Kris Longknife: Resolute

by Mike Shepherd

  “I figured it might not know about an M-6,” Abby drawled. “But if someone was throwing rocks, that might do the trick.”

  Kris stooped to pick up some rocks. Soon, anyone who didn’t have his hands full with black-box gizmos had a couple of rocks. Two crewmen talked about a slingshot and how they might make one out of what they had on hand. Since most of it involved cannibalizing their suits, slingshots remained just talk.

  The path split in two, but the place Kris wanted was straight ahead. The laser cutters took over, making trail. They took another rock as they left the trees.

  “Nelly?”

  “I only saw the latter part of the rock’s trajectory. Who- or whatever threw it was in the trees.”

  They stood for a long minute, eyeing the tree line they’d have to cross to get back to the shuttle, but nothing moved out of what they had already determined was “the ordinary.”

  They crossed the six-foot-high grass as quickly as they could. Ahead, the gray spire gave them something to aim for. What it may once have been was impossible to say, but it was tall, and thin, and looked very well worn. Yet it stood.

  They broke out of the grass to find themselves walking over broken stones or maybe shattered concrete. Cracks allowed for tiny invasions of growth.”

  “A million years old and it looks this good,” someone said.

  “The road between the stars wasn’t the only road the Three made,” Kris said.

  And a rock bounced across her path.

  “I saw that!” Abby said.

  “What was it?”

  “It looked like a string of oversize jelly beans on centipede legs. Only the first two legs were throwing things. It disappeared into that pile of rocks,” Abby said, waving her rifle’s snout to the left of the column.

  “Let’s not shoot anything we don’t have to,” Kris said.

  “It didn’t look like anything a big-game hunter would want to mount on her mantelpiece, anyway,” Abby said. “Leastwise none of the hunters I worked for.”

  “I just don’t want them mounting my head on their mantelpiece,” Beni said.

  “Let’s keep all 360 degrees covered,” Jack said. “You two at the tail. You’re the back door.”

  Kris turned to find that the rear of the column was already walking backward, rifle or pistol up, covering the rear. Nice to find field craft like that among merchant sailors.

  YEAH, RIGHT, Nelly muttered in Kris’s brain. I CAN ADD TWO AND TWO AS WELL AS ANY HUMAN.

  DOWN GIRL. DON’T LOOK A GIFT HORSE UNDER THE ARMPIT AS OUR CAPTAIN SAYS.

  YES, BUT I HOPE YOU WILL DO A BETTER JOB OF CHECKING THE HOOVES OF ANY GREEK GIFT HORSES WE NOW STUMBLE AMONG.

  THAT’S A GOOD ONE, NELLY. NOW CONCENTRATE ON THE PRESENT PROBLEM. WE CAN’T AFFORD TO BURN MORE THAN ONE BRIDGE AT A TIME.

  “There’s one,” Nelly said, and Kris got a fleeting look at what was tossing things their way. And sidestepped the latest rock to come at them.

  It did and didn’t look like one of the Three. Grampa Ray’s “download” from Santa Maria of some of the records from the Three showed three distinct species. One, the strangest, was a segmented species that started as one section of tubing, then added more as it grew. It didn’t grow them, but attached other singletons. Adults might have five or as many as seven segments, though there did appear to be one picture of an eight. For obvious reasons, they’d become known as the Caterpillar People.

  Beyond that, people didn’t agree on much about this weird species. “You sure we aren’t trying to figure them out from say, a Donald Duck cartoon. How much about humans would a classical Road Runner and Coyote snippet tell you?” was a question Kris found funny when she was a kid.

  Now, looking at something that didn’t fit the expected, she had to wonder just how much she knew . . . or needed to unlearn.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” she ordered. “Let me know if you see one of those things with more than three segments.”

  “You think we’ve found one of the Three?” Jack asked.

  “Or what it looks like after a million more years of evolution,” Kris answered.

  “Evolution?” Abby said, “or de-evolution? This place don’t look like the place I’d want my great-to-the-nth-degree-grandkids to be living in.” Abby had a point. That point was emphasized when Kris spotted one of the critters in question defecate, pick up the droppings, and hurl them at her crew. That one missed, but not the next one.

  “You know, Princess,” Chief Beni said, trying to scrape the muck off the leg of his battle suit with a large green leaf, “I don’t think they much like us.”

  “Kind of looks that way,” Abby agreed.

  They reached the edge of the greensward. Ahead lay a series of rock piles. On closer look, they turned out to be less of a jumble. Kris could make out the underlying walls, many of them cracked but still standing. Inside you could see open spaces, shaded by only a few stunted trees or shrubs that had found footing.

  “They look man made,” one of the sailors said.

  “At least intelligently made,” Kris agreed.

  Underfoot was more of the paving. It showed different textures and hints of different colors. Here and there it was broken by growth, but the handiwork of some engineer was fighting a long, slow retreat. Kris considered what on Wardhaven might still show that humans had been there in, say, a million years. She doubted anything would be left in a hundred thousand.

  “Chief, are we still headed for the source of the signal?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. It looks to be coming from that tower. Don’t know if the signal is originating from way up there or from someplace down around its base.”

  “That’s what we are here to find out.”

  That turned out to be no easy walk. Rocks and muck were bouncing off them regularly now. That didn’t impede them, but the work of the builders here did not always hold up as well. They had to cut their way through a thousand yards of grass, that or take a long walk around. There were also some pretty tall trees rising above the grass, and some nasty thorn bushes.

  “Now aren’t you glad we’re in this armor,” Jack said.

  “You don’t remember getting an argument from me, do you?”

  “She was kind of unusually pliant, as I recall,” Abby said.

  Jack might have shrugged, but the battle suit absorbed most of it. Kris decided to credit him with a shrug, because he said nothing to Abby’s defense of her.

  There were more of the critters here in the trees. Kris spotted what might be a family or clan. Anyway it had several of the triple segments, as well as several double segments and a few singles running around under what Kris took for close supervision. The rocks, sticks, and muck came mostly from the triples. A few of the doubles did try their “hands” at throwing, but theirs seemed almost comical in their poor aim. Were they teenagers imitating their elders?

  “Would be nice to take a sample of those home with me,” the sailor Captain Drago had identified as Doc said.

  “Crew, if we don’t have to kill anything here, I sure would like to leave here with no blood on my hands.”

  “You assume they have blood,” Beni said.

  “Let’s give these things the full benefit of the doubt.”

  “And if they start throwing hand grenades?” Abby said.

  “Then you can give them the full benefit of your rifle.”

  “Amen to that” came from somewhere in the rear.

  They were still a good thousand meters away when they got their first partial view of the structure at the foot of the spire. “That place looks huge,” Beni said.

  The satellite pictures and feedback from the scouts had not prepared Kris for what she saw. The building, she mentally tagged it “noise central,” was already too big for them to get a full view of it. What she could see showed multiple sides, a slight corner every hundred meters, no telling how many sides there was to this one.

  Beside Kris, the city, if she dare call it that, was in less ruin.
No way to tell if that was because it was better built or just protected by its surroundings. Still, while most of the roof might be intact, there would be some holes, made evident by a tree poking its leafy head through. Or a wall would be cracked, letting grass and shrubs into the shadows.

  Kris called a pause to let suit radiators catch up with the heat. They were only edging into the yellow, but Kris didn’t intend to get into anything today without plenty of reserves. Abby and one of the sailors, claiming that their suits were already in the green, took it upon themselves to laser down some shrubs and take a good look inside one of the buildings. The Doc provided a lookout or, in their case a look in, at the hole in the wall while they did some rummaging around inside.

  And returned empty handed.

  “It don’t look any different inside than it does outside,” Abby said, the helmet on her suit turning back and forth in as much of a rueful shake as it could.

  Satisfied with the color showing on her team’s readouts, Kris ordered them forward. The wind had been blowing softly as they made their way through the city. It fell calm as they reached the base of the spire. The jungle sounds also went suddenly missing. No rocks were tossed their way.

  Kris eyed the base of the silvery spire. No cracks in this wall; no grass grew on its smooth sides. There was hardly any pitting in the shiny blue-black facade it presented her.

  “About this time in all the vids don’t the intrepid explorers decide to split up?” Abby muttered.

  “And half of them vanish,” Jack added dryly, “into something truly vile and revolting. No thanks.”

  “The photos say,” Nelly said, “there are three identical indentations in the building that might be entrances. They are equally spaced around it. The nearest is about five hundred meters away to your left, Kris.”

  “Thank you, Nelly,” Kris said. “What say we skip the vile and stupid mistakes some fiction weavers resort to and do this smart.” Kris turned to the left and took a step.

  Her second step sank deep into goo.

  “Where’d that come from?” Kris muttered. “Folks, watch your footing. Some of this paving didn’t wear as long as the contractor promised.”

  That got a laugh. But Jack noticed Kris’s limp. “How bad?”

  “More embarrassing than hurt. I think I can walk it off.”

  And even if she couldn’t, she wasn’t going to admit it. It was hard to tell in armor, but the shape of Jack’s shoulders seemed to say he didn’t buy her claim. She kept walking.

  “Whoever built this took pride in his or her . . . or its . . . workmanship. Look at how this shines after all these years,” Beni said after a few minutes of walking around the wall.

  Maybe it was the armored suit, or the familiar canned air, but Kris didn’t feel any of the shivers that she did around the old houses on Wardhaven, or some of the really ancient sites—three or four thousand years old—that she’d seen her one trip to Earth.

  Or maybe it was just that it looked too good. She’d marveled at Stonehenge on Earth. It “felt” old. This . . . just seemed too modern.

  Or maybe too alien.

  They arrived at what might be a door . . . or not. Here was a longer side some two hundred meters between turns. Only this one had an alcove cut two hundred meters into it.

  “Looks like a murder hole,” Abby said, then had to explain. “Ancient castles or forts let you get at their gates, but only by walking into a space like this where they could shoot at you from all sides. You see any gun ports along there?”

  A search of the walls showed no holes for guns, arrows, or fire of any sort. From the ground to as far as they could see, the wall was just blue-black, seamless, and shiny.

  But then, in front of them there also was no evidence of a door, gate, portal, or any other way in.

  “Maybe it’s not a murder hole,” Kris said. “Maybe it’s just a place to sit and smell the flowers.”

  “I don’t see no flower,” Beni observed. “And I don’t see anyplace to sit.”

  “In a million years, those things could get lost,” Kris said. “Nelly, could you modify our nano-scouts to go over this place with a fine-tooth comb, see if they can find any cracks that we can’t.”

  “Doing it, Kris,” Nelly said. “Done.”

  “Have them start there,” Kris said, pointing at the middle wall where a human architect would have put a door.

  Ten minutes later Nelly reported, “No luck. That wall is solid down to the quantum level. Very solid.”

  “Maybe that’s not where these folks would put a door?” Jack said.

  “Yeah, maybe the door has to face east or west,” Beni said. “Aren’t there some ancient cultures that were like that?”

  “Yes,” Abby agreed. “But they usually oriented the entire building that way.”

  “But this building is just one big, round half sphere. If these people were made in six or seven segments, and could bend themselves around?” Kris said slowly, not at all sure where she was going with this thought.

  “Or are we bending our logic into a pretzel?” Abby asked.

  “I am sending the nanos to scout the other sides of this U,” Nelly said.

  “Maybe we need to look at the paving,” Beni said. “Maybe they liked to walk downhill into a place.”

  “We didn’t see any basements in the buildings that are open,” Abby pointed out.

  Kris let the chatter wash over her, something she’d react to if and when she needed to. The building itself was having its own effect on her. It towered, but it also leaned back, away from her, hiding its upper limits from her eye. What impact had the original architect sought on his public. No columns here. No towering straight walls.

  Totally alien.

  “Kris, we seem to have found a break in the wall that is linear,” Nelly reported.

  Kris led an avalanche of “Where?”

  “I will try to have the nanos mark the separation. It hardly qualifies as a crack. The nanos cannot penetrate it.”

  “That really is small!” Kris said. It took several tries to mark the outline of the potential door. The first two efforts at marking it resulted in slight puffs of dye marker drifting away on the tiny updrafts rising in the heat of the building.

  The third try succeeded in leaving a thin yellow mark. Slowly a pattern formed. It started about five meters away at the bottom where the building met the pavement. Then it rose in an arch, widening. “They were round centipedes,” Kris said.

  The circling pattern met at the top. No flourishes, nothing that Mother called gingerbread. Just a circle cut off at the bottom by the flat line of the pavement.

  “I guess that qualifies as a door,” Jack said.

  “Only if we can open it,” Kris reminded them. “Nelly, have your nanos look for something like a keypad or door lock. Anything that might open it.”

  “I have had them scouring the wall around it, as well as the wall across from it. Kris, what you see is all that we have found. This is a very blank wall.”

  “Thank you, Nelly,” Kris said. Nelly’s nonexistent feathers seemed to be a bit ruffled. Maybe some human respect would soothe. “Beni, do you have any signal that we might use for an ‘open sesame’?”

  “All I’m getting is the usual noise I’ve been hearing. Static with too much of a hint at some organization.”

  “Anyone want to try explosives?” Abby said.

  “You really think anything we’ve got will mar something that’s withstood a million years?” Jack said.

  “Nothing beats a try but a failure,” the maid answered.

  “Let’s start with the lasers,” Kris ordered. The lasers had been very low-powered to cut brush. Now the sailors dialed one up and applied it to a section of wall.

  To no noticeable effect.

  “Kris, feel that?” Nelly said a full minute later.

  “It ought to be white hot.”

  “Yes, but my nanos report that it is no warmer than the surrounding wall.”

  �
�Where’s the heat going?” the sailor with the laser said, putting it down.

  Kris reached slowly for the place he’d been working on. No heat came back at her. She touched it. Her gauntleted hands transmitted no warmth. “Whatever this stuff is, I want it on the hide of my next ship.” Murmurs of agreement filled the net.

  “Kris, I may have spotted something in the static,” Nelly said, interrupting them all standing around looking dumb.

  “What do you think you have?”

  “Among the signals I found on the stone chip I have been analyzing are a whole series of sequences that seem to make no sense at all. They are just in this one place on the chip with no reference to anything.”

  “And,” Kris said.

  “One of the sequences coming from the spire is the first half of one of those sequences from Santa Maria.”

  “An entrance code?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Nelly answered. Kris could almost hear a laugh run through the humans on net. Almost. Maybe they turned their mikes off.

  “Well, let’s see how good your guess is, Nelly. Play the sequence back,” Kris said.

  There was a pause. The door, if that was what it was, stayed closed. “I just played it,” Nelly said.

  “Do we need to hunt for a different frequency to reply?” Beni asked.

  “That could put us here forever,” Comm Boss at his elbow sighed, but he seemed to have intercepted Nelly’s signal and was already working his own black box.

  “Or maybe we didn’t send it right?” Abby said.

  “Your thoughts,” Kris said.

  “Nelly, you sent it the whole sequence, right.”

  “Yes.”

  “But was it sending out the whole sequence, or just part of it?”

  “It was sending only the first part.”

  “Send only the second part,” Kris said.

  And in front of them, the entire door moved up and out of their way. “Very, very good, Nelly,” Kris said as the doorway reached full open.

  Ahead of Kris spanned a large, empty space. The only light came from the open door. By it she saw the building’s ribbed outer wall rising up. The floor inside had a series of designs laid into its speckled-green stone that formed no pattern Kris could comprehend. NELLY, YOU WORKING ON IT?