2041 Sanctuary (Dark Descent) (30 page)

‘There’s no but. Just keep up the good work and ensure that inquisitive nose of yours stays out of trouble.’

‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir.’ She noticed that the flap of the bag, which rested at her feet, stood partially open, revealing its contents for all to see. Shifting position, Sarah hooked the rucksack with one foot and slid it under the bench behind her in a single movement.

‘Ladies,’ Locke said to Sarah and Cora, and then walked away without another word.

Once Locke was out of earshot Cora turned on her. ‘You think you’ve got Riley twisted round your little finger, don’t you?’

‘What?’ Sarah asked, distracted by the Commander’s praise. Looking back at Cora she homed in on what she’d just said. ‘No, of course not, we just get on well, that’s all.’

Cora’s expression grew vicious. ‘I can see past that pretty little face, even if he can’t. There’s something not right about you and I’ll find out what it is, mark my words.’

‘You go do that,’ Sarah said, remembering she’d not be around for much longer and that she needn’t take, or be threatened by, this mad woman any longer. ‘Knock yourself out.’

Cora looked stunned for a moment and then stormed off.
That was enjoyable
, Sarah thought, although in hindsight angering Cora was perhaps as good as pulling a tiger’s tail and then poking it in the eye for good measure; not the wisest move, especially if the plan got waylaid for any reason. Still, it was too late to worry about that now, and she still had an air-shuttle manual to get her hands on.

A few hours later Sarah sat down, defeated, outside the SED Command Centre. She’d been hanging around inside, making excuses for her presence and failing to get anywhere near the manuals, which were held in a cabinet in front of the main Control Station, which itself was permanently manned. Realising her efforts would continue to prove fruitless, Sarah had retired to reconsider her options.

The only time the Control Station was left unattended was during the nightshift, when air-shuttles underwent scheduled maintenance or were all off-site, not to return within a minimum of twelve hours. Even then, a side room off the Command Centre housed resting personnel for any emergency situations that arose. There was only one thing for it; she would have to come back much later when all was quiet and pray she wouldn’t be seen.

A distant rumbling signalled the imminent arrival of an air-shuttle into the central shuttle bay. Sarah sighed, swung the now heavy rucksack onto her back and headed for home; she figured she might as well dump her current load and come back unimpeded.

Reaching the outer edges of the building, the main entrance sliding into view as she descended one of the short escalators, people began rushing past her in the opposite direction.

‘What’s happening?’ Sarah said to a man running towards the interior.

‘They’ve found something big!’ he replied without stopping.

‘Big?’

Taking the stairs two at time, he looked back over his shoulder. ‘Artefacts, amazing artefacts!’

Other people, chattering in excitement, scurried past while the area around her rapidly emptied. Torn between completing part of her mission or seeing whatever had been brought back from outside the base, Sarah stood for a few seconds and then ran back the way she’d come. She had to see this, it sounded too good to miss. By the time she’d reached the centre of the building again, the corridors heaved with personnel from all over the SED, everyone flocking to witness whatever had been unearthed out in Sanctuary Proper.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ Sarah asked a woman next to her as they moved slowly forwards, people trying to find any vantage point they could to watch the shuttle bay.

‘An archaeological team just returned, they’ve found a hoard, biggest yet by the sound of it.’

‘A hoard?’

The woman smiled, her eyes alight. ‘Treasure – artefacts – who knows?! Whatever it is, I haven’t seen this level of excitement for at least five years so it will be worth a look, for sure.’

Up ahead the doorway became jammed, the press of human bodies creating a bottleneck. The woman grabbed Sarah’s hand. ‘Follow me,’ she told her and began working her way back down the corridor against the flow of people.

Hot on her heels, Sarah followed the woman through an emergency door.

‘Short cut,’ the woman said and then ran up some stairs.

Keeping up with her new found friend, Sarah was led through a rabbit warren of corridors in a section of the building she’d never seen before. Eventually they emerged out onto a narrow metal walkway, directly above the shuttle bay which was packed to the rafters with people, the sea of noise from the crowds bubbling up around them. Forty feet below, an air-shuttle had been surrounded by this mass of humanity while a green clad team unloaded from it three huge, composite crates, each twenty feet long, twenty wide and fifteen feet deep. These black, bespoke containers, Sarah knew, were used by teams to transport fragile objects back to the USSB, protecting them against the extensive rigours experienced during an air-shuttle’s journey.

A bulky forklift truck deposited the crates onto the ground, the archaeological team fighting for room as they struggled against the press of bodies around them. Watching the commotion below, Sarah found her attention diverted by a speaker system crackling to life throughout the shuttle bay.

‘This is Commander Locke; everyone calm down and give your colleagues some space to work. You are professionals, start acting like it!’

Reprimanded by their leader, people shuffled back as best they could, but it took a contingent of the army to regain some level of order. Soldiers formed a ring around the archaeologists, forcing the onlookers back.

The first crate lid swung open, the compressed gases inside hissing out into the air and enveloping the crew around it in a misty vapour. With the gas dissipating, the precious cargo within, still covered by a transparent film and held down by heavy strapping, came into focus. Sarah had a prime view of what lay beneath, situated as she was on the high gantry. Everyone else below craned their necks to see what lay inside. Rather than a selection of items, Sarah could see just a single jet-black, oblong object, measuring approximately fifteen feet long, ten in width and perhaps the same in height.

The archaeologists, belonging to team Delta Twelve, according to the text on the reverse of their coveralls, hooked the retaining straps onto the forklift and hoisted the precious discovery up into the air and then down onto the steel clad floor. The glossy artefact, now fully exposed, had an intriguing hexagonal profile. The flat surface was so without flaw Sarah could see the reflection of the surrounding people and shuttle bay within it. The straps were released and the protective film discarded, enabling lines of silver to be seen running down its length, accompanied by a fine flowing script and curious symbols.

‘Do you think it’s a coffin?’ the woman said to Sarah, breaking the spell that had settled upon her as she watched the scene unfold below.

‘Perhaps,’ Sarah said, still engrossed, as the other two transportation cases were unloaded to reveal two more near identical hexagonal shapes. Unlike the first artefact, these two had dirty, cracked and pockmarked brown surfaces, appearing as ancient as they probably were. As the last one neared the ground, the forklift operator misjudged the depth and lowered it too fast sending a heavy boom reverberating around the inside of the building, indicating to all present the immense weight of the objects on show.

‘Be careful, you idiot!’ one the archaeologists screamed at the forklift operator, the impact sending a small chunk of the strange monolith crumbling onto the floor.

The woman next to Sarah gasped and put a hand to her mouth in shock at seeing the object’s fragility and the mistake that had resulted in its further degeneration. Sarah knew how she felt; they had to be more careful.

‘Is this why the army are here in numbers today?’ Sarah asked the woman next to her, putting two and two together. ‘I’m Sarah, by the way.’

‘Anne-Marie.’ The woman gave Sarah a warm smile and held out a hand, which Sarah shook. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she told her, as they both looked back down once more, transfixed. ‘Word is the military has something coming in later. This team came back unexpectedly.’

Now unloaded, the green clad team, enlisting the help of a few of the soldiers, grappled with the topside of each of the objects. Sarah realised they were trying to remove the lids. Inch by tantalising inch, the top of each artefact slid away, the movement accompanied by grinding noises much like the discord of heavy stone on stone. The emotive sound drifted to silence. The massive covers, now fully retracted, hung suspended off to one side, somehow still attached along one edge; perhaps by an unseen mechanism contained within.

Sarah attempted to absorb everything at once, but to do so was an impossibility and so, succumbing to the unconsidered, she let her eyes be seduced by the nearest of the now open chests. The thick sidewalls, made of the same material as its exterior – a dusty looking brown rock – surrounded not a hollow core, but a single long, rectangular, oxidised metal insert. Sunken into this thick, pitted metal were three distinct shapes; an ellipse, a semicircle with a pinched peak, and a long, slim rectangle, ending in a point at one end and a small circle at the other. 

Two of the three cut-outs sat empty, the thick metallic walls reaching down a hand’s width to a flat dark surface. Resting within the ellipse, however, lay something that held the attention. Sarah gazed at the strange object, its colour seeming to change and shimmer as the shuttle bay’s interior lighting reflected from its intricate facets.

‘It looks like a shield, don’t you think?’ Anne-Marie said, captivated by the same artefact.

‘Hmm,’ Sarah murmured in agreement. It did have the look of defensive hand-held armour. The shield, if that’s what it was, consisted of a dark blue and purple material, inlaid with sparkling red gemstones and chrome-like diamonds in beautiful spiralling patterns. Just in from its outside edge, a wide band of gold enclosed the detailed centre.

Anne-Marie took a photo with her computer phone. ‘It must be about seven feet in length, most likely ceremonial.’

Sarah’s gaze shifted to the other two opened caskets. The second rock-hewn block held the bones of a skeleton, or at least the remnants of one. The segments of a huge Anakim skull, broken into six parts, had been positioned to give the impression of a complete piece. Each fragment had its own small compartment, sunk into a corroded metal surround, much like the shield in the other container. Along with this, around twenty other bones of various sizes had been placed in anatomically correct locations within the aging metal surface. Whoever this individual had been, they must have been important indeed; this find was a true relic in every sense of the word.

The final hexagonal container, black as night inside, as it was out, had been filled with three rows of twenty small circular holes sunk into the black onyx-like surface. Within each, apart from nine which were empty, nestled a small, round ball; around each hole were words in the same silver script, perhaps denoting some aspect of what rested within. Looking closer, Sarah realised the spherical objects weren’t round at all, but multi-faceted, which gave them their orb-like appearance. Each varied in colour and, although it was difficult to tell for certain at a distance, in texture and material too.

Sarah disconnected her computer phone from her wrist and recorded some video footage, much like everyone else below. The archaeologists weren’t finished, however, and one of them activated some kind of mechanism within the black vessel. The top surface containing the spheres sprang upwards a few inches and then parted, to reveal a cavernous hole beneath. At the bottom of this secret void Sarah could just make out a flash of gold.

Anne-Marie leaned forward. ‘What is that?’

Sarah wasn’t sure, but whatever these artefacts represented, it had become of great interest to the U.S. Army and the rest of the military fraternity. Armed Special Forces filtered through the crowds to the artefacts, the leader recognisable as the man who had clashed with Riley back on her first SED mission.

There were angry exchanges between the factions, their raised voices drowned out by dissent within the ranks of SED workers present. Finally the archaeologists succumbed to the military’s demands, finding themselves relieved of their duties before being escorted away. The Terra Force commander then gave a twirling signal with one raised hand and his men went about closing and covering the artefacts.

Jeers and catcalls rang out from the spectators and then the Command Centre’s speaker system sputtered to life once more. ‘SED personnel, my name is General Stevens.’

Sarah looked up to see an SFSD contingent behind the Control Station’s glass windows. A large portly man in an officer’s uniform stood next to Dresden Locke.

‘I have authorised the acquisition of these Anakim treasures,’ the General continued, ‘for immediate analysis by our science division. Any video or photographs taken will need to be submitted to our security teams immediately. Please report to your nearest security officer for compliance. To ensure no mistakes are made, everyone will have their recordings downloaded from all of their devices upon leaving this building, be that today or otherwise; if you have anything of a personal nature that you don’t wish us to see, we recommend deleting it now.’

There was a ferocious vocal backlash from the SED’s denizens at this sudden and unjust turn of events and the scene threatened to turn ugly in short order. Weapons were raised and objects thrown before harmony was restored by Dresden Locke and General Stevens, and the real possibility of a riot and ensuing bloodshed was averted.

‘This is so much bullshit,’ Anne-Marie said, after things had calmed down and a soldier motioned at them from below to vacate the area.

‘Do they do this often?’ Sarah asked, trudging back the way they’d come, the thrill of the discoveries still fresh in her mind.

Anne-Marie shook her head. ‘Rarely at the SED. They normally stamp their size twelve boots all over our teams out in the field. They must have missed something they were interested in and decided to grab it now.’