Spark by Hadwin Fuller

Author:Hadwin Fuller [Hadwin Fuller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Evil Dinosaur
Published: 2021-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

The Watta Sector branch of the Church of the Flaming Starcaptain was a tall, obsidian structure as black as the starless sky behind its rectangular peak.

It was night on Valgassos III. It was always night on Valgassos III. The star the planet had once orbited had long since burned out, leaving the local solar system cold and lightless, but not barren. While it lacked a source of light and heat, Valgassos III was able to keep its populace alive and - to a degree - warm, through the massive environmental shields that ran over each of the planet’s six major cities. It was thus that life on Valgassos III was allowed to continue, and because of the lack of natural light, the inhabitants built bright, glowing buildings lit with neon lights, fairy lights, plasma bulbs, lumino plates and all manner of external lighting fixtures. They lit the streets with endless processions of street lamps and decorated their bodies with luminous clothing. The cities on Valgassos III became famed tourist destinations, and they were used in countless holomovies (including a short scene in Space Cowboy of Fortune). But the upshot of all that artificial light was a level of light pollution so incredible that it blacked out all the stars in the surrounding sky, even the bright glimmering pole star that had once guided the natives in the days before they had stumbled upon a way to create fire.

The decorative light fixtures did not extend to the Church of the Flaming Starcaptain. As per church doctrine, no artificial lights were allowed outside or inside the building. The only light was natural flame. Twin torches burned at intervals up the facade of the church, the gap between the torches spreading wide for the huge, black iron double-doors that led into the church and narrowing as the torches climbed up the facade towards the rectangular peak. Outside the church, huge stone grey cubes rose out of the ground at irregular heights, spaced around the church grounds in an apparently random configuration. The sides of the grey cubes were covered with hundreds of tiny candles embedded in circular cubby-holes. And behind each of those miniscule flames, the charred remnants of a head remained, burnt to a crisp and ground down to a small cube of black coal; the last memento to the fallen followers of the Church of the Flaming Starcaptain who now resided with their eternal master in the Great Starship in the Sky.

Tayne followed the straight path of crushed blackrock lined with velvet-black irises and charcoal-grey daisies until he came to the huge double-doors. He reached into his shirt and pulled out a silver ornament on a silver chain. The ornament was reminiscent of flame, but made in the shape of a starship. It glimmered wildly in the torchlights.

A hidden flap above the door pulled back and a small, round-headed scanner poked out. The scanner shone a narrow beam of orange light down at the ornament as Tayne held it up before him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.