Chapter Twelve
In Search of Aliens
By the following morning, Rolf was filled with curiosity, but he was also scared. As he and Soo-Kai rode together from their house, Rolf contemplated what they were about to do. They were going into danger. It was just the sort of thing he liked to avoid. It wasn’t that he was a coward; just that he wasn’t a warrior, a Knight used to war and bloodshed. He was a tailor. And he had a lot to lose.
It was over six years since he had ridden into the clearing with Soo-Kai. He had sold the horse shortly after, and had bought food and cloth with the money he had received. It was the last time he had rode a horse until now. Not that he had forgotten how to ride. But somehow he felt that Soo-Kai looked far better on her horse than he did on his. Rather than her favourite blue outfit, Soo-Kai had chosen a red one he had made for her with leggings and waistcoat for the ride. It had a matching jacket trimmed in gold. Her original black boots adorned her feet. She rode in such a confident and proud manner, her head held high, and her rich red hair flowing in the wind. How he loved her so.
And that was what scared him the most. If he could spend his whole life with her alone, never meeting another human at all, he would be happy. And that was because it was humans that brought danger. Destroyers killed because they were programmed to. They followed a kind of logic he could relate to. But people had many motives for killing. For pleasure, for gain, and for lust. And sometimes just for the sheer Hell of it. Rolf had learned to be scared of people. Not so much for what they could do to him, but for what they could take away from him.
But then there was the child, Daniel. What reason could there have been to kill him like that? He obviously had no value to them, or else they would have sought his capture and not his death. Rolf and Soo-Kai had talked about it the night before. She had said that those at the castle were hiding something. It was obvious, really. They had killed the boy to keep the secret, and they would have killed him to do the same.
Rolf wanted to know what that secret was. He wanted to know what was going on at the castle, who these aliens were, and how they had got here.
That was when Soo-Kai asked him if he would keep another child if they found one. It was a question he hadn’t expected. But as he had stared into her eyes he had understood. To have accepted a child that wasn’t hers would have devalued their love for one another. As he had grieved over the death of the boy, that thought hadn’t occurred to him. But now as he stared at her, it was as plain as day. Rolf had said no, and he had meant it.
“I want only what you can give me,” he had told her.
“And if I can give you nothing?” she had asked.
“Then I will always have you.”
Soo-Kai had seemed content with his answer. But after they had made love that night, she had been strangely reticent about her success at conception. “Don’t ask me,” was all she would say when he had questioned her. It made him wonder.
By the morning, Rolf had second thoughts about the risks he was taking. He said as much to Soo-Kai, but her mind was made up.
“We cannot avoid this, Rolf,” she had told him. “What takes place at the castle in the forest is too close to us. We must either flee, or engage it at our choice. To sit idly by would allow it to over-take us at its choice. That would give those at the castle the advantage we now have. No, Rolf, I know this worries you, and I love you more for the fear you have for me, but I also worry. Twice now I have nearly lost you. I will not leave to chance a further engagement. We must learn what danger lies at the castle, and then we can choose our own fate.”
Now as they rode together through the forest, Rolf worried about the future, and about the fate that awaited them.
They had crossed a wide river in the forest when Soo-Kai drew her horse to a halt and stared off to their right. Rolf stopped his horse beside her.
“What do you see?” he asked her.
“Something I have not seen for a long time. Follow me.” She headed off to the right. Rolf followed her.
At first Rolf could see nothing. Then, bit-by-bit, the shape of a huge fallen carcass became visible among the trees.
It was like some huge tremendous sea beast that had died long ago and only its bones and fragments of dried skin remained. It lay across their path, long and straight, and with the trees of the forest growing up through its broken ribs. But instead of being clean and white, the skeleton was brown and dirty, as if it had just been dug up. Everywhere there were bits of dried mud and foliage hanging from the bones. And many of the ribs had fallen and lay broken on the ground, while others emerged from the soil as mere stumps. Only the dried fragments of skin still stood in a line, marking the creatures’ outline. They were like the huge brown scales of some great fish.
Rolf stared at it in awe. The forest floor was uneven here, and they were in a dip between higher ground on either side. He looked up and down the length of the great carcass. It seemed to emerge from the higher ground at one end, and dive back into it at the other, almost out of sight among the trees in the distance. Even the part that was exposed seemed to be half buried beneath their feet.
“What is this thing?” Rolf asked. “I have never seen the like of such a creature before in my life. Did it once live here in the forest?”
Soo-Kai got off her horse and walked between the creature’s great ribs, leading her horse behind her. “It is not a creature, my husband, but the remains of the assault ship from the Nakora Tabek. It is the ship that brought your ancestors to this world, Rolf. A ship that has been forgotten and buried here for more than two thousand years.”
Rolf got off his horse and led it among the great ribs as Soo-Kai had done. He touched one of them, feeling the rough brown surface. “This is not bone, then, but metal?”
“An alloy of steel. Long buried and rusting in the earth.”
“Why has it not been seen before?”
“We are not far from the river,” Soo-Kai suggested. “Maybe its waters rose during the floods of last year and washed away the soil that covered it as they flowed down this channel.”
“After two thousand years?”
“The floods come often. Maybe the effect has been cumulative.”
They walked around inside the remains of the ship. Soo-Kai led the way along its length. She headed towards the far end.
“This way is towards the back, where the cargo bays, engines and power source lay. Behind us would be the front, where the pilot would have sat and flown it. And in the middle, where we walk, is where once the Navak army sat and prepared for war.”
Rolf gazed around at what was left of the ship. “Why do we walk towards the back?” he asked her.
“Because Destroyers do not believe in coincidence.”
Rolf understood her meaning. The arrival of aliens to a world that had seen none for over two thousand years had to be triggered by some cause. What better than the exposure of an ancient relic? Soo-Kai’s fears were proved correct.
When they reached the end of the ship, where it returned to the earth at the edge of a hill, they found evidence of digging. There was a tunnel dug into the hill inside the broken metal bones of the ship. It went deeper inside. All around the entrance to the tunnel were the signs of many horses and men. And among them all was the deeply grooved track of a wagon. Its path was plain to see. At the side of the ship, two of its great ribs had been pushed aside to allow the passage of the wagon; its tracks passing clearly between them. The two deep tracks then wound their way off among the trees.
Rolf knelt down and felt the depth of one of the tracks. “What they carried away was heavy.”
Soo-Kai didn’t answer. Rolf looked up and saw her standing by the entrance to the tunnel, peering inside.
“Are you going to look inside?” he asked her.
Soo-Kai turned and shook her head. “I know what they take. There is much danger in what we find here, Rolf.”
Rolf stood up. “Danger, in what way?”
“
We are surrounded by the footprints of men and horses, and yet only a Destroyer would have known what to take. And Destroyers do not work with humans unless they are bonded to them.”
Rolf considered what that could mean. “These men probably come from the castle, like those that killed the boy.”
Soo-Kai nodded.
“Then there is a bonded Destroyer at the castle,” Rolf guessed. “The castle that was built to keep them out.”
Soo-Kai nodded again. “But if this Destroyer has access to the Althon Gerail, why then does she take a power source from this wreck? And why do the aliens appear? There is much intent here, a purpose pursued. But as yet, the purpose is hidden.”
“What do we do?”
“Find my mother.”