Archon’s Gate

Chapter One
Prisoner of Thraysha

 

Lanyar slowly woke to the dripping cadence of the rusted pipes above his head. He opened one eye and peered around the small room he called his home. The chamber was cold, damp, and dark. From the corners, small lights blinked and pulsed, throwing off a weak glow to show the hundred of bits of brick-n-brack that Lanyar had collected over the years. Piles of tungsten and ardentium coils and rods lay in one corner, while the opposite held boxes made of synthetic carbons, plastics, and bio-enhanced re-fabricated boards. In another lay piles of bolts of trylon fabrics of red, blue, and dark green stripes and pleated patterns. Scattered about were strange and mysterious shapes and sized boxes, spheres, and objects that bleeped with diodes of many different colors and intensities.

Lanyar stretched and slowly rose to his knees, looking about and seemingly trying to remember where he was. The boy had lived his entire life here, far beneath the surface, in this deserted building’s basement. As he looked around, he reached for a small bag laying next to him. He fumbled with its contents and pulled forth a small aniline-hued crystal rod and a dark black metal disk. These items were his most precious find — two artifacts that he never sold and or shown to anyone. Fumbling in the darkness, he flipped the black metal disk over and over, searching to find the notch in the disk and sliding the crystal into it. Placing the rod into the metal cusp, the crystal began to pulse with diffuse pruple light, then slowly glowing to a soothing ochre glow. The radiance was a hue short of the bright yellow-orange sun of any class-M star — not that Lanyar had ever seen a sun before, the one from this world, or any other star system in the Empire.

The glow the artifact gave off was more than just mere light; partly psychological and partly the inner workings of the disk, the light gave Lanyar a feeling of comfort and security. More so, the light also bathed the boy in warmth, and strangely made him feel as if he had just finished a full repast; again a thing that Lanyar had never known.

Letting the light bathe him for several more minutes, he finally stood, stretched and looked into a box next to his matted fabrics of his bed. From the old rusty metal box, he pulled out a strange piece of dull grey film. This he shook with two fingers and stretching it with his other hand. Turning back to the rod and metal disk, he separated the two and let the room go black. Then thru practice he placed the sheer film across his forehead, tucking it down over his brow and above his nose. The dark room suddenly exploded into brilliant hues of varying colors from dark purple to bright and scalding pink. The film corrected his near sighted vision but also gave him the ability to see into several invisible spectrums. The light from the lamp had warmed many of the objects in the room to a dull Burgundy, while the archway leading out into an empty hallway was stark purple.

From underneath his sleeping blanket, the young boy removed a rolled-up heavy dull black and silvery plastic mat, which he spread before him. Running his hands along the side, the mat buzzed with internal circuitry and began to glow. The ebony black surface flickered and wavered, turning from a lifeless blackness to the black depth of the void of space. The screen projected several bright golden yellow boxes one upon the other. In each box, forest green, emerald text flowed detailing specifications of various small parts, tools, and unusually shaped trapezoidal and elongated metal bars, pins, and beams.

Pulling his knapsack closer to him, he sat down and began to examine several cloth wrapped objects, each he sat next to the other. Taking the first cloth bundle, he slowly unwrapped it and set it down. Tucked in the cloth were a small pile of bronze colored screws. These he fiddled with for a second, bringing them close to his face and staring intently at the threads of each. Then he turned back towards the screen, moving his hands automatically across the surface. As he did so, the golden boxes, resized and moved across on the screen. He flipped through dozens of digital pages of varying size and types of screws and finally ended up with a picture that closely resembled the one in his hand. “ahhhhh,” Lanyar mumbled to himself. “A Tungsten core, byrellium threaded thumbscrew.” At the bottom of the lengthy description of size, shape, and usage. it flashed in bright red letters, “EQUIVALENT TIME VALUE OF 28 HOURS” and cyan letters, “150 CREDITS”.

“Let me see how many I have of these little guys,” Lanyar said to no one, and began to count off the small bronze colored screws. He counted twice, each time he ended up with twelve. “Ten for the time, and two for the credits sounds about right,” he finished out loud.

He re-wrapped the screws in the fabric, stuffing it back in his knapsack, then turned to the next bundle. He unwrapped this one, like the last, and examined its contents. At first it appeared to be nothing more than a mass of tangled and unconnected copper wires, a few with jackets of white and black nylon. He poked at it and grimaced. Lanyar shrugged and laid the mass of wires back down, and proceeded to the last bundle he had.

This he unfolded and withdrew two crystal cubes, about the size and shape of gambling dice. Both were made of clear crystal, with each of the six sides embossed with technical hieroglyphics that Lanyar knew were used during the first expedition to this world. The crystals were memory cubes, and could contain a tremendous amount of information on many different studies, or they could be filled with useless garble, music, or movie projections. Then again, they could be blank and contain nothing at all. Lanyar didn’t own a cube reader, and would have to journey to the base camp to use one of them at a cost of a few credits.
Movement caught his eye and he turned and looked back towards the cloth containing the tangled wires. In the radiance of the soothing crystal light, Lanyar swore that he saw them move, but perhaps it was only an illusion. He continued to stare at the wires and just as he was about to give up, they all twitched spasmodically. The boy’s eyes widened as he continued to watch the wires twitch and move under their own volition. In minutes the wires wriggled and moved until they laid end to end, and then under seemingly magical pretense they melded into one wire. The nylon jackets stretched and undulated across the entire length. With one final thrash, the wires ceased, now a perfect coil of wire.

Lanyar returned to his screen and hurriedly typed upon the soft keyless mat. The golden yellow boxes disappeared, replaced by scarlet cyan and sapphire screens. These he moved through, racing his fingers up and down imaginary sliders and turned pages. “Rats!” He exclaimed as he flipped back and forth between the blue boxes of cataloged information.

“I will have to look into that,” the boy queried as he sat the wires aside and returned to his old computer. Tracing his hands up along the side, he hit his “Favorites” and pulled down the Galactipedia on Thraysha. The screen flickered for a brief second, quickly loading the multiple windows from memory and showing data and archive video on a small dusty red world.

A deep and resonating voice spoke with authority, “Thraysha, the forgotten world of the Imperium, and home to the largest penal colony in the empire. Often called, Dungeon World, for its huge subterranean complexes, its atmosphere is poisonous to most of the inmates. With a gravity slightly less the T-1, it is an ideal spot to put the unsavory elements of the empire in a place of security.”

“Pfft!”, hissed Lanyar and then laughed. He let the voice continue its dissertation of his home, only partially listening to the encyclopedia recording that he had heard hundreds of times before.

“…first explored in 2376 AD, by the exploration ship VSS Titan, it held only mild interest to the authorities. But when the Imperium needed a new frontier world for its penal prison system, after the emancipation of Thora’s World, they opened Thraysha to colonization and development. After six decades on ceaseless development and the most advanced Terra forming the likes that has not been seen in all of the galaxy, the empire suddenly sealed the world and deported all colonists to the nearby Sequal system. Even though the Imperium still has a penal colony operating on the planet, a level twelve security seal has been placed on the planet and no new prisoners have been sent there in the last twenty-three years.”
“Little is now known about the world, its original colony, or even for that matter the penal colony. End of Transmission….for further information, please refer to Penal Colonies of the Empire.” The deep voice sputtered to a stop, and the room fell uncomfortably quiet again.

Lanyar had heard that same recording so many times he often heard the voice in his dreams, but for some reason he wanted to hear it…he needed to know where he was and why he was here. He didn’t know his mother nor father, but assumed they were two violent or subversive criminals sent to Thraysha for heinous crimes against the empire. On some days, he day dreamed that his parents were of the original colonists and that they would some how return to Thraysha someday and take him away….of late that little dream seemed as plausible as him walking the avenues of Earth, six thousand light years away.

Shutting down the plasmo-comp, he returned to his dimly lit room. He knew he needed to eat something, even though he didn’t feel very hungry. He looked over the many boxes and cartons scattered about and finally decided on a oblong cyan box that he tore open and swallowed its contents. The porridge like drool tasted sweet and it seemed to fill him up and give him a bit more energy. He crumpled the box and threw it in the corner, turning around the boy didn’t need to see that box dissolve into nothing, as he had seen it a million times before — with the carton seal broken the bio-degradable container quickly disintegrated.
He had allot to do today, he thought. He wanted to check out a new and perhaps forgotten building fragment that he spied several weeks ago. He also knew that he had to return to base camp, handing over his finds and facing Botick. With that thought he shivered, Botick was not a man you trifle with. He was a brash and uncouth man, hiding behind an eon of culture to screen his savage ruthlessness and self-centered copious attainment of wealth and self-gratification. Lanyar remembered with grim recollections of many of the boys that crossed Botick; rarely were any of them ever seen again, and those that did were nothing more than feeble zombies of broken humanity. He didn’t like the think of that and the faster he could get in and out the better — though a lonely existence, treasure hunting was far more comforting to him, than living around camp and sacrificing everything to that brute.

He collected his things, poking and prodding through the rubbish to find his bits and pieces and made his way out into the darkened hallway.

This page has the following sub pages.

• Chapter Two: Archon’s Gate