by Aer-ki Jyr
“Don’t supposed you can see any of this either?” Emily asked the techs.
All three shook their heads ‘no.’
“Alright, start taking notes,” Megan said, sifting through the interface to try and find a root menu to start them with.
“What did you find?” Paul asked, returning to the command deck on Jason’s request.
“Plenty,” his friend said, staring at a detailed inventory list in holo. He shifted it aside with a few button presses and brought up the planetary map that they’d all grown accustomed to using the past couple days. He zoomed in on tropical Antarctica and the surrounding regions prior to the rebellion, which Paul noted due to the presence of the lakes that had been later drained to cover the pyramid.
“Not fish ponds,” Jason said, highlighting several submerged buildings. “These were specifically built for the swimmers and connect to the base of the pyramid,” he said, shifting the hologram into a 3D schematic of the mammoth building with the bottom portion highlighted. “All five base tiers belong to the swimmers.”
Paul looked closer, then reached over Jason and adjusted the hologram, zooming out slightly. “What are these nubs?” he asked, pointing to little dots lining the underground tunnels.
“They’re air breathers, like us. Lungs, not gills. Those spots are air pockets.”
“There are more tunnels,” Paul pointed out, seeing five extra large versions located at a lower depth than the others that connected to the surrounding lakes.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Jason said, zooming back out until they could see all of the southern continent. With the tap of a few buttons the underwater highways became visible, connecting to five locations around the perimeter of the continent, giving the swimmers access to the oceans.
Another few button presses and underwater infrastructure was highlighted at each connection point, as well as others within a few hundred miles out into the ocean surrounding each ‘port.’
“How do they get there?” Jason said as Paul began to speak, anticipating his question. “These bigger tunnels are actually split into two segments. The top segment flows out, the bottom one flows into the pyramid.”
“Flows?”
“More like squirts, but use whatever word you want. Point is the current carries them along at insane speeds, faster than any of our bullet trains or aircraft.”
“Have we gotten into the basement yet?”
Jason shook his head. “No, the search teams are being methodical and cataloging the top ones first. In a couple of hours I’m going to jump ahead of them and see what’s down there. Wanna come with?”
“Dumb question.”
Jason smiled as he adjusted the hologram again. “I haven’t got to the best part yet. Earlier I was studying the orbital traffic records going back to the founding of the colony, and you’d be surprised at some of the types of ships that showed up for the construction. Massive things, plus a lot of others that look like something straight out of a bad scifi film. I couldn’t even guess at the functionality of some of the designs, so I’m figuring they must be some sort of aesthetic. That’s not the point though. When I input some search parameters I accidentally scrolled to the last contacts detected and found this…”
Jason pulled up the telemetry data again, showing 16 bulbous ships in orbit. “Look at the timestamp.”
Paul’s eyes flicked over to the V’kit’no’sat numbers. “Someone came to check up on the colony?”
“That was my first thought until I played through their tracking data,” he said, bringing the same up on the screen and running it through a pretagged loop at accelerated speed. “They weren’t coming, they were leaving.”
Paul stared in awe as the 16 ships lifted off from beneath the ocean’s surface and flew over to the pyramid, then headed up into space, eventually leaving the star system. “I guess that answers that.”
“About there still being some around? Yeah, I don’t think that’s the case. I’d guess the Raptors couldn’t get to them under water so they torched what they could from the air and left, but that included the entrances to the underwater highways. They dug down into the land just off the ocean and destroyed them. I’m assuming the ships came out to the pyramid to pick up survivors that got trapped on the other side.”
“Water filled ships, huh?”
“It gets even better,” Jason promised.
“Go on.”
“I think the swimmers are in charge.”
Paul frowned. “How so?”
“Well, this colony’s priority chart indicates that they’re towards the tops, but we were figuring that was because this was a waterworld. Now I’m not so sure. I did a search upstairs for information about other V’kit’no’sat worlds and found some interesting patterns of racial deployment.”
“You couldn’t access it down here?”
“If there’s a way to enlarge these holos I haven’t found it yet, so using the map room is a lot easier…plus I had some help and there’s a lot more legroom up there.”
“Point taken. What patterns?”
“Shared worlds. As far as colonies go, most are either binary arrangements or solos. They don’t share a lot, but wherever the swimmers are there are dozens of races on the same planet. I couldn’t find a single world that only had swimmers, even a few true water worlds with only a trace amount of land still had dozens of enclaves on them. There was even one with no land at all and four other races had built their own version of Atlantis to give them some living space.”
“There’s more,” Jason said before Paul could ask another question. “I did a similar search for patterns amongst the ground pounders and flyers. The Oso’lon are in the same boat as the swimmers. Where they go, others go. I couldn’t find a single Oso’lon only colony, and in more than 80% of the cases the Oso’lon and swimmers occupied the same worlds.”
Paul thought for a moment while Jason waited for him to catch on. “Longnecks?”
The Archon nodded. “For whatever reason, the longnecks appear to be dominant.”
“Have you found priority charts for any other colonies?”
“Yes, and the pattern holds with a few exceptions,” Jason said, pulling out the planetary holo until it became a system-wide view, then he input some hard key strokes and it suddenly shifted to a different star system, then he zoomed back in on another planet, this one with no visible water on it.
A few seconds later he had the priority chart for a world named ‘Kikkorop’ floating in front of Paul for his inspection.
“No swimmers, and the Oso’lon are second tier,” Paul noted. “Behind the Hjar’at.”
“Now look at the population statistics.”
Paul watched as the planet came alive with tiny dots representing numerical numbers of the inhabitants. A few Oso’lon blue dots dominated one city, while a few yellows and reds were clustered elsewhere, but all across the planet’s grasslands green dots were present in the thousands.
“It’s a Hjar’at world,” Paul guessed.
“It might even be their homeworld,” Jason guessed. “I can’t confirm that yet, but it would make sense that the home race would have more pull on their own turf than any other faction.”
“Where do the flyers fit in?”
“That’s another interesting point,” he said, sending the holo back to Earth and highlighting a few scattered cities. “The I’rar’et are the only flyer race present in this colony, but I’ve found three others, and Ryan found another one this morning. They appear mid level at best, and never in the top three tiers on any of the worlds we’ve looked at…though our sample size is proportionately very, very small.”
“I’m not sure which is harder to pronounce, I’rar’et or Pterodactyl.”
“There is another larger race called the Les’i’kron. They were not on Earth at any time, I checked through the entire timeline record and they never appear, but I think you’ll find them very familiar.”
Jason brought up a profile on
the larger flyer race and looked at Paul for his reaction.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
“That was my reaction too,” Jason said, glancing back at the image of a thick, but lean body supporting massive wings and a medium-length neck, on which sat a squarish head that reminded him more of a T-Rex than anything else, though even the Era’tran couldn’t match the sheer fear factor that the ugly face imposed. The Les’i’kron also had a thin, long tail that ended in a bony, double fin that probably functioned like a rudder in flight…or as a blade in combat.
But as alien as the creature looked, it was the spitting image of a dragon from medieval lore.
“That wingspan is bigger than the Mantis’s that we flew in on,” Paul noted.
“And yet these guys seem to have very few colonies, though their numbers are greater on the more densely packed worlds. There are millions of them on the V’kit’no’sat capitol.”
“Remind me to take that off our vacation hit list,” Paul said sarcastically. “You said there were five flyers?”
“So far. The database doesn’t have a comprehensive list to search through, so we’re having to find them through links from other data. A bit odd, but then again nothing in here is structured the way you’d expect. It’s functional, once you get used to the layout, but it’s no Wikipedia Gold.”
That comment caused Paul to have an epiphany. “Has anybody stumbled onto any training programs for children?”
“Not that I know of, why?”
“Maybe these systems aren’t comprehensive, and only data that isn’t widely known is logged. Having a list of races is pointless when you already know their names and can search directly for each one.”
“A bit egotistical assuming everyone will already know and remember,” Jason said, catching himself. “Right…forgot who we’re dealing with here.”
“Add in the compartmentalization and there’s no reason to give easy access menus and lists to help people find stuff that they should either already know about or not have access to.”
“An insiders system,” Jason summed up. “That makes sense, especially considering that I can’t find so much as a floor plan for the swimmer sections of the pyramid. Either I’m missing it or what they’ve got down there isn’t something the rest of the pyramid needs to know about.”
“You really want to wait a couple hours?”
Jason hit a button turning off the hologram. “Not really,” he said, smiling. “Let’s go.”
9
There were no doors blocking access to the lower tiers of the pyramid as there had been on the bottom of tier 18, but the ramps did end prematurely, spilling out into another large chamber that mimicked the dimensions of the command deck. It was smaller, by far, and had large pools replacing most of the pedestals, but the overall feel was the same.
“There’s still water in them,” Paul commented as they walked inside and over to the nearest of the artificial ponds that sat on the border between the water pads and the land pads. “The pyramid must be replenishing the water somehow, or else it’d evaporate away.”
“Doesn’t feel humid either,” Jason added, looking down into the crystal clear water and sighting several connective tunnels in the cliff-like walls of the pool. “You think the lower tiers are all submerged?”
“Gotta have air pockets somewhere,” he reminded him. “And if they used Ter’nat to service this area there’s got to be access corridors somewhere.”
“Alright, let’s start looking,” Jason said, breaking into a run to save time. Paul followed him as they wove their way through the padded pedestals and around the ponds, searching the massive chamber.
It took them more than half an hour before they finally found what looked to be an exit shaft in the opposite wall, Human sized, that looked totally out of place. Nothing was nearby it, save for ponds, and all the lower sections of the pyramid had dino-sized doors…which begged the question, where and what did it lead to?
Paul went in first, traveling down a very narrow hallway that would barely have allowed him and Jason to stand shoulder to shoulder if they tried, but like the rest of the Human architecture the ceiling was high, allowing for the taller Ter’nat. The claustrophobic tunnel ran straight for more than 50 meters before exiting into a slightly larger crossing tunnel that ran parallel to the wall of the secondary command deck.
“Access shafts?” Paul guessed.
“Looks like,” Jason agreed. “Right or left?”
“Right.”
Jason headed that way without further comment and they followed the once again ovoid tunnel past several connective hallways, checking out each as they passed. Most dead ended into specialized rooms with stacks of crates or equipment, while a few appeared to be dormitories, apparently so the Zen’zat in this area wouldn’t have to make the trek down from the top of the pyramid on a daily basis.
After they’d searched 16 of the offshoots they finally found one that led to a staircase that descended lower in the pyramid. Taking it they climbed down and down, as far as they could until it bottomed out at what they guessed was tier 30, though it was hard to know for sure. They walked across a small landing and then out through a door that had a partition in the central compartment that blocked the view coming directly through. Paul passed through the open doorway, turned left and walked around the tip of the divider, then back right and out through the second doorway, whistling appreciatively at the view.
“That’s some fish tank,” Jason agreed as they walked out through the clear tunnel that led across the bottom of a huge, water-filled chamber. He felt like a hamster in a tube, but was glad that the material was keeping the monstrous amount of fluid from crashing in on him. The view was so clear and the water so pristine that they could see everything everywhere, with dozens of tunnels crisscrossing the interior, not only along the floor where they were now, but rising up at angles and intersecting with higher ones, making for a navigational hazard for the swimmers that would have concerned the Archons had there actually been anyone left swimming around in the tank. He didn’t know strong the material was, but a collision seemed like it could be disastrous.
Along the floor were clear domes with wide openings and tunnels connecting to them. In fact, everything down here appeared to be transparent material, save for the walls that appeared bone white, giving the entire place an eerily synthetic feel to it that was in stark contrast to the stone-like construction of the rest of the pyramid.
As they walked they looked up towards the ceiling, spotting several faint dots in the distance that they guessed were the connective tunnels coming down from the ponds on the second command deck, which would mean that the entire bottom base of the pyramid was one giant, water-filled chamber…at least as far as they could see. Everything was brightly lit with white light, but there were so many domes on the ground and connective tunnels going every which way that they couldn’t see the far walls, wherever they actually were.
“We could be in here a while,” Jason said, still in awe at the grandiose design. Given that the base of the pyramid was wider than the top, the dimensions of this underwater chamber had to be larger than even the primary command deck.
“A mongoose would be nice right about now,” Paul thought out loud.
“A bit bumpy on the stairs, but yeah, it would.”
“Back to running?”
“After you,” Jason said, following his friend down the clear tunnel until they came to the first branch, then hung a left to head a quarter mile down an offshoot towards one of the domes.
“Dead end?” Paul asked when they came to a closed door.
“Hardly…probably an airlock to keep the tunnels from flooding,” Jason said, looking the door over as they approached. “If the swimmers have to breathe, then I bet the domes have air inside.”
“Good, because I don’t feel like swimm…” Paul said as the door suddenly opened on its own in front of them, revealing a slightly shimmering energy field in its place.
“That’s new.”
“If that’s what’s holding the air in,” Paul said, stopping short of actually touching the field.
Jason did reach out a hand and touched the crystal-like field…but his hand pushed right through, feeling a bit tight on the other side. He pulled it back and flexed his fingers. “Just stops the air, apparently.”
“After you.”
“After me,” Jason echoed, closing his eyes as he walked through. He was hit with an immediate wave of tight, moist air, realizing that the pressure was higher given to the compacting effect of the water above them. He took several long breaths, letting himself adjust, then waved Paul through.
When the other Archon entered and they walked a few steps down what was left of the tunnel, the solid door behind them closed again.
“Air pressure is high,” Paul commented. “And warm.”
“Guess they like the heat. All the worlds I’ve seen them with colonies on have been tropical at minimum.”
“How many swimmers are we up to now?”
“With the two that Sam found earlier today, that puts us at 14 total, 8 here.”
“So, 83 overall, if you count Humans,” Paul said, doing the math as they walked out of the open ended tunnel and onto the dome’s arc-like half ring of ‘land’ that surrounded a shallow lagoon split up into sections by low, submerged bumps, beyond which was the deep water half of the dome that connected down and out to the rest of the water world by a subsurface access duct. All together, the dome was the size of a football stadium.
“Sleeping chamber?” Jason asked.
“No clue, buddy,” Paul answered, spotting another of the Zen’zat computer consoles that seemed to be everywhere within the pyramid. “Let’s have a look.”
“Hey,” Jason said, pointing down into the nearest of the lagoon nooks. Paul followed his finger line until he noticed several shiny discs on the bottom…same as the ones they’d found on the pedestals on the command deck and elsewhere.
