Chapter 11: The City of Ash
A pair of white hemispherical doors opened before them. Royce bounced through them in the weak artificial gravity. A white tube-like corridor led them to a small circular opening.
On the other side, he saw a large oak tree cast a visibly moving shadow onto a grassy field.
He walked out of the white tunnel into a wide clearing. Ria bounced beside him. They stood at the edge of a massive dome under a dark glass sky. Brown rubbery boots sunk into the soft ground. He noticed leafy clovers sticking out from under his feet.
In front of them, white plaster paths crisscrossed the field at geometric angles. Tall lamp-posts stuck out of the paths and intermingled with the low-hanging boughs.
Beyond the tree's branches he saw a city of silver and white spires in the distance which nearly scraped the top of the great dome. Two of them in the center fully punctured the veil and stuck out beyond the dome into the blackness of space.
He remembered something. A distant echo of a conversation or a dream:
"Will you take me with you?" - "Sure! I think that would be fun."
A man wearing a white gold-trimmed robe ran toward them.
Blinding light erupted from the right side of the dome as the sun crested the station's artificial horizon. The man cast a long shadow.
"Captain Sylvan! Lieutenant Verbius! It's an honor!" The man exclaimed as he stopped in front of them, hunched over and caught his breath. His shadow receded into his body before their eyes.
The robed man postured to shake their hands. Royce cautiously reached out. "Who are you?"
"I'm Lieutenant Balman. serving a remote tour with Elder Nana. Been here ever since Ishigami assigned me."
"He told you to meet us?" Ria asked.
"Yes. I'll show you what we're working on. After that I can take you to your quarters in the Serilonan arm."
"What's that?"
The man pointed at two long white sections jutting out into space on either side of the dome like gigantic spears, and then pointed at the third section directly behind them.
"The three arms of the Ash Cloud. One for each of the world's alliances. The Federation Arm over there, the Serilonan Arm and the Khanian Arm behind you. Then there's the City, and Oakheart below. I'll show you."
The man scurried off toward the white towers in the distance, beckoning them to follow. Something about the man's demeanor and the silence of the vast dome put Royce ill at ease and he glanced at Ria who seemed to share his anxiety.
"Something's not right here," he whispered to her.
"I know… where is everybody?"
The sun flew below the bottom edge of the dome and instantly they were bathed in the high-kelvin glow of a hundred twinkling lightposts.
The man's white robe grew smaller in the distance.
"Royce, you know- I've heard stories about this place. I've seen it in the sky every day. But now that I'm here, it just seems so empty. So cold. I never thought- I guess I just never realized how few people are here. I've seen pictures of the station, the council chambers, but you never see pictures of the city itself. It's like- they're hiding something."
"Yeah. I bet you could hide a lot in a place like this," he stared out at the gigantic white city stretching out before them.
…
Frosted white towers loomed overhead. There was not even a remnant of foliage or a single organic twig on the porcelain ground as they moved wordlessly between gargantuan white structures on either side. He noticed the skyscrapers had no windows. The streets were silent and devoid of life. No cars and no stoplights. Only shadows that rose and fell with the sun in its orbit. They were alone in a city of ash, built for ghosts without eyes. A great mausoleum, a place never intended for living souls to walk.
"Balman," he said to the man leading eagerly them down a pathway between the looming spires. "Where is everybody?"
"What do you mean?"
"This whole station just seems- deserted."
"Deserted? This is the most crowded it's been in years. Probably the most crowded since the Plantation Era."
"I still can't believe thing's been around since the Plantation era." He peered around in awe of the vast station.
"Yeah, we don't know exactly who built it, but back then they called it APE Strategic Headquarters – we shortened that to A.S.H. Then some techies started calling it 'Ash Cloud' and the name stuck. The first major spaceflights up here were missions to check it out. A lot of the stuff in those early days is super classified. Even I don't know what happened."
"Where is everyone?"
"Well, most people don't stay up here long. It messes with people. Especially Ash City and Oakheart. I mean, there's rumors about what happened up here a long time ago. But even if you ignore the rumors, I can see why people don't stay. Forty five minute day night cycles, windowless buildings and unpredictable gravity. I don't mind it though. I'd happily live in the City, but Ishigami insisted I stay in the arm."
Every question he asked seemed to raise two more. "forty five minute cycles- is that why the buildings have no windows?"
"Probably," Balman sighed.
"What's all this about Oakheart? What's that," Ria spoke up.
Balman smiled. "That's what I'm going to show you."
"What do they do there?"
Balman flipped out a communicator and pressed a few keys. He peered deeply into the flat screen, then he nodded his head.
"They build Tracers," he grinned.
They soon reached a gray outhouse no larger than a telephone booth with a heavy steel door. Inside, a ladder led them down into a dim gray tunnel.
Reluctantly, and with a sideways glance at Ria, he followed the mysterious robed man down the ladder. They made their way through a series of tunnels, stairs, and sloping shafts with thick steel pressure doors. He counted seventeen. Then they arrived at the mouth of an enormous clearing. A gigantic cavern built below the city itself. A thin black band ran around the room's circumference - a vast window peering out into space.
They stepped out onto a long catwalk suspended above a mile-wide metal crater.
Royce gripped the railing tightly and peered over the edge.
The basin was opaque white. Microscopic men in spacesuits commanded robotic assemblers the size of tanks and bulldozers. Dozens of technicians were wearing orange fluorescent vests, floating in zero gravity. Blue lights and sparks danced around them.
Then he saw the giants: Tracers. Purple sinewy bodies covered in massive white armor plates, each one the size of a jumbo jet, resting against the bottom of a crater a thousand feet deep. Some were chained and welded into hastily erected metal scaffolding. Some floated free. Welders moved around them, attaching enormous plates, humanoid arms, legs, torsos and heads onto the massive insect-like black and purple cores.
A light coat of bituminous fluid spattered the floor like blood. Globs of the sticky dark violet hovered around the joints of the gargantuan machines. Huge corrugated tubes and power cables as wide as telephone poles ran from the rim of the concavity down into its depths. A bright blue and white flash would occasionally explode from an arc lamp. Freezing the world in time for a brief microsecond.
Royce stood in awe, holding onto the railing for dear life.
"Are they- functional?" he asked.
"Most are still in testing. And nobody's actually flown one yet."
"You said there were rumors about this place?"
"Oh your standard conspiracy junk- the station was built by aliens, and that some are still hiding out here, haunting the place. That the Tracers are based on alien technology. That you can hear Eldritch alien voices inside the hollowed-out skull cavities of the Tracers. Purple creatures from the void haunting worker's dreams. That sort of stuff. Personally I think it's all just superstition."
A hissing noise snapped him to his senses and he turned to look at the doorway they entered through.
Two old women and one man appeared from the open blast door and approached the edge of the crater. The women were seated in ornate wheelchairs and the tall man stood between them in a blue and black robe.
Balman gasped and ran off toward the trio who just entered.
He scurried across the gangway then abruptly came to a stop and bowed deeply before the elders. Then he waved at Ria and Royce to come quickly.
They followed cautiously. Long hollow footsteps rang out in the air and echoed off the concave mile-wide basin below.
The elders had white hair and their bodies were unbelievably frail. Each was covered in a differently colored shawl.
One of the women he recognized from pictures- the Serilonan Elder Nana who had white hair tied back in a bun. Her robe was covered in foliage and shapes like flowers with golden trim. She smiled at them kindly with dark green eyes.
The other woman he knew was the U.N.F. Elder Ikuno. She looked the most frail out of the trio. She had short white hair with glints of purple and wore thick glasses. Around her neck was a shawl colored gray and scarlet. Gold and silver geometric lines and circuit-like patterns ran down her arms and along the robe's sides.
The in the center and unfamiliar man peered at him. His eyes were small, cold, and hazel and he wore a look of distaste. He suspected it was the mysterious Khanian Elder Hachi.
Following Balman's lead, Royce bowed his head briefly. Out the corner of his eye he saw Ria step beside him and follow suit.
"To what do we owe the pleasure of meeting all three great Elders today?" Balman asked nervously.
Nana spoke, "Commander Ishigami told us you'd be arriving." She wheeled herself toward Royce and touched his cheek with a frail outstretched hand. "My goodness-" her large expressive eyes scanned him up and down. "I knew you would return. Your face is scarred, but your eyes- I wish we didn't have to meet like this, but it seems that things have become desperate."
My eyes- I remind her of someone? Old lady must be going senile.
Nana continued, "There is no doubt in my mind." She turned to the elder man beside her, "He's the one-"
"The brain damaged one?" asked the old man.
Nana snapped at him, "No, Hachi, the one we're going to need to pilot Quaking Aspen with your little experiment! Don't you think I'd forget-" The man crossed his arms in annoyance.
Ikuno ignored the confrontation and wheeled herself forwards toward Ria. She ignored Royce and stared straight at her, "Ichigo-"
What?
"What," Ria gasped.
Elder Ikuno simply smiled. "A girl I cared about a thousand years ago. A girl I made a promise to." She glanced at Royce, "but the fact that you're here, means that we failed-" She then shot an angry glance at the old man wearing blue robes and the old woman pointing a wizened finger in his face. "Thanks to our petty greed and arrogance, chaos is once again descending on this world. Once again, we have to turn to our brave young pilots to protect us from the mess we've created."