Chapter 134 The Aether
The climb was not banged to a close, but shuddered.
Four hours had passed: we had seen the Earth sink away until it melted away into blue and grey whirling in black. A wall of silver was there now in the way. The Ascender wagon decelerated, shaking when the magnetic braking clamps were activated.
CLUNK-HISSS.
One could hear the docking collar being locked as it echoed in the hull.
We are hard-locked, checked Vane, the stolen Pulse Rifle. He tightened the strap of the huge Gravity Hammer that was on his back. Equalization of pressures is green. The door is about to open."
Remember, said Ryker, who was standing at the airlock. In his presence he was all like a barbarian at the gates of heaven--his coat torn, his boots full of earthly mud, with a high-tech weapon of energy that he had plundered ten minutes earlier. It is an in-hostile environment. We don't know the layout. We are not aware of the gravity state of affairs.
And they know we are coming," grumbled Baron shaking his fur. The Wolf Alpha was pale with the bandages on his shoulder bleeding red yet he was baring his teeth. I can smell them like the seal. Ozone. And fear."
Keep in the middle, Sato; keep in the middle, Sato, keep in the middle, Ryker said. "Elara, watch the flanks. Vane, you're the breacher."
Knock, knock," Vane smiled in nervousness.
He hit the door release.
WHOOSH.
The heavy blast door lifted upwards.
We anticipated a company of Immortals. We expected plasma fire.
Instead, we found... nothing.
The airlock at the other end was a great, cylindrical room. It was dark, with turning amber warning lights. And it was silent.
"Clear?" Jaxon requested--no, don't, Jaxon was back on the surface. It was just us.
Ryker stepped forward.
When his foot went on the threshold, he did not come down. He floated up.
"Zero-G!" Ryker screamed and seized the door frame.
They cut the gravity plating in the docking bay! Vane screamed and his feet were off the ground. "It's a kill box!"
The assault was not through the floor. It came from the walls.
Hatches were opened everywhere around the cylindrical room. Figures were seen on the walls, in white void-suits, and they stuck to the walls with magnetic boots.
"Open fire!" Ryker roared.
He kicked the door framework aside, and sprang into the middle of the room. He discharged his pulse rifle in the air. Quick flashes of energy were bursting through the air free of gravity, and quiet, lethal.
PEW-PEW.
A Purist soldier was hit on the chest. He turned round and flailed and his blood floated out like perfect red balls.
"I can't aim!" Hurrah, Hurrah, roared Baron, and batted about. "I have no traction!"
Wolves were terrestrial creatures. Baron was an enormous floating target in the air.
"Grab something!" I screamed.
I attempted to call the wind so as to blow Baron to safety. I thrust my hand out.
Nothing happened.
"No air!" I gasped. "The room is depressurized!"
I was useless. My magic required a medium. I was no more than a girl in a tin can, without an atmosphere.
A soldier of the Purists sprang out of the wall, and pointing a spear-gun at Baron.
"Vane!" Ryker shouted.
Vane didn't shoot. He swung the Gravity Hammer.
It was a burden, a big block of black steel with a darting engine on the rear of it. In gravitation, it would be cumbersome. Here, it was weightless.
Vane used it like a baseball bat.
WOOSH.
A pulse of graviton energy was given out by the head of the hammer. It did not need to strike the soldier. The concussion hurled him in the air.
CRUNCH.
The soldier was hit down--digging his own grave a moment. He crashed down on the floor with bone-shattering power.
"It works!" Vane laughed and turned about in the air with the shock. "Newton's Third Law, baby!"
"Push to the inner door!" Seizing a floating handhold, Ryker gave it the command. "We have to get to the ring! There's gravity there!"
We crawled by hand over the floating debris and frozen blood. The silence was terrifying. I saw the flash of the muzzles, and I saw the mouths of the troops screaming but I heard nothing else, only the beat of my heart and the heavy thud of the blows striking my suit.
Ryker found himself in the inner airlock. It was sealed.
"Sato!" As she drifted by, Ryker grabbed the doctor, and pulled her to the keypad. "Hack it!"
Sato had to type the override code Kael had provided us with because her hands were shaking.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The door cycled.
Air rushed in.
WHOOOOOSH.
The rush repressurization came as a body shock. Sound came back with a roar of deafening sound.
We fell.
Not floating anymore. The spinning ring of the station grabbed the artificial gravity. We crashed on the white layer of the inner corridor.
Check of gravity, you gods, Baron groaned, picking him up. "I hate space."
We stood up.
We were inside the Aether.
The Pristine City
In case Station Zero had been a clean room, the Aether was a palace.
The walk we were in was long enough to carry a highway. The flooring was plush of synthetic white wool. It was paneled in real wood, oak and mahogany, which would have cost a fortune to get into space.
And there were windows.
The whole left side of the corridor was lined with a perspective through which I could see the curves of the Earth.
It was a hotel, I said to myself, gazing about at the gold-leaf trim around the ceiling. As we ate rats in sewers, they were staying in Ritz.
It is no hotel, Ryker said, pointing to a sign on the wall. "It's a lifeboat. To the folk that took the ticket.
We walked on with weapons on the alert.
The station wasn't empty.
We turned a corner and crashed into a press.
They weren't soldiers. They were civilians. Men in custom-made silk suits, women in fancy dresses. They were holding champagne glasses. They gazed out of the windows at the flaming planet beneath, and were talking in a pleasant way.
They stopped when they saw us.
Suppose a pack of wolves breaks into a ballroom.
Ryker, smeared with black blood and soot, with a sci-fi rifle. Baron, a seven-foot bandaged werewolf. Me, and all my wild hair and my mud-stained jacket.
The music--low piping of the soft classics on the unheard speakers--appeared to cease.
A woman dropped her glass. It shattered on the floor.
"Security!" a man shouted, backing away. "The surface trash is here!"
"Surface trash?" Baron snarled. He moved, and towered over the man. I came through the bowel of a worm, small fellow. Do not test me."
The civilians shouted and ran away to the escape pods.
"Let them go," Ryker ordered. "We aren't here for them. We're here for Valerius."
"Where is Command?" I inquired, and gazed at the bewildered design of the ring.
Sato checked a wall terminal.
The Aether is a wheel, I said to her. "We are on the Habitat Ring. Authority is in the Hub--the heart of the spokes. We must ride a tram to the centre.
"A tram," Vane sighed. "Of course. There's always a tram."
"Incoming!" Ryker shouted.
The promenade doors had slipped wide open.
This wasn't security. This was the heavy guard.
Purist Exoskeletons.
There came two huge, mechanical suits, banging into the passage. They were as high as ten feet, painted as white as possible, and had heavy rotary guns stuck on their arms.
"Suppressive fire!" Ryker screamed, and threw himself behind a planter of marble.
BRRRRRRT.
The rotary cannons ripped up the corridor. The carpet of plush was torn to bits. The mahogany panels broke.
"My rifle can't dent that!" Jaxon--no, Vane--shouted. "That's tank armor!"
"Elara!" Ryker called out. "We have air now! Can you push them?"
"They weigh a ton!" I screamed in reply, cowering behind a statue. "I can't lift them!"
Do not lift them, said Ryker, looking at the viewport. "Vent them."
"What?"
"The glass!" Ryker indicated the great window with its view into the space. "Blow the window!"
It will murder the lot in the hall! Sato screamed.
The civilians are dead, said Ryker grimly. "It's just us and the robots. And we have mag-boots."
He tapped his heels together. The magnetic clamps of our stolen Purist shoes were clicking together.
"Do it, Elara!"
I looked at the window. Beyond it was the cold undying emptiness.
I stood up. I summoned the wind. Not a push, but a vibration. A sonic lance.
SCREEE.
I struck the mid point of the view.
The glass spiderwebbed.
The Exoskeletons swung their cannons on me.
CRACK-BOOM.
The window blew out.
Chaos.
The air in the corridor escaped immediately. A gust of wind swept in the direction of the hole and pulled all these with it. The pieces of furniture, the statues, the rubble--all of that flew off into space.
The Exoskeletons made an attempt to anchor themselves, but it was a carpet floor, not a metal one. their nails tore the material.
They slid.
"No!" the lead man screamed at the outside loudspeakers.
The huge gears were dragged backward, blown off through the hole. They turned quietly and went into the emptiness, became part of the trash field of Earth.
We held on. We were fastened on by our magnetic boots to the floor below the carpet.
The emergency shutters were hurled down on the exposed window and the opening was closed.
Silence returned. Gravity returned.
My ears popped.
That was nasty, oneself, peeling himself off the floor, wheezed Baron.
My word, good," Ryker said, glancing at his ammunition. "Path is clear. To the tram."
The Core
We reached the tram station. It was one car on a monorail that moved down one of the spokes on the station towards the central Hub.
We boarded. Vane hotwired the controls.
Next, Command Deck, boys, said Vane.
The tram accelerated. We fired the tube, heading towards zero-gravity centre in the station.
The closer we were brought, the better the view became.
The Hub was not merely a command centre. It was a throne room.
It was seen through the front window of the tram. A huge, round, room suspended at the middle of the station. There were walls with screens that showed information about the surface -heat maps of the Rot, population of the survivors, atmospheric poisonings.
And in the middle, in a field of gravity-free space, was Valerius.
His head was connected to the mainframe in the station. Cables went around the back of his skull. He did not simply run the station, he was the station.
The tram slowed. The doors opened.
We went out onto the Command Deck.
Valerius opened his eyes. They were illuminated with the same blue light as the interior of the station.
You are a longstanding mistake, I was said by Valerius at every speaker.
Game over, Valerius," said Ryker and lifted his rifle. "Disconnect. Now."
"Disconnect?" Valerius laughed. I am the sole reason why the Orbital Defense Grid is offline. In case I break the connection... the Aether will roll out the Clean Slate protocol automatically...
"Clean Slate?" Sato asked, stepping forward. "What does it do?"
Valerius smiled.
He said, It fires the kinetic rods. Tungsten telephone poles crashed down out of orbit. They will be hitting the big Rot centers. The Spire ruins. The Deadlands. The tectonic plates."
He looked at me.
"It will crack the crust, Elara. It will bury the Rot in fire. And mankind--the naked mankind--will look on here until the dust clears off.
Thou shalt kill millions, I said.
I shall save the species, Valerius said. "By pruning the branch."
"Not on my watch," Ryker said.
He charged.
Valerius didn't move. His back was covered by snakes like cables.
Turrets that were automated fell down off the ceiling.
Kill the variables, Killer Valerius said.
The last struggle of the planet was commenced. And we were dueling it in the air.