Heart Of The Machine (Soulmates Book 2)

by Don DeBon

  Minerva bought up an image on several screens. "We are over the mountain that contains my bunker. Impressive flying Galina."

  Galina looked over for a second then back to her screen. "Thanks," she muttered.

  Deven got up, and leaned over Leon's console. "Is there any security we need to worry about?"

  Minerva shook her screen. "Negative. At least I didn't set any. Most of the bunker's systems were offline when I awoke. I only activated a few that I needed to rebuild myself and leave. Also, I do not believe the founders would put in a security system, its hidden nature and secrecy would have been the security."

  Deven straightened considering his options. "Okay, Otis we will take your truck."

  Aleshia stood up. "And I am coming too."

  "I really think you should stay here."

  "Fat chance. You might need me down there, and you know it."

  Deven sighed. "Yes. Besides, I know that look."

  Aleshia smiled. "You're learning."

  Deven turned. "Minerva, can you fly down there?"

  She nodded. "While I still cannot walk, my hover systems are fully operational thanks to Mr. Leon."

  Otis laughed. "Good thing too. You would have to ride in the back of my truck which might get a little rough." He winked.

  Minerva smiled. "You don't know, I might like it."

  Otis choked as Deven smiled. "You have to admit, you did leave yourself open to that one."

  "Yeah I did, but I didn't expect a tin can to do the come back."

  Minerva hovered over as her smiled deepened. "I will take that as a compliment."

  "Galina, Leon, keep an eye on us. Anything funny and I want to know about it yesterday."

  Leon nodded. "Always."

  Deven pointed to the hatch. "Let's go."

  Five minutes later Otis' truck left the Defiant's landing bay with Minerva right behind. She took the lead and pointed to the base of the mountain opposite them. They landed some distance from the entrance and made their way through the forest. After a few minutes they stood in front of the large outer doors that hid the tunnel entrance.

  Otis tapped several keys on the keyboard strapped to his arm. "You know, even standing in front of them like this, I can't get a reading. The founders really knew how to hide things."

  Minerva gestured to the small opening on the right. "This way." They followed her in, with her screen lighting the way. Deven, Otis, and Aleshia pulled out flashlights as they went deeper into the tunnel.

  They stopped at one of the large tunnel boring machines that lay parked in its own side tunnel. Deven stepped closer and examined giant machine. There was a little rust, but otherwise it looked as if it was left yesterday. "This is impressive. With this machine and the laser cutters built into the nose section, I doubt it took long to build the bunker."

  Walking along the ancient tread marks in the dirt, they approached the large inner doors, which were camouflaged to blend in to the walls of the tunnel. A few meters past those revealed the last door. A giant emergency hatch left open by the founders and large enough to fly a carrier through, just like the others. It stood silent as they walked past.

  Minerva guided them down the massive hallways to the central area revealing the carrier and racks of Mechands along the one wall.

  Deven cocked an eyebrow. "You have a lot of Mechands. I don't understand why you didn't use them instead of leaving the bunker and approaching us directly. Why not take the safest course of action?"

  Minerva turned around. "The problem is, if I initialized the command channel to activate these units, all units around the world currently offline would also awaken."

  Otis smiled. "And freak out the whole world's population."

  Minerva nodded. "Correct. Once I had determined it was over a month of me being absent, I calculated to do so would cause mass panic and more of my units would be destroyed. And I needed as many as possible."

  Aleshia reached forward and touched a Mechand standing in the rack. It was cold and unmoving as was everything else in the bunker. "To fight the Lytherians?"

  "Yes. I felt the risk was greater to activate them than not." She pointed to a small room off to the side. "This way." Minerva led them through the open door and pointed to the large box structure in the corner of the room that took up most of the space. "That is my core. Once I am reunited with it, I will have all the information we seek."

  Otis studied the mobile robot arm, and several of the work tables with various components strewn across them. "Impressive you were able to cobble something together to leave. I assume the founders never planned for this?"

  Minerva shook her screen back and forth. "No, they did not consider it. The original plan was to have me activate the units out there and move my core into the carrier when I wanted to leave the bunker. They also assumed I would have access to the resources I had been building."

  Deven sighed. "Nothing ever goes according to plan."

  Otis shook his head. "Nope, but it is amazing they thought this far ahead. I sure wouldn't have bothered."

  Deven looked at the large core then at Minerva. "What's our next step?"

  Minerva removed her chest plate revealing the connection point and hovered into the Mechand rack. "Stand back, I can take it from here." The mobile arm in the corner moved a few feet and stopped. "Although it might take a while. The arm uses a very old command set and frequency."

  Otis stepped forward and pointed to the cable laying at her feet. "I'm guessing this has to be plugged into your chest?"

  Minerva nodded. "Yes, but it must be done with a tender touch or there might be damage to me or the core."

  Otis smiled. "I have hands of a surgeon. Don't worry about a thing." He grabbed the cable and slowly, carefully plugged into Minerva's chest.

  "Connection established. I am recombining. I will see you in a few minutes." Her screen went black as her body grew limp. The cable at her feet began to glow bright blue.

  Deven looked around the room again. "How long do you think this will take?"

  "Well based on the amount of data she is transferring. Maybe an hour. But that connection is larger than I have ever used, so it could be a bit faster."

  Deven whipped out his data tab and powered it on. "Good time to contact Leon."

  "I don't think you will get a signal out from down here. I couldn't detect this place due to the shielding the founders put in place, I would assume it would block outgoing signals as well."

  Deven tapped several controls on his data tab but all he could get was static. "It appears you are right. I will go outside and let Leon know what we found. You two keep an eye on," he paused to jerk a thumb at Minerva, "her."

  Otis nodded. "You got it Boss."

  Deven climbed the sloping tunnel and after fifteen minutes blinked in the bright sunlight. He pulled out his data tab and hit the encrypted link. "Leon? You there?"

  Leon's face appeared on his screen. "Deven! Where have you been? I have been trying to get a hold of you for the past thirty minutes."

  "The bunker is shielded to prevent detection, it also appears to block my signal to you. What's the problem?"

  Miles' voice came through the data tab. "The Lytherian armada has been joined by several larger ships. I assume these are makers by Minerva's description. There is a large area in the front resembling a mouth on a human, and several large oblong protrusions on either side which I assume have mining functions."

  Deven nodded. "Yes that sounds like one all right."

  Leon's jaw clenched. "Miles, he was asking me."

  "My apologies."

  Deven rolled his eyes. "Has there been any other changes?"

  Leon shook his head. "Nope, their formation is the same. But several of these makers arrived about twenty minutes ago. Their power curve is enormous, what I would give to peek inside."

  Deven smiled. "If we find a way to beat them, I will save you a piece."

  Leon chuckled. "Thanks. Do you need any help down there?"

 
; "I don't think so at the moment. But if you don't hear from me again in an hour, send Gregory down and make sure his team is loaded for bear. I doubt it will be necessary, but I'm not taking any chances."

  "You got it." Leon's face winked out, Deven put the data tab back into its pouch, and started the long walk back to the bunker.

  Deep inside the mountain, Aleshia leaned against the wall of the small room. "How much longer?"

  Otis checked his watch. "About ten minutes or so. Could be longer. I'm sure it is a tricky thing, merging a mind like this."

  She pushed herself off of the wall. "I'm going to check out that carrier."

  Otis blinked. "Why?"

  "I don't know. But my curiosity is up. Why would the founders leave her only one carrier if this is some kind of fail-safe bunker?"

  Otis looked at the ceiling, the racks of Mechands, the power core in the corner of the smaller room, and shrugged. "Minerva said they thought she would still have access to the world-wide Mechand infrastructure."

  "Perhaps, perhaps not. I am not going to take the chance though." Aleshia started walking towards the carrier on the other side of the large room.

  "Okay, let me know if you find anything."

  She waved and continued on approaching the large capital ship. Minerva said it was an older model, but it looked the same as the ones they had come across. She wondered how to get inside. Walking along the hull, she found a ramp extended on the far side in the back, which was hard to see from the front. Walking up the ramp, she stopped at a large internal bay door. A keypad to the left held one single green light. She tried several code combinations but the door refused to raise. After the tenth failure, she tapped enter without a code. The door ground up and she gasped.

  Inside, the carrier was full of Mechands. Racks and racks of them. All dormant but she was certain they could be activated at a moments notice. She walked down the center isle and found several fighters on the other side of the bay. These were a different design than what they had seen before. She opened the hatch on one and all the cockpit lights turned on. Its power cells were still functional, as no doubt was the rest of the ship.

  Aleshia wandered around, instinctively heading upward. After a while she reached the bridge. Several Mechands sat in the command chairs and were dormant as the rest. For a moment she wondered why they would bother to have chairs, then she remembered how the Mechands copied humanity, designing everything around the human frame.

  She felt like she was in a grave yard, except these corpses could come to life in an eye blink.

  Otis checked his watch and turned his focus back to Minerva. The data cable glowed bright blue indicating the data transfer still in progress. He toyed with the idea of pulling the cover off of the core and looking inside. But decided against it. If he did something to jeopardize this transfer, it might harm the AI personality in ways he couldn't imagine. Lost in his thoughts he jumped and spun around when Deven put his hand on his shoulder.

  "Whhoa, don't do that!"

  Deven shrugged. "Hey it is not my fault you were staring off into space and didn't hear me." His head turned back and forth as his eyes darted around the bunker. "Where is Aleshia?"

  Otis raised his arm in slow motion pointing to the carrier. "In there."

  "What is she doing in there?"

  Otis shrugged one shoulder "She was talking about how this whole thing seemed fishy and she wanted to check it out."

  "And you let her go alone?"

  "Why not? It is not like anything is alive in here except us."

  "That we know of."

  "Nah, Minerva would have told us otherwise."

  "Unless she forgot."

  Inside the carrier Aleshia continued looking around the bridge for clues to the bunker's construction but not finding anything she decided to leave. She walked back towards the exit hatch when she bumped into a console. It lit up and asked for identification. She continued on thinking it would shut off like the other one she had touched. But it didn't. It began to flash faster and faster. A second later the bridge door sealed in front of her face. "Unauthorized access on the bridge detected." A voice boomed.

  "Great," she muttered. She checked the console for a way to turn off the alarm and open the hatch when two Mechands stood up from their seats and turned around. "Uh-oh."

  "You have entered a restricted area. If you do not submit you will be terminated," they said taking a step towards her.

  Aleshia thought about crushing them like the tin cans they were, but decided against it. If Minerva was right, they needed every one. These Mechands weren't using their actual brains, but rather an emergency response system of very limited intelligence the ship had activated.

  She scooched down behind one of the consoles and the two Mechands stopped their approach. Their heads spun around again and again in a 360 motion but didn't move from their position. Proving her right, they were running on the limited emergency response system. Which gave her an idea.

  She popped up and smiled. "Right here boys."

  Their heads turned and focused on her. "You have entered a restricted area without authorization. You will submit or be destroyed."

  She laughed. "That will be the day." She raised up her arms and both Mechands floated up off of the deck plate. Their tiny emergency systems could not comprehend the situation and both shut down. Aleshia lowered them back down to the floor and placed them on their backs. If they did wake up again, it would take them a while to get vertical again.

  She turned around and faced the hatch. Her eyes narrowed and the door began to raise. When it was high enough she stepped through and let it slam back down behind her. Aleshia peeked through the door's window and as she hoped, the console shut down after failing to detect anyone on the bridge. She smiled and muttered, "Sweet dreams." before heading back down to the launching bay and the bunker.

  She found Otis and Deven talking, but they stopped when she approached. "Find anything?" Deven asked.

  "That ship is full of Mechands and fighters. Odd considering there are racks of them here as well. Why have both?"

  Otis shrugged. "First wave is inside the carrier I am guessing. Second wave is here if needed."

  "Possible, but there are a lot more in the carrier than here. Wouldn't you think a second wave would be the same size?"

  "Maybe, maybe not. It could be this place was built in a rush and they didn't have time."

  Aleshia regarded the carefully carved ceiling with several support braces arching along to connect with large vertical beams mounted to the rock floor with rods larger than her car. "It looks too well done in here for a rush job."

  Deven smiled. "Could be this bunker was built for something else and repurposed."

  Aleshia sighed. "I suppose. It still feels like something don't add up."

  The cable at their feet with its blue light faded, then went out. "Looks like the transfer is done. You can ask Minerva in a minute," Otis said.

  "I'm not sure I want to."

  The large screen next to the core flashed and Minerva's face smiled at them. "What did you want to ask me?"

  Aleshia smiled. "Nothing."

  "She was wondering why the carrier was filled with more Mechands than the racks here," Otis said jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

  "I don't know. It is what I was given. I assume they are backups in case some of the original developed failures."

  Aleshia's eyes narrowed but she remained silent.

  "Okay now for the answers you were brought here for. What can you tell us about the Lytherians? And how do you know so much about them?" Deven asked.

  "Centuries ago a small Lytherian scout ship arrived. As I told you, they go from system to system plundering resources to fuel their ever expanding population."

  Deven nodded. "Yes so you said. But how did you stop that ship?"

  "I didn't personally. A strange energy pulse was seen by a satellite searching for abandoned ordnance from the previous world war. When investigated further the
y found a small ship with a reptilian alien inside."

  Otis folded his arms. "I am guessing he didn't like the 'Hello welcome to Earth.' speech?"

  "Correct. He opened fire on those approaching the ship. The Lytherian was an exceptional military mind. He deployed tactics that thwarted several attempts to capture him."

  "Why didn't they simply destroy him? Or couldn't they?" Aleshia asked.

  "They could, but they wanted to find out about this alien. Time and time again they tried to capture him, only to have him slip through at the last second. Finally, they were able to disable his ship. The attack destroyed most of the data inside, including the pilot, but they did learn about the Lytherians, why they were coming, and he did manage to send a brief message to the Lytherian home world. It wasn't very detailed, only that this world was a possibility."