Star Thief

by T. Jackson King

  “Yes, captain.” Flow tapped the scope control dot and kept her finger on it as her right wing-hand moved a touch control until the scope was centered over the rocky hills. She tapped the scope dot until the zoom-in function brought the Harl installation into clear view. She noted it was small compared to Boundary’s city. There were only three towers, a single dome and four black stone circles that might be habitation areas. They surrounded the standard central plaza. The plaza stones were mostly covered in brown sand, though local winds kept part of the plaza clear of sand. The winds also kept the structures mostly clear of sand. “Shall I land us in the plaza?”

  “Pilot, yes. Land us there. Do you detect any scanning of us?”

  She answered quickly. “No scanning by hadron, neutrino, microwave, infrared or other emissions. There is a localized source of intense graviton emissions, though. It lies within or below the tallest tower.”

  “Weapons? Anything?”

  “No captain,” Sharp Claw hissed. “No intense energy sources like on Boundary. No evidence of any signals from an AI. Either it is ignoring us intentionally, or the facility AI is dead.”

  “Well, remain ready to take out any laser or gravity projector.”

  “Your vessel is safe,” boomed the Stars crystal. “I have sought neutrino linkage with intelligences like myself. There was no reply. Though I do detect a few small minds like those that control portal openings and general maintenance.”

  Flow fluttered her wings in irritation at the invasion of her routine by the Harl AI. So long as it stayed silent she and others could pretend it was not dictating their actions. But of course it would not be silent upon their arrival at any Harl facility.

  “Thank you, Stars That Beckon,” the captain replied. Her panel vidimage showed his expression as irritated, based on her watching of him over the four years of her crew service. “Pilot?”

  “Going into atmospheric entry mode,” she said, her wing-hands touching the attitude control jets to push them out of orbit. The vessel’s external hull could easily withstand the heat of re-entry at hypersonic speeds. However, the magfield drive did not require her to maintain an aerodynamic vector. She touched its dot. The Akantha slowed rapidly by pushing against the planet’s magnetic field and charged ionosphere. While they did not drop straight down, her vessel entered a slanted spiral entry pattern that was both very direct and not easy to target. She tapped in some random motion algorithms to impart a few unpredictable elements into her spiral. While they had not been scanned, her training told her to always make it hard for any enemy to target her. Or her vessel. Leastwise that was what her Lunteen people had learned while evolving on Windy Air. “Landing on the plaza will occur in about nine minutes.”

  “Good. Weapons, advise me of anything you detect that might be hostile.”

  “Weapons will comply,” Sharp Claw hissed as the muscular reptile focused intently on her control pedestal.

  Flow’s field sensing fibers rose from her head as her vessel fully entered the planet’s magnetic field. The sense came of flying through a swirling wind, but a wind with a direction. The primary direction was north to south, and vice versa, following the strongest magnetic field lines. Some smaller magnetic winds came from mountain areas that must hold large iron deposits, some of which must be magnetized. A final twist in their descent brought them into a glide pattern that faced them into the northwest wind. A tap of her panel caused the Akantha’s landing struts to deploy. A few seconds later her claw-feet felt the tiny vibrations of landing atop the black stone tiles of the plaza. The front vidscreen changed to show a view of the three round towers, with the dome to one side. Another dot tap released a floater spyeye to observe the entire facility from a few kilometers up.

  “Captain, floater spyeye is launched. Vessel is grounded. Shall I shut off the magfield?”

  “Shut it off. Akantha, do you detect any AI presence?”

  “I do not,” sang the AI who sometimes resembled a fellow air flyer.

  “Which is what I told you from orbit,” boomed Stars That Beckon. “When will you leave to find the graviton source? I must know if this facility contains any stasis tubes!”

  “Patience, patience,” her captain said calmly. “Lotan, join with me, Flow, Meander, Draken and Sharp Claw on our inspection trip. Laserta, do you wish to join us on this exploration?”

  “I do not,” barked the irritating female furry, her green eyes fixed on the vidscreen image. “I will see what you see from your suit videyes. And your vessel’s intelligence will keep me informed if other star vessels enter this system.”

  Flow felt relief at the news the Mogelian would stay behind. The female could not harm her vessel, not with Akantha watching. And having Lotan with them would be helpful if they encountered any animal lifeforms. Plus, he would be an extra pair of plasma pistols.

  “Crew, wear enviro-suits, bring your weapons and put on your exploration backpacks with the floaters inside,” the captain said. “We will use our personal floater pads if the tower’s gravlift is out of power. And we may need explosives to gain entry. Or for defense of ourselves. The giant reptile and ceiling multi-leg have me worried about the kinds of critters we may encounter below ground.”

  She shared the captain’s concern. But her participation in ten other ruin explorations before the hiring by Laserta had given her experience in dealing with unknown locations. Hopefully this exploration would be swift and they could depart on the next flight of their trip. If not, maybe it would not be boring.

  I followed Sharp Claw along the black stone pathway that led to the base of the tallest tower. While standard arky procedure would have been to send small teams to check out the other two towers and the dome, the presence of pulsed gravitons within this tower dictated a different strategy. As before Claw led the way, her magrail rifle and plasma pistol out and aimed forward. At the rear of his group Draken carried a long floater pad strapped to his back. He had reared up on his two hind feet when they exited the Akantha, exposing himself to the bright red light of the local star. Then he had dropped down with a shake of his head segment, as if the star radiation had disappointed. I sympathized. This M-class red dwarf would not give any human a suntan. Claw came to a stop before the base of the round tower that reached upward about 30 levels. She gestured at the entry circle outline on the black stones of the tower. “Captain?”

  I blinked an eye and my helmet visor rose up. Dry air and a dusty smell came to me. “I will do this.” Moving past the sexy woman reptile, whose bodyform had more and more drawn my attention, I stopped within a meter of the circle. “Entry mind, open your portal!” My Translator turned my English into the Harl words spoken by Stars and Home Guardian.

  A sputter of sharp sounds came from the area of the circle. My Translator turned it into something I understood.

  “Being who speaks the Prime Language, you do not belong to a servant species. Why do you wish to enter?”

  “You are correct, entry mind. However I arrived in a Tessene vessel. It belongs to a servant species. I am here on orders from a Primary intelligence on the Harl world of Boundary. It may touch your mind.”

  “I have done so,” boomed Stars over my suitcom.

  “I obey the Primary. You may enter.”

  The entry spiraled open as stone leaves moved outward, leaving a hole in the tower wall that was four meters high and wide. There was room for a single Harl to enter, which meant three of us abreast could enter. Claw jumped inside, her suit lamps flaring bright yellow.

  “Captain, it is an access hallway,” she hissed. “I detect no danger.”

  White-yellow lights glowed on the hallway ceiling. Clearly there was some level of power within this tower.

  I aimed both plasma pistols forward. While I trusted Sharp Claw, I was not about to assume no danger inside a Harl tower that had been abandoned for 400,000 years. Who knew what kind of life lived within the brown sands of this world?

  “Crew, follow me. And have your weapons at the re
ady.”

  As I stepped through the entry I heard the movements of my praying mantis, my eagle, my walking worm and my tall meerkat as they followed me and Claw into the tower’s ground level. As on Boundary we were in a black stone hallway with smaller circle entries on both walls of the hall. None were open. I ignored them and followed Claw through an open arch and into a massive circular room. Wall and ceiling lights came on in here too. Similar to Boundary there were two ramps leading up to the second level. Carved bas-reliefs ran around the wall at shoulder height. To my left rose the clear tube of a gravlift. Like the main entry it was four meters wide and ten high. The similarity of this tower and its ground level chamber to the one on Boundary was remarkable. Then my ancient history studies clicked in and reminded me that empires existed to enforce uniformity within their boundaries, in obeying imperial law and in following imperial building customs. Just as most Greek city state capitals had a central agora with merchant offices, a colonnaded stoa, a paved plaza and a Doric-style temple, so every Harl ruin I had ever seen had a central plaza surrounded by one or more towers, a dome or two and round stone habitation blocks. And there were always underground levels below each tower.

  “Entry mind, does the gravlift operate?”

  “It operates,” the simple mind said. “I do not know what lies below. My programmed duty zone is the ground level entry and this chamber.”

  “Thank you. Draken, is the pulsed graviton source below us?”

  “It is,” he honked quickly. “There are also strong neutrino sources. The particle flow is similar to that emitted by our vessel’s fusion reactor.”

  “Crew, into the gravlift. Down we must go.”

  I walked over to the gravlift and touched the center of the entry oval that was outlined on the transparent shaft. A large circle of glassine moved to one side. Inside hovered a black metal gravplate that was four meters across. Plenty of room for all of us. And for any portable tech we might find. Claw bounded into the chamber, then stood close to the entry so she would be first to exit. I followed after her. Flow, Meander, Lotan and Draken followed me inside. The soft brown eyes of Lotan looked to me. He wore an enviro-suit like mine and carried a backpack. His two plasma pistols were holstered to his narrow waist. His hands moved in a gentle pattern.

  “Captain,” he clicked amidst the scent of lemons. “What do you expect to find below?”

  I looked away from him. “Gravlift, descend slowly.”

  “Descending slowly,” came the shaft’s voice, which sounded very unemotional. It seemed the shaft mind was even more simple than the tower entry mind.

  “Lotan, there could be nothing more than a Harl fusion reactor. There could be mechbots aplenty. There could even be one or more stasis tubes, though pulsed gravitons are emitted by sources other than the zero-point energy blocks.” I smiled. “That is why I tell employers they will enjoy exploring ancient ruins. There is always a surprise to be found in ruins. The danger in such work is letting oneself be distracted.”

  “Captain,” honked Draken. “We just passed the first level entry. The graviton source is lower.”

  I nodded. Draken like all my crew understood human body language and my meaning. That was the nice part of serving with the same crew for four years. And hopefully long into the future. I watched the black stone shaft. It was bare of lichen or any kind of debris. Which told me that there were maintenance mechbots still functioning at this remote Harl station. While the spaces between galactic arms were not empty of stars, just less star filled than the arms, I had not expected a Harl facility to occupy a planet at this Gate. I had assumed the Gate was here only due to the 3,093 light year limit on wormhole transits. Clearly this facility said otherwise. But why the Harl would place a facility in this remote locale was a mystery. Nearly all Harl facilities I had heard about lay within the galactic habitable zone that lay between 13,046 and 32,615 light years out from the central black hole. Very few Harl sites were known from Perseus Arm and none had been documented in Cygnus Arm. Scutum, Sagittarius, Orion and Perseus arms were where nearly all Gates were located. Word was Gates occupied a similar zone on the far side of the galaxy.

  “Entry two has passed,” Draken honked.

  I left my mental meandering and focused on the slow passage of the black stone gravlift wall. Looking at my feet I saw the round lip of a third hallway entry begin to appear. In seconds we reached it.

  “Entry three is not the source.”

  Draken I trusted. While we all had emission sensors within our arm vidtablets, his body was a living, walking radiation detector. He had never been proven wrong in anything he’d told me about radiation sources. Flow was just as perfect in her awareness of electromagnetic fields and stellar winds. Meander was equally talented in his guidance through Gate wormholes and estimates of transit time. And transit exit times. Lotan was my first line of defense against nosy aliens. And Sharp Claw was always the first to detect any threat. I felt lucky to have such a crew.

  “Captain, the fourth entry hallway is the source,” Draken announced as the gravplate came to a stop at the bottom of the gravlift.

  “Gravlift, open your entry.” I aimed my two plasma pistols forward, but to one side since Claw was already standing in front of the entry circle. “Remain here until we return.”

  “Opening. This gravplate will reside here until bioform return.”

  Claw jumped forward, her suit shoulder lights illuminating a black stone hallway that was four meters wide. White-yellow lighting flared on from the ceiling, apparently due to sensing our body heat or walk vibrations. We followed Claw forward along a hallway like those on Boundary. Chamber entry circles showed on the black stone at irregular intervals. All were closed. At the far end of the hall was a solid wall of stone. A four meter wide entry circle barely showed in the hall light. My Weapons chief looked back at me, her yellow eyes questioning. I knew her body speech as much as she knew mine.

  “Claw, yes, touch the center of the circle. Let’s see if it responds the way the entry circles did on Boundary.”

  The sexy female put a pistol in her waist holster and touched the entry center, all the while aiming her magrail rifle forward. Her head made quick checks of the ceiling and hallway walls, as if an invisible predator might jump out from the hair-thin chinks between the wall stones. A grinding sound came to my ears, both through my suitcom and to my ears, thanks to my open visor. I aimed both pistols at the entry. Just because the entry was sealed did not mean some critter could not have burrowed through the sand and entered the chamber beyond by chomping through the hardened stone walls. Though such a critter might have to use acid saliva to create an entry. The stones of all Harl ruins were a wonder in durability.

  Claw jumped through as the stone entry leaves slowly spiraled open. She moved to one side, her suit lights illuminating nothing but an empty stone floor. “Captain, my infrared vision sees nothing alive in here. Nor do I hear any mechbot movement. It appears—wait! Something metal is coming this way. Three somethings.” She went to one knee, put the stock of her rifle to her right shoulder and aimed it forward.

  “Crew! Inside and behind her! If she fires, we fire!”

  In seconds we five had formed a defensive arc behind Claw.

  Overhead ceiling lights came on, casting a modest white-yellow light into the chamber. I saw multiple things.

  In front of us were three mechbots. They were attack units based on the double barrel lasers that flanked each unit’s side. Sensor eyes atop a gray metal dome swiveled toward us. I tried something.

  “Attack units, stop! Do not fire on Harl servants!” My words erupted out in the Harl Prime Language sounds.

  “Captain! They are going to fire on us!” hissed Claw.

  The three units rotated their laser arms upward. Each spoke.

  “Attack Unit 4172 responds to Prime Language order.”

  “Attack Unit 3972 responds to Prime Language order.”

  “Attack Unit 4224 responds to Prime Language order.
”

  “No, they are not.” I stepped up to Claw’s side, my pistols still aimed forward. “And look beyond them. This is a lab. And the facilities appear to be operational.”

  We all focused on what had appeared when the ceiling lights came on. Similar to the Boundary research station, gray flexmetal counters, benches and round globes with spikes on their surface were clustered in a group ahead. Behind them was a black stone wall. Or was it? The wall had a shimmer on it I had not seen before when exploring underground halls and chambers in Harl sites. Well, first things first.

  “Attack units three, pass by us to the gravlift. Remain there on guard against any non-thinking animal entry.”

  “Departing to guard duty,” all three said in sharp Harl words.

  I started to walk forward. Then I remembered the rest of my crew. “Akantha, Stars That Beckon, what is your analysis of this location?”

  “It is an operational research laboratory,” boomed Stars. “The research appears to focus on Dark Energy, as indicated by the spiked globes. Such globes are able to contain Dark Energy for controlled transmission to other sources. Such as the gravity projector lying atop the table to your left. However I do not detect a site artificial intelligence like me. Which is odd.”

  “I concur,” Akantha said. Jake, be careful. While there is no obvious AI present here, this place feels . . . strange to me. This place is more than a copy of the Boundary research station.

  Thanks. I will be careful. At least there are no critters down here.

  There are not. But there are worse dangers than predatory bioforms.

  I walked slowly forward, preceded by Sharp Claw, whose neck twisted from side to side as if trying to see every dimension at the same time. Maybe I could help her. “Crew, set your vidtablet scanners to alert us to any movement beyond the six of us.”

  My crew responded. I moved ahead, ignoring the lab tables and benches. The chamber wall ahead seemed different from the rest of the black wall stones elsewhere in the chamber. And the walls I had seen at every other Harl site.