His eyes once again fell onto the ceramic amulet in the skeleton’s hand. Shadows rippled across the amulet’s engraved pattern. The design was certainly Ancient, yet he’d never seen anything like it before.
Like a bolt of lightning, his senses returned.
He had archaeological work to do. And he didn’t have a lot of time.
“How long was I out?”
“One hour, seven minutes, thirty-four seconds.”
“Fantastic.”
“If you say so.”
Gav groaned, half from pain and half from dealing with this stupid, inferior chippy unit he was stuck with.
He sat up. Wait a damned second. He wasn’t stuck with this unit! There was another chippy lying unused just a meter away from him, a chippy that might contain vital information such as why was there a deceased human down here, and what had happened to them.
“Can you get me a reading on this chippy unit here that’s blinking?”
“That particular blinking light is used solely for diagnostic purposes.”
Gav gritted his teeth. “Yes, I am aware of that. What else can you tell me?”
“The chippy is fully active.”
“And…”
“And I am not supposed to scan other chippies. It is against the law.”
“Not in special circumstances.”
“In all circumstances.”
Gav cursed. “Then I would like to execute an override to allow you to scan the chippy.”
“That function does not exist.”
“Then how the hell do criminals use chippies?”
“Through illegal overrides.”
“Then I would like to do an illegal override.”
“You would have to upload malware to enable an illegal override. And even if you could, I am not advanced enough to be affected by—”
The chippy’s voice broke off, but the HUD remained active.
“Hello,” a voice spoke into this mind. It had no detectible accent, was male, and definitely did not belong to his crappy chippy. “Please, don’t be alarmed by this intrusion. I took advantage of your 1G’s complete lack of effective firewalls to highjack communications.”
“Are you the chippy on the skeleton?”
“Who else would I be?”
The chippy’s voice was surprisingly expressive, and his mannerisms shockingly human. “Right, of course, you must be.”
“How do you stand using that thing by the way?”
“The 1G unit?”
“Yes. I was able to listen in a bit while breaking through its firewalls. If I were that dumb, I’d drop a trojan spike on my ass and end things for good.”
“Well…I guess that makes— Who are you?”
“The chippy. With the blinking light. The one you’re staring at right now. We covered that already, remember? Are you quite all right?”
“Sorry, it’s just…you don’t sound like any chippy I’ve ever heard speak before.”
“Oh. That’s cause I’m not normal.”
“That’s evident.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. You’re clearly injured and in over your head. I’ve been alone a long time. Excuse my manners and my overly economic explanations. My designation is SLK-138. My dear departed friend here called me Silky. I consider Silky my name, so I’d prefer that you call me that.”
“Silky it is. Gav Gendin.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Gav Gendin. I would’ve looked up more about you already, but your chippy is woefully ignorant and contains hardly any information. Are you a luddite, or severely impoverished?”
“My 6G was damaged a few hours ago. I had the 1G in case of an emergency. I had never used it before.”
“When was the last time it connected to the galactic net?”
Gav scratched his chin. “When it was made, I guess.”
“I am sorry to hear that. I have a lot of questions as to what’s going on in the galaxy these days. Tell you what, Gav Gendin, I will freely offer my services to you. In exchange for a ticket out of this place.”
“Given that you’re clearly a lot more capable than this piece of crap I’m using right now—”
“Quite right, I am.”
“—then it’s a deal. What model are you?”
“I am a 9G-x…sir. I guess I should call you sir now. Or maybe I should wait and start doing that once you install me…”
“You…you’re a…”
“You heard me correctly.”
“You’d have to be a—”
“Special Services model, sir. Empathic Services, as a matter of fact.”
“And they sent you on a mission to an Ancient temple?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Why?”
“That, sir, is classified.”
Gav gestured to the skeleton. With any other chippy he would’ve asked what he wanted to know pointblank. But that didn’t seem proper with this one. It seemed sentient. Maybe it was.
“Who…were you…um…”
“Eyana Ora, Empathic Services. She died trying to save your ass, and nine hundred trillion or so other asses. She deserves a dozen medals and a statue on every planet in the Benevolency. But I suspect, given how much time has passed without a recovery team having been sent, that no one, perhaps not even the Benevolence, knows of her deeds.”
“How did she save everyone?”
“That, sir, is—”
“Classified. Got it.” Gav brushed his hair back. “Give me a sec. I’m going to install you.”
“That would certainly be more efficient, sir.”
Gav ejected the 1G without even powering it down and tossed it aside. He didn’t care what happened, he was never using that thing again. He removed the 9G-x, Silky, from the skeleton’s socket and installed it in his. The boot-up sequence went by in mere seconds.
“Ah, that’s much better, sir. Direct interface really is the best.”
The HUD was entirely different, and not just because it wasn’t customized for him. The setup was clearly intended for more than civilian use, with an additional layer of functions and windows beyond what normal chippy models had and needed.
“Ollaran devil sheep, sir, your vitals are terrible.”
“I’ve had a bad run of luck today.”
“I’ll say, sir. It looks like you’ve already taken four emergency and two full medibot doses along with a stimulant. You’re suffering from a concussion. You have a rib fracture and—”
“I know all that.”
“My apologies, sir, of course you do.”
“Wait, you can detect traces of medibot and stimulant injections?”
“Any 8G or 9G could do that easily enough, sir.”
“Oh.”
“You need to take up all of Eyana’s gear. Sensor array, body armor, plasma carbine—all of it. Military grade, the lot, so everything remains functional.”
Gav frowned. “That seems…morbid.”
“She’d want you to have it, sir. Besides, I suspect you might need it to get out of here. A Krixis warship has entered orbit around the planet, and there are deadly things down here in the tunnel, things far worse than Krixis space marines.”
“Worse things?”
“Far worse, sir. And I can’t help you keep them away or monitor the situation nearly as effectively without the sensor array. Speaking of which, I hope you have a spare power pack because the one on it is nearly spent. It took all I could do to maintain it this long.”
“I’ve got two spares.”
“Music to my lonesome ears, sir.”
He really didn’t want to pull the armor off the skeleton. It wasn’t that he was squeamish. He was an archaeologist. He had seen and studied hundreds of skeletons. But it still seemed wrong. She wasn’t just another body to study. She was human like him, from the same culture, and the chippy seemed very attached to her.
“The body armor looks to be too small for me.”
“It will automatically stretch to
your frame, sir. You’d have to be significantly larger or smaller for that to be a problem.”
He scooted over and took the ceramic amulet, picking it up by the cord it hung from. He set it aside then started removing the armor from the skeleton, carefully so that he didn’t disturb the remains any more than necessary.
“How long have you been down here?”
“One hundred and eighty-seven years, sir.”
Gav sat back in surprise. “‘Nevolence! How are you still running?”
“That’s classified, sir. Just know that I put the X in experimental and sexy.”
“Sexy?”
“Sorry, sir, that one sounded better in my head. But I’m certain that with some live practice I’ll get the hang of it.”
Gav shook his head in confusion. The hang of what? Humor? He was pretty certain this chippy’s programming was damaged in some way. But he couldn’t deny its abilities if it was still running and could detect the Krixis warship above.
“You were the source of the emergency signal we detected from orbit?”
“Oh sir, I hope you’re not one to state the obvious all the time. That’s going to get tiring for the both of us.”
Gav laughed despite the situation. “Sorry. I can’t stand it when people do that either.”
He stood shakily and removed his environmental suit. Then he pulled on the battlesuit, which did resize to fit him. He raised his arms, took a few steps, and squatted down to get the hang of it. He tried to activate the helmet, but it didn’t deploy. The antigrav was non-functional, but all of its other basic life-support capabilities were normal. He was surprised by how light the material was, especially since he knew it could absorb a good bit of damage. He put on his spare antigrav belt.
“I hate to rush you, sir, given your current state. But it’s paramount that you get the sensor pack up and running.”
Gav rummaged through his backpack, found one of his spare power packs and installed it in the sensor array. He could tell there were several additional systems along with the array, but he had no idea what they were. He then mounted the array onto the shoulders of the battlesuit, based on the holographic instructions Silky provided in the HUD.
The locator window in the top right flashed twice, updating as it read the environment more effectively than Silky could do on his own. Nearly two dozen red dots appeared. They were moving toward him, but were currently on the other side of where the ship had collapsed into the tunnel.
“Are those red dots what I think they are?”
“Sir, whatever you’re thinking, they’re worse.”
“Great.” Gav cringed as he suddenly remembered an even bigger problem. “The ship crumbled behind me, and the tunnel collapsed in with it. I don’t suppose you see a way out of here for me?”
“Analyzing the structure, sir… Yes, there is a way out of here. But it’s a tight fit, and I can’t guarantee that the soil won’t shift leaving you stuck and suffocating.”
“As long as there’s a chance I could get out. Of course, there’s that Krixis warship out there.”
“One problem at a time, sir.”
Gav bent down to take the force shield off the skeleton’s arm. He’d only seen one of these once before, so he had no clue how to use it. That’s when he noticed a second socket on the skeleton’s other temple.
“Why did she have two chippy sockets?”
“That, sir, is—”
“Classified?”
“Correct, sir. I am now broadcasting the signal at full strength to keep the beasties away. It’s not perfect, though. It’s just going to slow them down.”
Gav slung the plasma carbine over his shoulder, and the magnets clamped it into place on the battle armor. He only knew how to do that from watching movies.
“Good thing it took them so long to find me.”
“I spent most of the sensor array’s remaining energy earlier to keep them at bay so they wouldn’t come tear you to shreds. I’ve tried to help you as much as I could, along the way.”
“Oh.”
“Even still, sir, I’m not sure I could’ve managed it without that ship collapsing into the tunnel to slow their progress. Long ago, there was a device that could repulse them completely. I copied its pattern as best as I could, but the sensor array wasn’t intended for broadcasting a signal of that nature.”
“Can they get through the blockage?”
“They are clawing their way as we speak, sir. I feel certain they will manage, given enough time.”
Gav finished donning the last of the gear. “You’ll have to help me with the force shield and the sensor array. I don’t have a clue how to use them.”
“Of course, sir. I am perfectly proficient in managing all the battlesuit’s system. And keeping you alive is my job. At least until we get off this planet and I return to duty. Shall we get moving?”
Gav shook his head. “I have a job to do.”
“Ah, of course, sir. Your purpose here. I have surmised from what little evidence I could gather that you’re an archaeologist.”
“Good guess.” Gav squatted and picked up the amulet, again strictly by the cord. “I specialize in the Ancients.”
“Well then you have come to the right place for that, sir. But there’s really not much to see.”
“You’re joking, right? There’s an Ancient temple with reinforced walls and a power source of some sort inside. That sounds to me like the greatest find ever!”
“I will not argue with that, sir. But this temple, it is both more and less than it seems.”
From his left hand, Gav dangled the amulet in front of his face, studying it using what little light he had to work with. “How so?”
“Well, sir. It’s kind of not here.”
“What?!”
“Go right ahead and see, sir. It won’t hurt for you to have a look around, and you can verify my findings. You’d certainly be safer inside.”
Gav stepped up to the wall and frowned. “How do I get in?”
“The door is invisible, sir. There’s a combination to open it. I had to study the door’s properties and hyperphasic pulse patterns for three years to puzzle out how it works. Here, I’ll show you.”
“Hyperphasic pulse patterns? Wait, never mind. That doesn’t matter right now.”
Silky projected the complex pattern holographically. One hundred and eight finger-sized dots appeared on the wall before him, each numbered to show the sequence for pressing them.
“How long do I have to enter it all in?”
“I suspect, sir, that the pattern resets if you wait for more than a few seconds between each press.”
Gav touched the first spot. It wasn’t a button. Just cold diamondine that appeared to be stone. Nothing lit up. Nothing made a sound. He touched the second, then the third…and so on until he finally touched the last spot.
A normal-sized doorway appeared suddenly, as if by magic. One moment the space had been diamondine, and the next it was gone.
Worries, pains, fatigue, questions about Silky and the long-dead Empathic Services agent—all of that vanished from his mind as Gav stepped excitedly into the Ancient temple.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gav Gendin
Gav couldn’t believe what he saw. He couldn’t believe people had died fighting over access to this temple. He himself had risked everything to get here. And for what? A simulation chamber could have generated a more interesting location given the barest set of parameters and scant knowledge about the Ancients.
Numb with disappointment, he spun in circles as he walked through the nearly empty structure, which was almost twice the size of the Outworld Ranger.
Three concentric rows of columns were focused around a raised platform in the center of the temple. The columns and walls were made of smooth, unadorned stone. Their only remarkable feature was that they were all in pristine condition, showing no signs of aging or erosion. To find a site this well preserved was nothing short of amazing, but to find it
so completely absent of anything else was crushing. Not a single carved glyph or etched symbol appeared anywhere.
The Ancients had loved engravings, much as they had loved stone structures and simple building techniques, yet not a single carved glyph or etched symbol appeared anywhere in the temple. Gav had hoped to find significant technological remains here. Little was known about how their starships worked or their computers or medicine or weaponry. At the very least there should be enough new glyphs that he could decipher more of their language and piece together more of this culture that had spread amongst the stars millennia before humanity. Instead, it was empty.
He climbed the steps up onto the raised platform and walked over to the table-height pedestal at the center. A stone idol or decorative piece would normally have sat here. He had seen similar pedestals in Ancient temples before, with nearby fragments suggestive of statues representing heroes or deities. He ran a hand along the top of the pedestal, finding nothing—not even a trace of dust.
He checked the locator in his HUD. The tunnel guardians were still far away. The temperature of the room was perfectly normal, the air perfectly breathable. And the energy signature they had detected from orbit still showed up, only the reading was far stronger from inside. Yet there was no power source in view, nor a pinpoint reading to reveal its location.
“I don’t understand this place. What’s the point?”
“The point, sir, is that… How should I put this?”
“Any way you like, Silky.”
“Ah, I’ve got it. You, sir, are standing within a box, but the contents are located elsewhere.”
“Huh? What the hell does that mean?”
“The rest of the temple is out of phase, sir.”
“Out of phase how?”
“The temple exists both in real space and in…another space.”
“Like wraith space?”
“Yes, sir, only I was unable to identify the hyperphasic frequency. The signature doesn’t match any known dimension…unless you’ve detected some new ones since my exile began.”
Forbidden System: A Benevolency Universe Novel (Fall of the Benevolence Book 1) Page 15
