I mengsk, p.28
I, Mengsk, page 28
“Charles told me you received a message today.”
“I did,” she said with a smile that served only to make her face look even more cadaverous than it did already. “It’s from your grandfather.”
“What does he have to say for himself this month?”
“He says your father is coming to see us.”
The cup of water fell from Valerian’s hands.
* * *
The spire of rock soared above Valerian like the horn of some massive, buried narwhal, its surface pitted and worn smooth by uncounted centuries. He ran his hand across the surface, feeling tingling warmth through the fluted surface of the rock that was quite at odds with the chill of the air around him.
Sheer cliffs of curving rock arched up overhead, a natural canyon that Valerian suspected had once been roofed by ribbed beams of stone, but which now lay scattered and broken at his feet.
Frozen, gritty winds howled as they funneled through the canyon, lamenting the fall of so mighty a structure, and Valerian wondered what great catastrophe had occurred here to cast it down. The sky rippled through the thin atmosphere, stars pulsing in the far distance, their light already millennia old.
He pulled his thick jacket tighter about himself and adjusted his goggles as he descended the loose-rubble-and-scree slope that led to the colossal cave mouth ahead. He had ventured within this cave before and felt a deep sense of connection to the past within its shimmering, hybrid walls.
To know that long-forgotten hands had crafted this palace with ancient artifice was an electrifying sensation—proof that life had existed in the galaxy long before the arrival of human beings. The secrets that might yet be buried here were beyond measure and Valerian longed for the opportunity to plumb the depths of those mysteries, both for the sake of knowledge and for the rewards it would bring.
Valerian paused as he took a moment to savor the solitude, smiling to himself as he realized that this was probably the most alone he had been in his entire life. He was the only human being on this rock, and the freedom of that sensation was intoxicating.
The news that his father was coming to Orbital 235 had made Valerian surly and irritable. He found himself unable to concentrate on his researches, and his mother had even berated him—something she almost never did.
The only peace he found was on the surface of Van Osten’s Moon, alone with his thoughts and the ruins of a forgotten race of alien builders. What had brought them here and what had become of them? These were mysteries Valerian felt sure he could unlock were he but given the time.
Time. It all came back to time.
Time he, and more especially, his mother, didn’t have.
He’d managed to persuade Charles Whittier that he could travel to the surface of Van Osten’s Moon without escort and had landed one of the orbital’s two flyers at the mouth of the largest canyon complex on the surface.
He wore a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants and a heavy, insulated jacket. Over his back was slung a rucksack filled with a comm unit, surveying equipment, and food and water. He wore a slugthrower in a shoulder holster and his favorite sword was belted at his hip. He wanted solitude, but he wasn’t about to venture into alien ruins without taking some precautions.
The journey down the rocky canyon had been easy going so far, but his breath was still tight in his chest, and he slipped the mouthpiece of a small aqualung canister over his nose and mouth.
A squall of dust blew off the ground and Valerian looked up to see the Orbital’s second lander flash overhead, circling and coming in to alight at the mouth of the canyon. He cursed at the interruption and had half a mind to just carry onward, to hell with the new arrival, but he forced the thought down.
The lander touched down without fuss and within moments, the side hatch opened and a tall figure emerged into the twilight world of Van Osten’s Moon.
Valerian recognized him immediately, and his heart hammered on the cage of his ribs.
There was no mistaking the powerful cut of the man, even from this distance.
His father.
Arcturus Mengsk descended the ladder and began the trek to meet his son. Valerian saw that the man was dressed similarly to himself, with heavy-duty work wear and rugged boots. Like Valerian, his father carried a pack over his shoulders and moved with the natural assurance of a man used to being in control.
As his father approached, Valerian took the time to study him. Arcturus’s hair was still dark, but the first signs of gray were appearing at his temples and in his beard. Only in his mid-thirties, his father’s ongoing war against the Confederacy was evidently aging him prematurely—though he was still an imposing, proud figure.
Despite the thin atmosphere, his father seemed untroubled by his exertions, and maintained a steady pace toward him over the rough terrain.
He waved at his son and, despite himself, Valerian waved back.
His mother had once told him that people often found themselves going out of their way to please his father for no reason they could adequately explain. Valerian wondered if he too had been affected by that reality-warping effect.
Arcturus dropped over a fallen slab of rock and took a deep breath of the thin air.
“Bracing, isn’t it?” said his father.
Valerian removed the aqualung canister and said, “That’s it? That’s your greeting after eight years?”
“Ah, you’re angry,” said Arcturus, pausing and taking a seat on a smooth boulder. “A natural reaction, I suppose. Do you need to berate me for a while before we talk as men? It won’t do any good, but if you feel you must, then go ahead.”
Valerian felt the angry outburst he had planned to deliver wither in his breast and the angry retort on the tip of his tongue become stillborn.
“Right,” he said. “I might as well get mad at these rocks for all the good it would do.”
“Words spoken in anger are just hot air, Valerian. They rarely hurt, so what’s the point of them? There are no words as ultimately destructive as those which are ultimately considered.”
“You’d know about that,” said Valerian. “The UNN is making you look like some kind of crazed madman.”
Arcturus waved his hand. “No one believes what’s on the UNN anyway, and the more they vilify me, the more people are waking up to see that I have the Confederacy worried.”
“And do you? Have them worried?”
His father stood and came over to him, looking him up and down as though inspecting a prime specimen of livestock. “Oh, I’d say I do. The Confederacy is about to fall; I can see the cracks widening with every day that passes. My father and your grandfather knew what they were doing, but they weren’t thinking big enough.”
“And you are?”
“Very much so,” said Arcturus, nodding in the direction of the cave mouth Valerian had been heading for. “Now what say you show me what’s been occupying your time on this barren rock?”
Valerian nodded and set off without another word, picking his way down the slope toward the yawning cave. Its scale was immense and it took them a further hour to reach the bottom of the canyon, the towering cliffs wreathing them in shadow and cold.
The surfaces of the rocks were smooth and glassily transparent, as though vitrified by intense heat and striated with what looked like gleaming metal. Perfectly round gemstones were buried within the heart of the rock.
“Fascinating,” said his father. “The surface has an igneous look to it, but appears to be metamorphic. Do you know the substance of the protolith?”
“No,” said Valerian, suddenly wishing he knew more about the formation of rock and had more specialist equipment here. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Ah, no, I suppose you wouldn’t,” said Arcturus. “Metamorphic rocks come about when a preexisting rock type, the protolith, is transformed into something altogether new.”
“What sort of thing could cause that change?”
Arcturus pressed his hand against the rocks, resting his forehead on the smooth face of the stone. “Usually it’s caused by high temperatures and the pressure of rock layers above, but tectonic processes like continental collisions would do it as well. Any sufficiently large geological force that causes enormous horizontal pressure, friction, and distortion could cause this, but I don’t think we’re looking at any natural phenomenon here.”
“Why not?”
“Because whatever caused this transformation—if it even was a transformation, didn’t take place over geological spans of time; I think it happened virtually overnight. But then, I’ve just arrived. I’m sure you’ve looked more deeply into the geological formations already.”
Valerian hadn’t had the chance to go any deeper than observational study, but suspected his father already knew that, and was bandying about his knowledge in an unconscious display of superiority.
“Of course,” said Valerian, attempting to reassert his power. “My studies have shown that this formation is a blend of natural forces and artificial engineering. See here, where the natural camber of the rock has been molded and interfaced with what looks like some kind of metal reinforcement.”
Arcturus looked closely at the rock Valerian indicated. “Yes, like a neosteel rebar in plascrete.”
Valerian waved his father onward. “Come on, let’s go inside; it’s quite something. You’ll not have seen anything like it.”
“Don’t be so sure—I’ve seen a lot these last few years.”
“Nothing like this,” promised Valerian.
* * *
His father stood in the center of the cave, though to call it such was to vastly diminish its unbelievable, incomprehensible scale. It was a gargantuan cathedral of light and stone and metal, fashioned deep in the heart of a mountain by an ancient race of gods. For surely no beings but gods could have hollowed out so massive a peak and not have it collapse in the millions, probably billions of years since they had first devised the means of its construction.
Gracefully curving ribs of rock soared overhead, each one thicker than the hull of a battlecruiser. Corbels the size of siege tanks jutted out of the walls and airy flying buttresses supported hanging finials and graceful descending archways of stone. Distance rendered them slim and delicate, but Valerian guessed most were at least twenty meters thick.
The very walls seemed to shimmer with internal bioluminescence, scads of light darting along the lengths of metal set in the stone like flickering embers of electrical current. Gems pulsed with a faint glow, as though in time with an infinitely slow and inaudible heartbeat.
Fluted stalactites descended in tapering spears, penetrating the roof like an inverted crown of ice pushed through the mountain’s summit. A light mist hung in the upper reaches of the enormous cavern, a cloud system that kept the air moist and reduced the internal humidity.
The interior of the cave seemed to point even more conclusively to a deliberate hand in its creation, its scale making a mockery of any such human constructions. Entire fleets could fit within this enormous cavern and, for all Valerian knew, perhaps they had.
“It’s incredible,” said Arcturus, and Valerian was surprised to hear genuine emotion in his voice. “I’ve never seen the like.”
“Told you,” said Valerian, pleased he had been able to surprise his father.
“And you think this is alien?”
“Don’t you?” replied Valerian, surprised at the question.
“I suppose it’s possible,” conceded his father, “but even if it’s true, what does it matter? Whoever built this is long dead and gone.”
“Aren’t you curious about who built it? What great secrets we might learn from them?”
“Not especially. They are nothing but dust now and no one remembers them. How great could they have been?”
Valerian’s frustration at his father’s obstinate refusal to grasp the enormity of such revelations grew with every word Arcturus uttered, and his temper began to fray. He realized he’d been sucked into his father’s reality by the man’s apparent interest in the ancient cave. Valerian shook himself free of it as all the things he had wanted to say to his father suddenly rushed to the forefront of his mind.
“Where have you been all these years?” he blurted. “Why did you never come for us? Didn’t you care for us?”
His father turned from his contemplation of the vast cavern, its majesty forgotten in an instant as he saw that the pleasant fiction of a father and son bonding was at an end.
“It was too dangerous,” he said simply. “The Confederacy wants me dead and if they knew where you were, they would use you to get to me. There’s no great mystery to it, Valerian.”
“My mother is ill,” said Valerian. “Did you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you care?”
“Of course I care,” snapped Arcturus. “What kind of childish question is that?”
“Childish? Is it childish to wonder where you were when the mother of your son is dying?”
“Ailin told me your mother’s cancer was inoperable,” said Arcturus. “Is he right?”
“He is,” confirmed Valerian, fighting to control his anger and hurt. “And all this running from planet to planet and moon to moon isn’t doing her any good. It’s just making her worse.”
“And what would it have achieved if I had come rushing to your side, save put you both in danger?” said Arcturus. “Did you want me to come and help you hold your mother’s hand as she lay on her deathbed? Is that it? Well, Valerian, I’m sorry, but that would have achieved nothing. I have greater concerns than comforting you. Or your mother.”
Valerian wanted to launch himself at his father and wipe the uncaring expression from his face with his fists, but he kept his anger locked tightly within himself. Though he hated to admit it, Valerian found himself admiring the man’s ability to think logically and focus in the face of what would have broken the composure of a lesser man.
But still, he had things to say to his father that needed saying, regardless of whether or not they would penetrate his armor of conceit.
“Greater concerns? Like overthrowing the Confederacy?”
“Exactly,” said Arcturus. “And such a goal requires sacrifice. We have all lost people in the course of this war, son, including me: my parents, Dorothy, Achton.”
“Who?”
“He was my father’s head of security, and a good man.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was on Korhal when the missiles hit.”
“Ah.”
“But their deaths will gain meaning when the Confederacy lies in ruins and you and I step in to fill the void. We can do it, Valerian. I have an army behind me that is the equal of anything the Confederacy can field. It’s only a matter of time until they break and we can rule what they leave behind. But we can do it right, and found an empire for the good of humanity.”
“The good of humanity?” spat Valerian. “You mean the benefit of the Mengsk dynasty.”
Arcturus shrugged. “I see no difference between the two,” he said.
“And you’d want me beside you?” said Valerian, trying to keep the hope from his voice.
“Of course,” replied Arcturus, coming over and gripping his shoulders. “You are my son and you are a Mengsk. Who else would be worthy to stand at my side as my successor?”
“You didn’t think so before,” pointed out Valerian. “I heard what you said about me. You called me bookish, effeminate, and weak.”
“Words spoken in anger long ago,” said Arcturus, dismissing the hurt his words had done with a wave of the hand. “But look at you now! You have done me proud, boy. And I’m impressed; I can’t pretend I’m not. You have achieved a lot since I saw you last.”
“I didn’t do it for you, Father,” he said. “I did it for me.”
“I know that, and that’s good. A man should never do anything to impress others; he must always do things on his own and for his own sense of validation.”
“And what if I don’t want to your successor?” said Valerian. “You’ve been controlling my life from afar for so long now, I think you’ve gotten used to the idea that I’ll always jump at your command. Well, I’m not like that, Father. I am my own man and I make my own decisions.”
His father smiled and nodded, letting go of his shoulders and sitting on a nearby hunk of fallen rock. “I remember saying something similar to my father long ago.”
Valerian felt the anger drain from him and took a long drink of water from a plastic canteen he removed from his pack.
“Did it do you any good?”
“Not really,” said Arcturus, accepting the canteen from Valerian. “I called him a terrorist and a murderer, but now I’ve done far worse than he ever did. I guess if someone does something truly terrible to you, it’s easier to justify your retaliation, no matter how vile it is. The Confederacy killed my family and obliterated my homeworld; what could I possibly do that would approach an atrocity of such magnitude?”
“I don’t know,” said Valerian. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“Then what do you want, Valerian?”
“I want to be part of your life, but I want to make my own destiny.”
“I said that to my father too,” replied Arcturus. “However, I have since found that time and history have a way of sweeping us up and making use of our talents, irrespective of what we might want.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that destiny will sometimes force us down the road it intends for us and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Is that what you think happened to you?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because destiny dances to my tune,” said Arcturus.
Valerian laughed at that, but the laugher died when he realized his father wasn’t joking.
CHAPTER 17
DESTINY DANCES TO MY TUNE …
The words came back to Valerian as he watched the gigantic AAI holo-screen in the main commercial square of Gramercy City, capital of Tyrador VIII. Fully thirty meters wide and nine high, the artificial advertising intelligence projected an image atop a shimmering podium before a giant skyscraper.
