New World Read online

  In the middle of the room, Slate searched under the table, and found an assortment of tools. Some looked much like ones you’d find in any house’s garage, and others were far more complex. “I hope we don’t need to use one of these to turn the power on.” Slate held up a device with ten prongs sticking out of it, and what looked like thousand-year-old grease piled on each tip.

  Suma walked over to him, sorting the tools on the table, not saying anything. I smiled and headed for a doorway that would lead us further inside.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, more for the sake of saying it than needing to.

  Slate was always ready. He nodded, raising his gun as I turned the handle, feeling the years of neglect fight me as I pressed the lever. It eventually moved, and I pulled, opening us up into the next room. It was the right door, which was good, because it was the only door.

  “This is it,” Slate whispered as we walked inside the large open bay room. Machinery sat in clumps along the edges of the room, but the center was what drew our eyes. A massive clear crystal the size of a dump truck sat glimmering as our lights reflected off it. The thousands of edges on it each angled the light out in a beautiful pattern around the room’s wall and ceiling. “Isn’t that something.”

  It was. Where the crystals in the “boiler room” we’d seen up top had been glowing a tiny bit, this one was dead. It was just a crystal down here. The largest single crystal I’d ever seen, but it was here.

  “Does the rock power things, or does it just act as a transmitter?” Slate asked, and I shrugged, having no idea.

  Suma came behind us, her black eyes even wider than normal. She walked around the room, and just as I was about to tell her to be careful, I noticed she wasn’t just out for a stroll; she was figuring it out. She found an input into the crystal and traced it back to the machines sitting idly around the edges of the room.

  Five minutes later, she was standing at a large machine that looked like a combination of a commercial furnace, an icemaker, and an oil derrick. It was just ten feet wide and twelve or so high, but she stood at the hunk of junk like it was going to be our savior.

  “What do you have there, Suma?” I asked, breaking her from her analysis.

  “This is the start. We fire this up, the rest will follow. In ideal scenarios.” The small alien continued to astound me. Clare would love this one. Mary would too. I’d been trying to forget about my friends and loved ones since we’d traveled, just wanting to focus on the task at hand. Thinking about Mary and getting back to her gave me a well-needed boost of energy.

  “What do we do?” Slate asked, hands ready to work.

  “We have to get each operational again. Mostly cleaning and lubricating.”

  A few minutes later, we started moving from machine to machine, of which there were about seven, leading up to the initial power generator. Slate held the ten-headed lubricator tool and stuck it out, trying to get me to take it.

  “No way. You made the joke earlier, you deal with it. It’s only fair.” I spoke too soon, because that meant I was crawling under the machines to make sure the wiring was in place and intact. They looked different than the cables I was used to, but I imagined the principle held the same. They were thick, round, and clear. Instead of metal as the conductor, it looked like a fiber-optic material, possibly the same as the crystal. I wasn’t sure.

  An hour later, we were covered in dirt, grease, and sweat, but Suma thought they just might be operational.

  “Let’s move back, just in case something goes terribly wrong,” I suggested, moving from the center of the room to the side, beside the first machine, from where we could also make a quick exit.

  “It has a hard start,” Suma said, moving to a panel on the machine. It had a touchscreen on the outside, but it was dark.

  “How do you know all this?” I asked her.

  “My father is the Gatekeeper, and my mother studies how other races tick. She’s a technology expert of many solar systems. She wants me to take after her, so I’ve learned how to understand machines.”

  “Is that what you want to do?” I asked.

  Her lower arms raised up into her version of a shrug. “I suppose. I really want to take after my father, but after today, I suspect I’ll never be allowed in the Shandra again.”

  Her honesty was refreshing, and I hoped we could get her home to hash it all out. Whatever she did, she’d do it well. Her hands found what looked like a large primer and pushed it, while turning a knob to the left and holding it. Soon my feet vibrated, along with the floor.

  “You did it!” Slate exclaimed. Suma beamed, her snout twitching inside her filter mask.

  Lights appeared on the first machine’s touchscreen, and symbols I didn’t recognize glowed on a white background. Suma peered at them thoughtfully before hitting a series of them. The vibrations increased as each machine began to spring to life, one at a time, ten or so seconds between them.

  Recessed wall lighting glowed white as the power made its way around the room, and soon our suit lights were unnecessary. Mine turned off automatically, and I saw Slate’s do the same. My friend was grinning ear to ear, and he stuck his fist out for a bump. I happily obliged.

  “You’re amazing, Suma. How long before…” I stopped asking the question as the huge crystal began to glow from the center out. It was like watching the sunrise from a high vantage point. One moment it’s dark, the next a soft glow, and in a while, you’re covered in all the sun’s glory. We stared at the stone for five minutes, feeling the energy vibrate off of it. A series of cords glowed from underneath it, snaking out toward the city, the clear fiber optics blue with energy. It was a brilliant sight. Eventually, we had to avert our eyes to avoid damaging them.

  “Time to see if our building is up,” I said, making for the exit. “Great work, Suma. Your parents will be proud of you.” Her pace slowed at this, and I put an arm around her short shoulders.

  “Thank you, Dean,” her translator said after a small squawk.

  We headed outside and could already see the effect of the power being on. Buildings started to light up floor by floor, until we were covered in the soft glow of a long-dead city block. Street lights I hadn’t even seen before were on, lighting our way back to the tower.

  “That’s better,” Slate said, casually walking with his rifle slung over his shoulder. “We should be able to get back up and to the room in twenty minutes.”

  I was happy with that timeline. I wasn’t sure how long we’d been gone, but it hadn’t been more than a couple of hours yet. Given the circumstances, that was a win.

  The sounds of the city had changed when the power turned on. There was a constant hum as things turned on for the first time in centuries. In a few lower buildings, which appeared to be stores of some sort, I spotted screens playing advertisements.

  “Hold on,” I said, walking over to one. A thin alien, with a tail as large as its legs, talked to the audience, his language silent through the glass window. His face was long, with no visible nose and a slit of a mouth. His eyes were deep-set and marble-sized, black as the night was now. He pointed up, long arms extended to a sky that was still partly blue but in the middle of a lightning storm. “I think this was before they left. Before things got too bad here.” The video was short, ending and repeating on a loop.

  The constant hum we’d been hearing accelerated, and the ground shook violently, almost enough to send us sprawling. I grabbed the wall, and Slate caught Suma, steadying her.

  “That can’t be good,” Slate said, looking around for a sign of trouble.

  “Who knows what happened when we fired it up? Maybe we caused an explosion in a building’s power system.” I was going to say more, but a loud screech cried through the air, causing us all to cover our ears.

  When I looked up, five small drone-like ships were hovering near us. They were each only about a foot across, but the red lights flashing on them made me think they weren’t there to guide us home.

  A series of rob
otic commands came through the front one’s speakers, and Suma’s translator automatically relayed the message. “You are trespassing. Drop any weapons. Place hands on your heads.”

  The message repeated twice before we caught it all. “What happens if we don’t?” I asked quietly, hoping Slate was on the same page as me. Our eyes locked, and his finger twitched, ready for a trigger. I spun, pushing Suma behind me, and fired my rifle in quick succession, hearing Slate do the same thing. The unsuspecting drones didn’t even move as we blew four of them out of the air, scrap metal falling to the ground in a clank. That left one, which flew away spewing out commands Suma’s translator didn’t pick up.

  “Run!” I said, keeping Suma in front of me. The drone was following us, and we were only half a block from the lift to bring us back to the platform where we’d started this city walk. Small blasts hit the ground between us as we zigged and zagged down the road, Slate firing back over his shoulder as we ran.

  Just as we neared the lift, Slate turned, stood firmly, and took aim just as a red beam fired at him. He let off a volley of shots, being rewarded with a small explosion. He jumped to the side to avoid the red beam, which ended up hitting the ground at my feet. “Yeah!” he cheered.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I moved to the lift and we all got on, Suma hitting the pedal again. The sooner we got back, the sooner we’d get the hell out of this abandoned nightmare. The lightning seemed to be flashing more often now, and after having been below, walking the city streets, I could see why a race would want to leave this place. It was unnerving.

  The lift carried us upward, my knees holding firm against the sudden change in trajectory.

  “What’s that noise?” Suma asked, moving to the side of the lift.

  I hadn’t heard anything, but when I concentrated, there was a constant hum again, this one getting louder by the second.

  Suma pointed, and Slate and my gazes followed along to see a cloud moving to intercept us.

  “What the hell is it?” Slate asked, his voice panicked, but it only took us a few more seconds to answer that. It was a horde of drones.

  EIGHT

  “We have to get inside!” I yelled as the lift stopped short of the platform we needed to get to. “Suma?”

  “It’s stuck.” She pressed the pedals, but nothing happened. “Maybe they jammed it.”

  We were only five feet from the ledge, and Slate jumped, pulling himself up with a grunt. I saw the cloud of drones coming in fast, and at this distance, I could make out individual units, rather than a clump of them. We were running out of time.

  Slate’s hand reached down, and Suma grabbed it. He pulled her up with ease as I jumped, grabbing the ledge myself. I worked at pulling myself up, the months of training having done wonders for my upper body strength. The first laser fire hit as I rolled to my side on the platform, Slate and Suma already running for the doorway. I chased after them, smoking holes appearing on the walkway around me as the hundred or so drones fired away at us.

  The door was there, and Slate got it open, ushering Suma in first. When he turned to let me in, I felt the shot hit. It burned into my leg, nearly causing me to fall, but Slate grabbed hold of my collar and threw me inside like a bouncer tossing a drunk onto the street. He slammed the door shut behind us, pulse fire hitting the outside of the building like rain on a tin roof on a hot summer day.

  “Will it hold?” I asked no one in particular. My leg was bleeding, but it looked more like a graze than serious damage. It hurt like hell, though.

  Suma was moving down the hall to a touchscreen on the wall, which was lit up in glowing green light.

  “If I can…” Her mask was off her face, and her snout was straight forward, the ends of it mechanically moving back and forth. The gesture seemed a mixture of concentration and nerves. Her thick hands fluttered across the screen deftly, and in a minute, the firing ceased.

  Slate was activating the window screen on the access, which had been black before we had the power on. It now showed us what was on the other side. The hundred or so drones had stopped attacking and were slowly moving back the way they’d come.

  “Great work, Suma. How did you do that?” I asked.

  “I knew they would be linked to the network somewhere. I just had to break through their clearance settings. It was basic. We’ve had this technology for centuries.” She made it seem so easy, and I stumbled toward her, throwing my arms around the small alien girl.

  She didn’t seem to understand the gesture at first, but soon I felt her four arms wrap around me, and Slate was there, picking both of us up.

  “Quite the team. You did well, little buddy.” He patted the girl on the shoulder, and she beamed, her big black eyes wide. “You too, boss.” As if I needed the motivation. My calf was burning up, but I knew we could get back soon if the device would work. Slate slipped some water out of my bag, and we all drank, relishing the refreshment. I realized just how tired I was; the exhaustion of the day started to take its toll.

  I found a bandage inside the pack, and after rolling up my pant leg and painfully washing the wound with a liberal amount of water, I placed the cloth over my calf. It stung but already felt better. They evidently had improved the bandage, because if I didn’t know better, it was healing me on contact.

  “Time to go home, Suma.” I got up, and we started to walk back the way we’d come. The place was lit now that the power was on, making it much easier to see our surroundings. I could see the signs of centuries of vacancy, even in the sealed corridors. Our footprints were still on the floor, evidence we’d been the first people to tread on the floors in a long time. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the echo of a race that had once lived vibrantly in a technologically advanced society. I prayed they still lived and thrived on a new world, much like we would on New Spero.

  The trip was fast, and soon we were walking past the room I thought of as the boiler room, the stones glowing blue, energy thrumming out into the halls and rooms of the high-rise. We kept moving, arriving at the Shandra, the room we’d started our adventure in.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, approaching the door. My heart pounded in my chest, my face getting flushed as I worried the room would be dark, dead. We’d be stuck forever on this horrible empty world.

  The door slid to the side with a hiss, and Suma let out a tweet her translator didn’t relay. The room was dim, but as we entered it, the hieroglyphs came to life along the walls. So many places to see, so many worlds out there. I couldn’t let my brain think about it, because it made everything I knew seem so small and insignificant. If there were hundreds of known worlds with rooms just like this, that meant the universe was so much larger than even the corner we’d seen, travelling faster than light and traversing wormholes.

  Suma led us to the center of the room, where the table stood.

  “Which world do you need to go to?” she asked.

  Slate and I looked at each other. The sickening feeling that had finally started to subside was back.

  “Proxima. We call it New Spero.” My own voice sounded distant to my ears.

  She looked at the icon options. “Which one?”

  “We don’t know. Until a couple of hours ago, we had no idea what a Shandra was, or that we could use them to travel between worlds,” I said, trying to keep calm, but failing.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know where your home is.” The squeaks came out softly, and I could tell that Suma was upset she couldn’t help us.

  “Your father is a Gatekeeper?” Slate asked, showing more common sense than me.

  “Yes. My world’s finest, and we come from an ancient lineage of gatekeepers.”

  “Then he’ll know how to get us home.” Slate slid his pack and rifle off his shoulders and nodded to the table. “Take us there.”

  “I can’t. If I bring strangers through, he’ll be very upset. I wasn’t supposed to be using it. I’ll never be allowed through again.” Her squawks rose in pitch.

  “Suma,
he’ll understand. I’ll take the blame,” I said, hoping the rest of her race were as sensible and kind as she’d been.

  “Okay. I do want you to make it home. I like you both.”

  I smiled at this, and Slate’s face stayed intense and impassive. I wondered to what lengths the big man would have gone to twist her arm into helping us. I pushed it away, since we weren’t going to have to find out.

  “Are you ready?” she asked. We held our belongings and said that we were.

  She used the console on the table, tapping an icon with four arrows crossing over each other like a compass. A mountain range stood behind the symbol. Soon the rock lit up, and the room went so brilliant I had to close my eyes. This trip was far less startling, since we hadn’t been moving and were expecting it, but I still felt nauseous as the light dimmed, and we found ourselves in a totally different place.

  A siren emanated from beyond the door at the far side of the space. This room was massive, at least twenty times the size of the last one, and the pillars stood a great distance apart. The floor was white, like pristine marble, not a speck of dirt evident to my gaze. The walls were adorned with pictures on screens, reminding me of my favorite section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York suddenly felt like a lifetime ago. I looked up, but the light coming from the ceiling was too bright for me to see how high the room went up.

  “Tell me this is your home,” I whispered to Suma, who gave a lift of her snout, which I was starting to associate as a smile.

  “It is home.”

  The doors opened, and a dozen beings entered, their thick legs and torsos looking a lot like Suma’s, but they were at least twice her size, dwarfing even Slate. “Oh boy,” I said under my breath as Suma stepped between us and the quickly advancing entourage of her people.

  “Stop,” she said, twitching at how loud her own voice came out. She fiddled with something on her sleeve, and when she spoke again, the translator was turned off. It was a private conversation, and she didn’t want us to be part of it.