The Ship

The Ship

Bredilovo, Bulgaria: 0330 April 16 2044

Two columns of a dozen trucks each approached the safe zone. Six bore the symbols of UN relief services, but the rest had the markings of private contractors. Above them, three 10 cm-wide discs floated on transparent parachutes. As the private trucks passed the 2 km mark, the first of the discs exploded. The convex metal face of the disc blew outward and apart. Diamond-shaped dimples became long, slender arrows. Then they hit. The fifth truck in line on the left took the brunt of the blast. Several of the largest arrows, capable of penetrating about 3 cm of steel, hit the windshield. But there was no shattering glass or flames from a wrecked engine. Instead, the truck "body" tore and peeled away as the fabric cover it was, revealing a blocky, tracked APC. The other two discs fired. One hit a target that was what if seemed to be, except that the wrecked truck proved to have a 12 cm mortar in the back. The other blew away another fabric shell, revealing an antique T34 tank.

A small drone recorded the scene, and sent the information back to two squires who manned a 10 cm mortar on the far side of the safe zone. (Actually, the mortar was not quite 10 cm, but 98 mm, a caliber selected decades earlier for the express purpose of circumventing a treaty that limited artillery of 10 cm and up. Such fine distinctions were disregarded by users.) One of the squires transmitted a report: "There are two dozen vehicles of unknown type and armament. At least two of them are disguised armor: So far, we've exposed an M113 and a goddamn T34."

"Fire more EFP devices, then some scatterable anti-personnel mines," Princip ordered. "I will send the drone to establish a road block."

"We should withdraw," Zotgjakt said.

"Yes we should. But we need to see what is in the caves. Father- let us see what is behind the wall. There is something evil and terrible beneath this town. I know your way as been to keep it closed off and secret, and you have done well to hold it back this long. But the evil has already slipped its bonds, and will do so again. If we are to stop it, we must see where it began."

The priest nodded sadly. "I know. I will help you, but I cannot do so happily." He took out a pry bar, and lifted a slab of the floor to reveal a set of stairs. "Follow me."

The lieutenant went down, accompanied by Zotgjakt, Pavel and a squire named Petrovic, the one with Zotgjakt's extra equipment. They found themselves in a catacomb between rows of stone ossuaries. Pavel, who had been educated in the history of the Balkans and had told Princip all of what he knew about the church, examined a number of stone carvings. "Most of these look Medieval, similar to the stellae of Bosnia," he said. "The stellae were assumed to be Bogomil until the late 20th century, and even now some sources repeat that mistake. It's long since been established that the stellae were made by a variety of groups. But, there is ample evidence of syncretism. Take this figure here." He pointed to a very stylized figure that looked like a man with horns. "This is an example of the horned god', the archetype of Pan, usually associated with fertility or hunting, or both. Taken out of context, it could easily be mistaken for the Christian figure of Satan, reinforcing the misconception of heresy."

"So, do you think the Bogomils were not heretics?" said the priest.

"Well, if they did teach what they are said to have taught, they were heretics from the orthodox Christian perspective- and from their own perspective, orthodoxy' would have been equally heretical," Pavel said. "But there's no way to know how much truth there was to the charge. Maybe the charge was a willful invention of their enemies. Maybe they were conflated with an unrelated Gnostic group, the same way your church and the Church of Bosnia were mislabeled as Bogomil. Maybe they started out as basically orthodox, but turned to heresy later. Maybe just a few turned to heresy. Maybe preexisting heretics joined the movement for their own reasons. We just don't know, and since virtually all we know about them was written by their enemies, we never will."

The priest frowned. "All you say is reasonable… But make no mistake, there were heretics. There still are. Some of them are in your own country, your own leadership: the Ophites, the New Bogomils'. Do not trust them. And I beg you, whatever you find in the caves, destroy it, or bury it deeper still. At all costs, keep it from the hands of the heretics. For those who think the world itself evil, there is no limit on the evil they might do against it… And now, look upon this."

He pointed at a slab at the back of the chamber. The figures on it were recognizable as a sequence, telling a story. The first showed something like a comet, with a swastika on its head (a distinct Slavic version with curved hooks), descending to the base of a mountain. The next showed a skeletal human corpse with something like a snake emerging from its belly. The snake had two sets of jaws, one inside the other. The third picture showed the snake enlarged to titanic size, encircling a stylized village of tiny houses and an oversized church. The final picture showed the snake being slain by an angel with a mask on its face and a spear in its oversized fist. "The serpent is the demon of the caves. Its slayer is the angel of Simeon," said the father. "It may be that neither is quite what it is thought to be. And it may be that, if you enter the cave, one is as likely as the other to destroy you. You are warned; now do as you wish."

Princip put his fist through the back wall.

There were intersecting caverns, but an unmistakable main passage went straight ahead and downhill. When they had traveled five hundred meters, they stopped to examine a striking find: a human skeleton, with clothes and some of its skin still intact, partially covered by carbonate. "No question when this guy died," Pavel said. The preserved clothing included a scarlet arm band with the swastika, the angular version whose infamy had driven the symbol out of common usage. "I wonder what happened to his head…"

"I wonder how this happened," Zotgjakt said. He pointed to a fist-sized hole in the body's ribcage. The edges were noticeably blackened.

Still further ahead, about 2 km from the church, the passage met a much larger chamber. That was when a shape suddenly appeared from the darkness. It was a golden big cat, like a lion without a mane, and as large as a bear. It seemed to shine with a light well beyond what came from the finbacks' lights. It roared, and when the finbacks only stared it pounced. Lupov fired a 12.76 machine gun, but the bullets only went through the cat. Then the cat fell upon them, only to vanish abruptly. "That was a hologram!" Pavel exclaimed. "It looked like a Pleistocene cave lion! They may have lasted longer in the Balkans than anywhere else, you know- perhaps up to 2000 years ago. I wonder… Might the hologram have been taken from a living animal?"

They moved into the chamber. They could not tell its size, but it measured in hundreds in meters. The floor rose gently up, especially where boulders and silt had piled up around the center. Stalactites, stalagmites and complete columns of carbonate were everywhere. It took a moment to see that the greater part of the floor of the cave was a broad, silver wing, rather like the fin of a manta ray, heavily encrusted with carbonate.

"This has been here thousands of years, no more or less," Pavel said. "It certainly didn't come from anywhere near here."

"That would explain a lot, wouldn't it?" said Zotgjakt.

Once they made out the shape of the wing, they then saw evidence of a fuselage. At the subtle joining of the two was a protruding tube. At the end of the tube, partly obscured by stalactites, was an open doorway

The Hunter awoke.

He was puzzled for a time what had triggered this latest alarm. It had been triggered by a motion sensor just inside the broken airlock. But, there was nothing visible in infrared, nor were there detectable pheromones from the Hard Game. Then he looked at the mist which hugged the floor. Disturbances marked the footprints of the intruders, and he was able soon enough to get some notion of their size and shape. They were certainly not Hard Game, and they seemed too robust to be native jag. Then he recalled a couple strange specimens he had taken six and a half centuries before, jag that encased themselves in clumsy steel plates and mesh. It had seemed to be a course that could not proceed much further, and he had been unsurprised when he failed to encounter this clumsy armor on his few hunts since then. But, he thought, the jag might have revived the technology. They might, furthermore, have developed a material that not only blocked blows, but held in the infrared glow of their bodies. He found this disconcerting, to a degree that seemed beyond reason.

He clicked his mouthparts in thought. He had spent the last millennium trying to find a means of return to the wider galaxy, for the Huntress if not for himself. The ship was well beyond repair, but he still had use of a life pod and an emergency transmitter. A century ago, he had finally made contact, with a ship of the separated Clans. He had no desire to join them, but he thought that joining them would be the best course for Huntress. The source had been a lone adventurer in a sublight pod, who promised to relay his message once he rendezvoused with his Clanship, in another twenty years. There was no chance of the Clanship diverting from its course, however, and it would take authorization from a colony governor for another ship to make a special trip. Between the time it took for travel, for transmissions and for bureaucratic approval, he had anticipated another 130 years before he was rescued- no great wait, for a long-lived species with use of Sleep chambers.

He had planned to awake again only when a signal arrived from the rescue ship. This interruption was particularly unwelcome. However, it was not hard to see how it might be made enjoyable. He considered three of his favorite trophies, which he kept with him in the control room. There was his most recent trophy, who had laid about him with volleys of lead even as he fell. There was the armored jag, still in his helmet, who had slain beside him until they only had each other left to slay. Then there was the swarthy old chief, whom he had slain in his own tent. It had been curiosity more than anything else which had led him to seek out this chief who would not fight beside his young warriors, curiosity in particular whether the natives might finally be degenerating beneath jaghood. He had felt gratitude when the chief, though seemingly loath to seek battle, had freely joined it when it came to him. He was convinced that he had redeemed the chief, that the chief himself had been grateful when death in battle interrupted his life of pampered disgrace. The Hunter's one regret was that he had not slain the other chief, who had fled while his enemy stood to fight. That one was no worthy trophy, but surely worthy of death as a matter of genetic hygiene.

He turned back to the problem at hand, how to dispose of these strange intruders. He had an array of internal defenses that could have disposed of them handily, but he dismissed these almost at face value. These were jag, not Game, and the fact that they would intrude upon his ship spoke of considerable courage. They deserved better than death by unseen traps. The other obvious option was to go forth and fight them himself. But they were obviously dangerous, and he could not yet know how dangerous. In the end, it was the thought of the Huntress left to fend for herself if he perished that convinced him against taking the matter into his own hands. A third option presented itself when he saw they were going: Inward, toward the chamber where he stored his live trophies. That was it. He could release the trophies, one by one, several at a time or all at once. The intruders would almost certainly meet honorable death against Hard Game. If they managed to survive, then he would know that much more about how he might slay them himself. He poised his finger over a button as the intruders drew nearer and nearer to the central chamber.

NEXT: Battle and Death