The Empire's Last Battle (© Biswapriya Purkayastha)
Page 1 The
clouds reach up and smear across the windows as we descend, instantly turning
day to gloomy near-night. The darkness is so sudden that it takes a moment for
the eyes to adjust, even though the cabin lights brighten instantly to
compensate. I lean as far towards the window as I can and peer down
through the murk. "I don’t wonder it took so long to find it," I say. The sergeant has pressed herself back in her seat to let me
look, and she gently nudges me with her hand. She introduced herself as Ajekwo
when we first met. No first name. "You can see it as well on your viewer," she
says. "Better, in fact." "I know, but I prefer to see it with my own eyes and draw my
own conclusions." I sit back, glancing at her. She’s very black, tall and
wirily muscular, with a cap of woolly hair fitted tightly to her narrow elegant
skull. She might have even been pretty except for the look in her eyes, a mix
of suspicion and resentment, which she’s worn ever since I’d first met her,
long enough for me to decide that it’s her habitual look. She turns away from me, fiddling at the controls of her
viewer. It’s showing only the position of the shuttle relative to the surface,
a red pip descending over a graphical representation of spiky hills and
valleys, not what I’m interested in. I turn to mine, and experiment with the
controls until I find what I’m looking for. On the screen the ship shows as an elongated smear, growing
slowly larger as the shuttle descends. I’ve seen this view, more than once, of
course, as the robot probes made this same journey. But this time it’s us, it’s
me, with nothing between me and the ship but a few kilometres of the
poison-air. As we drop closer to the ship, I grow again impressed by her
gigantic size. I’d known all about that, of course – I am, after all, the
foremost historian of this ship’s life and death – but the size still amazes
me. Compared to its bulk, this tiny shuttle would look like a gnat hovering
over a dozing crocodile in some primordial swamp. It even looks vaguely like a
crocodile, long and spindle-shaped, and I can imagine it waiting in ambush for
prey. But its ambushing days are gone. It’s a carcass now, picked
over by the corroding winds. "So there it is." The sergeant has switched to the same
view. Her long slender fingers touch buttons on the viewer, much more expertly
than I, and the screen fills abruptly with the image of the wreck. It’s blurred
at first, but sharpens swiftly as she sweeps a pointer over it. I can even make
out some of the details I’m familiar with from my research and the images the
robot probes sent. "Yes," I say. "There it is, right enough." "You’ve waited a long time to see it, isn’t that so?" Her
face is expressionless, her eyes intent on the screen of her viewer. If not for
the fact that there’s nobody else for her to talk to, I wouldn’t be able to
tell it’s me whom she’s addressing. "You researched it, I’m told, for your
doctorate thesis and then all the time afterwards." "That’s right. I find everything about this ship
fascinating." "Is it like a love affair? I mean, is it like a lifelong
consuming passion with you?" "You could call it that, I suppose." I peer at what I can
see of her face. Her voice has grown curiously tense in the last few moments,
as though she’s holding something in with an effort. "It’s certainly the most
important thing in my life right now." "I thought it might be." With a touch, she blanks out her
viewer. Mine still shows the ship as an elongated featureless blob. She points
to it. "I hate it. I hate everything about those people, the Empire. And I
volunteered for this mission only so I can see the last of it for myself, and
be happy it’s gone."
"We’ve
found a way into the core section," the voice in my ear had said. I’d struggled awake, sitting up in bed with my hand holding
the earpiece in place, quite superfluously of course. "You have?" "Yes, one of our robots which went in through one of the
breaks in the outer hull found a way in through the inner hull too. I’ll give
you the co-ordinates later. So far it looks good, all the way to the central
section and the engine banks. Maybe we can even find our way to the control
rooms. But that can be left till later. For now..." [ Continue to page 2 ] |