by Mark Wandrey
The two groups regarded each other for a long moment. Minu was about to speak when the pair turned and ran. “Wait!” Minu yelled, but by the time she’d collected herself and started running after them, they’d left the station and gone into the labyrinth of tunnels.
“What the hell?” Aaron asked as he came up behind her. Even though gravity was lower than normal, he had some difficulty as his legs were still not one hundred percent.
“We keep running into those guys in the places we least expect,” Minu said. Cherise and Kal’at nodded. Minu touched the gem behind her ear. “Lilith.”
“Yes, Mother?”
“There are Squeen down here. We don’t know if they are a ship-operating species, so you’d better stay alert.”
“I am always alert, but your warning is appreciated. Have you located your father’s cache?”
“Not yet. I’ll let you know when we do.”
“They have never been hostile, have they?” Kal’at asked.
“No, just the opposite. The first time I talked with one was when the Tanam captured a bunch on Serengeti. The cats really hate the little rodents. After I rescued them, they hinted they knew a lot about humans, so I hunted them down later and questioned one of their leaders. That eventually led us to Paradox and the Kaatan ship that’s up there in orbit.”
While she wanted to run down the two Squeen, she knew it made little sense to try. They were small and fast. Maybe they could have managed if it were just her and Cherise, but Kal’at was a Rasa and not as fast on foot.
And there was Aaron. She never made his infirmity an issue, but now she had to think about their quest. Maybe he wasn’t the best choice for all the operations on the trip. “Let’s check out the place my father indicated.”
“What if we run into more of the little furry dudes?” Aaron asked as they walked down the tunnel in the direction Minu indicated.
“They’re harmless,” she assured them. “Maybe they ran to get their boss.”
* * *
It had been many years since Minu found herself within reach of one of her father’s clues. When she lost her access to fieldwork as a Chosen, she lost her ability to follow those clues. She had no idea where they were leading her.
Her father’s only sister, an aunt she barely knew, delivered the files left by her father shortly after Minu became Chosen. He’d been missing since before her Trials, and the Chosen declared him dead a year later. The files contained thousands of records of Chriso’s explorations of the galaxy in his time as a Chosen scout leader and as First Among the Chosen. He’d never allowed them to tie him behind a desk as had happened to his daughter.
“It’s great to be out in the field again,” she whispered as they went quietly down the hallway.
“Good to be out here with you,” Cherise agreed a few steps behind.
“Too bad Gregg is doing his Ranger thing,” said her husband as he glanced at a compact life scanner—standard Chosen-issue field gear. “He’d love the chance to get his hands dirty doing some good, old-fashioned scout work.”
“I’m glad he’s where he is,” she said with as much conviction as she felt.
If she couldn’t lead the Rangers herself, at least they were in the hands of one of her best friends, a man who’d helped her train them from the ground up. Her only concern was the way the Chosen continued to use them as soldiers for hire, carefully picking which contracts to accept and which to decline. Picking sides in the Concordia was a dangerous thing at best, suicidal at worst.
Just ahead, the ten-meter-wide corridor they’d been moving down stopped at a pair of access doors. Made from the same crystalline material as the rest of the city, they were opaquer than the rest and offered no view of the other side. Concordia script floated over the doors in slowly morphing code. Minu glanced at it and translated.
“Access is restricted, dangerous,” she said.
“Wish I could learn that trick,” Kal’at told her.
“I’m working on a program with the basics,” she told him as they walked up to the access lock.
Unlike the other areas of the city they’d seen, this one was not pristine. Piles of casually discarded computer chips, parts of optronic boards, and other components surrounded the doorway.
“Looks like others have been trying to force their way through those doors using some creative hacks.” Minu ignored the junk and went straight to the lock.
Her hands danced in the holographic spaces as her mind processed the symbols. As the data moved through her, she recognized the level three lock and silently whistled. The only other time she’d encountered anything like this had been a Portal left as a trap on Sunshine. They would have died there if the Weavers hadn’t implanted the knowledge to read ancient Concordian script and a list of uber codes in her brain.
“It’s so weird watching you do that,” Aaron whispered into her ear. “What does it feel like?”
“Ants crawling across my brain, running me by remote control. It’s not even conscious.” She’d explained it to them before, but she didn’t complain. They thought it was weird watching her, but it was even weirder doing it.
The holographic controls locked the code in, and the warning script disappeared as the doors beeped and started sliding into the wall. She was wondering how her father had gotten through the doors when Kal’at drew her attention. He’d been rummaging around the trash piles and was holding up a circuit board.
“Unless I am mistaken, this is indigenous human technology.”
“Sure is,” Cherise said and took the board. “This is from a code-breaker we used years ago. I’ve seen a couple in stores, don’t think the old guys can bring themselves to get rid of them. Ironically, Pip wrote a tablet application to make them redundant about a month after he joined the Chosen.”
“So, it’s something my dad would have had?”
“Before he went missing? Sure.”
Minu stepped closer, and Cherise handed her the component. Without a doubt, it was made by humans on Bellatrix; you could even see the builder’s corporate logo stamped on it. The device was electronic, unlike Concordian technology which was optical or photonic. It was worthless garbage to any other species.
“Someone left it here on purpose,” Minu said and handed it back to Cherise. “Can you make it work?”
“Why? Someone must have dumped it after it broke.”
Aaron shook his head. “Scouts never dump recognizable gear, especially anything made by us on Bellatrix. It’s against our SOP. You think it was left here on purpose?”
“Had to be,” Minu said.
Cherise cocked her head but pulled out a tool kit. “We don’t usually carry the stuff to work on these old things anymore,” she said as she worked, “but I threw this gear into my bag because we were heading down memory lane. Guess that was a good move.”
It only took her capable hands a few minutes to attach an EPC and interface the device with her diagnostic tablet. “Yep, busted. Looks like it was overloaded. There’s a code stuck in the data buffer.”
“Can you display the code?” Minu asked. Cherise’s tablet obediently showed a line of Concordian script of the more modern type the Tog preferred. “Bingo.”
“What is it?” Cherise asked.
“I guess you could say its Concordia lock-breaking for dummies.”
“Huh?” everyone replied, even Kal’at.
Minu smiled and explained. “I was wondering how my dad got through some of the doors he passed through over the years. I started to believe he’d gotten his own Weaver code upgrade. But, what you have here is the master lock code in my brain, only in modern Concordian script. It isn’t identical to the one in my head, but there are analogues for all the code scripts from ancient Concordia in modern Concordia.”
“The old bastard broke the code?” Aaron laughed.
“Evil genius seems to run in the family.” Cherise grinned.
“I do not consider Minu Groves evil,” Kal’at complained, snapping his j
aws for emphasis.
* * * * *
Chapter 6
April 14th, 534 AE
Abandoned City, Planet Atlantis, Galactic Frontier
Lilith floated in the dark space, most of her brain asleep, while small parts of her consciousness watched the ship’s systems, monitored the sensor arrays, and remained alert for updates from her mother. Nothing had changed in the six hours since they’d gained entrance to the high security industrial complex on Atlantis, and since she had not ‘slept’ in forty hours, she decided to use the lull to do so. But, her subconscious was not cooperating.
She’d discounted Pip’s suggestion of allowing him full access to her database as ludicrous. Pip was far too dangerous with what little access he had already. He constantly tested her defenses, pushed the boundaries, and asked questions she couldn’t answer. The last part was, of course, the most frustrating.
She raised the light level slightly and removed her jumpsuit. She’d long ago set up the CIC so she didn’t have to leave it if she didn’t want to. If you were creative, you could use force fields to create just about anything you wanted or needed. Fields formed, and water flowed from a valve.
In a minute, she had a perfectly formed four-hundred-liter ball of warm water. Naked, she pushed off another force field and swam into the water making ripples rebound across its surface, bouncing back and forth in intricately reforming patterns.
The water system was there mainly as a combat contingency. Should the ship be severely damaged and the gravitic compensators compromised, she could flood the chamber with water and operate from inside. It was not perfect but surviving fifty-G maneuvers any other way was impossible.
She’d long since began to improve her muscle tone and bone density with carefully planned exercises. But no matter how hard she worked, she’d never have the body a human female got from simply walking to work every day.
The bath was relaxing; even having to stick her head outside the water every couple of minutes for a slow breath didn’t interrupt her relaxation. The thoughts of her database again came to mind, and her mother’s desire to better understand it.
She’d had been given the power to control a Kaatan-class ship-of-the-line. She exulted in that power whenever she fully linked with the ship and its myriad of systems. That was a gift she was only now beginning to understand. But why was she given that gift?
She knew the idea of creating her was suggested, in part, by a communication with a central command node somewhere in the vast expanse of the galaxy. She’d tried more than once to link with that node for instructions. It never answered.
Lilith finished her bath, letting the ship dry her, before donning a clean uniform. The quest her mother had undertaken could lead to places where she could solve some of her own mysteries. Regardless, it was her duty to serve the ship’s commander. It was what a Combat Intelligence did.
* * *
The interior of the industrial complex was a complicated series of structures. There were docks, storage bays, massive silos of chemicals and raw materials, and towering machines of unknown function. Amid it all was a dizzying diversity of control structures and computer automations. Minu noticed two surprising things right away: others had been here recently, and no one had attempted to steal or salvage a single thing.
“Why would anyone go to the trouble of getting in here without helping themselves?” Aaron wanted to know, gesturing at a line of chemical processing machines that would fetch a fortune on the Concordia salvage market. He knew they were impossible to find new or used.
“You could finance our planet for a year with the stuff in this one room,” Cherise agreed.
“My dad was here,” Minu announced. “But I think the reason he left well enough alone was because he noticed others had been here, and they’d left it alone.”
“This equipment has been recently serviced,” Kal’at pointed out, examining a manifold. The pipes and their connections all looked the same, but when you leaned close you could see micro-welds where a section had been repaired. The dualloy fittings would last many hundred thousand years, or more. Whatever caused the failure was either a design flaw or evidence that the apparatus was still in use.
“Must be the bots,” said Cherise as she glanced around.
“Haven’t seen one since we got here,” Minu said.
She’d been looking for the little crystal squares in the wall like those on the Kaatan. The People had mastered making bots from living crystal, extruding them as needed and reabsorbing them after they completed the task. Pip called it ‘piezoelectric crystals on steroids.’ It looked like magic to her. “Maybe this manufacturing process was ‘not friendly’ to bots.”
“Can you imagine anything bots can’t handle that we can?” Aaron asked skeptically.
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
The team moved aimlessly through the complex looking for clues. It was as pristine as the rest of the city, so Minu had ruled out a typical scout trick like a conspicuous pile of trash or scratches in a wall. Chriso would have needed to be more obtuse. Whoever, or whatever, was keeping the place in such pristine condition would probably have removed his cache marker shortly after it was put into place.
“Maybe we should split into two teams,” Kal’at finally suggested after they’d finished searching a large room full of quiet conveyors. The place had them on edge. It felt like the machines could suddenly leap into action without warning. The sensation was so profound, they’d been avoiding touching or stepping on obviously movable parts.
“I don’t know…” Minu mumbled as she unconsciously bit her lower lip.
Where would her father have left something in this sort of situation? There were literally thousands of machines he could have opened to stash something as tiny as a computer chip. A needle in a haystack would have been easier to find. This was like looking for a grain of sand in a solar system.
Maybe I’m not thinking about this logically. I’m here for data, not a cache.
He’d left the last clue with a stash of dragonfly-bots, but that was out of expediency on his part, not necessity. So, where would he have stashed data? “Where’s the central control room?” she asked.
Kal’at stepped to a nearby panel and touched it. The display came instantly to life. As she’d noted earlier, many of the symbols from ancient Concordia were similar to those currently in use. ‘Map’ was one of those ubiquitous words that translated perfectly. He was about to reach for his translator when Minu pointed, and the symbols instantly converted in her uploaded memories.
“There.” Kal’at glanced from the icon to his computer with one eye, then shrugged. He was becoming as human as his brother.
It looked like any of a hundred other small buildings in the complex. Minu decided they probably would have visited it and moved on quickly. A dozen workstations sat along one circular wall, each with several configurable screens and a single seat.
She did a double take when she looked at the chair. The back section had the same hole as the original chairs on the Kaatan, right where a human’s tailbone sat. The few times she’d seen one of The People, she’d thought they looked rather like lemur monkeys, only taller, with more expressive faces. Their tales were long and dexterous and likely served as an extra hand. If she had a tail like that, she wouldn’t want to sit on it either.
“The facility was made by the same people who built our ship.”
Minu smiled at Aaron’s quick thinking. She might be more scientifically minded, but not by much. She’d fallen for his good looks and muscles. Luckily, he was much more than that.
“All this industry, and they lost a war?” Cherise wondered as she walked along the line of work stations. Adjacent to the control room was a meeting room and what looked like a small break room. Everything had the same ‘just left for lunch’ feel as the rest of the facility.
“What’s running?” Minu asked Cherise, who was examining the work stations.
“I’m far from good at reading th
is crusty, old, Concordian script, but I can decipher a technical phrase or two. Each workstation has one program running, a sleep mode minder or something like that. But this station has two. I can’t read the damn thing, it looks like something about ‘selection.’”
“Like choosing?” Minu asked and came closer.
“That could be it,” she replied, cocking her head to look at the display.
Minu leaned in and read the script. It was a subsystem, a mineral selection program. Select was another word for choosing or Chosen.
It made no sense for the program to be running; all the hoppers and mineral silos were empty. It was like leaving a lawnmower idling in the middle of winter. She slid into the seat and let her fingers work. There was a small file stored in the program buffer. It only took a second to send it to her tablet and unlock the main file’s encryptions. Four more to go.
“That’s it?” Aaron asked as she replaced the tablet in its holster.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Kinda unspectacular. But that’s my dad for you.”
While she was in the system, she poked around a little. Kal’at’s assessment that the facility was still in use was accurate. She linked through to other workstations and started checking logs until she found what she was looking for.
“Look, one of the material handling systems is working right now!”
“The facility is not processing anything,” said Kal’at, gesturing to the dozens of stations with blank screens. “What could it be handling?”
Minu looked closer at the display she’d called up. “It is moving quantities of a material called korovite. She glanced at Kal’at, and he stared back with no sign of understanding. She clicked the gem in her ear.
“Yes, Mother?” Lilith answered.
“What does your database say about a material called ‘korovite?’”
“Korovite, an isotopic alloy of selenium, yttrium, and palladium, is a vital element in channeling gravitic force waves.”
