[font=Book Antiqua] It is the year 814, and war with Kusari looms on the horizon.
Sirius is in turmoil, and chaos rules the night.
Planetside,
Bretonia
The motorcycle sliced through the tempestuous night, a red, watery streak down the deserted alleyways and roads that wove between the towering structures of the city. Mile after mile, it seemed, of black stone and dark Bretonian architecture gave way to nothing else but larger roads, smaller roads, or the occasional tunnel - which would require careful navigation, as the catacombs of the city were extensive, to say the least. It had not been built with ground travel in mind, and the passages down here were complex and roundabout beyond the understanding of man...
The lightning rippled across the sky, the billow of the flickering clouds silhouetting the complex, brutal, early Bretonian Gothic style of the structures. The steeples, towers, gargoyles and crenelations stood out against the sky in the brief moments of the flashes of lightning, only to disappear to leave the world dark, the sounds of thunder rolling across it with its rolling, rumbling voice.
The sleek bike shot out of the alleyway into a court. The red brakelight flared, lighting the entire dim square within the buildings as the vehicle slowed down, sharply turning to the side in a skid around the centre of the court to avoid colliding with any of the encircling structures.
The bike slid around the court, ever slower as it skidded across the damp stone, a wave of grey water rippling across the inundated stone as the motorcycle slowed down. The small waves from the bike's passage lapped up against the central part of this court, a stone circle with a great, arching tree in it - or what used to be one. The entire thing appeared to be petrified - a grey, stoney mass as opposed to a black, rotting trunk that one might expect in this damp. Not a single leaf was visible anywhere. This section of the city was probably centuries old, not like plants would have survived anywhere after it this city sprawled across the entire planet.
The motorcycle jerked as it finally came to a halt, and the boot of the rider stomped down on the water-covered pavement to steady the vehicle. The water splashed against the side of the sleek, advanced motorbike and against the leg and coat of the rider - who was busy glancing upwards, scanning the buildings above. They were there, looming, omnipresent, but only revealed to the eyes in shadow against the flickering, rolling sky. A white, luminescent, face dominated one, a circular light. It was like a moon on this moonless night. A moon with hands, that was. No man in this moon, just the lettering of a clock. A clock which displayed that it was almost three - in the morning.
The rider shut the bike off, and the plasma flywheel engine slowly whirred to a halt.
The red lights around the rims of the solid, slick wheels dimmed slowly, as did the rest of the lighted highlights along the cutting-edge lines of the vehicle. The headlights remained on, casting their pale glow across the courtyard, upon the enigmatic tree that stood in defiance of the city.
The clock began to strike three.
A single brazen note echoed over the city, a reverberating gong that seemed to shake all the raindrops in the air, and seemed to make even the lightning quaver in fear.
The second strike sounded, the noise so powerful that it could be felt.
The third.
And then silence, the pouring of the rain onto the pavement, the endless deluge.
A fourth strike sounded, seeming to reverberate from beneath the very foundations of the city.
The central hub of the Interspace Commerce base in New London was a towering room, with crowds and people milling all around, heading for terminals or conference rooms or the stock exchanges or the ship dealers or equipment mongers. All of them, single humans, one out of many, moving about, each with an individual purpose and objective - and all creating together with the spacestation that noise so peculiar to the heavily populated spacestations, a union of machine noises and human voices.
One had to speak almost at a yell to be heard at close quarters in this terminal.
"You have it, then. That's it." The forceful, whispered words came from the mouth of an older Kusarian woman, clad in rather plain clothes. So plain, in fact, she looked like some spacer who spent her years out on the edge of humanity, salvaging waste or exploring the wastes - rather than who she actually was.
The man standing in front of her nodded, gulping nervously. He was bald, wearing a suit and tie. Round glasses. He looked exceptionally academic, a stark contrast to the woman's rough edges. Yet, it was evident both had weapons on their person, at least to the trained eye.
"Yeah, yes, I have it, here." He slightly lifted up the titanium tube he held, looking down at it. The plain metal reflected his squashed face back at his glasses, which returned the favour to the tube.
The woman glanced down at the tube, and sighed. "Thank God for that."
She slowly took it out of his arms. "This nightmare's over."
He nodded, and adjusted his glasses as she took a step back from him. "For me, yes." he said slowly.
She started to walk away into the milling crowd.
"What about for you, Namazun?" he called loudly, cutting through the noise that already separated them.
She smiled a little bit at this title, but it somehow phased into a drawn expression showing her length of years, without any intermediary movement. Her feet halted, and she glanced over her shoulder at this man. "I'll bring it safely to where it belongs, Howard." she said loudly, flatly, forceful.
"You can't count on that." He moved back toward her. "You know what's happened to everyone else," he said more quietly, "we're the last ones. All for THAT." he pointed at the tube. "How do you know you'll be safe?"
The weary smile remained on her face. "They think we're all dead. Nobody expects us to be anywhere but dead, orbiting the Neutron Star with the rest of the Halberd. We're safe, finally." She glanced down at the floor.
He did too, breathing in. "Safe... that's so strange."
She shrugged, taking a slight step back. "You enjoy it, Howard. You've earned it...."
He nodded. "But so have you...." he sighed. "All right then."
She sighed, nodding. "Yeah, all right." She glanced back at where the mooring points would be. "My gunboat's waiting, Howard. I need to be fast."
Howard smiled, taking her hand. "Be careful out there, Namazun."
She smiled again, but it was a true smile. The first time he'd ever called her that had been twenty years ago, when they'd met on Kurile and she was only the structural engineer, and he the poor explorer. "I will, Howard." She pulled away, letting her smile fade as she did in the crowd.
"Kaisha!" Howard called. "I will see you again, Namazun." He had a smile on his face the size of New London.
She smiled bitterly, not acknowledging him as she continued through the sea of people, alone and isolated again, within her own mind... somehow knowing that it would only be in the next life.
The dark grey cloak of clouds circled all around, leaving only the very top of the sky clear of their gloomy, suffocating bleakness. The sun shone across this rim, illuminating the snowy air within only barely. Each flake that fluttered lightly through the air, down from the encroaching clouds, was visible in the pallid rays of light. They swirled and twirled through the air, a chaotic precipitation in this dome of clouds.
The tower - or fortress, perhaps - stood at the very centre of this bank of clouds, a tall grey metallic castle that was nearly as wide as it was tall - about ten stories, disregarding the additional towers that rose from each of the four corners, plus the one that jutted out to form a landing pad bridged to the main structure with a sturdy metal arch. A Bretonian gunboat, red colours painted over to be grey, sat upon the landing pad, the ramp at its belly extended onto the surface of the platform. It appeared to be still running, as the lights were blinking slowly, creating coloured halos through the haze of snow.
The flag of Rheinland was emblazoned in each side of this structure, evidently abandoned (or at least crewed minimally) for some time. Despite the cares that had gone into this, the love and loyalty with which the flag had been cut into the super-alloy structure with plasma torches possessing grim efficiency, this facility hadn't been taken care of. Perhaps the need had passed, perhaps something else. The military seldom works in ways most can understand.
Now, the six-inch cuts into the building were covered over in rime, as was the rest of the structure. The frost grew across it like a white moss, or a mould. The grey sun did little to free this building of its icy shackles, only glinting in a dull shine from the always-cold metal surfaces of the tower.
Three figures were visible at the top edge, facing the sun.
The one stood at the very edge of the structure, toes not an inch away from the edge. He was wearing a long black coat, standard issue of the Rheinwehr. It was obvious, however, that he wasn't a Rheinlander, as his face had the colour and features of a Kusarian, distinct even under the mirrored sunglasses he wore.
The other figure was standing a bit behind him, her arms crossed over her thin chest. She had a Libertonian or Rheinlander look about her, it was difficult to tell. She wasn't what most might consider a voluptuous woman, by any stretch of the imagination. She wasn't necessarily thin, and kept her hair short. Businesslike, though perhaps tomboyish - which fit with what she wore, that which one might expect a mechanic to wear. Cargo pants, belt with areas for equipment, drab jumper. A wrench hung from her belt, along with a few things, vaguely mechanical in nature. A pair of metal-rimmed goggles hung around her neck.
The third being was another man, a Bretonian, from his looks. He was a bit younger, and wore a brown coat, as you might see in the Liberty territories more than anywhere else. He had a grey wool hat pulled down over his eyes and forehead, obviously in an attempt to combat the cold. His hair was a sandy blonde, and his eyes blue. He was sitting down, against an air intake that rose up from the roof.
"I do have to wonder when they'll be showing up." he mused idly, rubbing his hands.
The Kusarian glanced stiffly back at him. "In due time, I'm sure. You can't rush this sort of thing." His voice was perfectly level, controlled, just like the rest of his appearance.
"I shouldn't think it could possibly take this long." the Bretonian muttered.
"We're not going to leave until the facts clearly indicate something has gone awry." the Kusarian said, with a finality in his voice that prevented further conversation. "We...." his voice trailed off suddenly.
Looming out from the swaths of cloudbanks directly in front of and above them was what could only be the prow of a Rheinland cruiser, flanked by two gunboats, which were in turn flanked by four fighters each - and all headed straight for the facility on which these three stood. The hulk of the cruiser blocked out the ashen sun as it powered forward, snowy clouds billowing around its base like it was a ship of old.
The gunboats immediately started on a descent pattern.
The fighters dove for the fortress.
"Time to leave," the Kusarian said flatly, turning around.
The mansion was on fire, blazing with brilliant orange flames.
The grounds, it seemed, even were. Or was that just the light?
Whatever the case, it didn't matter. It was all burning, all gone.
He couldn't do anything..... he just stood and watched... watched the fireman attempt to combat it. He knew - they knew - it was futile to try to save the mansion. Save the research. Save his family. And yet, they tried. Why would they do such a pointless thing?
Human nature.
Struggling against the inevitable.
You could never win that sort of thing.
All this ran through Diedrich's head subconsciously as he watched the red flames leapt up into the pitch black Berlin sky. The wide mansion below gave off a brilliant orange light, across the snowy grounds, and up into the air above. He imagined that it could be seen for miles, his life burning away like that.
He acknowledged that it at least looked nice, burning.
The medic came back over to Diedrich. "Herr Von Claussen?" he asked, placing a hand on Diedrich's shoulder. "Herr?" he asked again, shaking a little. Diedrich just pulled the blanket around his shoulders. This didn't feel real, sitting here in the snow. It wasn't real, this wasn't a paramedic's blanket he was holding, it was his own. He wasn't sitting in the snow, it was his white sheets. This was not his oak tree he sat against, it was his oak backboard.
"He's gone into shock, we need to get him out of here!" the medic yelled hastily to the others, at the rear of the airship ambulance that was parked on the grounds.
Diedrich heard them, but he didn't care.
Only one thing mattered to his mind - why had this happened?
The researcher looked up at the woman who had appeared through the low cement archway. He was an older man, with grey hair and the critically concerned stare of a doctor. He was sitting at a cold metal table in the underlevels of the New Berlin Museum of Rheinland, far beneath the surface within the xenoarchaeology archives. Fossils, preserved xenobiologicals, old mainframes with scan data, and peculiar rocks were the main body of what could be found through these trackless dungeons, but there were other things of more value mixed in - though, perhaps the value was relative to certain people who understood items more thoroughly than others.
"All right." he sighed, pushing his chair away from the table. "I'll be there presently." The chair screeched across the concrete floor.
The woman retreated through the doorway, her steps echoing down the passages lined with crates and boxes. As she went, he turned back to what lay on the table before him - a steel crate, marked
"8/6/732,
Asteroid 43.61.357, Omega 11
Catalogued by Herr Schneider and Dr. Baumann
New Berlin Museum of Rheinland"
Below that, "ARCHIVED 14/6/732" was stamped onto the faded label.
What was in this box was simple - an urn-like object, made from stone that could be found in some artifacts, a peculiar greyish crystalline material. The top of the urn - if it was indeed a top, and it wasn't all just one solid piece - was clamped on by the handles themselves. It was built to stay together, and the outside was covered in some of the glyphs that had been recorded from the same find - a cavern in a sizeable asteroid in Omega 11. There had been other significant finds there as well, and he was probably the first person to look through them since they'd been catalogued. Artifacts, a bit more of this strange sort of pottery, odd pillars that had been disassembled and archived here, bits and pieces of rubble, scan data, and even some parchments, oddly enough.
He glanced at the mysterious urn, placing his magnifier on the table beside it and the ultrasound machine he'd been examining the interior with. There appeared to be low-density stone of some sort inside - or something, it was a mystery.
A mystery he had all the time in the world to sort through, because it was his job. The examination of all the materials from the Omega 11 Findings, in fact, was his job at the moment. It was a nice sabbatical from the hectic work that had to be done on Stuttgart, what with everything being brought in from Pygar.
And it could wait.
He pushed the chair back in - quietly - and walked down the hall.
He hoped that he wasn't being called back from this research so soon.
The rock wall buckled inward.
A crack appeared in its centre, and spread slowly like frost over a pane of glass. Smaller rocks broke from the ever-widening seams and fell to the smooth cavern floor in microgravitational slow-motion. Dust rose from the surface of the wall, which had begun to push outward even more, vibrating.
The centre of the rifts on the stone suddenly thrust out, shattering into multiple slabs of grey stone as a massive metal drill pushed through the rock. The debris scattered violently in the negligible gravity as the drill flung them into motion, dashing and smashing them against the walls in violent, soundless crashes.
The drill pushed out into the cavern more and more, widening the hole in the rock as the metal plates that made up the drill revolved faster than an eye could register. Any rocks in their way were dashed to pieces, and those pieces dashed against the other walls of the cavern.
The last of the rock was stripped away, and the borer continued forward for a moment more before it halted, the great treads spread out around its cylindrical shape holding it fast in the rock. The drill slowly came to a halt, the rotating and counter-rotating plates of the drill grinding to a standstill.
A panel opened on the front, and a cable snaked out into the darkness of the cave.
A light suddenly burst from its tip, revealing the far wall of the chamber.
The men inside the borer tilted their heads a bit.
The walls appeared to be carved with some sort of glyphs.
"What in god's name...?" a bearded man, the captain, began. "Move it to the right there." he said, leaning over the camera controllers' shoulder to gaze at the screen. He pointed at the side of the screen, tapping it clumsily with his rough finger.
The operator tilted the control stick in his right hand, swinging the camera over to the area indicated.
The colour of the bearded man's face drained as the light illuminated the. "I-I'm calling Solarius." He dashed to the rear of the cramped cabin. "Do... don't touch anything, you understand?"
The operator nodded dumbly, staring at what the light had revealed - a square alcove in the rock, circled round with odd markings, a language of some sort - an alien language. That, however, was not the most surprising find. The middle of this alcove was a pyramidal stone structure, probably about twenty feet wide and fifteen feet "high" from its base. It, too, was covered in these writings, and it bore unmistakable similarities to the artifacts that he'd seen.
He turned to his right, hurriedly tapping at the keyboards, scanning the structure.
Three seconds, later, he started looking through the results. It was hard to find anything about it, it was somehow difficult to scan. It was definitely very similar to artifacts, except in one respect. It was hollow, and contained something within it.
The question is what exactly it contained.
What would be buried in an asteroid in Omega 11 - the tail end of the universe, the middle of nowhere?
The captain stumbled back into the cabin.
He leaned against the bulkhead. "I don't know.." he mumbled, rubbing his face. "They're sending for Berlin."
"It is like nothing I have ever seen, other than those artifacts." the controller said earnestly. "I..."
"Ja, ja, I know, I know." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "They want us to stay here. And they are not going to pay us for profit lost... damnation."
"It is a glorious find, though, captain!"
"Ja, but it doesn't end up in our pockets. I bet it will just disappear into Berlin and nothing will come of it. You mark my words..." He turned to walk out of the cabin again. "Get some food or sleep or something. We might as well rest now if we're not going anywhere." He left, leaving the controller marvelling over the scans for still some time.
Loss of money or not, this was still incredible.
As much as the controller realised the import of this find, he couldn't have grasped its true potential, the lives that would revolve around it in the future, and the fact that one day, all of Sirius would hang on a thread, and this would be the key to its salvation.
Dr. Lucas Baumann pushed the last box all the way onto the sparse shelf with a grunt. There were many other boxes of burnished steel, all labelled the same way.
"8/6/732,
Asteroid 43.61.357, Omega 11
Catalogued by Herr Schneider and Dr. Baumann
New Berlin Museum of Rheinland"
He smiled as he looked at the relatively small cluster of boxes that took up this corner of the otherwise massive archive room. The rough shelves of this empty sublevel of the museum archives were mostly bare, letting him see across what must have been hundreds of square yards of mostly bare shelves. A few clusters of boxes or crates were here or there, but there was nothing substantial to the pileup.
He stood up, brushing his labcoat off with a smile. "Vell, now, my boxes, I vill be getting to you in just a veek, once mine work mit Mr. Tekagi is finished. Zen ve vill find your secrets, mine little xenoartifacts." He smiled a little, ignoring the three jumpsuit-clad archaeologists or technicians around him. He was quite thrilled at the find that he'd been tasked with cataloguing these new artifacts that had been unearthed quite by accident by diamond miners. This was his big chance...
Well, he needed funding. A very generous Kusarian governer was funding Baumann at the moment, and would be awarding him a very handsome if he assisted in the reactivation of a peculiar matter cascade device that had been adapted from artifacts that gave off relatively harmless emissions - a very pretty looking device with little use, like all artifacts. Still, as pointless as that was, there was the money to be considered. Baumann knew these artifacts could wait; they had already been waiting for longer than he could imagine, and his acquiring money to further his research certainly wouldn't be getting much in the way of this.
He started back toward the elevator, chuckling.
His spirits were as high as his fortunes at the moment, and his future looked brighter than ever.
He would be the most distinguished xenoarchaeologist by the end of this year if all things worked out.
It was, somewhat literally.
On his way back from Kusari after activating the artifact for the philanthropic and ecstatic governer, the tradelane in Sigma 13 that Baumann was travelling through was caught by a titanic gas explosion, which threw his ship from the lane at superluminal velocity, ripping him and his ship to mere particles...
... scattering him across the skies as a cascade of light.