by Aer-ki Jyr
“Happy to. How hard do you want?”
“Don’t hold back,” she said, gesturing to an open ring nearby and walking towards it.
“Um, don’t mean to brag, but my Commando ranking is 18 levels above yours.”
“I know.”
“So you want to get beat up?”
“If you want to help me, give me a challenge.”
“As you wish,” Kevin said, stepping into the ring and flexing his shoulders a bit. “How do you want to do this?”
“I need some arm work.”
“Alright,” he said, mentally disconnecting most of his movement options and leg attacks/defenses and prepping himself to go at it with his upper body only in a series of drills that were competitive, but designed to test and train reflexes more than determine a winner. “Ready when you are.”
Two weeks later Jyra met San at a door in the training facility that she’d never seen the other side of and hadn’t been able to use her codes to bypass. She’d spent several hours sneaking around trying to find out what was behind all the locked doors and this was one of the few that she could never access…but to her dismay it opened for San simply as he walked up to it and motioned her to go inside.
She stepped through into darkness, walking into a room that only had the angular slab of light coming in through the door to guide her, then it disappeared plunging everything into darkness. A moment later the lights came on and a solitary pillar stood at the center of the room some 30 meters in front of her in the circular chamber.
“Your final mission,” San said, staying in the small tunnel between door and wall perimeter, “is to reach the top and retrieve the object there. You pass when you bring it back and place it in my hand. Clear?”
“Clear as mud,” Jyra answered as she looked around for potential hazards hidden in the open architecture. “Time limit?”
“Preferably sometime before lunch.”
Jyra rolled her eyes, but San was standing behind her and couldn’t see. “Anything else you’d like to add?”
“Nope.”
“Wonderful,” she said, standing still and glad she hadn’t already set off some sort of trap. The floor was solid and flat, or at least appeared to be. Same went for the walls and ceiling, but the pillar had grooves in it. Irregular pattern and easy to conceal crap in, but it was the smoothness that truly concerned her, for she suspected there was something beneath hidden doors or maybe even camouflaged via holograms out there…yeah, with so much empty space holograms were probably in use.
Not liking this one bit and knowing that failure would see her out of the program entirely, she took a small step forward and waited, getting no response. She took another, again without any reaction and San being totally silent only made the situation worse. Jyra had no idea where the attack would come from, but multiple options were flowing through her head as she thought about what might be here. There was no proof either way, so all she had to work with was experimentation.
To that end she stood still and pulled her shirt off, revealing the jog bra she had underneath as she wadded the garment up into a ball, tying the sleeves together so it wouldn’t unravel in the air turbulence, then threw it towards the pillar. It sailed in a clean arc and hit the side, bouncing off lightly to hit the ground nearby where it rolled to a halt without drawing any reaction whatsoever.
Jyra’s lip curled to the right in a curious frown. That left her with no option other than walking up to the pillar and taking her chances, so she took another baby step and proceeded with that tactic over the next few minutes, taking her precious time and trying to play this safe…but at the same time knowing from all her training that there usually wasn’t a ‘safe’ play to make and that she’d just have to wing this given the lack of data for her to use in order to minimize what were as of now unseen hazards.
Closer and closer she crept, with every step and lack of response making her more nervous all the way up to the pillar. She refrained from touching it and made a slow circle around it, inspecting the grooves carefully and looking for clues. Nothing appeared to be there, aside from useful finger and toe holds, but the lines and indents almost looked like a form of writing. If it said ‘don’t do that’ and she went ahead and did Jyra would be kicking herself for the rest of her life, so she took her time again and tried to decipher what she was seeing.
But it was no use, which left her with two options: keep trying and not rush into a bad situation…or rush into it and avoid spending forever here looking at something that wasn’t actually text. Either way it made sense as a way for her to display her stupidity and punish herself, which was definitely this program’s mojo. One thing she could do was pick up her shirt, so she walked around to it and retrieved her projectile, but before putting it back on she stepped back and hurled it up to the top of the 8 meter high pillar.
She tossed it several times, hitting different sections, but there was still no response. Eventually she untied it and put it back on, then walked up to the pillar and hesitated before touching it, half expecting to get a stun shock from contact. Jyra thought through everything for the hundredth time, but if there was something for her to figure out here she was either missing it or was being duped into wasting time prior to climbing the pillar. She could wait here as long as she wanted chewing on this, for rushing wasn’t worth screwing this up…but at the same time she would be waiting here indefinitely if there was nothing to find.
Once again there was no right course to follow, at least not an obvious one, so she gave herself a few more minutes to think before she started climbing. When nothing came of it she reached out gently and touched the pillar with her left index finger…again drawing no reaction.
Jyra bit her lip and committed herself to this, spotting finger and toe holds a moment before she reached out and got her weight off the floor, hanging a few inches up as she very slowly began to climb. The indentations weren’t deep, but they were much easier to manage than some of the climbing walls she’d been training on. Fortunately she didn’t have to search minutes for the next hold and could make her way up fairly fast if she wanted, but the Commando instead decided to take a ponderously long time climbing as she was looking for any deviation in the pillar or room, for something coming up behind her when she wasn’t watching would fit just right into this situation.
Every meter she climbed she grew more nervous, feeling the moment coming as the distance shrank. When she was hanging directly under the top she stopped, taking another long look around before finally sliding her fingertips up on top of the flat cap while holding on firmly with her other three grip points, expecting to be stunned or attacked in some way that would toss her off and onto the hard ground below.
When her fingers brushed the top…nothing happened. She pulled herself up a bit more and got her eye line over the edge, seeing a small blue orb sitting suspended in a field, either energy or magnetic, but it was hovering an inch over a slight depression. Now guessing that it was either protected or would trigger the fireworks when removed, Jyra moved up more and got her elbow on top before reaching out and waving a hand around the object in multiple directions, feeling for something invisible. Nothing triggered, so she bit her lip again, making sure her grip points were solid, then reached out and grasped the orb.
When her hand hit it she felt a bobble, but otherwise nothing happened. She held it in place for a moment, then pulled it away while glancing around. Wanting her hand free she tucked it awkwardly inside her bra, giving her a third breast, then got her hand back onto the grooves and began to slowly climb down, expecting something to jump or shoot her and monitoring what she could see of the walls and floor intently. Stopping just before she reached the bottom, Jyra extended her left foot out and tapped the floor, half expecting it to fall out beneath her.
Again, nothing happened and she got the feeling that she was about to run into an idiot trap just shy of completing the mission. San had said she had to get it back to him, and he wasn’t walking out to congratu
late her. Nor had he moved from the short walkway, suggesting that the floor outside, or maybe the airspace, wasn’t safe. She wished there was a way to smoke out whatever was waiting for her other than using her own body, but that was a luxury she didn’t have in this situation.
She stepped down onto the floor, hanging onto a pair of grooves with her hands just in case, but when the floor didn’t disappear beneath her she began walking around the pillar until she was on a straight line to San.
That might not be a good idea. Maybe she had to approach from a flanking angle to avoid triggering the trap. Damn it, she wished she had something to work with here, but the chamber was exactly the same as it had been when she…
No, wait. Something was different. There was a smell that wasn’t there before. It was faint and coppery, almost undetectable, but it definitely had not been there before. Jyra didn’t recognize it but thought fast, wondering what it could be as the scent increased in intensity. She definitely did not like the feel of this and took another step forward, thinking hard.
Another step followed but still no response. Feeling like she was about to walk into a huge trap she continued forward, for the smell was increasing like a countdown. When she was a third of the way to San she abandoned the tiny steps and just walked normally, looking down and around and on her guard as much as she could be. She got to the halfway point and continued strolling on as the smell increased to the point that it felt like it was starting to clog her nose.
With the tension in her running at an all-time high she walked the last few meters and up in front of San who held out his hand. Glancing right and left she looked for something to attack her at the last moment, then cringed and pulled out the orb and reached it towards him…
The palm-sized ball landed neatly in his hand and his fingers curled up around it as she let go.
“Well done,” he said, tossing it into the air playfully and catching it again.
Jyra frowned. “That’s it?”
San nodded. “What were you expecting?”
“Oh fuck that!” she said, backtracking a few steps and closing her eyes in vexation before clenching her hands into angry fists and mentally kicking herself for letting him do it to her again. “What the hell is this?”
“Your final trial,” he said casually.
“What, climbing that?”
“I said it was your final trial. I never said it would be hard.”
“Fuck you, San. Do you have any idea…oh, damn it. I did it all to myself again, didn’t I?”
“Well, you certainly didn’t set any speed records, but you still completed the mission.”
“So the whole, ‘you only get one shot at this’ was just a load of bull?”
“No, you did only get one shot. If you can’t climb that and grab a stupid ball,” he said, tossing and catching it again for emphasis, “then there’s no way in hell you deserve to be a Commando, let alone an Arc Commando.”
“I really hate you now.”
“I did nothing.”
“That’s exactly why. You made me kick my own ass again,” she said, letting a bit of a smile slip. Through it all she hadn’t missed the fact that she had actually passed, worthless of a final test as this was.
“Sometimes the mission is a lot simpler than you think.”
“Final lesson then?”
“If you ever stop learning, then quit and go civie. We have to stay adaptable. Come on then, what are you waiting for. We’ve got stuff to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like making you an Arc Commando. It’s not just a title you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Follow me and find out,” San said, turning and walking off with the door opening before him again. He left Jyra there until she jolted out of her angry/happy stupor and jogged a few steps to catch back up with him as they left the final challenge chamber and its coppery stench, heading off to who knew where.
7
May 6, 2897
Solar System
Earth
The mantis Jyra and San were flying in set down on a pad atop an unremarkable bioharvest facility in Antarctica, with the Commando eyeing him questioningly.
“Can I talk now?”
San rolled his eyes. “Follow me,” he said as the boarding ramp opened and the two passengers got out, stepping down onto the thin layer of snow amidst a storm that was kept back via a bubble shield covering the landing pads. It was coming down so hard that the few times it had to be lowered to allow ships to come and go the falling snow had blanketed the surface. The temperature was frigid regardless, causing the Archon to shiver a bit when it first hit him, but he walked across the snowy tarmac to the nearest visible bunker that contained a lift down into the facility.
Jyra walked behind him, wrapping her arms around herself and wishing she had her armor on instead of a casual uniform, but they spent no more than 20 seconds outside before stepping through the door and into a lift shaft that wasn’t much warmer. They traveled down a few levels then a wall of warm air hit her as they stepped into the facility and San headed off without saying a word.
“Come on,” she whispered as they passed several workers. “Tell me something.”
“We’re not here for a snack,” he said, then continued on through the unfamiliar hallways making twists and turns as if he’d come here a lot. To her it just looked like a cramped facility maximized for volume output and turned into a cozy labyrinth as a result. She had no idea what they’d do in this place, but she had a sneaking suspicion it didn’t involve food.
Eventually they turned a corner and ran smack into a guarded checkpoint…with six Commandos in armor standing in front of a closed door. San put his hand on a scanner that identified him as an Archon mage, which gave him the authority to bring guests past the doors, though he’d need to have Jyra logged in as well, so he stepped to the side and pointed her to the scanner.
She raised an eyebrow when her ID popped up as a hologram, similar to San’s, except hers was labeled ‘Arc Commando.’ The guards exchanged glances with each other, but didn’t say anything. They let them both pass and San opened the door with a special code that he tapped into a rubrics cube-like color system.
“What you see beyond this point doesn’t exist. Understood?” San asked as he was punching squares with his fingertip.
“Understood,” Jyra said, her curiosity and eagerness spiking.
The doors pulled open and revealed a personnel lift, into which the pair walked but San didn’t turn around to face the door. Jyra mimicked him and kept her back to the guards, then the doors shut and they began to move, though neither could feel it given the IDF field insulating them from inertia. Should the lift fall they’d live through a crash…so long as something spikey didn’t come shooting up through the floor to impale them.
“Where are we going?”
“To the beginning,” San said cryptically. “What you’re about to see is why Davis began Star Force in the first place, and why we’re in constant danger.”
“Danger? From the lizards?” she asked, expecting that not to be right.
“No. They’re pushovers. You, me, every Human in existence descends from Zen’zat, which are an altered form of Ter’nat. Zen’zat were never meant to reproduce, so our psionic legacy has gone dormant over time. I was brought here to wake mine up when I became an Archon, and the same is true of the Arc Knights. More recently the Arc Commandos have joined us and a limited number of highly placed civilians. I have dozens of abilities, but all of us have a basic 7. Yours never developed because they were genetically inactive. By the end of today that will no longer be the case.”
The wall in front of them opened into a concealed set of doors leading them out onto a wide landing platform…save for they were underground in a very tall chamber, on the other side of which was an angled wall made of a green/black material that was unlike anything Star Force used and clashed with the walls and floor halfway up to it, then the footing changed ove
r to the same material.
“Welcome home,” San said, starting to walk across the artificial platform built to nestle up against the tiered nature of the huge structure in order to create a flat plain that stretched off into the distance so far that Jyra couldn’t see the end of it, but she did see a couple of parked mechs nearby, both combat models, along with a host of industrial mechs, hover trucks, and smaller bits of equipment.
“What is this place?” she asked, wide eyed as a group of workers were shipping Star Force crates in through a gigantic open doorway, ostensibly from another lift shaft more accommodating cargo traffic.
“Davis found it buried underneath the snow of Antarctica and began a clandestine excavation project. It’s a massive pyramid miles wide, built of a technology that we are still trying to master. It’s been driving our technological progress all these years, but we still haven’t caught up yet.”
“These Ter’nat built it?”
“No. Ter’nat are a slave race that Zen’zat are pulled from, then enhanced to function as infantry for a conglomeration of races called the V’kit’no’sat. Their empire suffered a civil war when one of them rebelled and it caused the outer border regions to be abandoned. Earth was one of numerous worlds that held colonies out in what is the wilds as far as the V’kit’no’sat are concerned,” he said as they crossed from the Star Force deck plates onto the green/black stone. “A battle was fought here, in which the rebels won. They trashed the planet and left, but apparently a few Zen’zat were missed and became our ancestors. Abandoned here and choosing to reproduce against their mandate.”
“Mandate?”
“Zen’zat serve the V’kit’no’sat as individuals because the Ter’nat race is considered inferior. When one is upgraded into a Zen’zat, they are forbidden from reproducing in exchange for the enhancements given to them. Passing on those enhancements to offspring is a treasonous offense. The Zen’zat and their offspring would both be killed. If the V’kit’no’sat ever return to reclaim their lost colony they will kill us all.”
