Forbidden System: A Benevolency Universe Novel (Fall of the Benevolence Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  “Not doing that again.” She activated her helmet and walked around, shaking her limbs to life. “Is the hull going to hold up during entry?”

  “They have managed to patch about twenty-five percent of the breach using auto repair systems and manual efforts from one crew member. They also diverted power from a number of systems to reinforce the plasma containment.”

  Eyana crossed her fingers and kissed them.

  The ship shivered then rumbled as it plunged into the atmosphere. Entry should have been a lot smoother, and with each passing moment she felt more certain the ship would break apart. The room warmed to uncomfortable levels, and sweat dripped down her brow. The hull must have endured significant scarring, reducing its ability to reflect heat, and clearly the energy shields were still knocked out and incapable of helping.

  Just as the room reached a temperature that would’ve rendered her unconscious, or worse, without her battlesuit, the ship slowed.

  “They have begun their landing approach, Ana. The temperature will begin to cool off.”

  “We survived?”

  “We could still break apart upon landing.”

  “You’re a bundle of quantum computing joy, you old buzzkill.”

  “Sorry, Ana.”

  The ship swayed creakingly as it went into hover mode and drifted down toward their landing target.

  “What are we looking at below?”

  “There is nothing to see from up here, Ana. However, there is a network of tunnels and a structure underground.”

  “A building?”

  “Based on what I can tell, Ana, it would once have been on the surface, so yes, a building.”

  “Covered by the rot and waste of their civilization?”

  “Mostly, Ana, based on my preliminary soil readings. However, I think it might have been partially buried before the Krixis even settled this world.”

  “So Ancient ruins?”

  “The temple structure appears to be Ancient in design, but I never bothered to decompress and review any archaeological studies.”

  “Do so.”

  “Processing, Ana.”

  She groaned with irritation.

  “Done. And yes, Ana, the structure is generally in keeping with Ancient design. However, no other structure like it has ever been catalogued before. It is unique…to us.”

  “This weapon the insurgents are after…are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That the Krixis didn’t design it? That it’s entirely of Ancient origin?”

  “Yep.”

  “It is possible, Ana. I would think that if the Krixis themselves had designed and possessed a super weapon then—”

  “Our spies would have learned about it long ago.”

  “Ana, I’m picking up some odd readings from the temple structure. An energy signature…hyperphasic in nature…an active force field…walls of stone, graphene, and diamondine…”

  “That’s sounds a little more than odd to me.”

  The ship clumsily thudded onto the earth, as if the pilot had never landed a ship before and the automated systems were broken. Of course, both of those things might be true.

  The red dots in her locator sprang into motion immediately. The ones in Engineering charged out and headed directly toward the exit at the back of the ship, the boarding ramp deploying ahead of them. Three insurgents left the Bridge and sprinted down the ramp and into the corridor.

  She ran to the door. “They’re in a damn big hurry.”

  “And they aren’t concerned about you in the least, Ana.”

  “And that has me hella concerned.”

  “I guess they do think you are dead.”

  She deactivated the blast door. It retreated up into the ceiling. Then she hit the control panel for the regular door.

  “Or they know something I don’t.”

  As the door whooshed open, she deployed her force shield then took her carbine in both hands, placed it in autofire mode, and unleashed a hail of plasma bolts as she stormed out into the corridor.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eyana Ora

  With her refraction field turned on, Eyana immediately gunned down one insurgent, then wounded another in the leg. The rest ducked and weaved as they exited the ship and dropped out of her line of sight. The one with the wounded leg dived to the side in the back section, hiding behind the left half of the door which was unable to retract, almost certainly because she had blown a hole in it.

  Eyana stopped firing but kept sprinting forward.

  When she was past halfway down the length of the ship, the wounded Krixis popped up into the jagged hole in the door and fired wildly into the corridor with his needle rifle. Eyana darted to the side, placing her force shield in front of her to block the incoming shots. Most of the needles went down the center of the corridor, but her force shield flickered as stray needles pinged off of it, allowing him to pinpoint her position.

  As he trained his gun on her, she returned fire. One of her plasma bolts splatted into his face. He fell, and the red dot representing him disappeared from her locator.

  “Just four of the bastards left. Prep a flashbang.”

  “You got it, Ana.”

  The four remaining dots paused and formed a semicircle outside the ship. Eyana leapt in behind the broken half of the door, placing her force shield in front of the hole. They had to know she had a locator, so they knew they weren’t going to catch her by surprise. But then they also knew that if she wanted to kill them, she was going to have to come out to play.

  “Armaments?”

  “Ana, you are facing two needle rifles, a needle pistol paired with a shock flail, and an electro-blast cannon, along with acid-pulse sidearms.”

  “Damn.”

  One red dot broke off from the others, heading away from the ship.

  “Any chance that’s the one with the cannon?”

  “Pistol and flail, Ana.”

  “Naturally. Where’s he going?”

  “There is an entrance to the tunnels nearby, Ana.”

  “You know, they must have thought I was dead after all. Otherwise, they would’ve set a more clever trap for me.”

  “I would say this one is quite effective, Ana.”

  “I could launch a flashbang and storm them…” She sighed and shook her head. “But they’ve seen me do that once already, and besides, the one with the cannon is just going to spray the back of the ship. He won’t care if he can’t see me.”

  “So what are you going to do, Ana?”

  Smiling, she spun around and raced back toward the front of the ship. She headed up the ramp toward the Bridge, which was no longer sealed away. “They forgot something important. I scanned their minds very deeply.”

  “Tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re about to do, Ana.”

  “I’m not about to do what you think I’m about to do, Silky. Also, I’m lying.”

  “I know you are, Ana. I always know. Your blood pressure changes.”

  The bridge of the Krixis research vessel shared the same creepily organic design aesthetic that infused the rest of the ship, as if it had been constructed from materials gathered only from within a noxious swamp, except here it was even worse.

  She had seen Krixis ships from afar during numerous combat and infiltration missions, and she had seen videos of their interiors. So nothing she saw surprised her, and yet in person, it was all so much more disturbing, like walking around the inside of a brain instead of merely studying one.

  A number of hexagonal windows looked out onto the world.

  “Seriously, what the hell’s the point of breaking up the windows like that?”

  “They display information for various crew members and situations, Ana. Remember they do not have HUDs like we do.”

  “But why not have one big screen or window with all the displays projected onto it?”

  “No idea, Ana. We have quite a few knowledge gaps when it comes to how they actually work their ships. T
hat’s where you come in. This is just one of the many mysteries you could potentially learn using your emppy. Well, maybe not the one you broke.”

  “Changed you mind about the emppy?”

  “I would most certainly approve of a new, updated, more reliable model, perhaps with safety protocols I am unable to override.”

  Eyana dived into the ship’s command chair. “Smart ass.”

  “You know, Ana, what you are trying to do is entirely dependent on you still having trace Krixis memories echoing in your brain. And not just emotions. Those will not be enough.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “You know, Ana, that dredging up those memories, if they are still present, might have repercussions.”

  “Stop worrying and help me save the day.”

  “Just remember that you are very poor at projecting emotions, Ana, much less thoughts. And projection is likely the only way this will work.”

  “Hey! I’m one of the top-rated agents in all of Empathic Services.”

  Silky wasn't wrong though. Even as a third-generation empath, she sucked at projecting emotions onto others. It was nearly impossible to sway someone to a new emotion, unless they were in a rested state where they were essentially stuck in neutral, and even then the effect was minimal. Mostly, she could dampen or enhance existing emotions, making an angry person fly into a rage or dragging a happy person down to a state of contentment.

  “You are that, Ana. Yet my assessment still stands.”

  “You have absolutely no faith that this will work.”

  “Of course I don’t, Ana. The plan is ridiculous. I would, however, have a little more faith if the emppy still functioned and if you again made me make it do things it was not designed to do.”

  “If I’m lucky, I will find a way to work the ship without needing to use empathic projections.”

  “Unlikely, Ana. Besides, I don’t think luck has been with us today.”

  “I’m still alive.”

  Eyana gripped the arms of the command chair and, chewing at her lip, glanced around. The chair didn’t have a command interface circlet like a Benevolency ship would, or any control panels either. Even though they lacked the use of chippies and HUDs, nothing physically linked a Krixis commander or any other crewmen to the ship. And the crew stations provided basic readouts on a screen along with a minimal set of physical controls, nothing more.

  “So, you really don’t have any idea what I should do now?”

  “I thought you had a plan, Ana. What happened to dredging up Krixis memories, hoping for a miracle and then, if necessary, projecting some emotions at the ship?”

  “Your tone is way negative today, old friend. Look, I just want to be as prepared as possible before I make my attempt. I think it will be easier to trigger the memories if maybe I know where to start. Even a few tiny scraps of knowledge could make a difference.”

  “Well, Ana, we know the ship stations only provide secondary and backup controls. And we know the crewmen bond with their stations and the captain with the entire ship, only they use telepathic commands directed at crystal receivers instead of our system of chippy-to-ship interfacing. The crystals wired into the control panels and the command chair receive telepathic commands—somehow—and those are directed throughout the ship along bioelectric conduits, essentially neurological pathways, if you think of the ship as a living organism.”

  “Do you think it is?”

  “Not in the traditional sense, Ana. But some scholars would disagree, and it is certainly more alive than I am…by standard definitions.”

  “Hopefully the crystals will respond to empathic signals as well.” She sighed. “Where is the crystal in the command chair?”

  “Embedded into the headrest, Ana.”

  She brought her feet up into the chair so she could squat high enough to rest her head back against the top of the chair.

  “Going straight for empathy, after all, Ana?”

  “Stop pestering and let me focus.”

  Taking deep breaths and conjuring the memories of the experience in as much detail as possible, she tried to recreate the experience of being telepathically merged with the Krixis woman who had been on the Bridge before rushing out to face Eyana. Surely, that meant she’d had some special knowledge pertaining to higher ship operations.

  But nothing came to her. No memories. No sensations. No understanding of how to work any of the limited control panels on the Bridge or anywhere else. And the remnant emotions were hers alone, not those of the insurgent. Perhaps too much time had passed since the experience, or maybe it was the dampening effect from overloading the emppy. Regardless, she was no longer in touch with her Krixis side. Maybe if the emppy was still functional or the woman still alive…

  Eyana shivered, remembering the blast going up into the woman’s skull, as if it were her own.

  Okay then, there was no going back. On to Plan B, using empathy alone to make a connection requiring telepathic communication in an alien thought language.

  Simples.

  If this didn’t work, she was going to have to charge out, guns blazing, and hope for the best.

  “Silky, while I’m trying this, see if you can find another way off the ship. Maybe I can sneak around invisible and flank them.”

  “Will do, Ana. However, there is a reason I did not suggest that approach. They are now monitoring your location using a scanning device with which I am unfamiliar.”

  “Why didn’t they use it before?”

  “I am uncertain, Ana, but they didn’t turn it on until they were no longer onboard the ship.”

  “Well, see what you can come up with.”

  Eyana closed her eyes, her face scrunching up in concentration as she tried to focus her mind on the ship. It sounded impossible even to her. How did you connect with something that was, strictly speaking, neither sentient nor alive using only emotions?

  She cocked her head to the side. That really didn’t seem right. Clearly, the ship was biological…even to the extent that it made her uncomfortable, as if she were inside a tree uprooted from one of the murky swamps on her home world.

  Why shouldn’t it be truly alive? And if the Krixis could send telepathic signals to it using crystal receivers and get information back, then why shouldn’t it be somewhat sentient? Like a biological version of Silky or one of the top-line starships in the Benevolency. If it was biological and had as much sentience as even a mouse then it could experience basic emotions.

  She just needed to…to quit stalling. The truth was, she was afraid. The last time she had reached out to something Krixis, the experience had been overwhelming.

  “Conquer your fear, Eyana,” her trainer Oberra had told her repeatedly for what seemed years on end. “Fear more than any other emotion will squelch your empathic senses.”

  She reached out empathically, seeking the crystal in the chair behind her head…

  She found a pulse…a beat of emotion, a surprisingly strong one, as powerful as that of any human or Krixis. She had not sensed it before with the emppy, though she had not tried either. And it was…different, unlike the Krixis themselves. It seemed primal and even more alien.

  And based on her reading of it, the ship was agitated, worried, and yet not unreceptive.

  Perfect. Now she just needed to communicate with it. If she could convey her need then maybe it would open up secondary control functions.

  She quickly considered which emotion to try first. The ship was so alien though. Would it even recognize things like hope or loyalty? Attempts at projecting emotions toward Krixis in the past had proven the two species had tremendous differences in outlook.

  Aw hell, she should stop overthinking this and just unleash everything she was feeling onto the ship. If that didn’t get a response, then nothing would.

  Eyana let her guard down and mentally unburdened herself, projecting every emotion that roiled within her onto the crystal in the command chair, wave after wave: fear…desperati
on…puzzlement…determination…more fear…regret…and finally the ultimate reason she was here, the reason she served in the Empathic Services.

  It wasn’t loyalty to the Benevolency that made Eyana serve, though she did take pride in everything the Benevolence represented. Nor was it curiosity or a desire for adventure, though both of those were important as well. Love was why she served with such dedication, taking on a relentless number of field assignments.

  In fact, it was a single memory that had driven her over the last fifty years of service…

  Late one evening, while they were lying in bed staring up at the twin moons and vast array of stars projected onto the ceiling of the bedroom they shared, Illia had said to her:

  “Did you know they want us to become agents in Empathic Services?”

  “I overhead Oberra talking to you about it,” Eyana had replied.

  Illia leaned up on her elbow and looked across to Eyana. Illuminated by the wan light, Illia’s face spread into a broad smile, startling Eyana. Illia so rarely smiled.

  “You want to work as a spy?” Eyana asked, puzzled.

  “We are cursed with gifts, Ana. They should be of some use, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Think of the fun we’d have. You and I could adventure across the galaxy, battling Krixis warriors, brokering treaties between warring planets, making first contact with new alien species. We could escape our lives here and do some good in the universe.”

  Eyana moaned sadly. For that one night, Illia had beaten back her demons with joy. Three days later, she had disappeared into the wilderness, and Eyana had never seen her again.

  That memory had guided her into the stars, to live an exciting life for Illia as well as for herself. Illia had known her so well. Eyana loved the adventure Empathic Services provided. And sometimes she wondered if Illia had set her on this path, understanding Eyana’s heart, and knowing already that she wouldn’t be there beside her.

  Suddenly, Eyana was no longer on the Bridge of the Krixis research vessel. She was…somewhere else.