4.
The Star of the Founders was a ten-kilometer coffin made of black metal. It orbited the world below, serenely gliding through the void.
The seven astronauts drifted out into the rotating cylinder; the great shaft of light which had illuminated the interior glowed like a dying fluorescent. A thin layer of frost hung over the overgrown gardens that had fed the colonists on their long journey.
“This is amazing,” Lucretia radioed, “how many people lived here?”
“Five hundred to start with. Seven thousand at the apex of population; after planetfall, five hundred were left, to manage the machinery.”
“There were people living up here?” the Yodzi engineer asked, astonished.
“Emphasis on were,” The Emissary added, “I don't know what happened to them.”
They descended from the port by which they had entered, half-climbing, half-sliding. The air smelled stale, a slight basic whiff clung to the underside of the Emissary's nose.
“It's going to be quite a walk,” he noted.
The astronauts looked at him, slumped over and rubbery-limbed. A day and a half in micro-gravity had taken its tole, making them weak.
“It can't have been that bad,” he said.
“It was,” Lucretia said.
“Well, there's no point in you coming if you can't go on,” the Emissary said, “that would be a hell of a shaggy dog story: 'I went a hundred thousand miles to see the Star of the Founders, I was one of the first humans in space after a millenium. Then, I had to take a nap.' Seriously?”
“Not all of us are superhuman,” the nauseous Thuban said.
“You could've been,” the Emissary said, settling into a crouch, as he waited for his companions to revitalize, “I'm just a man with technological enhancements. Don't place your stock in the Founders, and you could learn enough to modify yourselves into something like me.”
“Heresy,” the Yodzi muttered.
“What? The Founders were once human; why worship them?”
“You're their creature,” Lucretia pointed out, “why do you test our faith like this?”
“It's not a test. You can worship anything you want, but don't let it rule you like that; none of this 'lines man wasn't meant to cross, things man wasn't meant to know' bullshit.”
“Is that wise?” she asked.
“Is it wise to be ruled over by inhuman intelligences that could make your world a paradise but don't?”
“Heresy,” one of the Yodzi engineers stated.
The Emissary laughed.
They walked for some time; Lucretia's companion, the other Dowini, removed his helmet, sniffed the air, and replaced it.
“It's cold and smells like lye,” he said, dumbly.
“That'll happen.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Now you want to know things? Amazing.”
“He just asked a question,” Lucretia muttered.
“Oxygen...the stuff you breathe...is inherently unstable, it'll react with just about anything. Without plants to replenish it, it begins to react with other materials in the environment. Sometimes, when it combines with hydrogen, it forms hydroxide, and then that combines again, making whatever-the-hell hydroxide, which is basic. Like lye.”
“Amazing, so the plants are dead?” he asked.
“Yeah. Because the fusion reaction up there--” the Emissary pointed up “--stopped. From what I know, similar things could happen planet-side if the machines stop.”
“It'll die, like this place?” the Dowini asked.
“No. Your ecosystem will turn into a riotous, autophagic orgy, first.”
“Lovely.”
They reached the low, pseudo-stone hut that was the nerve center of the colony ship. The machinery inside was still alive, but sluggish.
The central room had a large console along one wall and a chair fitted into a track that would, in better days, slide back and forth in front of it. The Emissary ripped the chair out when he found that the graphite casters on which it sat had broken down, leaving just an unstable and broken-down mechanism.
Tapping out a series of commands, he brought up a holographic display.
“I'm going to check something, the Emissary said. There was a flash, a burst of light that entered his left eye. It lasted less than a quarter of a second.
“Son of a bitch,” he breathed.
“What?” the nauseous Thuban asked.
“They killed them.”
“Who killed who?”
“The Founders sabotaged the heating mechanism. The people up here were holding the power supply ransom. They wanted to move on.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Your point?” the other Thuban asked, “the Founders' will is law.”
“Those idiots!” the Emissary shouted, “they sabotaged themselves!”
The astronauts stood dumb.
“Listen,” the Emissary said, “I'm not doing it. I don't give a damn anymore. If you're the last people in all of creation, then fine, we're all dumb enough and mean-spirited enough to deserve extermination.”
The six astronauts tried cajoling him, they tried pleading with him, and finally happened upon threatening him.
The Thubans pulled out knives, and the Yodzi shrank back, retreating to the corner. The Dowini engineers stood their ground, watching dispassionately.
“Be reasonable, you can't kill me,” the Emissary said.
They lunged forward in unison, and the Emissary did not dodge. The knives entered in, sinking into his flesh down to the hilt. His blood did not drip, nor did it seep.
Red drops splattered them, and began to eat away at them; their flesh smoked, as the machines in his blood did their work, disassembling the two humans.
In a minute, they were gone.
Meanwhile, the yodzi emptied their pouches, and began fitting things together.
“What are you doing?” the Emissary asked.
“Stopping you,” one said.
“We have a bomb,” the other warned.
“A bomb? You were planning on sabotaging this mission from the start!”
“Only as soon as we learned what we needed,” the first said, narrowing her eyes.
“You can't do anything to stop us.”
“You can't hurt me,” he said, disbelieving, “don't you get it. You're just committing suicide.”
And they did, as soon as he stepped closer. Shrapnel filled the room, tearing the engineers apart, wounding the Dowini, and leaving the Emissary unscathed.
He stepped to each fallen person, and made sure they did not suffer. Then, turning to the console, he entered the last command, turning the ship inward, toward the planet.
Its orbit would decay, and the people below would live or die by their own merit.