The smoke wafted strangely in the the thin air and gravity, the nearly perfect globe of flame drawn into curious tendrils by the sucking of the few vents in the dark metal walls. Smudges, ash, or worse, were smeared with little order across floors, walls, and ceilings. The only light, aside for the glow of the campfire, was the spasmodic sparking of ruptured conduits.
In the distance, a speaker crackled to life. A voice, or two, or a hundred, whispered.
“Always creepy, that.” A figure, hunched close over the fire, glanced up, staring into the darkness.
“That? That’s nothing, just the call of old security drones. Too old and too rusted to do anything anymore. Too bad, too. Coulda kept them idjits far from anything important.” A second man said, spitting into the flames in disgust.
“I heard say it’s monsters hunting.” A third said, hand resting on the holster at his hip.
“It’s nothing, and I’ll have your heads if you keep yapping. We’ve got to get back on the road early tomorrow, if we want to make anything on this shipment.” A last man drifted from where he had sat, stooped over a wheeled wagon. “Tony, Shen, you’ve got first watch. I’ll set second with Curly.”
A long silence fell, punctuated only by the hissing of sparks and air rushing from a ruptured pipe.
In the distance, a speaker crackled to life. A voice, or two, or a hundred, whispered.
“GOD DAMMIT, SHUT UP!” The third figure pulled the gun out, and fired into the darkness.
The rapport of the gun echoed back and forth in the darkened hallways.
“The dead dream, and when they dream, they whisper.” Another voice, a woman’s, muffled. “This is their land, and they will keep it. They would thank you to put your gun down, Shen, as would the living.”
Shen spun, cursing, the gun waving. A group of figures filled in the hallway, where none had before, cloaked in grey cloth and darkness.
“How d’you know my name?” Shen asked, suspicious anger in his voice.
“There is little that happens in the halls of the ossuary that it’s keepers do not know.”
The leader of the merchants spoke “You are welcome to share our fire for the night.” He gestured to the sputtering flames. The first of the cloaked figure drifted forward, into the light, though her face remained obscured by the grey cowl. Around her, the other figures moved, staying in the shadows, past the campfire and into the darkness. Faintly, sounds of repair could be heard, and slowly the sparking lights and hissing of the ruptured piping faded. The figure remained silent next to the open flame. Though her face remained hidden, all could feel her frown.
Finally, unable to take the heady silence, Shen spoke. “Your friends don’t want to sit by the flame?”
“It is not theirs to sit with friends. They have their duties, and I have mine. I will be your guide while you walk the mastaba, but be warned, this will be the last time your journeys will be allowed.”
“What do you mean by that?” The leader of the merchants stumped forward angrily. “This is my business! You can’t stop honest men from plying their trade. Who do you think you are?”
“I am the fifth speaker of the Mastaba. I am the voice of those who have none. These lands belong to the dead, and you, Bertram, and your father before you, have been allowed to walk them only because you caused no harm. Outsiders have endangered us all, and the ways of the dead are closed. The Spine is to be shut and will not reopen until Starfall. None will be allowed. Not those who march for the purity of man, not the people of the Crown, none. the way is sealed.”
“Shen! Tony! Shoot them!”
Almost casually, the speaker waved forward, and her sleeves seemingly dissolved into a grey cloud which flowed over the raised guns. After a moment, they retreated. The guns clicked uselessly as Shen and Tony fired.
“You will be guided safely through the Mastaba, but you will not return here. None will. These lands belong to the dead, and the Dead will keep them.”
“Someone will stop you!” spat Curley.
“They will try, And they will fail. Unity’s bones are our homes. We live amongst the dead and the ancient mechanisms that bring life to the whole the ship. None know them as we who keep them do. It has been our ancient mandate to keep Unity, and that is an oath we will not break, not for the impotent pride of the blind and bewildered.”
In the distance, a speaker crackled to life. A voice, or two, or a hundred, whispered.
Elsewhere a trio of Syndicate Soldiers found their armor falling to pieces around them as a grey cloud devoured it. Even as they raged impotently, the words of the dialectic dripping like so much honeyed poison from their lips, they were escorted back they way they had come.
Elsewhere, a group of Soldiers of the Order of Man found themselves hopelessly lost, as corridors they had claimed and explored inexplicably changed around them. Finally, exhausted and starving, they emerged back into their own habitat, miles from the forward post they had meant to reach.
Elsewhere, a science team from the Autumn Crown found themselves locked out of systems they had been using that very morning. No matter how deeply they dug, the access that had been almost instinctual that morning slipping from their grasps like sand.
Elsewhere still, after the vulnerable parts of the spine were devoid of life, ancient mechanisms spun into life, lights flashing blood red in the cavernous emptiness. Inexorably, the enormous doors designed to seal habitats from one and other in the case of emergency slowly, ponderously, ground shut.
In the distance, a speaker crackled to life. A voice, or two, or a hundred, whispered.
