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

by David Alastair Hayden

  Three beeps sounded as the boot-up sequence began. A crude, barely three-dimensional HUD came into view. The 1G’s could speak to you, but their AI was primitive, limiting their conversation to basic, impersonal statements. It had no sensors for scanning his environment, and its communications array would probably lack the power needed to ping the Outworld Ranger when the time came.

  The 1G did fulfill a few critical functions he needed, however. It could record his experiences, access his files on the Ancients, analyze his health, and register the time.

  His eyes fell on the clock and his gut wrenched. He’d been unconscious for almost three hours. The Krixis warship wouldn’t be far away now, and he was nowhere close to the temple. He had to get moving.

  The chippy’s systems continued to come online. A flashing red box popped up in his HUD, warning that he was injured. With an eye flick, he acknowledged the alert and opened the health report. A window opened, and data scrolled through detailing his injuries.

  “Severe concussion. Scalp laceration. Cut on left temple. Broken left forearm. Deep contusion on left shoulder. Minor bruising across all limbs, torso, and head. Minimal blood loss. Heart rate elevated. Blood pressure high. Blood sugar low. Temperature above normal. Seek emergency medical help immediately. Do not wait!”

  The specific data for all his ailments then followed, but he didn’t care about the actual numbers. Just that he was alive. And he had no doubt now that without the enviro-suit, and its helmet in particular, he would be dead.

  Gav used the flashlight to survey his surroundings. He was, in fact, inside the wrecked ship. Though he had no idea what section this was, he guessed it was a cargo bay since it was a large, empty space. Cracks and dents scored the floor beneath him and the outer hull overhead. The ship still creaked from structural damage and the weight of earth on top of it. He doubted it would hold for long before collapsing in on itself.

  With the tiny flashlight clenched between his teeth, he pulled out his first-aid kit. He dosed himself with a medibot injection, then a pain reliever followed by a stimulant to counter its strong soporific effect.

  Gav scooted backward until he could rest against a wall. The aches throughout his body slowly eased, the stabbing pains in his forearm and head diminished, the throbbing in his shoulder faded.

  The 1G connected to his embedded medibot capsules and updated their status in his HUD: empty.

  Something shifted above, and dirt blocked the crease in the ceiling. Dust trickled steadily through the slender gap. A new wave of louder creaks and groans echoed through the decaying ship. He couldn’t stay here much longer. He had to move on…assuming there was somewhere to go.

  Gav swung the flashlight around. One exit led from this room, but he couldn’t tell any more from here.

  “Chippy, scan the ship’s structure.”

  “What ship would you like me to scan?”

  Gav closed his eyes and huffed. “The one I’m in.”

  “You are not in a ship.”

  “I am—” Gav took a deep breath. “I am inside a structure. Could you please scan it?”

  “I do not recognize the nature of this structure.”

  “It’s an alien starship.”

  “If you say so. I will attempt to scan this alien vessel now.”

  “Thank you…chippy.”

  “My designation is 37BU579522-H.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “And you do not need to thank me, Gav Gendin.”

  “Great.”

  “What is great?”

  “Just do what I asked.”

  “The scan is already in progress.”

  At the moment, the possibility of having a Krixis warrior torture him to death for information seemed no worse than having to deal with this infernal 1G chippy.

  His blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature had normalized. The pain continued to lessen. His head seemed clearer now.

  Gav stood, his knees shaking, threatening to buckle. His brain felt like it was wobbling around inside his skull. He took a step forward and nearly fell, but he carried on, managing three steps before returning and sitting back down. He looked at his vitals. Though worse than a few moments earlier, they were normal enough. He had tested himself, and unfortunately, he still had a ways to go.

  Gav sorted through his pack, checking his rations and tools. There was no way he’d be able to carry it all without using antigrav. He checked the status of the antigrav in the suit. According to the chippy, the suit’s antigrav had sustained light damage and was operating below normal capacity. It was at less than fifteen percent power. The backup belt he’d brought along had sixty-three percent. That would be more than enough to help him shoulder the burden of the pack.

  He pulled out a protein bar, talla-berry and coconut flavored, and ate slowly. He didn’t really want food, but he figured it was important to keep his energy up, especially with the drugs currently running through his system. He washed it down with an energy water—a mix of electrolytes, a mild stimulant, and an almost pleasing flavor.

  “Chippy, is it safe for me to take another medibot injection?”

  “Do you want me to stop analyzing the structure of the alien vessel?”

  “Why would I want you to do that?”

  “Analyzing your local environment is taxing my processing and sensory capabilities. I cannot—”

  “Never mind. Keep on doing what you’re doing. I’ll risk it.”

  “Risk what?”

  “Taking another injection!”

  “You do not have to shout your thoughts. I am always able to hear them at—”

  “Just do what I asked.”

  Gav pulled out the second of four medibot syringes in the first-aid kit. He placed the end onto his broken left arm and triggered the release. It didn’t matter where he injected them. The micro-biological machines went where most needed. But it made him feel better to target them.

  Maybe it would be best to take a nap. It wasn’t like he was able to move anywhere yet, and it was taking this chippy forever to scan the area. The medibots were active, so he could safely sleep now despite his concussion.

  “I’m going to take a nap. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.”

  Gav leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes…

  The timer went off.

  Groaning, he sat up. “That was fifteen minutes?”

  “Correct.”

  “Have you finished scanning?”

  “I am still in progress.”

  “Would it be possible to see what you’ve accomplished so far?”

  “I can show you, though it will reduce my processing by approximately two percent.”

  “Let’s risk it.”

  A map popped up in his HUD. It showed the room he was in, along with its measurements. The corridor outside this room stretched at least ten meters in either direction. He couldn’t tell how far exactly because the scan hadn’t picked up anything farther along yet. Another room the size of this one lay on the opposite side of the corridor. Half of it was caved in.

  The map also showed the earth packed in along the surrounding area. The wrecked ship had a covering of newly settled earth on top of it, ranging from less than one meter to over twenty in depth. It didn’t show anything more than a few meters of soft earth underneath this section. This part of the ship had not yet penetrated the tunnels.

  “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?”

  “This sort of operation takes a while given my sensor and processing capabilities. The vessel cannot be compared to anything in my data banks. Also, scanning the soil and rock and analyzing its composition and unusual properties is—”

  “You’ve been analyzing the soil?!”

  “Yes.”

  “Just…just stop scanning anything outside the vessel. Just scan the immediate area I’m in.”

  “As you wish.”

  “And tell me if you spot anything out of the ordinary.”

  “What would be ordinary on a ba
dly damaged alien vessel?”

  He had half a mind to rip the chippy out of his socket and throw it against the nearest wall.

  “I’m looking for a way to get into the tunnels that were under this vessel. If you spot a way in, I would like to know. Otherwise, tell me if you detect anything moving.”

  Gav would have asked Torus whether it would be better to use the antigrav belt on himself or to just apply it to his backpack. There was no point asking the 1G. It probably wouldn’t even understand the question.

  Perhaps he should use the belt on the pack and a fractional amount from what was left in the suit on himself. He considered it for a few minutes, then decided it probably didn’t make a difference. Besides, he didn’t really want to undo the belt.

  He finished sorting through his pack, tossing out the change of clothes that Octavian had packed for him, along with several analysis tools that he figured he could live without. That would save several kilograms.

  Lighting was going to be a problem. He could rotate his shoulder a little now, though he was trying not to, but he couldn’t grip anything with his left hand yet. He needed to keep his good hand free.

  He remembered he had some magnetic strips. He fished one out and stuck it onto his shoulder, just at the base of his neck. Then he fixed the flashlight, which had a metal casing, onto the mag-strip. He tapped it a few times to be certain it was secure. The solution was crude but effective enough.

  “How long will the battery on the light last?” he asked the chippy.

  “At least one hundred and forty-four hours.”

  Six days… He could survive and get out of here in that much time, surely. And if not…he didn’t have much more than ten days worth of water with him, so it didn’t really matter.

  He stood again, feeling a lot better now. Before, it had felt as if he’d narrowly survived a skimmer crash. Now it felt…now it felt like he’d narrowly survived a skimmer crash several hours earlier. The creaks and groans of the ship grew louder. He should get moving.

  He slung the backpack over his good shoulder and turned on the antigrav. He’d use up what was left in the enviro-suit first. He took a few steps toward the corridor, sagging with each one he took. Then he upped the antigrav boost more. Normally, it would’ve put a lot of bounce in his step at that level. Given the pack, his fatigue, and his injuries, it was just enough to keep him from dragging his feet along the floor.

  As he approached the door, he realized he didn’t have access to any of the scan data anymore. He’d have to remember what he’d seen of the tunnel layout. For the most part, it was straight forward, with only a few branches leading to what seemed like pointless dead ends. A feeling in his gut told him those weren’t pointless, but even if they were, he didn’t want to waste time traipsing down wrong corridors.

  He drew his neural disruptor and set it to kill before stepping out into the corridor. Glancing both ways, he checked the map in his HUD. He couldn’t see how it made any difference which way he went to…

  Gav smiled. When he’d fallen, he was at the aft of the ship, the part that had been sticking up out of the ground. The fore of the shift was closest to the tunnels underneath, and was generally pointed toward the temple.

  Boosting the antigrav, Gav took off down the corridor, moving as fast as he could.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eyana Ora

  Eyana’s connection to the both the ship and the Krixis captain ended abruptly. She fell forward out of the command chair and onto her hands and knees. Gasping for air, she gathered her composure, fighting back a wave of vertigo and nausea. She had felt perfectly fine during the connection, but it must have taxed her system, or else she’d had no idea what was going on with her body during the trance.

  She stood up and walked shakily toward the door. “Silky, inject stimulant.”

  “What the heck was all that, Ana? You weren’t responding, like you were in a trance, and your vitals were all over the place.”

  The stimulant coursed through her system, turning her awkward lope down the ramp to the main corridor into a full sprint. Recounting to Silky what had happened, she raced through the corridor, down the ramp, and across the planet’s seemingly endless gray turf to the shaft the Krixis insurgent had used to access the tunnels below.

  Eyana stared down the shaft. Ten meters below there was a metal hatch, the lid cracked open. A humming, sparkling force field maintained by a device locked onto the lid kept the freshly stirred earth leading up to the surface at bay, clearing a meter of earth to each side of the hatch.

  “I believe, Ana, that the hatch was the original surface-level opening the Krixis used for accessing the tunnels back in the day, before the rotting detritus from thousands of collapsed biological megastructures on yet another of their failed worlds covered it up. The force field is attached to a small, automated drill robot. Quite clever. The insurgents obviously came prepared.”

  Eyana activated her antigrav, using what little power it had left, and hopped into the shaft. Her skin tingling from the waves of energy pulsing within the shaft, she landed beside the hatch and eyed the walls of earth nervously.

  “How powerful does a force field have to be to compact enough earth to form a shaft this deep and wide?”

  “Damned powerful, Ana. Though this soil, based on my readings, is significantly aerated. That helps.”

  She pulled the lid back far enough she could enter, careful not to disturb the device. She didn’t want to get this far only to suffocate on this barren world. “And how long will that force field hold up, given the battery capacity of a Krixis device that size?”

  “Long enough for you to get in then get back out, Ana. Unless there is a failure.”

  “You could’ve left that last sentence off.”

  She gazed down into a pitch dark tunnel. She activated the night vision in her smart lenses and the weaker illumination filter in the visor of her helmet. Unfortunately, neither was going to help much once she ran out of ambient light.

  “Once I’m down in the tunnel, bring the illumination on the helmet flashlight up just enough that my night vision will function.”

  “You got it, Ana.”

  She checked her locator. No sign of the insurgent leader. Either there was still too much earth and stone in the way, or he had moved too far away, which would mean he’d reached the temple already. She scanned empathically, but didn’t pick up anything. Of course, he could've figured out some way to hide himself. But there wasn’t much she could do about that. She was going to have to risk getting ambushed.

  “Activate the refraction cloak.”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds left on it, Ana.”

  “That will do.”

  She readied her carbine, dropped down into the tunnel, landed softly on her feet, then immediately rolled to the side and came up with her back against a wall. No shots were fired at her. She glanced to her right, down a tunnel that led she had no idea where, and then to her left along the tunnel that would take her to the temple. No enemy in sight in either direction. Blank stone walls and darkness was all that greeted her.

  Something pricked at her empathic senses.

  “We are not alone down here.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ana.”

  “I mean there’s something else here with us besides the Krixis insurgent.” She focused for a moment then shook her head. “Can’t tell what it is or where it’s coming from.”

  “Let’s hope it is just your nerves, Ana.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t picked up anything?”

  Silky sighed. “I did detect some…things…moving but I couldn’t get a good read on what it was.”

  “Lifeforms?”

  “Didn’t register as such. I don’t know, Ana. There’s a lot of hyperphasic interference down here. It could be nothing.”

  “Or it could be the other guardians the Krixis captain referenced.”

  “Perhaps, Ana. Perhaps. I’ll keep monitoring.”

  As she ea
sed along the tunnel, a red dot flickered into view within her locator. It was now picking up the insurgent leader. He was well ahead of her and moving at a brisk pace. But he wasn’t as far along as she had feared. It must have taken him a while to drill down to the hatch and deploy the force field. And maybe it had taken him a while to deal with the other guardians, whatever those were.

  If only the Krixis ship captain she’d spoken to had told her what she might be facing… She nearly chuckled. It was possible he didn’t know what the other guardians were either. It wouldn’t surprise her, given that this planet was taboo.

  Eyana took off into a sprint down the tunnel, her antigrav set at two percent, which was just enough to quiet her footfalls. She still had a chance to catch up to the insurgent leader if she hurried, especially if something slowed him down at the temple entrance. Surely, there would be a door with a locking mechanism of some sort.

  She quickly figured out that the tunnels weren’t perfectly straight like they had seemed within her locator or Silky’s initial scans. There were slight bends, rises, and dips. Whoever had designed this tunnel network had done so using fairly primitive techniques.

  “Silky, how smooth are the walls here?”

  “They are fairly rough, Ana.”

  “As if carved by hand?”

  “I suspect so, Ana.”

  “Did the Ancients make structures that way?”

  “Ana, we have yet to encounter anything constructed by the Ancients that was not perfectly symmetrical and crafted to near perfection.”

  “In that case, how are the Krixis with stonework?”

  “If you are asking what I think I you are asking, Ana, then they have certainly been capable of making something more sophisticated than this facility for a long time now. Any spacefaring civilization, regardless of the basis for their technology, would be able to construct something more refined that these tunnels. The hatch, though, is significantly newer.”

  “And the oldest Ancient structures we’ve found?”

  “Were those of a spacefaring civilization, Ana. We believe, though with scant evidence, that they sailed the stars for many thousands of years. It is unlikely we would ever encounter anything belonging to their distant, more primitive past.”