Uhlek Badlands
Hanhala 12,112-7
"The Town"

Cold fluorescent lights flickered unwillingly to life. Bearing no resemblance to the classical atrium at the hub of the Hanhala sanctuary, this new chamber was constructed of angled metals and white plastic. Heavy doors hissed open, greeting the Leghk guardians and the Windfall crew with the pronounced smell of medical disinfectant. The air buzzed quietly with the round thrum of hydraulic systems and the whir of computers.

Arella shivered as she entered the brisk chill of the anteroom, surprised to see her breath as Volusze and the others followed her in. She quickly assessed her surroundings: a set of what appeared to be dedicated life support monitors and related equipment, all arrayed around a small control platform. Beyond the platform’s guardrail, and down a meter or so, the rest of the chamber stretched out. It was lined with black containers arranged in pairs along the length of the room.

“Cryogenic Stasitorium,” said Biggs, resting his hands on the rail as he looked out on the repository of living creatures. There were dozens of cryo tubes simultaneously suppressing and preserving the lives held within. “How long?” he asked.

“One thousand forty eight Imperial years,” said Volusze, his organs pulsing quietly beneath green translucent skin. “For a millenium the Hanhala Thrynn have waited in silence, biding the nightmare of barbarism that engulfed Thoss.”

“Dread irony,” said Arella. The exiles had fled from Thoss an eon ago, running from—what had HvHuss called it?—the living death of Thrynn civilization.” And here they were, caught up in another kind of living death, the suspended animation of stasis.

Arella looked to the Thrynn Senator. He was draped in his imperious cloak, gazing with primeval reptilian eyes over the rows of cold black sarcophagi.

HvHuss left the others standing on the platform and stepped down into the corridor. He walked a slow, measured pace, as if in the well of the Senate, pausing finally toward the far end of the repository. He reached down with a slender reptilian hand, clacking his thorn-point claws onto the dark glass lid. A dim interior light activated inside the sarcophagus, revealing a green face shrouded in cold haze. HvHuss ran his hand down the lid, pulling a thin layer of wet ice toward the metal grate floor.

“The ancient hope,” whispered the weary statesman, speaking to ghosts and legends and the ages. Behind the glass, behind the eyes was a mind swimming with ancient memories of a world where truth shone down like the gentle light of a yellow sun. A world called Thoss. Where there is past, there is future. It was simple enough, but in this turbulent present, even the simple things were difficult.
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Next: “Concealment”