The URANUS Code (Citadel World Book #1)

by Kir Lukovkin

  Rick could barely remember the number of the floor on Omicron's main level—it was probably five hundred and forty. He said that to Maya, and she quietly explained, “That's too high. Your sector is far higher, and ours is way more so.”

  However, Arcadius also managed to overhear their conversation.

  “You descended from above? We thought that there is nothing up there apart from jungles and mutants. How high up do humans live?”

  “It's difficult to say,” Rick admitted. “It's not long since I thought that there was nothing below my sector apart from emptiness. And Maya lives even higher up.”

  “This is amazing. Sometimes outsiders come down here, but they are either monsters, or bloodthirsty barbarians.”

  “Haven't you tried to go upwards yourselves to find out what is going on above?”

  “This was a long time ago, and it ended with a lot of blood,” Arcadius replied. “The jungle was smaller back then and it was possible to pass through safely. No one has gone there since then. We have all we need to live. And we are satisfied with this.”

  He sounded completely sure of his last words.

  The corridor led them to the edge of a huge shaft filled with a blue glow. The source of the glow was at the bottom of the shaft—a huge sphere, which shimmered with a million points of reflected light.

  “The Reactor,” Arcadius explained.

  The stood still on the promontory that went over the shaft and spent a while observing the sphere. A powerful hum came from the below, so strong that it even blocked their ears. Rick felt a dry heat emanating from the sphere. It had been a long time since he felt this warm.

  Arcadius led them along a walkway around the wall, towards a semicircular rule with panoramic windows.

  “The Chief Operator's Post.”

  A significant proportion of the room was taken up by tables with machines that flashed with multicolored lights. The black squares of monitors were positioned equidistantly from each other. One of the large monitors on the opposite wall displayed a strange diagram, which Rick perceived as a drawing of an urn with a ball at the bottom. The shape of the urn was highlighted with a silvery light. Messages and signs flashed. Arcadius pointed at a large armchair, located by the tables.

  “From now on, this is your place. Take it, as is your right.”

  “Thank you. What must I do?”

  Arcadius intoned with great import, “The Chief Operator observes the Reactor.”

  Rick waited for him to continue, but it was in vain.

  “And is that all? I must sit here and watch this thing down below?”

  Arcadius looked reticent.

  “The position of Chief Operator was hereditary. Cornelius took it after his father Angus, who replaced his father, and so it went. No one had ever challenged the Chief Operator and won a dispute about life. I believe that Cornelius must give his position to you. Yes. I will take care of it. To be honest, I thought that the people from above were intelligent enough to use amulets.”

  He looked at Rick questioningly as he said it.

  “We know how to operate machines,” Rick said confidently, “but there are so many of them in the world, that each one requires skill and knowledge.”

  “Of course.”

  “And what is your position, Arcadius?”

  “I am the Brotherhood Mentor. The First Brother. Please excuse me, I must go. Stay here and look around. We will talk more later.”

  Arcadius respectfully nodded and left before Rick had the time to ask a new question.

  Tommo continued to stand in the middle of the room, doing absolutely nothing. Maya fidgeted as she stood, and touched the chair of the Operator.

  “Rick...”

  “Maya, I am incredibly happy to see you.”

  They looked at each other for a second and then locked each other in a tight embrace. Rick was uncomfortable with Tommo's presence, so he ordered him to leave. The prole obeyed and quietly stepped out of the room to the walkway

  “They kept me in a cage like an animal...” Rick began.

  “And I was put on a chain. Then they took me into a hall, a different one to the one where the Red King stands, a smaller one with a well in the middle. They forced me to choose whether to fight, or to jump into the well.”

  “You won.”

  “You did too.”

  “And Ahmed is alive.”

  “I was so worried about him!”

  They went quiet, looking at each other in confusion. Suddenly, there was no need for words and they just held hands, taking pleasure in each others presence and the feeling of being alive.

  “So what do you think of all this?” Rick asked, indicating the machines.

  “This looks like a generator, but Reiner described it as a cylinder, not a sphere.”

  “This Arcadius said that it's a Reactor. Is there a difference?”

  “Yes.” Maya furrowed her brow, carefully picking her words. “A reactor produces something, while a generator turns this something into energy.”

  “I don't understand anything.”

  “Reiner could explain everything in a simple and understandable way, but I don't know how to do that. Basically, this is not a generator.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Maya walked over to the observation window and looked down for a minute, pressing close to the glass.

  “No,” she replied. “They have light and heat, but it is not produced here.”

  “Then what is happening here?”

  “We need to take a closer look.” Maya approached the control panel and consulted some sort of data on the screen. “The radiation is at a normal level. This means that we can come closer to the sphere.”

  They came out onto the walkway and stumbled into Tommo.

  “Who are you?” Rick demanded. “Tell us about yourself.”

  Tommo stayed silent, standing there and looking at them.

  “Maybe he is deaf? Or he can't speak?”

  “Or maybe he is not human. I saw the way he crawled on walls like a spider. So, who are you?”

  But Tommo continued to stare wordlessly at them with his round lenses.

  “Our scientist say that in ancient times they were able to make machines that were similar to people. Maybe this is one of them...”

  “He is very strange. I would like to know what is hidden under his mask.”

  “And I don't want to see that at all!”

  “I would bet that if he has even a grain of intelligence, he could tell us many things about the people here. What are you looking at? It seems that there is no point to you. Get out of the way, we want to go down below.”

  Tommo inclined his head to the side, and motioned for them to follow him. Rick and Maya glanced at each other in confusion, but they complied. They whispered to each other behind Tommo's back as they walked.

  “We mus be careful...”

  “He might have been attached to us to spy on us...”

  Meanwhile, Tommo entered the elevator cabin at the other end of the walkway, waited for his companions and pressed a button, sending the cabin downwards. The cabin crawled slowly, so they could examine the shaft in detail. Weak lights shone around the edges, there were walkways circling the shaft at even intervals and platforms with elevator entrances could be seen here and there. It was becoming not just warm, but hot. The air here was very unlike the moist heat of the jungle—it was more akin to the dry breath of a red-hot oven. The cabin reached the bottom. The sphere looked much bigger from here than it had seemed from above. They followed a stairway into the hall, covering their eyes from the bright shine of the sphere, which was quietly rotating around its axis.

  Tommo pointed at a control center identical to the one installed in the room above. Rick and Maya approached a table. The screens shone with pale diagrams and columns of data. A green notice was flickering on the main screen. Maya read it out loud.

  “Sleep mode. Awaiting activation using the Omega protocol.”

  “What
does that mean?”

  Rick tried to press a button but nothing happened, just a sentence that appeared on the screen.

  “Enter access code,” Maya read out loud.

  “What?”

  “Something like a spell, if I speak using terms you would understand. In reality, these are just security passwords. The ancients had them. There was also a book of passwords in our sector, but it burned in the great fire. The scientists remember no more than a dozen.”

  Maya tried to enter something on the keyboard, but the machine refused.

  “It doesn't work.”

  They started to examine the screens, control panels and the readings on dozens of devices, going from one table to another. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. Maya suddenly yelled, knocking over a chair and a large and dusty mass that was in it. There was a crunching sound. Rick rushed over to her side and understood the reason for her alarm—a desiccated mummy lay on the floor. Its clothing had turned to rags through which bones could be seen.

  Rick and Maya looked around more carefully—several other mummies could be seen in the chairs and on the floor nearby. An oblong object with a lever and handle at one end and an opening on the other lay by the side of one of them. Rick picked up the object and turned it around in his hands.

  “I wonder, what is this?”

  “Please be careful!”

  “What's the matter?”

  “This is a weapon. It could be loaded.”

  “I saw our Committee members with something similar.”

  “The ancients used to use these.” Maya took the object away from him, looked at the mummies and grimly added, “Rather successfully, so it seems.”

  Rick was consumed by curiosity. He examined the remains one by one, while Maya was busy at the far end of the hall.

  “Look at that. I found it around one of their necks. It's just like my talisman!”

  However, Maya was not listening to him, she was entirely engulfed in studying the ancient papers strewn around the table. Rick could not help but think that it was time he learned to read.

  “Come over here, quick!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “I think I found it!”

  He came closer. Maya unfurled a sizable sheet with a large and incomprehensible diagram. The diagram was divided into five parts, and each part was split into another five. Rick immediately noticed some familiar sigils. He took out his own piece of diagram that he got from Kyoto and put it by the side of the canvas.

  “Here!” Maya combined the two diagrams, and it turned out that Rick's drawing was almost identical to part of the large diagram. They bent over the papers, trying to make out the details and understand their purpose.

  “They spoke of the people of Sigma and Tau. And these sectors,” Maya tapped her finger on the diagram, “are exactly above Rho sector. There's a label here—“Hydroponic plantations and farms”. And opposite Sigma and Tau there are the “Machine production plants. Biotechnology plants”. Everything matches. It's so great that I know how to read!”

  “So we are moving in the right direction?”

  “Yes. And this drawing supports what I guessed—the generator is still a long way away. Here, look, Epsilon sector follows Tau sector, and they have written that it is the “Material synthesizer. Particle accelerator.”.”

  “What is that?”

  “I don't know,” Maya shrugged.

  Without conspiring, they looked over at the sphere rotating behind the window.

  “That is either a synthesizer or an accelerator,” Rick said. “There is no third option.”

  “Brilliant! You're such a genius. But that's not enough. We must find out the details. All of this is in the fourth aeon. The Generator is located in the fifth.” She drew her finger to the segment at the edge of the diagram and silently mouthed some words. Then she compared it to Rick's drawing. “Well, that's right. The same symbols. We will need to descend another one hundred and fifty floors.”

  They had a quiet moment, getting their heads around this fact.

  “You know, the more I look at this drawing, the clearer the difference between the aeons is to me,” Maya noted. “The lower aeon has a different energy supply system. It is more powerful and advanced.”

  “The light is brighter,” Rick nodded, “and there are more machines.”

  “It looks like the core of this world.”

  “The Expanse is full of mysteries...”

  “And we stumble into them like blind men, unable to solve them.”

  “But we will definitely find it all out,” Rick said with assurance.

  “Are you serious?” Maya seemed to lose all her will and determination.

  “Of course! Look at the number of levels we passed already. It sounds strange, but over the last few days I felt... How can I say this? That we can do it. We've got the strength, you understand? We overcame our fear and gone too far to turn back.”

  “You have changed, Rick from Omicron,” Maya looked at him with a new expression. “I must admit I was wrong about you. You could have abandoned us many times, but you didn't do that. I am starting to...”

  “No. It is too early to talk about that.”

  Rick noticed that Tommo came to life and started making signs at them.

  “What do you want?” Rick called out in irritation.

  Tommo stayed silent and kept making the gestures, first pointing somewhere upwards and then to the side. Rick did not understand what he wanted to say. Meanwhile, Maya started to collect all of the papers she could find on the table, excitedly muttering to herself under her breath.

  “These are priceless treasures. Many would give their lives just to read these manuscripts. We must take them with us!”

  “You won't be able to take all of it.”

  “I will take what I can. It seems I can't rely on the help of a certain someone.”

  Rick breathed heavily, but started to help her with the papers. They raised a whole cloud of dust and started coughing. Rick was rolling the papers into tubes and grumbling.

  “Don't forget that we are now members of the Brotherhood and we need to think what to do about that. We can't just get up and leave. I suspect that the traditions are a little strict here. Come on, what do you actually want?” he got distracted by Tommo again.

  The prole was jumping in front of them, getting in their way. Something had alarmed him. Only now did Maya and Rick hear the noise coming from above. It sounded like rats scurrying through the ventilation shafts—still far away, but the sounds were getting louder and louder.

  “Damn!” Rick slapped himself on the forehead. “I think I understand. We have left the post.”

  “Time to return.”

  They wanted to return to the walkway by the sphere, but Tommo kept stubbornly pointing in the opposite direction to the door which led out of the room on the other side. The noise became louder. Maya jumped out onto the walkway anyhow, and looked up.

  “Someone has come to the post. They are busily running around. They are coming down here.”

  Logic dictated a simple solution—to walk up to meet Arcadius and his men. But something in Tommo's gestures said the opposite. Rick's inner sense suggested that the prole was worried for a reason and that he was trying to warn them.

  “Rick, we must go back.”

  “Yes, but first, we must find out what's over there.”

  “Where are you going?” She looked at him in astonishment.

  Rick did not waste time on explaining. He followed Tommo into a narrow rectangular room, which mostly looked like a storeroom. The room was filled with identical gray cabinets with a sign and number on each. Tommo slid along them so quickly, that Rick almost lost sight of him. He ran after the prole and found himself on a small platform with a chair in the middle. It was an unusual chair—it was large, massive, and fixed on a rounded raised area, with a powerful back and armrests, full of complex devices. But the most amazing was the helmet, which hung down from the ceiling right above where the
head would be.

  Tommo indicated the chair.

  “What is this?”

  Tommo stayed silent. Rick sighed. It was pointless to ask. He approached the chair, touched the cold plastic, the metallic joints and the coils of wire. The device did not look broken. It was only that it was covered with a thick layer of dust, like all the other surfaces. Rick stroked the shaped plating with his fingers and he was overcome with the feeling of something familiar, as if his hands had muscle memory and had already once interacted with a complex device of this kind. But in which way? Rick looked at his hands, and did not understand. Shouts could be heard from the large hall. Maya ran into the room.

  “They're already here!” Then she stood still. “What is this?”

  They had no more than a minute. Rick jumped into the chair. He did not know what he was expecting. He just felt that he was doing the right thing, imagining himself in the place of the unknown ancient operator that said his technical spells here and entered mysterious passwords to command the machines. His hands found the niches by themselves and the back softly adjusted itself to the form of his body. Rick brushed the remains of the dust away with his elbows and stared at the small screen in front of him. A dot appeared, which quickly grew into a red semicircle and then closed into a full circle which turned green just as fast. Then, the circle disappeared and the outline of a human palm appeared.

  They heard approaching shouts: “Where are they?”, “They're here!”, “Look for them!”, “I warned you!”. Rick placed his palm inside the shape on the monitor. A blue line ran upwards across the screen, the screen blinked green and a notification appeared.

  “Maya! Hurry and write what's written here!”

  “”Genetic code confirmed”. How did you do this?”

  “No idea. Here's another sentence. Hurry and read!”

  Their pursuers had already burst into the storehouse and ran past the cabinets, shouting, “This place is forbidden!” “You mustn't!”

  “Chronos program in operation. Select or modify program: Gaia, Chronos, Uranus.”

  Rick thought for a moment and then tapped on “Uranus”.

  “Uranus program selected,” Maya read out hurriedly. “Recharge of batteries, generators, air supply stores and water completed. Activate external shell? Yes—No.”