Mindspace - Complete Series

by A. K. DuBoff

  Nia frowned. “Think the entire planet is like this?”

  “It all looked the same on scan,” Kira said with a shrug. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.”

  “Does it matter?” Ari continued forward. “We’re going after the source of the signal you identified.”

  Kira nodded. “Right.”

  Following their discovery of the planet, Aleya and Rodrick had been able to narrow the source of the signal to a valley, adjacent to the site where the shuttle had touched down. They had considered traveling to the exact location, but thick tree cover made the possibility of landing difficult, and they also didn’t know what they’d find. For caution’s sake, it seemed worthwhile to take a longer walk.

  It was easy-going over the terrain, between the light gravity and the powered armor. Kira had to rein in her movements to avoid lunging ahead at an unsafe pace, in case they encountered any hostiles.

  At the top of the ridge, she held up her fist, signaling her team to pause. They each took up position behind a tree that afforded a view of the valley beyond.

  The aerial survey hadn’t done the location justice. Rather than a continuous, thick forest, the landscape on the other side of the ridge was interrupted by an odd outcropping of rocks. The dark stones jutted from the ground in a grooved half-arch that tapered to a narrow tip.

  “It’s like an ocean storm froze,” Nia murmured into her comm.

  “That’s definitely stone,” Kira observed, looking at the density reading displayed on her HUD.

  “What would make rock take that kind of shape?” Ari asked.

  “Was it grown?” Kyle posited.

  “That would fit with the rest of the place,” Kira realized.

  The trees, the groundcover, the dirt—they all had the same markers of a manufactured substance. It was more likely that the structures had been forced in place rather than each element having been created elsewhere and then arranged. It would take an extreme mastermind to design such a large-scale project, but the Trols may very well have been up to that challenge.

  One significant question stood out to Kira. “Where did the raw materials come from for this?” she asked her team.

  “The Gaelon System does not appear to have the necessary elements in the natural composition to support construction on this scale,” Jasmine stated over the shared comm link.

  “Mysar and Elusia, maybe?” Nia speculated.

  “It would explain why Reya had infiltrated so many organizations,” Kira agreed. “Let’s take some samples and see if we can get a match. Really, it doesn’t matter where it came from; it’s here now.”

  “Good point.” Kyle bent down to gather some material from the ground.

  Kira scraped off a sample of the artificial bark from the tree closest to her.

  When the samples had been gathered, Kira and her team stored the canisters in slots within their armor. Kira then motioned them forward through the trees. She felt a little ridiculous darting from tree to tree while they were already in stealth gear, but there was no way to know if hidden enemies might be waiting for an opportunity to shoot at them.

  When they were halfway down the hillside, Kira signaled for her team to stop. “Do you see a building up there?” She enhanced the view on her HUD and sent the image to her teammates.

  The three soldiers evaluated it.

  “That does look more squared off than the other rocks,” Kyle concurred.

  “In all fairness, the forest is laid out on a grid,” Kira added. “Still, the color and texture is different than everything around it.”

  “Huh,” Kyle said cryptically.

  Kira glanced in his direction. “What?”

  “Look at the aerial of this valley with an overlay of the on-the-ground details.” Kyle sent the team the composite image. “Look like anything familiar?”

  Kira’s brow knitted. “A transmission dish.”

  The strange, curved rocks in the center were positioned at the focal point, and trees filled the main body of the dish. Rock cliffs ringed the outer lip.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see that before.” Kira’s stomach knotted. This is the source of their control.

  “How do we blow it up?” Ari asked.

  “This is a recon mission,” Kira reiterated, though she didn’t disagree with the sentiment.

  “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Kyle cut in. “We’re totally going to end up blowing this thing to bits. We may as well find its inevitable weakness on this go-around to save ourselves trouble in the future.”

  “Planning ahead, and all,” Nia added.

  “You bring up a valid point.” Kira sighed. “Let’s get a closer look.”

  They continued down the hillside until they reached the perimeter of the rock formation. Smaller trees were scattered amid the rocks, which explained how they had missed the now-obvious formation when they’d initially looked at it. Kira had learned long before that patterns often didn’t emerge until there was some idea of what to look for.

  “Whoa, radiation spike,” Nia said, breaking the comm silence during the second half of their walk.

  “The signal is definitely stronger here, too,” Kyle commented.

  Kira sensed a pressure in her head. she asked Jasmine.

 

 

  Jasmine confirmed.

  The pressure in her head diminished.

 

  Kira smiled.

 

  The team approached the apparent structure at the center of the rock ring.

  “That, ladies and gentlemen, is a door,” Ari observed.

  Sure enough, a door a little over three meters tall and one meter wide was positioned in the center of the structure’s nearest side. There was no obvious way to open the door, but an access panel was positioned next to it.

  “Want me to get us inside?” Kyle asked.

  “Hold for a minute. I need to check in with Sandren,” Kira replied. “We’re going a little beyond our planned mission scope.”

  She activated the comm link in her armor and set it to a private channel to connect with the Raven.

  Sandren answered after five seconds. “What do you make of it, Captain?”

  “It’s every bit as strange as we observed from above and so much more, sir.”

  “I’d say I’m glad to hear it, but I’m not sure. I’ve been following along on the video feed, and I don’t like the look of that structure.”

  “Neither do I, but it’s located at the center of the target site. Seeing the valley up close, the details look strikingly like a transmission dish. None of us saw it from orbit.”

  “Think that structure is the control center?” Sandren asked.

  “Maybe. The question is, do we go inside?”

  The major was silent for several seconds. “Do you have enough information about the dwarf planet to recommend a course of action?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Would going inside that building offer additional insights?”

  Kira took a slow breath. “Most likely.”

  “Then you know what you need to do,” he stated. “You have your authorization to proceed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Kira,” Sandren added after a moment, “watch your backs.”

  “Always, sir. We’ll check in as soon as we have additional information.”

  She ended the private call and then switched back to her team’s channel. “All right, we’re going in.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “Kyle and Nia, can you get that door
open?” Kira asked.

  “Psh.” Kyle snorted. “You needn’t even ask.”

  Kira smiled. “Work your magic.”

  The two soldiers got to work doing what they did best while Kira and Ari kept watch. The sensors on her suit were unable to penetrate the walls of the structure, so they’d have to wait to see what was inside.

  “You know, I would have expected them to make a move to snatch you by now,” Ari commented privately to Kira.

  “I kind of did, too, actually,” she admitted. “As much as I’d like to think our stealth tech makes us invisible, I suspect it’s useless against this particular opponent.”

  “They can probably pick up our specific brainwaves or something.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.” Kira’s hand instinctually gravitated toward her sidearm. “We’ll need to be extra careful inside. Secret underground lairs are the perfect hiding place for robotic monsters with tentacle arms.”

  Ari chuckled. “True.”

  “This motherfoker,” Kyle swore into the comm.

  “I haven’t seen encryption this intense outside of the Guard.” Nia sighed.

  “Can you break it?” Kira asked, switching back over to the team’s common band.

  “Of course.” Kyle swore again under his breath. “It’s just going to take a little time.”

  After four minutes of cycling through their various hacking tricks, Kyle and Nia eventually found a combination that worked.

  “Take that, Trol bastards!” Kyle exclaimed as the door hissed open.

  “If that was their front door, I can’t imagine what the computer systems are going to be like,” Nia said with far less enthusiasm.

  “Another point that I hesitate to even mention,” Kira began, “is why there’s a door and a panel that resembles the tech we’re used to. I can justify building a planet with the same organic composition and general habitat that we’re used to as Tarans, but a structure like this…”

  “Yep, just going to choose to ignore that point for now.” Ari readied his multi-handgun and stepped through the open doorway.

  As he entered, lights came on.

  “Okay, yep, the stealth tech is pointless,” he said.

  Kira could make out, around Ari shoulders, what appeared to be some sort of control room with desks and monitors. She followed him inside to get a better look.

  The room was laid out with three computer stations along the wall, complete with an array of monitors, and a door similar to the entry point positioned on the left wall. Again, her suit’s sensors only read as far as the room.

  “I’m going to guess that’s the way in,” she commented. She checked her suit’s settings and saw that the signal to the Raven was cutting in and out. “Ah, shite.”

  Nia must have noticed the same thing. “We’re going to be in the dark, aren’t we?”

  “Looks like it.” Kira sighed. “One sec.” She stepped back outside to warn Sandren that their connection would likely be severed as soon as they entered the underground facility. He instructed them to proceed, offering additional words of caution.

  When Kira got back inside, she found Kyle and Nia each working at one of the computer terminals. The screens above the desktops displayed what looked like scrolling gibberish.

  “This won’t be easy,” Nia stated without taking her eyes off the screen in front of her.

  “I’m trying to find a root database, but this isn’t laid out like a normal system,” Kyle added. “And this coding is weird. I’m going to try running it through the external processor.” He pulled out one of his specialized pieces of equipment—a small black box that contained powerful software that advanced Lynaedan AI had helped design to interface with encrypted computer operating systems.

  Kyle dropped beneath the desk to look for wires to use as a hard jack into the alien computer. “If I can’t make sense of this, we’re out of luck.”

  “I think I may have found the door controls, at least,” Nia said.

  “Bomax, I was kind of hoping we’d have to blow it up,” Ari replied.

  Kira rolled her eyes. “Yes, explosives near the computers is a great idea.”

  Jasmine offered.

 

 

 

  A moment later, the pressure she had felt in her head when they first stepped into the rock formation returned twofold, and this time it was accompanied by a high-pitched buzzing that stabbed behind her eyes. “Argh!”

  “You okay over there?” Ari asked.

  “Yeah, just don’t ask me to do math or be patient with children for a few minutes.” Kira placed one gloved hand on the side of her helmet while she breathed deeply.

  “Jasmine, you’re a genius!” Kyle cheered after a minute.

  “This is, indeed, a strange system,” Jasmine said over the team’s suit comms. “I noticed that the frequency being emitted from the transmitter has a visual wave pattern similar to the arrangement of geographic features on this world. I extrapolated that layout to the computer system architecture, and it matched. The database is located at a system core analogous to the location of this facility relative to the rest of the world.”

  Kira scowled. “I didn’t follow all of that, but it sounds like you found what you’re looking for.”

  “Yes,” Jasmine confirmed.

  “Good. We’ll go with that.”

  Kira waited while her team followed through on Jasmine’s lead. The pressure in her head remained, but after a couple of minutes she found herself getting used to it.

  “Ah ha!” Nia let out a delighted cackle. “Got it cornered now.”

  “Shite, this is going to take forever to download over the slow connection through this firewall,” Kyle groaned.

  The hum in Kira’s head diminished as Jasmine disconnected from the external processor.

 

  the AI replied.

  Kira asked.

 

 

  Jasmine gave a mental scowl.

  Kira pointed out.

 

 

 

  Kira reminded the AI.

  Jasmine made the mental equivalent of a harrumph.

 

 

  Kira returned her attention to her team. “All right. Sounds like it’s going to take some time to copy the data, so let’s check out the facility and leave this running up here.”

  Ari shifted on his feet. “That’s assuming we exit the same way we go in.”

  “Worst case, this
entry isn’t far from our original landing location in the shuttle. We can always circle back here if needed,” Kira replied.

  Kyle nodded. “I don’t really want to wait around here watching a progress bar march across the screen. I vote for exploration time.”

  Kira’s statement hadn’t been an open call for votes, but she decided to let it slide. “Get that door open,” she ordered.

  “And… presto.” Nia made an entry on her computer terminal.

  A bolt clanged, and the door popped open with a hiss. It slowly swung inward.

  There was only darkness beyond, and the sensors feeding into her HUD indicated a featureless corridor with uniform temperature. A row of lights along the ceiling illuminated, and strips along the floor to either side of the corridor lit the path to an apparent stairwell.

  “Oh yeah, absolutely nothing ominous about that,” Ari said.

  Kira swallowed, happy her opaque helmet hid her face. “Nothing to worry about.” She hoped her tone sounded more confident than she felt.

  Before her team could reply, she strode forward through the open doorway, her multi-handgun aimed ahead.

  Ari followed. “Let me go first, ma’am. If they’re after you, you should stay in between us.”

  The idea of being literally snatched from the group hadn’t occurred to her, but if it made Ari feel better to go first, there was no reason to stop him. “Go ahead,” she consented.

  Ari slipped past her in the corridor to scope out the stairwell ahead. “I can’t see past the first switchback.”

  “We’ll take it slow,” Kira instructed. “Hopefully it’s not too deep.”

  It was.

  The stone stairwell descended twenty-four stories, with flights of twelve steps each forming one side of a spiraling square around a solid central column. With each floor, Kira was reminded how strange it was that there were stairs on this alien world. Person-sized stairs. Not to mention twenty-four stories and no elevator. Nothing about the place added up.

  “This is really foking weird, right?” Kira said as they rounded the second switchback of the twenty-fourth story.

  “Oh, without a doubt,” Ari agreed.