by Aer-ki Jyr
“Point defense?” Paul suggested.
“That doesn’t hurt the Hjar’at?” Ryan added.
“Let it play through,” Jason prompted.
Sam zoomed back in a bit and released the pause, watching the odd weapon tear away the forest, the spike-generated energy blasts, and the Rit’ko’sor rush. When they got back to the point where they were at the center one’s neck blasting away at point blank range the much more massive dinosaur jerked to the side and pointed its helmeted face back towards the pyramid, whipping its huge tail around in a 180 degree arc and crushing two of the Rit’ko’sor on impact.
There was no sound accompanying the recording, but to Paul it almost felt like he could hear the crunch of their armored plates as the two smaller Rit’ko’sor were knocked back the way they’d come, flying into still more pouring out of the jungle, not all of which were wearing armor. The newest arrivals had a spine plate and helmet, but the rest of their tough skin was visible, making Paul wonder if they were seeing different classes of warriors, with maybe the first wave being the more elite troops now being followed up by their version of ‘grunts.’
The other two Rit’ko’sor deftly jumped over the swinging tail, one of which landed on top of the twin row of spike plates on the Hjar’at’s back. It fired down in between them several times, then jumped free as another energy cascade spread between the plates. Its twin, meanwhile, leapt forward again and pumped more and more tiny green blasts into the damaged neck armor and finally drew first blood a moment before the Hjar’at curled its neck down and tucked its head, shoulder rolling to the left and impaling the Rit’ko’sor with one of its forward spike plates, nearly cutting the other alien in half.
It blew the mortally wounded dinosaur off its skewer with a cascading energy blast as more and more Rit’ko’sor emerged from the charred and smoking tree line. Most of the fully armored versions were gone, replaced by the augmented ones, but they still had the same green forearm-mounted weapons and they swarmed against the bloody breach in the Hjar’at’s neck armor. Blast after blast expanded the gap, and eventually the massive beast went down.
Another neon ‘water’ attack fell on top of the two surviving Hjar’at and the dozens of Rit’ko’sor surrounding them. From the camera viewpoint, which Sam had lowered down to their level, everything disappeared in the tidal wave, then as it cleared the tops of the Hjar’at sparkled with some type of an energy field that was repelling the attack, while the Rit’ko’sor and the wounded Hjar’at were incinerated on contact. The smaller dinosaurs disappeared entirely, but a smoking lump only a fifth the size of the former monster remained behind, marking the spot where it had been felled.
As more Rit’ko’sor reinforcements appeared, seemingly in identical numbers to the other waves as if they were staggering their attack, an artificial icon appeared in the air over the battle, denoting something that none of the Archons could recognize. It flashed three times then faded away as the battle continued.
“Zoom out,” Paul suggested. When Sam did so he pointed to the opposite side of the pyramid. “Swing around to the hangar.”
Sam touched various points on the 3d map and physically swung the whole thing around as if he were manipulating a touchscreen, only with the extra dimension added.
“I think that icon was a perimeter breach warning,” Paul explained, pointing to a tiny line of quickly moving Rit’ko’sor entering the pyramid through some sort of service entrance next to the main doors, which were still closed. Next to them were several large corpses, accompanied by hundreds of smaller ones…the defenders no doubt that had been overrun by the numerically superior Rit’ko’sor.
“Rewind,” Paul said, pointing to the service entrance. “I want to see how they got inside. Explosives won’t work on the stone…at least not anything we have access to.”
Jason finally glanced back at Davis, who was standing quietly by listening. “Still can’t see anything?”
“I’m afraid not,” the Director admitted.
“It’s a battle record, and if the timestamp is accurate this could be the attack that ended the V’kit’no’sat presence on Earth.”
“I’d gathered as much,” he said as Jason’s eyes were drawn back to the invisible hologram.
“There,” Paul said, pointing for Sam to zoom in closer. “Some sort of lock pick,” he said, referring to a small, shiny device about the size of his head that the Rit’ko’sor had placed on the door.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sara asked, finally stepping up behind them along with half a dozen other Archons.
“We’re just beginning to find stuff,” Paul told her. “Battle records included.”
“I think we can safely say why there’s restricted access,” Jason decided, facing Davis. “You’ve been working with civilian access. This is military.”
“Plausible,” Davis considered without jumping to any conclusions. “With the amount of ambrosia needed to be able to see what you’re seeing, it’s possible that only warriors would put in the amount of training required to raise their thresholds to that level.”
“That’s one bit of good news,” Morgan said, just arriving to the group after Greg had filled her in on the basics at the top of the stairs.
“How so?” Davis asked.
“Because it means that training wise we’re on par with at least their junior warriors, else we wouldn’t have access to this security measure.”
“Finally something to measure against?” Paul asked in agreement.
“And if these are military records, there might be a great deal more to compare with.”
“I’ll leave you to the records search then,” Davis said, politely extracting himself from the group he suddenly found himself inadequate to be a part of. “I’ll split the research staff up and have them lead the others around to the sealed sections and see how many doors we can open up.”
Jason nodded to the man as he left, then turned his attention back to the battle records as another glob of ‘water’ shot out from the pyramid and burnt a second gaping hole into a section of forest that they couldn’t see any troops within, nor anything else due to the thick canopy covering that region.
“Sam, back it up again. Let’s see how all this started.”
4
“Here it is,” Davis told Rafa and Oni as they got back to the set of doors that they’d initially unlocked. “Can you see the ring and symbols?”
“Yes, clearly,” Rafa attested as Oni nodded her agreement.
“This is as far as we got before we decided to get everyone squared away,” Davis told him, holding his hand out. “After you, and let me know if you see any other markings.”
“Will do,” Rafa said, stepping across the threshold and into the sealed section. It was little more than a straight hallway with doors set into either side, 8 in total before the wide walkway split in two and circled around a central room. They found five other such hallways radiating off like spokes around the circle, with only one set of already open doors granting them access to the central chamber…which was empty save for a console on the far wall, which was also curved to match the interior wall of the ring-like corridor.
The ceiling was high and had a domed curve that reached to an apex as smooth as the rest of the chamber. It was also dim, with only trim lighting and the buttons on the console providing any illumination, other than that spilling in from the well lit hallway.
“Ideas?” Davis asked as they walked across the center of the room towards the console.
“Floor is soft,” Rafa commented.
“Walls too,” Oni said, driving one of her little fingers into the dark red material, which depressed a couple of centimeters. “Padding of some sort.”
“Training area?” Davis asked.
“Maybe,” Rafa said, walking up on Davis’s shoulder as the director touched a few buttons on the console.
“If you see any holograms let me…”
Suddenly the lights flashed on and a person appeared
a few meters behind them, as if running into sight from an invisible hideaway. The tall Human took five steps forward and brought an elbow down on top of Davis’s head.
The blow knocked the Director down, but didn’t fully land as Rafa hurled himself at the attacker, blunting most of the strike as the pair wrapped up and fell to the ground. Oni dragged the stunned Davis aside and scanned the area, trying to figure out what was going on while Rafa disengaged himself, rolling to the side and up onto his feet, then taking a large hop backwards to clear fighting space as the man swung at him with a leg sweep that missed inches short before he too rolled up onto his feet and charged at Rafa.
“Move,” Oni told Davis as he held his head, blinking away the pain and haze. Seeing no one else in sight she pulled him by the elbow towards the door as Rafa exchanged forearm blows with the larger man, being driven back a few steps by his superior strength but holding him at bay long enough for Oni to get Davis clear.
“Call the others,” she told him at the doorway, referring to the earpiece he’d picked up below, before turning about and heading back in to help Rafa.
Davis backpedaled cautiously, touching his ear and contacting his staff who were spread out across the pyramid, escorting the Archons around. He hoped some of them were close.
Oni crossed to the center of the chamber in the blink of an eye and jump-kicked into the man’s right side as Rafa wisely turned his attention away from her, setting up the heavy strike.
The bulky giant, a good head taller than Rafa, went down hard, stunned by the unexpected attack as the two Archons orbited around him. “Who are you?” Rafa demanded.
Not seeming to care to talk, the man got back up and spun around in a twirling run headed towards Oni. When he got within range he didn’t stop his rotation, but rather extended arms and legs in a flurry of odd blows that he executed artfully. They caught her off guard, forcing her to step back and back and back until she took a chance and darted in with a fist-locked shove aimed at his torso…but his arm whipped around too fast and knocked her blow off target.
The man caught and locked Oni’s arms against his chest, pulling her off balance as his spinning momentum threw her much lighter body back towards Rafa as he tried a nearly simultaneous attack. Oni’s head hit him in the gut and knocked them both down, then Rafa saw a massive foot coming down over his head.
He twisted aside just in time, then kicked up at the man’s crotch in response, catching him in the side of the leg instead as the man danced aside and out of range…only to step forward towards Rafa again as he tried to get up, launching into a forward, midair summersault that ended with an outstretched leg that came down hard on Rafa’s left side, hitting him in the pelvis and knocking him back down.
In the moment of awkward positioning the attack left the man in Oni tackled him, wrapping an arm around his thick neck and working her way around and onto his back, then latching on with her legs and immobilizing him as much as possible. As Rafa struggled to his feet the man lifted Oni up off the ground as he rolled over onto his hands and knees, then jumped up and to the side, landing on his back and crushing Oni into the padded floor.
She yelled on impact, but her grip didn’t break. As the man tried to roll aside again to get his arms and feet underneath him she yanked him back, putting her right leg out as leverage to keep him on top of her in a giant bear hug as Rafa suddenly appeared in mid air over top of them both. He fell elbow first down into the man’s exposed gut, just below Oni’s locked arms, and impaled the man with as much force as he could bring to bear…knowing that Oni was going to suffer for it too.
He felt his elbow hit the man’s taught muscles and dig in several inches as the two Humans were crunched down into the floor…then suddenly the pressure beneath his elbow vanished, along with the man.
Rafa’s elbow fell down onto Oni, as did the rest of his body, delivering an unintentional hit to her crotch.
“Ooowww!” she moaned as air was suddenly available to her lungs. “Son of a…”
“Sorry,” Rafa offered, looking around. “What just happened?”
“I don’t…know,” she said, coughing and feeling her chest. “Ah, think I’ve got a broken rib…or three.”
“My bad,” Rafa said, rolling off her and pulling his fellow adept up to her feet. As he did he saw a hologram had appeared over the console. “Check that out.”
“Sure,” she said, walking over to it while he stood guard, looking for another attacker to pop out of nowhere.
Oni recognized about half the script, the rest were independent symbols that she wasn’t familiar with. The V’kit’no’sat language had a basic alphabet, but it also had thousands of unique symbols, such as the one used to represent Humans, which marked various rooms and files meant for their access. Each of the V’kit’no’sat races had their own identification symbol, but these she was seeing were something else entirely.
The part she could read was mostly numbers. It took her head a while to wrap around the glowing figures and descriptions, but when she worked her way down to ‘grad’ac tas,’ which translated as ‘elapsed time,’ and she saw the figure attached to it she swore in vexation.
“Damn.”
“What?” Rafa asked, still alert and scanning the room.
“You can relax. I think it’s a training program that was left running when the pyramid was attacked. It probably went into powersave mode until Davis touched the console.”
“Holographic?” Rafa said, still not taking his attention off the room as he walked over to the console.
“These read like statistics. The timer also says it’s been on for 100,000 years.”
“Damn,” Rafa echoed her previous statement. “I thought he felt a little weird.”
“And heavy…heavier than one of the Knights.”
“I wonder what difficulty that was on…and how much damage had been inflicted before we got to it?”
Oni reached down and held a hand against her crotch, bending over in anguish. “You just had to jump on me, didn’t you?”
“You set up the opening. Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”
“Yeah, it was,” she admitted. “Didn’t expect him to disappear and have you bone me,” she said, squinting as she tried to massage away some of the discomfort. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”
Rafa smiled at her playful exaggeration as Ross and Tyr came running into view, with Davis coming back down the hall behind them.
“It’s over,” Rafa said as Oni straightened back up and the other two Archons slid to a halt inside the chamber.
“Where is he?” Tyr demanded.
“It was a hologram…we think,” Oni explained, gesturing to the floating statistics. “A training program left in sleep mode until we woke it up.”
“Seriously?” Ross asked.
“Yeah,” she said, feeling her ribcage again.
“Are you alright?” Davis asked, finally catching up to the much faster Archons.
“Little banged up,” she said, waving aside his concerns.
“Where is he?”
“Back in the computer,” Rafa told him. “We think this is some sort of hand to hand training chamber. The attacker was holographic.”
“We think,” Oni emphasized.
“Whoops,” Davis said sheepishly. “Sorry about that. Didn’t know what I was turning on.”
“It wasn’t you,” Rafa assured him. “It was in sleep mode. I’d guess any key would have turned it back on.”
“Sleep mode? Since…” Davis said, his face clearing with sudden understanding. “All this time?”
“Timestamp,” Oni said, pointing to the appropriate line on the hologram.
Davis frowned. “Let me guess, another hologram?”
“You can’t see it?”
“Apparently not. Do you want to stay and work on this or leave it till later?”
“I’ll stay…I don’t feel like walking around just yet,” she said, throwing Rafa a mock glare as Cora came running into
the room.
“Situation handled,” Rafa told her as Davis got on his radio to call off the others.
“What happened?” she asked, looking around.
“Stick around and I’ll fill you in,” Oni told her. “The rest of you can check out the other rooms, and stay on your toes.”
“Right,” Rafa agreed, pointing back to the doorway, “no way of knowing how much other stuff they left on. How’s your head?”
“No concussion,” Davis said as the foursome walked out, “but I imagine I’ll have a nasty bruise by tomorrow.”
“Ross,” Rafa prompted as they walked around a piece of the ring-like hallway and into one of the spurs, letting the other Archon go first while he stayed back to watch over Davis.
Without hesitation Ross walked up to the closest of the closed doors and touched the dent in the center, with the door opening as soon as his fingers brushed the surface. He walked inside and disappeared from view.
Tyr stepped up behind him and looked inside, then motioned the others forward. Davis followed Rafa in and saw the first two Archons standing in the middle of a giant hologram…apparently not a solid one this time, for Tyr’s head was sticking up above the galactic plane as a swarm of tiny dots representing star positions within the galaxy filled the room with an abundance of ambient light.
Rafa glanced at Davis. “Can you see that?”
“Yes I can,” he said, looking out across the map of the Milky Way. “Find the controls.”
“Pedestal over here,” Ross said from the opposite side.
“See if you can pull up data on specific systems,” Davis asked. All other maps regarding galactic data had been extremely limited. He hoped that this one, in a secure area, might be more forthcoming…but then again he could see it, so he wasn’t sure how hopeful he should get.
“Give me a second,” Ross said, messing with the controls. Suddenly the galaxy map zoomed in on their current star system.
“Whoops,” he said, backtracking. Finding the button he wanted he pulled up a sector by sector highlighter and picked one in closer to the core, in the middle of the deepest outlined V’kit’no’sat territory. Their current position was indeed on the periphery of their territory, barely shaded, marking it as frontier and low priority/low traffic according to the data streams floating above the map that acted as a key.
