by Terry Mixon
“How’s it going, cutie?”
“That is sexual harassment,” he said without looking up. “Just because we’re married doesn’t mean you get to objectify me.”
Angela gave him a throaty chuckle as she came to stand beside him. “If you think this is sexual harassment, I haven’t been trying hard enough. Seriously though, what’s the verdict?”
He turned to face his wife and shook his head. “It’s a dead end. We’re going to have to go back a couple of systems and try branching out.”
She shrugged slightly. “While that’s a pain in the ass, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes us to get there, so long as we can win once we make it. We’ve just been recalled via FTL. Admiral Mertz needs us. More specifically, he needs you.”
Carl frowned. “Me? He’s got a ton of scientists scattered throughout the fleet. Why does he need me?”
“Because you’re our expert on alien technology. They’ve found something on the planet we left them at.”
“Have they sent any details?”
“Fiona has them. I’ll leave you to sort them out while I get us headed back. We’ll be in orbit around the planet in roughly four hours, so I suggest you get something to eat and maybe take a nap. You’re going to be very busy for the next couple of days.”
He almost groaned as his wife walked out, because he’d already been up late the last couple of days. His implants allowed him to get by on less sleep, but there were limits.
A couple of taps on the archaic physical keyboard he so loved brought up the video that the admiral had sent. He scanned it while he imported a written report into his implants.
What had attracted the admiral was obviously a beacon. It came from a mountain range a fair distance from where Talbot had come down in a marine pinnace to pick up samples of the local wildlife. Wildlife that Carl noted was far too closely related to something from Terra than it should be.
Done skimming the basic information, Carl focused his attention on the video. The viewer was obviously on a smaller mountain inside the chain, because Carl could see other peaks dominating the landscape around the site.
The stone plateau was covered by snowdrifts, but that didn’t obscure the massive green obelisk that rose out of the white like a fist thrust into the sky. The sides of the structure were smooth and seemed to be made of a different kind of stone than that of the mountain. Its color reminded him of jade.
There was no frame of reference, so he couldn’t tell how large the obelisk was until Jake Peters stepped into view beside it. Once things were in perspective, Carl realized that the structure rose several hundred meters into the sky. It wasn’t just a monument. It was a building in its own right.
That probably meant the man with the camera was Talbot. The video took him around the base of the obelisk, but there were no visible signs of a door leading into it.
Carl had no doubt there would be a way inside, probably buried under the snow. There was no reason to summon visitors without putting something there for them to find.
And that was all there was for him to review. Without knowing what lay below the snow-covered ground—which he had no doubt that scientists would be determining even now—he couldn’t do anything more. He’d just have to wait to get there in person to solve its mysteries.
Thankfully, that allowed him to grab something to eat and catch a nap. He had absolutely no doubt that he’d need his wits about him very soon, and sleep would be in short supply.
Jared stepped out of the pinnace and onto the plateau. It was gorgeous out in the open like this. He had no idea what the wind chill was, but he was glad that he’d taken Talbot’s advice to wear cold-weather gear.
The air was so cold that it felt as if his nostril hairs were freezing every time he took in a breath. It was… invigorating.
The jade obelisk towered high overhead, making him crane his neck to stare at its peak far above. He couldn’t imagine how much work it must’ve taken to get what certainly looked like a single piece of stone into this remote and rugged location.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Talbot asked from where he’d just stepped up beside him, the snow crunching under his boots.
“It is,” Jared agreed. “Any idea why someone would bother putting a monument like this deep in the mountains on a planet that never had intelligent life?”
His brother-in-law shrugged. “No clue. We’ve gone over as much of the base as we can with this snow, but we haven’t found an entrance. Since something is sending out a signal, I’m sure there’s a way in, but I don’t want to get too aggressive looking for it.”
“Aggressive?”
“Yeah. We could’ve brought out some plasma rifles and started clearing the snow, but I’m guessing that any defense mechanisms would probably take that the wrong way.”
“I’m not sure there’s a right way to take something like that,” Jared said with a smile. “Let’s leave the heavy weapons in the pinnaces.
“Persephone is back in the system, and Carl will be here in a few hours. I brought some of the scientists down with me, and they’ll start taking readings, but no matter how interesting this is, we’re not going to be able to stay long enough to do it justice.
“That last branch of the current multiflip point node was a dry well. It’s close to Twilight River but so heavily defended that there’s no way we could possibly force our way through, even with all the ships we have available.”
“Leaving without exploring this is going to piss Carl off.”
“He’ll get over it,” Jared said, not sure that was entirely accurate. “Eventually. You have any theories?”
“The critters that we caught look like the artist renditions of velociraptors. The colors are off, but I understand those were just educated guesses. We’ve also seen some larger species that seem to be from the same geological period. Over that length of time—even in a stable environment—they should’ve evolved.
“That tells me that there’s been some kind of tinkering. I’m not sure whether it’s going to be on a genetic level or if machines are killing off the sports to keep the bloodlines pure. We didn’t detect anything like the latter, but I’m not going to rule it out.”
Jared had to agree with that assessment. When it came to aliens, it was better to keep an open mind.
“I’m surprised that Julia isn’t with you,” Talbot said. “She’s even more curious than Kelsey. I figured this would’ve drawn her like a moth to a flame.”
“She was going to come down, but Elise wasn’t feeling well this morning, so she’s providing moral support on the trip to see Lily. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but best to make sure.”
“Probably something she ate,” Talbot agreed. “Maybe this will get her to agree to medical nanites. Having implants without them is just silly.”
A figure in marine cold-weather gear came around the far side of the obelisk. Jared had to squint and shade his eyes from the sunlight reflecting off the snow, but he finally recognized Jake Peters.
The man was looking a lot better than when they’d first met. Hell, he was looking better than he had a month ago. He finally seemed to have recovered from his injuries and centuries of disability.
It was hard to believe the man was half a millennium old, but the information they’d been able to pull out of Persephone’s computer system had confirmed his identity. Based on the research that Lily had been able to perform, his medical nanites would still be keeping him alive when the rest of them were dust.
Well, those of them that didn’t upgrade their nanogenerators. Kelsey and Talbot had both encouraged him to upgrade. He had no objection but wouldn’t do so if Elise decided not to take the plunge.
Lily’s raw assessment was that his life span might range anywhere from a thousand to ten thousand years, perhaps even longer if something didn’t kill him first.
Even compared to the mystery of the alien obelisk and the Terran dinosaurs that roamed this planet, that was more shocking to Jared. Ali
ens were going to be aliens, doing things that no one could understand. This was something that humanity had created, and everyone in the New Terran Empire was going to struggle with its implications as soon as they got word of the new potential home.
“I’ve found something,” Peters said as he approached. “It’s on the far side of the obelisk from where we’re standing. It’s hard to tell exactly what it is under all this, so I’ll need some help clearing away the snow.”
Talbot whistled loudly, hurting Jared’s ears but getting the attention of every marine in sight. The man circled a finger in the air and pointed toward the far side of the obelisk. That got them all moving in that direction.
When the three of them got to the spot that Peters had been messing around with, Jared immediately saw what was different. The stone in the area that Peters had cleared was green like the obelisk.
The marines pitched in with small shovels that they’d scrounged from somewhere and began clearing the area. Ten minutes later, they were all staring at an oval patch of the strange material that was embedded in the regular stone around it. It was about ten meters across at the narrowest point and maybe half again longer.
“This has to be a way inside,” he agreed. “Now, all we have to do is figure out how to activate it. Or rather, we’ll wait for the scientists to give everything a good look, and Carl can open it up. Excellent work, people. Now, how about we get out of this wind and get something hot to drink?”
4
Elise Orison tried to sit still on the cutter taking them over to the hospital ship Caduceus, but it was hard. She’d never been a very good patient, so it was lucky that she was usually healthy. That was what made her upset stomach so galling.
Food preparation wasn’t something that the cooks in Fleet took for granted, she was sure. Sometimes it was the roll of the dice, though. Something had happened, and she’d gotten a meal that was a little underprepared.
She could accept that, but it didn’t make throwing up any easier.
“You know, if you had medical nanites, this wouldn’t be such a big deal,” Julia said from the seat beside her.
“So you’ve said four times already. I suppose this is a sign, but if I get them, I won’t be doing it alone,” she said with a sigh as she shot a meaningful look at Olivia West, who was on her other side.
The woman was the Coordinator of Harrison’s World, a former Rebel Empire world. The AIs hated medical nanites for some reason, so she’d had implants but no nanogenerator. If Elise was going to get them, it was time for Olivia to do so as well.
The three women were almost alone on the cutter making the trip from Invincible to Caduceus. Elise was grateful that her friends had come to provide moral support, even if she didn’t need it. Mostly.
Her life had certainly changed since she’d met and married Jared Mertz. Born into the royal family of Pentagar, she was the crown princess of that sovereign star nation. She’d had a busy and rewarding life, even with the threat of death or enslavement at the hands of the Pale Ones looming over her.
Those poor bastards in the Erorsi system were savages that had been under the control of a mad computer that had augmented them with Marine Raider hardware—minus the medical nanites—and had kept sending them through the flip point to try and conquer her world for centuries.
Capture had meant the loss of one’s ability to control their own body. Like the rest of her people, she’d been prepared to commit suicide to avoid that fate. She still carried the small knife that she’d have used to do that as a reminder.
Jared Mertz and Kelsey Bandar had changed her world forever when they’d defeated and destroyed the computer that had controlled the Pale Ones. Now Pentagar was providing aid to Erorsi and the hidden people that had been living there under the very nose of the computer since the Fall.
Her people hadn’t been primitive, but their technology was getting a considerable boost from the information that her husband and the New Terran Empire had provided and from the technical specialists from the old planetary command center on Erorsi.
And when Omega—the unbelievably ancient alien trapped in a station around a black hole—had created an artificial flip point between his system—which they’d named the Nova system—and Pentagar, as well as a second one from there to Avalon, it had opened the floodgates of trade and technology exchange.
Whereas they’d once been trapped, they could now journey to the capital of the New Terran Empire in a matter of hours. No longer were they hobbled by the fact that they couldn’t build their own flip drives. Jared’s discovery of those rare minerals inside a cul-de-sac system near Pentagar had seen to that.
The last few years had been a whirlwind of societal and technological changes for Pentagar that had reached its current peak when she’d married the savior of their world and bound the New Terran Empire and the Kingdom of Pentagar together.
She was so deliriously happy to have Jared as her husband and prince consort. The fact that his biological father was the Emperor of the New Terran Empire—even if his birth had been on the wrong side of the sheets—was as strong a connection between their peoples as she could possibly hope for.
Elise hadn’t intended to go on this journey with Jared. She’d thought she was only spending a couple of weeks with him as he carried out a moderately risky mission. Honestly, she shouldn’t even have gone on that, but the appearance of a version of Kelsey from a different reality had cemented her desire to be there for everything that had happened.
Julia was certainly different from Kelsey, but she treasured the woman. The four women had grown into such a tight friendship that Elise couldn’t imagine how she was going to get on with life once Julia returned to her universe to free it from the scourge of the AIs.
She realized that she’d been lost in thought again as she felt the cutter docking. They’d reached Caduceus. The hospital ship was the size of a superdreadnought and was by no means unarmed, but it was filled with everything needed to care for the injured and ill.
Commodore Lily Stone didn’t command the ship’s operations in space, but she directed all of the medical activities and held a lot of sway over how her flag captain ran the ship. If anyone could figure out what was going on in her stomach, it was Lily.
And Julia was right. Now that they had the opportunity, it would make sense to get medical nanites. With how her people felt about the Pale Ones, the decision to get implants at all had been one she’d had to think long and hard about. She’d declined medical nanites because it had seemed like a step too far.
Now she realized that had been stupid. She’d already taken the first steps toward what was becoming standard in the New Terran Empire, so she might as well get the remaining work done.
She’d been thinking about it ever since Julia had suggested it. The woman had subversively advocated skipping the Fleet-grade medical nanites and getting a Marine Raider nanogenerator. Elise had been leaning toward agreeing, but the more she’d learned about Jake Peters, the less certain she became.
She couldn’t imagine how her life would change with that kind of life span. Still, would the opportunity ever come again? As soon as word of something like that got out, access to Marine Raider nanogenerators would be heavily restricted.
At least she thought so. After all, how would society change if everyone became functionally immortal? Population control would become a huge issue. Maybe that was why the AIs had eschewed medical nanites.
She’d had a few discussions about it with her husband. He already had a Fleet-grade nanogenerator, and those were becoming commonplace. That extended life spans into the hundreds of years. There was a survivor from Erorsi—Reginald Bell—who, even though he’d been in medical stasis for hundreds of years, had been a serving Fleet officer before the Fall.
He’d lived three hundred years in the real world. To her people, that was unimaginable.
Elise flipped the question on its head as she stood and headed toward the pinnace’s hatch. Would she want to li
ve a shorter life than her husband? Would she want him to give up any portion of his life for her? Didn’t they deserve to take advantage of the same technology that his sister had?
Jared hadn’t made any final decisions. She suspected that he was waiting on her to make up her mind, and then he’d follow suit. Perhaps she’d best get on the ball and do that. She was here, after all.
Right outside the hatch, Lily was waiting for them. The dark-haired medical officer gave each of them a big smile and a hug.
“Even being in the same fleet, I don’t see you girls nearly enough,” the woman said warmly. “I’m glad you’ve come over, even if you’re not feeling well, Elise. Why don’t we get you down to the medical center and figure out what’s going on?”
“That sounds good,” Elise said grumpily. “This bug has kept me feeling grungy for two days now, and I’m ready to feel normal again.”
She took a deep breath. “And I think it’s time to install medical nanites. Would it be possible to get a Marine Raider–grade nanogenerator?”
Lily nodded and gestured toward the left. “I’ve already had that discussion with the admiral. He said if that’s what you wanted, then that’s what we’d do. The same is true of you, Olivia. Sean was part of that conversation.
“Both of them already have Fleet-grade nanogenerators, but they’ll upgrade if you do. This isn’t being made available to everyone—at least not at this time—but rank does have its privileges.”
As soon as they were inside the lift and on their way to the appropriate deck, Elise turned to Lily. “Do you think that’s the right call to make? Is this going to be something that I’ll live to regret? I can’t imagine this technology is going to become broadly available, because it would change society in ways that we can’t imagine right now.”
Her friend shrugged. “I believe this technology is going to get out no matter what we do. Frankly, I think it should. We’re going to have to rethink how society is structured, and things like inheritance will change.
