Bridy and Quinn did the same.

“Bridget, Cervantes—allow me to introduce the landgraves of Leuck Shire: Yan Cova, Adeva Oros, Enora Yova, Decin Rokon, and Urova Pren.”

“Hello,” Bridy said.

“A pleasure,” Quinn added, though he was sure he wouldn’t remember any of these ladies’ names in about ten seconds.

Gesturing for everyone to sit, Naya said, “Let us eat.”

Quinn let all the women serve themselves before he covered his own plate with slices of white meat in a brown gravy, hearty bread, and assorted raw and boiled vegetables. Then he picked up a copper pitcher and filled his ceramic mug with an amber fluid that, when he tasted it, reminded him of sweetened tea.

For most of the meal, the landgraves spoke only to Bridy Mac. They asked her banal questions: How many worlds had she been to? What was the life expectancy of a human female? Did men on Earth know their place as they did on Golmira? For the sake of satisfying his hunger and staying out of trouble, Quinn let Bridy do the talking for the first hour or so.

He was in the middle of enjoying his dessert, which bore an uncanny similarity to his grandmother’s pear cobbler, when the topic of conversation finally turned to the Denn and the recent history of their world.

“The collapse was centuries ago,” Naya said. “Journals from that time spoke often of instabilities and upheavals, but no one thought the end could happen so quickly.”

The landgraves nodded, and Yan said, “Survivors of the collapse spoke of a tipping point. Pollution had been warming the air and the seas for centuries before then, but no one did anything about it.”

Decin continued the story. “Our polar caps and permafrost melted, and the seas began to rise, destroying many of our coastal cities. Then the change in the ocean’s salinity disrupted the deep currents that moved warm water from the equator out to the polar latitudes, and the deep freeze began.”

“After countless warnings about how the planet had been warming,” Urova said, “it seemed ironic that Golmira should find itself the victim of a new glacial age. Temperatures plunged. The ice walls advanced, and our ancestors used every bit of energy they could burn to keep their cities alive.”

“But there was no stopping the ice,” said Adeva, picking up the narrative. “Within decades, the carbon fuels and the fissionable elements were used up. The engines stopped, and the cities went dark.”

Enora added, “All that remains of the old world is what you see now. We live in its ashes and grow our crops on its grave.”

Bridy asked, “Didn’t your ancestors explore solar power? Or biofuels? Geothermal taps? Hydroelectrics? Wind turbines?”

The local women nodded. Naya said, “They tried, but by then it was too late. Biofuels require expendable crops, and once the glaciers came we could barely produce enough to subsist. The other options demand resources that our forebears lacked the wisdom to develop in time, and that are now beyond our grasp.”

Quinn leaned forward. “Mind if I ask a question?”

Naya nodded. “Please do.”

“Do you have much contact with other towns? When we were flyin’ in, we noticed y’all have a decent number of boats, and it looks like there are roads between here and some other provinces, or shires, or whatever.”

“Yes,” Naya said. “We trade and share news with other communities on a regular basis. Crops that grow well in one place often fare poorly in others, so we all have an incentive to cooperate. All of this is done by sea, however. The roads between the shires aren’t safe.”

Bridy and Quinn glanced at each other. Bridy asked Naya, “Why aren’t they safe?”

“The Goçeba,” Naya said. “Superstitious nomads. They roam the desert wastes between the coasts and ice walls, and they like to ambush travelers on the roads.”

Decin added, “The only time it’s safe to travel the roads is during the month of the summer solstice, when the Goçebagather at the Precursor temple in the Hinterlands.”

Quinn felt a tingle of anticipation. It was the same sense of excitement he got at the card table whenever he drew a guaranteed winning hand or learned another player’s tell. Feigning nonchalance, he said, “Why do they like the temple?”

Enora replied, “It’s always been a magnet for the delusional, even before the collapse.”

“Some legends say it houses an artifact that predates the evolution of our species,” Naya added. “I’ve never seen it, so I don’t even know if the artifact exists, but the Goçebacertainly believe it does. And they worship it like fools.”

“I’ll bet,” Quinn said. “But only once per year, in high summer?” The Denn women nodded, so he pressed on. “And you said it’s where, exactly?”

“In the Hinterlands,” Adeva said. “In the center of a city once known as Doanhain. It was swallowed by the desert ages ago, but the nomads keep the temple uncovered.”

Quinn looked at Bridy, who inquired, “Is it far from here?”

Naya seemed unsettled by the question. “Why do you ask?”

“Ancient cultures are important to the Federation,” Quinn said. “If it’s as old as your legends say, there are thousands of archaeologists who’d love to study it. That alone could be a huge revenue source for your planet.”

Yan leaned forward, her expression eager. “Really?”

Admiring the woman’s finely honed sense of avarice, Quinn said, “Hell, yeah. But only if it’s reallyold. We’d have to go out and run some tests to be sure, but if that temple’s the real deal, we could probably get Federation support and snag some major investors to help rebuild your planet.”

His proposal inspired several seconds of terse, whispered discussion between the landgraves and their cynosure.

Naya looked up and said, “Would your Federation help control the Goçeba?”

He shrugged. “They’d have to if they want to get anything done.”

“Very well,” Naya said. “The temple is half a day’s ride from here. Tomorrow we’ll provide you with mounts, provisions, and a map. Until then, please stay here in Tegoresko as our guests.”

Bridy replied, “Thank you, Naya. That’s very kind of you.”

Quinn sipped his tea and felt as if he’d done some good by inviting himself to dinner. Then he realized there was one very important question he’d neglected to ask.

“It’s not high summer, is it?”

“No, Cervantes,” Naya said. “It is early spring. The Goçebadon’t convene for many months yet.”

He let out a relieved sigh. “Just checkin’.”