God Star

The Thousand Year Night

3. The Thousand Year NightSelene watched her visitor disappearing into the sands and the shadows of the dusk. Would the desert people survive what was coming? They had more chance than anyone, perhaps, although their chances were surely remote.

It had started the same way on Maes Far. A dot of black in the centre of the sun, barely noticed at first. Growing like a skin cancer, always perfect and round. Most likely the authorities had spotted it first and, understanding what was happening, tried to prepare. It made little difference in the end. Before long, the dark circle was visible to everyone, as if some impossible cosmic worm was eating the sun away from inside.

She still lived with her vivid recollections of those days. Oddly, she almost valued them, too – proof, as they were, of her essential humanity. The soaring cities she'd once known were fallen and empty. Only darkness filled the graceful halls she remembered. The fountains had run dry and no one gazed at the statues and sculptures she'd played round. The people she'd grown up with, that she'd loved and been loved by, were no more.

Visions of those last few months of strangeness and horror filled her eyes as she stared into the peaceful desert.

She recalled one vivid memory, a month before the end, when the planet alternated between true darkness and a grey midwinter gloom, all colour and warmth leeched from it. Violent rainstorms lashed Caraleon, the capital city, scouring the streets and buildings with their fury. She was hurrying home with her father after a visit to a nearby doctor, some infection making her weak and delirious, necessitating an expedition beyond the walls of their home. They chanced across a family friend, a kindly man who had once visited them often, sitting with her father to listen to music long into the night. A ring of unidentified figures had him surrounded, some holding improvised clubs, others jagged blades. She assumed her father would leap to his friend's defence, but instead he bundled her away from the scene and Selene grasped for the first time that her life was in imminent danger. If the mob caught up with them, she and her father would be beaten or hacked to death. They made it home, but the family friend was never seen again.

She remembered also a sunrise, at the end, when all that appeared was a thin ring of white, the limb of the sun's disc like a bridge built on the horizon. She was protected from the worst of the violence, but the truth of what was going on couldn't be hidden from her. She recalled the sensation of hard edges forming inside her mind, cutting into her to replace the soft, warm certainties. A sense of loss for things she hadn't even considered until they were gone.

And then there was the gnawing hunger. Life on Maes Far could have continued for a year or more, she'd been told, if supplies of food and energy had been carefully rationed. It didn't work out like that. Seeing what was coming, people began to hoard food. Fights for diminishing supplies became more and more violent. Sane, kind people she'd known all her life were turning into angry killers, stealing food and fresh water from others by shooting them in the street and taking what they wanted. Bodies began to pile up, with no one to move them or bury them. It was as if she'd grown up among monsters without knowing it. They'd been there all along, lurking beneath a veneer of civility until the time came to reveal themselves.

The planet had gained most of its energy from the sun, large tracts of the desert dedicated to converting solar radiation into electricity. As the solar farms failed, the cities went dark. Power cuts became the norm. The communications infrastructure faltered and collapsed. Water purification plants stopped pumping. Crops withered and died, or failed to grow in the first place. Animals reared for their meat, those that survived slaughter by the mobs, died from starvation on the barren ground.

Going from something like normality to an entire breakdown of civilisation took three terrifying months. Global nuclear destruction would have been kinder than the shroud; the long-drawn-out nature of it was malicious. It was almost gleeful, a way of making the people on the planet destroy themselves. Maybe a few survived for a little longer, but the collapse of the planet's ecosystem meant the end for all large creatures. Beetles and bacteria survived, carrying on as if nothing had happened, but everything larger was swept away.

And now all that was going to be repeated. Borial would suffer the same fate, lost to centuries of darkness, and once again she would be the one to flee, leaving behind the helpless billions to boil in their own brutality. She thought about calling after the desert walker, offering the stranger the chance to escape. Somehow, she knew it would be refused. The nomad had come to warn her, that was all.

She would do what she could. She'd leave the access pit into the Magellanic ship open and shored up. Perhaps there would be a refuge there for the people of the desert.

When everything was secured and prepped for take-off, the lander rattled into the sky. This time she was wary of attack, ready for anything Concordance might throw at her. But the Dragon had done its work well, and she reached the purple cool of orbit without being spotted.

“Shall I prepare the run-up to metaspace translation?” the Dragon asked.

Since Eb, she'd refrained from talking to the ship directly via her brain flecks, preferring the distance of speech. “How long until we reach the 90% safety boundary?”

“Three hours, and I can plot a trajectory that will keep us hidden from the Angelic Gaze for most of that time.”

She should leave; the fleck she carried was too precious to endanger. She had to take it back to the safety of the Refuge and the machines that might be able to extract data from it.

Instead, she paused. The flecks were the key to the trail she'd followed, but perhaps there were other clues to be found as well. She gazed down at the jewel-like planet, its aquamarine oceans, its honey sands. The limb of the disc blazed in a crescent of gold from the glow of the system's sun. Somewhere in that direction, safely below the horizon, the Cathedral ship was unleashing its slow apocalypse onto the planet. From the distance of orbit, everything on the surface looked peaceful and eternal.

“The lander that left for the planet from the Angelic Gaze three weeks ago: did it ever return?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea who was on board?”

“None. I have been unable to decrypt any of their communications.”

“How big was this lander? Enough for a squadron of soldiers?”

“Big enough for only one person.”

That puzzled her. Who had gone down to the planet and not returned? She was already picking up reports that rioting was sweeping through Zandia and the other cities as the growing shroud became apparent to the populace. Everyone knew what had happened on Maes Far; Concordance had made sure word – and images – had spread to planets the galaxy over. There seemed to be no need for Concordance to send an emissary or a negotiator down to meet Borial's authorities. And yet one had been despatched. More to the point, they were apparently still there.

“Are any ships leaving the planet?”

“Apart from yours, none have left the surface for three days. Interplanetary craft in orbit were allowed to leave and landers were allowed to ferry refugees up to them. The transporters have now all left Borial for populated moons and stations elsewhere in the system.”

“Are there orbital shuttles still down on the surface?”

“Some. One attempted to leave yesterday but was destroyed by the Angelic Gaze before it left the stratosphere. Concordance have imposed a total blockade.”

“How many people managed to leave the planet?”

“Perhaps two thousand.”

Two thousand out of thirty-six billion. Not great odds. She wondered who the two thousand were, what fighting and heartbreak had taken place for them to be selected. What payments and promises and threats. Whether, among them, there was a terrified young woman leaving her family and everyone she knew behind.

Selene wondered, also, if Concordance's latest intervention had anything to do with her presence on Borial. It seemed unlikely: they would have come for her if they'd known she was there. It had to be mere coincidence that both she and Concordance had developed an interest in the planet. Still, the thought troubled her.

“Keep your systems at full readiness,” she said to the Dragon, “but we're not going to leave just yet. The fleck I recovered is secure in the vault. If I don't return, if anything happens to me at all, take it to the Refuge. If I'm not back in seven days, or if Concordance show any sign of knowing you're here, abandon me and run.”

The ship expressed no emotion. She'd have felt a little better if it had argued, objected, told her she was making a terrible mistake. “Understood. Where will you be?”

“I'm going back down to the surface. I want to find out who goes to a dying planet when everyone else is fighting desperately to leave.”