“Yes we have,” Jacques said. “They’re on the other wall, down near the end.”
Kris turned away from the wall she’d been walking down and cut across to the other wall. It was easier to pass the royal family that way. There was less to see from their backs.
“Do you think they were the rulers of the planet that got hammered down to bedrock?” Kris asked Jack as they passed them.
“I tend to think so,” he said. “They must have really hated them to bury them alive in whatever that stuff is.”
“Bury the husband and wife only after they’d watched their children killed before their eyes.”
“You can’t be sure,” Jack said.
“Look them in the eyes, then look at me and say that.”
Even in battle armor, Kris saw the tremor go through Jack’s body. “I can’t,” he admitted. “But think, Kris. Where did the hatred come from that would do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking. We really need to date the bombardment of this planet. I’m thinking that if it was ten thousand years before the one that beat up the other planet, they might have been the aggressor, and the people they hit took ten thousand years, but they came back and hit hard.”
“I’m thinking the same thing. Ten thousand years of anger welling up would be a terrible thing to see.”
“And a hundred thousand years later, that anger, or fear, is still driving them to kill anything alive,” Kris said.
“It’s sure looking that way,” Jack admitted.
They passed a lot of creatures as they walked down the line, hunting for those whose planet had been the warning to Kris. They passed encased bodies of beings that looked out with stunned and dumb looks or intelligent gazes. Most they passed had the dull look of animals, unaware of why they had suddenly been transformed from the top of the food chain to trophies in a war they hadn’t started and had no part in.
There were two scientists working with the pile of chitinous skulls that Kris was interested in.
“We’re trying to get a better date of death from these,” one told Kris.
“We estimate it at two hundred years ago. I doubt you can get any closer,” Kris said.
They ignored her and continued about their work.
Kris looked at the insectoid. Now, it looked back at her. Like the family at the entrance, this one, too, had grown skin and muscle on its face. Kris wondered if the ability to express yourself in body language and facial expressions was critical to the development of a civilization. No doubt, the boffins would be looking into that.
Certainly they’d never be able to study so large a set of different evolutionary tracks as had been so brutally arranged for them around these two walls.
Two more worlds were represented between Kris’s planet and the end of the line. One looked like a vicious animal, something like the shark that swam in Wardhaven’s seas. It was named for something equally as toothy in Earth’s own oceans. Strange, Kris hadn’t noticed any other fish in the collection. The other looked out with no spark of intelligence in its eyes, only dismay at its treatment.
Kris again found herself wanting to cry. To weep for all the futures and hopes and possibilities that were cut short and brought here.
As much as she wanted to weep, Kris found only a cold anger growing in her. She stood guard over three intelligent species. Two of them, the human race and the Iteeche, had stumbled into each other, and, though it might have been a struggle, found they could share space without having to kill each other. The third, the Alwans, had offered to share their life-giving planet with desperate human refugees.
Her Royal Highness, Kris Longknife, Commander of the Alwa Defense Sector, Viceroy and ambassador at large, looked down the line from where she stood.
“I swear by you who have lost everything that no more will be added to this trophy room. It stops here. We will stop you. I will stop you.”
“Yes we will,” Jack echoed.
16
“But how?” Jack asked, raising the practical question that would, no doubt, dog Kris’s every waking hour from now until her last breath.
Or the other guy’s.
“That is something we will figure out,” Kris said. “Nelly, how many glass coffins are here?”
“I’ve been able to observe four hundred and twelve from what you’ve seen. I’ve just checked in on the boffins’ network, and I believe that number is correct. That includes the first samples.”
“That many!” Kris said, trying to feel the sorrow and finding that 412 was just too big a number to feel. But it could be analyzed.
Assuming they’ve had one hundred thousand years to commit all those atrocities, what does that average out to? One every two hundred and fifty years.”
“One every 242.7184466 years,” Nelly said. Professor la Duke wasn’t the only one given to babbling over what they were looking at. Kris could not recall the last time Nelly had not rounded up or down to the nearest significant number.
“However, Kris, if I may point out,” Nelly went on, “there are two species here after the one we have dated to two hundred years ago. If we can assume that they are alternately adding kills to both sides, it seems a likely conclusion that they are killing more planets now than in the beginning.”
“There are more of the bastards,” Jack whispered, amazement in his voice as the realization dawned.
“It looks that way,” Kris said, but she’d spotted something.
“Jacques, what are those markings behind each coffin?” Kris pointing to the wall behind the cubes. “It looks like a memorial or something.”
“We think those are numbers in the first line. Possibly a star’s location. The rest are words. We’ll have to study them.”
“Kris, I have been studying them,” Nelly said. “Could you look closely at the writing behind the fish with all the teeth?”
Kris moved in that direction.
“Notice the bottom of the writing. All the writings above are in the same font and the lines are equally spaced. The last two lines are in a different font, larger and etched deeper into the stone. It appears to me very likely that someone added a comment.”
“Is that the only aquatic life-form?” Kris asked.
Jacques paused to consult his computer, but Nelly was faster. “Yes it is. I’ve also identified the line as identical to other markings we’ve found in three of the other memorials. I think we may have the name of one of the ships. I don’t know what it means, but we may have ourselves a name.”
“And I very much want to know how many ships are represented here,” Kris said.
“I think we all do,” Jacques agreed.
Kris turned toward the entrance. “I’ve seen enough. Jack, you and I need to get out of these hard suits and back to where we can do some thinking. Jacques, give us more to think about.”
Three hours later, Kris and Jack sat across from Penny and Masao as Nelly gave them the briefing on the pyramid’s contents. It was easier to take at a distance, but Penny was still reduced to tears.
Kris put the meeting on hold while Masao held her and shed some tears himself.
Kris found herself fishing a tissue out of a box for Penny, then took one herself.
Even Jack asked for one.
Kris located a second box and let Penny and Masao have the first while she and Jack shared the second. Without the restrictions of an armored helmet, it was impossible not to feel the pain in the pictures at not only the loss of that family at the entrance, but the blight represented by the walls of horror.
“So that is what we are fighting,” Penny finally said.
“Yes. We are fighting to keep our skulls from being added to a pile on that floor and one of us locked in plastic as the only proof that we ever lived,” Kris said. “They are not adding a human, an Iteeche, or an Alwan to that house of horrors. Not on my watch.”