The Worlds Within

By Paul Broatch

The Corin were an advanced alien race that disappeared leaving nothing behind except a series of enigmatic walls scattered across the galaxy. When archaeologist Jason Dodds makes a chance discovery while investigating a Wall on a remote planet, it leads him and a team of soldiers accompanying him, to a meeting with a hidden civilization and into the middle of a war that has been raging for hundreds of years. Pursued by enemies and against all odds, can they save the Earth and an alien civilization?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Broatch
• Release date: Aug 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370678082

Paul Broatch

Paul Broatch has had a lifelong fascination with technology and hard science fiction books. He wrote his first novel The Worlds Within in 2014. He started the Red and While Trilogy in 2015 with the City of Lights and The Demon's Hand. He has also written two novellas Running the Rift in 2016 and Little Girl Lost.

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PAUL BROATCH

THE WORLDS WITHIN

Also by Paul Broatch

City of Lights (Book 1 in the Red and White Series)

Running the Rift

Coming Soon: The Demon’s Hand (Book 2 in the Red and White Series)

This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organizations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.

All rights reserved. Paul Broatch asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Paul Broatch at Smashwords

Cover art by Jimmy Larry on Upsplash

Copyright Paul Broatch 2014

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 the Wall

Chapter 2 –First Incursion

Chapter 3-Interlude

Chapter 4-Second Incursion

Chapter 5-Exodus

Epilogue

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The Worlds Within

Prologue

Planet Mircel Year 2035 ES

The small city sat just on the edge of a beautiful lake, the cold, green, glacier-fed waters reflecting the thick, forested hills surrounding it. Small, multi-coloured row-boats bobbed by the shore, pulling gently at their lines amid floating clumps of water lilies. The autumn air was cold and clear, and a slight mist obscured the views of the massive mountain range that dominated the northern horizon. The sun had risen, but the hills still blocked the morning light, leaving the city in shadow.

The inhabitants had just started their daily chores. Lights were on, radios blared thin, rhythmic music, and thin curls of smoke rose from chimneys, carrying the smells of cooking. Keen shop owners were hanging their wares outside their premises hoping to get the first sales of the day. The distant sound of a tolling bell from the monastery deep in the mountains carried across the valley.

No-one noticed the great ship that coasted silently over the hills from the east, with the first rays of the sun behind it, until the cries of the children brought out the people, who stood, shading their eyes against the sunlight, to watch it drop gently to the ground. A small crowd began to gather, speaking in hushed whispers as their curiosity overcame their fear. Many carried cameras, keen to capture a slice of history.

Minutes passed until, with a whine of motors and gears, a series of large ramps began to open in the side of the ship and dropped slowly to the ground. The crowd hushed in uncertainty. Out of the ship strode huge, multi-coloured monsters with four long legs covered in razor sharp spines, and massive heads full of sharp teeth. They had two arms below their shoulders, and long whip like tentacles tipped with steel sprouted from below the great heads. For a moment the crowd stood silent in shock and fear, then those at the front tried to turn and run. In seconds the scene had turned to chaos as people were crushed and trampled in the panic. The monsters hesitated for a moment, almost as if savouring the fear they had induced, and then launched themselves at the crowd. Whips flashed out knocking people to the ground, and then they pounced; sharp teeth ripping flesh and limbs. The carnage was terrible. The dead and dying littered the blood-soaked ground.

The monsters surveyed their grisly work for a moment. There would be no resistance now. Terror and panic would be spreading through the city like a wave. They strode off into the deserted streets to pursue their real objective.

The raid was over in a few hours. The death toll was horrific. A few lucky survivors fled to the mountains. Those that remained in the city were rounded up, herded into the belly of the great ship and transported away.

They were never forgotten.

Chapter 1-The Wall

Planet CS 7821- Year 2080 ES

Dodds paused his recording and pulled up his bandana to wipe the sweat dripping from his chin. Damn it was hot. It was late afternoon and there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze to bring any relief from the fierce sunlight beating down on him.He pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. His face felt gritty and dirty. He looked up at the sky, azure blue, not a cloud to be seen.

He’d been staring at the Wall for hours and recording the familiar Corin symbols. This Wall was in particularly good condition, he thought. The symbols could have been carved just the day before. He ran the tips of his fingers over the sharply defined edges, as if the physical contact might help him pull some insight out of the warm, ochre stone. The Wall was on a planet at the extreme edge of the Corin expansion, so he assumed it may have been one of the last constructed before their inexplicable disappearance. Understanding eluded him.

He pulled out his water bottle and took a swig to wash the dust from his throat; the water was warm with a sight metallic tang.

His eyes moved to a rectangular box of symbols carved into the stone near the edge. Many of the pictures etched into the Walls were of local wildlife or plants; others were exotic, alien symbols. The ones in the box were on every Wall he had ever examined, but their meaning was lost.

No-one had ever found anything resembling a Rosetta stone, or for that matter, any clue to who or what the Corin were. Clearly, a highly advanced, space-going civilisation, they had left nothing, but enigmatic Walls, scattered on a few dozen earth-like planets. No other structures, no roads, no technology or artefacts of any kind; just Walls, on otherwise unaltered planets. Even the presumed home world, at the centre of their expansion, was little better; it had a series of Walls, arranged in circles like some alien version of Stonehenge.

The home world also had the so called Hives: structures similar in some ways to insect nests on Earth, hence the name, but on a colossal scale. A few were above ground: small artificial mountains filled with tunnels and rooms. Others were underground, smaller in scale but much more numerous. All of them long abandoned, partially collapsed and empty.

The connection between the Walls and the Hives was uncertain. No-one was sure if the Corin had also constructed the Hives. None of the symbols so beautifully rendered on the Walls were present in the Hives, so the conventional wisdom was that some other species must have been responsible for them, although which one was also unknown. The Walls were newer, so they may have been placed there after the Hives had been abandoned.

Where did you come from and where did you go? he wondered, not for the first time.

He glanced around at the team. There were six of them in total. Five soldiers, four of them male and one female, and himself, the scientist. Their two small vehicles sat on a nearby dune, a canopy between them providing some much-needed shade from the shimmering heat. Two of the soldiers stood on guard, staring off into the pale, yellow dunes. Three more sat under the shade cover playing cards. They all wore desert camouflage gear, sun goggles and baseball caps. They were hot, and they were bored. He was well aware that, as they saw it, they were just babysitting a dumb scientist who had spent hours examining a Wall in the middle of a desert. If it hadn’t been for the presence of an Idrian ship in the system, he realised, he probably wouldn’t have even warranted an escort. It would have been him alone in the wasteland.

As he watched, one of the men stood and looked down at his arm, activating the military pad that encircled his forearm. It was Collins, the sergeant; a practical, competent man, quiet but intelligent. The sergeant stood about two metres. Dark hair, close cropped, blue eyes, lean and hard. His team obviously respected him. He spoke to the device for a few minutes, but Dodds was too far away to hear what was said. Collins glanced at him, then pressed something on his pad and headed in his direction, the sand crunching under his boots.

What’s up? Dodds asked, as he approached.

"Not sure. Just got a call from the ship. All I’ve been told is that a short while ago they picked up a locator beacon out beyond the orbit of the planet. They did a scan of the area and came up blank. A beacon, but no ship. They backtracked and found, just before the beacon started transmitting, a signature from what seemed to be a very small wormhole opening. They said it was something they hadn’t seen before, not Idrian, not ours, too small to be a ship.

They continued scanning the area the signal was coming from, and a little later they picked up a small object. They thought it was just an asteroid at first but when the ship plotted the orbit, it was hyperbolic, and it was altering. Whatever it is, it has power. It’s the source of the beacon and it’s heading straight towards us. The Idrians must have seen it too; they’re heading further into the system. Just a warning at this stage but it might be good to wrap this up today."

No problem, Dodds replied.

Collins headed back to the shade.

Dodds thought back to their arrival. This system was a long way from anywhere, just a backwater unclaimed by anyone, unremarkable except for the presence of a habitable planet and a Corin Wall. The ship had diverted here from an exploratory mission just so Dodds could take a look at this Wall. They hadn’t expected to find an Idrian ship. The Idrians probably hadn’t expected them to show up either and had been pretty belligerent. They had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that the Earth ship should leave. The Captain though was not one to be bullied and had responded to their threat by telling the Idrians that the ship was on a scientific mission before proceeding to ignore them. The Earth ship outgunned the Idrians, as far as Dodds could make out, so the Idrians just sat in the inner system and did nothing. Maybe they’d been waiting for this thing.

Relations between the Idrians and humanity hadn’t been good from the start. The Idrians had a tendency to be arrogant and demanding and extremely difficult to deal with, but since the conflict on Tinis, things had got a lot worse. They were now on the edge of an outright war. Dodds had firmly believed that Earth did the right thing in supporting the popular uprising there. He still recalled the death of the Tinis child that had sparked the revolution. Clubbed to death on a public street, the video had rapidly gone around Tinis and out to other worlds. It was the spark that set the fire. The people rebelled. Years of pent up fury were unleashed. Street riots had erupted, buildings were torched and Idrian flags burnt in the street. The people called for freedom and self-rule. The Idrian response was entirely predictable. The crackdown had been quick and brutal. The death toll had mounted rapidly. It almost seemed like the Idrians were prepared to destroy everything simply to maintain power. Earth and other worlds had piled on the diplomatic pressure but had been ignored. Then Earth weapons had started to appear on the streets. The Idrians had accused Earth of supporting the actions of what they described as terrorists. Even when it was shown that the weapons had come from illegal gun runners, the Idrians had refused to accept the facts. The people of Tinis had eventually thrown off the Idrian control but at a huge cost in life. Now, Earth openly backed Tinis and a fleet sat in orbit.

If the Idrian warship was waiting for this new object and an Earth ship was blocking them, things could get difficult. Earth wouldn’t want a war over minor incident, on an uninhabited planet, at the edge of the galaxy.

He set his pad, which unlike the military version was a chunky 30 cm tablet, to do a full EM scan of the Wall and surrounding area and watched the little machine’s readouts.

He glanced back at the soldiers. They’d settled back into the card game ignoring him again.

The pad gave out a short tone. The Wall was giving out a slight energy reading. He narrowed the scan. None of the other Walls had shown anything like this. They were all just inert, stone walls. The energy reading was tiny, about the same power as his own pad. It was coming from the rectangular box of symbols. He went back over to it. There were five symbols in the first line, five in the next one down and then one at the bottom. He ran his fingers over the rectangle. Maybe a hint of a vibration. He was probably imagining it. He checked to make sure the pad had recorded the energy reading. He started to do a full set of tests on the small section of stone.

The sun had begun to set by the time he was finished. A spectacular sunset lit up the western horizon. Reds and oranges illuminated the desert, light scattered by the dust in the atmosphere. The soldiers had heated up some food and the aromas of cooked meat and vegetables floated over, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

He was about to pack up and join the others when something caught his eye. The slightest hint of electric blue on the stone. The rectangle again. He went back over to it and pulled out his pad. The reading was still there. He touched the symbols and, as he touched them, the blue flared for the briefest of moments, just on the edge of vision. He set the pad to scan the rectangle in the widest possible range and then ran his fingers over the carvings again. There, in the UV spectrum, a slight flare as his fingers grazed each symbol. Excited, he realised that this wasn’t just a stone wall. This was an active Corin device.

All thoughts of food vanished. He set the pad to record. As he touched a symbol the UV flared around it. Large buttons perhaps but there was no movement. Maybe a hint of haptic feedback. The intensity of the flare didn’t change with each of the buttons. Perhaps the symbols were just representations of numbers. He tried a few simple sequences. Nothing happened. There was no reaction from the Wall at all. There had to be something. Exasperated, he stepped back and rubbed at his hair.

Frustrated?

Collins stood behind him, a steaming bowl in one hand and a lantern in the other. He hadn’t even heard him come up.

I think I’ve found something.

Collins raised a questioning eyebrow. I thought you said on the way out here that no-one had been able to make any progress with these Walls since we first found them.

Yeah, I did, but this one is giving me a slight UV flare when I touch the symbols in the rectangle. All the other Walls are inert - nothing at all. As far as we know, just plain stone.

So, it’s got power. What does it do?

No idea! Dodds threw his hands up. I think they’re buttons. A large key pad.

But you don’t know the combination, or what it unlocks. Might be a bomb, Collins smiled.

Dodds snorted. I doubt that. Why would you put a bomb in a wall in the middle of the desert?

Why would you put a wall with a keypad in the middle of the desert? Collins was grinning now.

Dodds smiled and shook his head. No idea about that either.

Here, eat some dinner. He offered him the bowl. You haven’t eaten much, and you need to keep up your fluid intake. He handed him a canteen of water. Maybe it’ll get your brain working.

Thanks. Any change with the Idrians? he asked sniffing at the food. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was.

They’re moving further into the system. They haven’t said anything so far, but the threat is implied. Not good.

Any idea why?

The wormhole signature. The captain won’t tell me much but it’s not one of ours. The Idrians must have been waiting for whatever came through, but I guess it didn’t wind up exactly where they expected. The object’s small, it has to be, the signature’s a fraction of the strength of one of our ships and it’s heading right at the planet, not too far from here. The Idrians are too far away to directly intercept it, so they’re on a trajectory to get them here asap.

A ship?

No. It’s too small apparently. I don’t know.

Dodds noticed for the first time that a couple of the men were on the move.

What’s going on? I thought we were moving in the morning?

Might be earlier. There’s a sandstorm coming up. Pretty major one apparently, but the Captain has asked me to send a couple of the guys to see if they can find this thing when it enters the atmosphere. See what it is. He looked up at the darkening sky that now had a smear of red reflected from dust high in the atmosphere.

Dodds nodded. That was a provocative step by the Captain.

A few minutes later a couple of the soldiers drove out into the desert heading north. They quickly disappeared among the darkened dunes.

Dodds sat on the sand and ate dinner. A mix of beans and meat; spicy, but good. He heard the crunching of sand behind him. The soldier they all called Eyes was heading his way. He gave Dodds a quick lift of the eyebrows which was his way of saying hello. Eyes was a six foot four, bald, African American. The team’s sniper, Eyes was a man of few words, but he missed nothing, literally. Dodds had often seen him listening to music while the others talked and played games.

I heard you found something. Eyes had a deep rich voice that would have been perfect in the movies.

Yeah. I’m just not sure what it is. While he ate he explained to Eyes about the EM flash and the haptic feedback when he touched the symbols.

Might just be like a numerical code on a lock or a card. May be no way of figuring it out except by brute force.

What? Dodds had a momentary vision of taking a chisel to the stone to try to find out how it worked. The alarm must have sounded in his voice.

Eyes chuckled gently. No. I mean trying every combination until you get the right one. Could take you a long time. With that many symbols you’ve got millions of combinations.

Thanks for that. Makes me feel much better.

Eyes smiled, then went quiet. After a few moments he spoke again. ’Cept that doesn’t really make much sense to me.

Why?

Assuming it’s a keypad what does it do, what does it unlock? This thing’s out in the open. It’s not secret.

Dodds could see where he was going. Eyes was almost speaking to himself, thinking out loud.

So maybe lots of those Corin used it. If that’s the case, then it can’t be that complicated.

Dodds considered that. We don’t know what it is. It could be art or have some religious function for all we know. It might not do anything.

Eyes went quiet for a while. Why did they put it in a desert? Are all the Walls in deserts?

No, they’re in all sorts of places. Most of them are in nice places. This was too when it was built. This area, he waved his arms around him, wasn’t always a desert: it was a nice, forested area with rivers and wildlife when the Corin built the Wall. There was even a large sea to the south. The climate has changed since then and this whole area has turned to desert. A bit like the Sahara on Earth.

Eyes nodded but said no more. He went over and looked at the Wall for a while and then, with another nod to Dodds, left.

Dodds stared at the Wall … musing, maybe something based on the ratio of the dimensions of the Wall, the number of sections or other symbols. The Walls were different sizes, but all had the same dimensions. The length was always 3.1415 times the height, and the width was 0.1 times the height. This one was middle sized, around eight meters in height and twenty-five meters long. He tried every combination he could think of and then gave up, frustrated. He was assuming it worked like a human keypad, but that could be totally wrong. He tried bottom to top then right to left. Nothing. He sighed, picked up the lantern and headed back to the camp. Collins looked up as he came over.

Any luck?

No. I don’t even know where to start really. I don’t know anything about cryptography. Hell, I’m not even sure it’s a key pad. He lay back on his bed roll and looked up at the unfamiliar constellations above him. Ideas and possibilities swam around in his head but none of them coalesced into anything useful. He just didn’t know where to start. At some point he must have drifted off, as he woke up to a shout from one of the soldiers, Mackay- the one they called Scottie. He jumped up.

What’s happening?

Collins just pointed low to the western horizon. A fireball was streaking across the sky, heading north. That’s our unknown object. The ship’s tracking it. Johns and Franks are heading toward where they say it will impact.

How far?

Eighty k’s more or less.

The fireball vanished from view. They all stood there watching, as if expecting to hear some sound from the impact or to see some sign that it had struck.

***

The console in front of the communications officer on the Earth Ship Endeavour gave off a low beep. He pulled up a holographic screen.

Sir, he turned toward Captain White. I have a message from the Idrian ship.

The captain came over to him. The message was text only and brief. The captain read the translated text over his shoulder.

A probe has just entered the planet’s atmosphere. It is Idrian property. We are inbound to collect it. It may well have sustained damage and be leaking radioactivity. Stay clear.

Captain White was in his early fifties: a big bear of a man with a bushy beard that had been black, but now was a salt and pepper mix. He pondered for a moment. Matthews. He called his chief engineer over. That warp signature we picked up earlier. Could it be a damaged Idrian probe?

"Unlikely. The energy burst released when a warp bubble decelerates from faster than light speeds is particular to the exact configuration of the drive and the size of the warp bubble. The signature isn’t Idrian, unless they’ve developed something