Whisper of the Intar

By Geoff Kirker

Prologue

Space. Studded into it's jet black expanse, distant points of light sparked white amidst wisps of glowing purple and orange nebula. From deep amongst them came a tiny yellow gleam of reflected incandescence off a planet in a lonely orbit around a huge white star.

The entire planet, Oppio, was a vast undulating desert. It lay cloaked inshadow for a moment then as it slowly rotated it's blinding sun roseand flooded it's surface with a moving horizon of light.

The edge of the sunlight washed over a rippling sea of sand dunes to where one had been excavated. Revealed in it's fast lightning depths, was a pitted archaeological dig site around the broken shape of abulky, ancient spacecraft.

Two dozen men trudged out into the site to begin work for the day beneath the quickly brightening vermilion sky. They joined a multitude of robots of assorted sizes and shapes already there. The 'bots started coming to life. Hovering drones took to the air and scanned downwards, communicating with boring machinery below that rumbled into action. Activity began to bustle as men moved to their respective stations and along with the 'bots started to chew into the sand and loose rock around the ship. They deposited it onto conveyor belts that fed machines sorting out pieces of corroded metal alloys from the sand.

Following the workers were a small group of armed men, who fanned out into the dig edges and gazed down absently on the toil below, amidst the sudden burning heat and chirping insects.

One of the human workers, Cambatar Grasete - olive skinned, with awave-like mark above his right eye - stabbed a shovel hard into the ground and heaved it onto a conveyor belt. He straightened a moment, roughly brushing back black hair already starting to get soaked with sweat. He glanced around with apathetic, hopeless eyes as though he couldn't believe how he got here. With a suppressed sigh, he tightened his hands around the shovel and continued digging.

Beside Cambatar, a fellow worker, Dorbin, suddenly slapped his dirty tee-shirt and swore. He flicked a red, winged insect off himself withdisgust.

"Shittenbugs! Don't get paid enough for this crap!"

Dorbin lowered his voice as their armed supervisor, Tangor - tall and thin walked over. Tangor looked as though there were many other places hewould rather be, and his face twisted as he regarded Dorbin. "Get paid as much as you're worth. More. You wouldn't be here at all if we weren't behind schedule. 'Bots work three times as hard as you."

Dorbin turned sullenly to Cambatar as Tangor strode off. "Hey at least this should be interesting for you. This is meant to be from the crash of one of your people's ships. The Ompars."

Cambatar looked surprised, then weary.

"Intars. And they're not my people. Just a bunch of drunks."

Dorbin persisted. "But don't you people have a leader? A King? He'd be interested."

Cambatar snorted. "A King? He's only interested in hopeless legends and fools to help search for them."

"Hell, sounds better than this."

Bitterness thickened Cambatar's voice. "He hasn't done anything for Intars except keep them believing in stupid fantasies of the past - rather than doing anything for themselves now."

Cambatar angrily jabbed his shovel hard into the sand. A siren started blaring from speakers strung up haphazardly around the site.

Tangor spotted a sorting machine bearing a flashing red light and waved a cut-off signal to a man at the other side of the dig. All activity ceased and a sudden silence gripped the site, punctuated only by insects chirping.