“We will,” he promised. “In fact, you can head that up as soon as you get back.”
Looking as though she wished she hadn’t said anything, her ancient lips cracked as they puckered like a fish’s. “Okay.”
Osuto looked over to Toriko. “And by the way, I’m glad you had us help Ujaku. He’s already a great addition to the team.”
Toriko blushed. “Well, he has a stake in it too, after the Nukari lackeys nearly destroyed his ship—”
Allia’s voice rang through the intercom. “Just don’t forget to get back quick! Nikko is going to dance for us tonight! And Ujaku and I are going to work on more upgrades for my shield. I think you guys can handle this one without me!”
“Just be ready next time, kid,” Naijen snarled, belying his true concern for her.
* * * * *
“Wait, what is she doing?” Mencari heard Seigie’s alarmed tone as he entered the craft.
“Nothing really,” Toriko replied. Her hands blurred over multiple holographic displays just in front of the main navigation console. The dutiful Spark sat next to her, reviewing his own projection with data.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” Seigie said, more concerned than before.
“Are you sure we need to make those updates now?” Mencari walked over to Toriko while the others strapped into their seats.
“Mini-T can handle normal space flight, but we’re going inside a turbulent nebula,” Toriko explained in a hushed tone. “I’m concerned about her heuristics—and ability to properly compensate without these enhancements.”
“I heard that,” Seigie said. “Rhysus, the last time she tinkered with this ship before flight, it broke up in space. By dumb luck we survived.”
“It’s not changing the fundamental way the ship travels,” Toriko said with frustration tinged with guilt.
“If it changes the way the ship moves, it’s fundamental as far as I care,” Seigie said.
Mencari saw a hollowness in Toriko’s eyes as she stopped work on the interfaces. After an awkward moment of silence, she commanded, “Mini-T, Bob.” In moments the two appeared in a fountain of light.
“What’s up?” Mini-T chimed while Bob bleeped in greeting.
“Run a simulation on real-time support of a navigator within the Janux nebula, assuming the automated navigational systems enhancements are not installed. Include a potential to co-opt systems as necessary.”
“That’s easy enough.” Mini-T created her own holographic display.
“Don’t forget the lag introduced in communications, and a potential gap in transmissions due to the electromagnetic interference,” Bob cautioned.
“Yeah, yeah, Bob,” Mini-T said. “I know, I’m on it.”
Mencari found the interaction amusing. Not only did Mini-T and Bob seem like real people, they sounded like an old married couple.
Mini-T’s screen illuminated with a radiant green light. “We’re good.”
“Within safe tolerances, she means,” Bob clarified.
Toriko looked back at Seigie, her expression serious. “I’ll roll back the update, but I’m piloting it myself. If something happens, I’ll have Mini-T and Bob compensate.”
“Okay,” Seigie said. “I’m not trying to—”
“No, I understand. Sometimes there’s glitches—sometimes more than there should be with my stuff. I guess I have to be reminded of that sometimes.”
With a few gestures, her many displays folded together. A green alert appeared. “There, redacted,” she said. “We’re ready.”
Mencari looked back across the others. Naijen had taken his usual position, as far back away from everyone as possible. Seigie sat as far as she could from Naijen. Which left a spot for him in between them.
A projection of Ujaku appeared before Toriko. “The bay’s open, path to the onramp is clear.”
Nodding, Toriko gestured across the navigation display. The ship undocked from the clamps and made an easy glide backward into space.
Ujaku said, “Come back safely.”
Mencari saw the slight smile cross her face as he took his seat. “Count on it.”
Had he not been looking at the front display, he wouldn’t have known they were spinning around, to orient toward the space lanes. The engines roared to life, shooting them through an open channel through the asteroid belt.
* * * * *
“There!” Toriko cheered as a massive, orange-and-green nebula grew on the forward screen. Sections lit up like a cloudbank in a torrential thunderstorm. Holographic displays appeared next to her that showed astrometrics, dotted with indicators and warning messages.
“It’s rougher than I thought in there,” she said, and bit her lip while reviewing the details. “Eudora!” she gasped. “The amount of energy discharge is off the charts.”
Mencari said, “Is it safe?”
“I’m not taking chances.” She looked over to Bob and Mini-T’s avatars, which floated to the side. “Bob, I need you to monitor conditions within the nebula: changing currents and energy discharges.”
“Roger!” he bleeped.
“Mini-T—hull stress and general perimeter scans. We’re looking for something big in this nebula. Help me find it.”
“Got it!” Mini-T said.
“Enhance my displays with your data,” Toriko directed. “Without the autopilot, I need to focus on navigating.”
Translucent panels of green and yellow layered over the top of her displays.
“Good,” she said, and looked to Mencari for approval. At his nod she said, “We’re going in.”
The ship rocked gently as the internal dampeners struggled to keep up with the ever-changing tides outside.
“I detect a buildup of energy ten clicks ahead,” Bob warned.
Toriko reviewed her displays. “I see it.”
“Discharges appear drawn to specific points within the nebula,” Bob added. “The eddy five clicks ahead should keep us away from the nearest points.”
A yellow marker appeared on her navigational display.
“I’m on it,” Toriko said, still nibbling her lip while she worked through a narrow channel.
The same instant she noticed a section of red appear on the diagram of their ship, Mini-T warned, “Hull stress increasing disproportionally.”
“I know, I know,” Toriko muttered, her eyes on the display showing a section of the ship dragged outside the channel.
“Discharge imminent,” Bob warned.
“Nearly there,” Toriko said, and hit the main thrusters for an extra boost. The yellow indicator turned green seconds before a flash of energy momentarily blanked out the main display. Through a side portal, an arc of raw energy blazed in the distance. It was a massive, forked bolt of energy, like lightning, both beautiful and terrifying. The amount of raw power that floated inside the nebula was staggering. She could feel the tension in her slow-rising shoulders.
“Hull stress is increasing linearly from the eddy,” Mini-T warned. “Still within safe manufacturing tolerances.”
Toriko reviewed the currents around the ship. Despite being a safer location from the arcing energies, the churning tides caused other problems.
“No building discharges for twenty clicks,” Bob informed her.
“Wake me when there’s som’thin ta do,” Naijen grumbled. She looked back in time to see him bank his head against the hull by his head. It really shouldn’t annoy her, but he was just a big baby sometimes. Now wasn’t the time to think about his tantrums.
With support, she guided the ship deeper into the nebula, played cat-and-mouse with the discharges, and adjusted to lessen the hull stresses from the changing tides. Despite progress, the trek felt endless.
“Do we know what we’re looking for?” Seigie said, weary-voiced.
“An asteroid temple.” Toriko gestured. A projection appeared before Seigie with details. “It was referenced in the crystal.”
“Perimeter scans show a drop in nebula density fifty clicks ahead
on our current trajectory,” Mini-T added.
“An abnormally powerful discharge is forming two clicks ahead,” Bob warned.
Before Toriko could do anything, a massive flash blinded them. Mini-T and Bob glitched and disappeared while lights dimmed and flickered around her. The ship listed limply to the side.
“Main power is bleeding out.” She hurriedly reviewed her displays. “Engines are offline.”
“Did we get hit?” Mencari said.
The ship groaned and began to shudder. She knew they were probably drifting out of the traversable channels into the rougher sections of the nebula. She had to work fast or the tides could tear them apart.
A golden glow filled the cabin. Toriko looked and saw Seigie’s aura radiating.
“Just a precaution,” Seigie said, dismissive.
“Mind if I’m not useful for a little bit,” Naijen grumbled to Seigie before he kicked back and closed his eyes.
Toriko bit down on her lip again as she tried to call up more displays.
“No sensors, controls are out, and basic ship diagnostics are coming in and out,” she said, frantic. “So many systems are down! I can’t even get the services to start back up.”
Seigie said, “What does that mean, exactly?”
Her troubleshooting skills all pointed to one conclusion. When all else fails, one thing usually helped. “I need to do a hard reset.”
What if the systems didn’t come back online? She didn’t have much choice. Software resets weren’t responding. There wasn’t even anything in the errors logs about hardware faults. She’d need to code a new reporting module to get better data.
At least Mini-T and Bob knew their last position in the event she couldn’t get the systems back. Maybe Eyani would send Una? Assuming they’d last long enough and their ship could handle the nebula tides. With unexpected suddenness, she wished they could just have tunneled directly inside. But without coordinates, they wouldn’t know where to go in without risk. Of course now, using their data, Una could do just that. A design flashed through her mind of tunneling a probe to a potential location, and the probe could tunnel back with scans to clear a potential location before a larger ship attempted it. She filed it away in the back of her mind for later, assuming there would be one.
The hull groaned louder as she summoned her holographic cube. With a gesture it stretched into a command shell with her favorite old school tech.
“Hello little prompt,” she said, her fingers a blur over a holographic keyboard. In moments she drilled into the ship’s core operating systems. Despite the many software modules she personally bolted on, the ship’s base operating system was still more than half a century old.
She breezed through backdoors and routed around fail-safes until she found the memory location to trigger a hardware reset. She hesitated, finger hovering over the enter key. A prick of pain made her lip tingle moments before the taste of iron seeped into her mouth. The sensation was enough to stop her from gnawing on her lip, a bad habit that appeared to be worse now.
The reset was the only option; she had to take it. She hit the key. The ancient hardware groaned, then stopped. The physical displays blanked, and her holographic panels became void of new data.
A strange silence overtook the ambient sounds of air circulating and electronics buzzing. A red shimmer of emergency lights danced with Seigie’s golden radiance.
“Well, this looks promising,” Seigie said, unimpressed.
The ship jarred, tossing Toriko against her restraint. She saw Spark drive his metal paws into the metal flooring to stop himself from being flung backward.
“Did we hit something?” Mencari yelled.
She watched the displays, waiting for something—anything—to show back up. “Come on!” she said with growing anxiety. “Reboot!”
The ship began to shake, tussling them about.
“Toriko?” Mencari asked.
An icon of a sad face popped up on the physical console before her. Beneath it was a far less useful cryptic code. Unless the operating system just had horrific messaging, this would be a code from the motherboard itself.
“Hardware fault,” she said.
“That bad?” Mencari asked.
“I can work with it. Spark, hardwire in and find the fault.”
With an obedient bark, a panel opened in Spark’s chest and a cable shot forth. The gel-tipped end gushed into a hardware port on the floor. In moments the cable illuminated as Spark interfaced with the ship.
Toriko’s visor began to glow with data. “Good, good,” she said while she reviewed the information. “There, Spark. General fault—flash ROM!”
The ship jarred again, this time accompanied by the sound of electricity discharging across the hull.
She pulled up a three-dimensional display of the ship, which zoomed in on circuit boards. “I can work out a revised start-up sequence.” She filled the display with hex codes. “There,” she said, satisfied. “Install that, Spark.”
Spark barked, and the navigation console before her binged. Seconds later an icon of a cherry with a bite out of it appeared.
“YATA!” she cried. “Cherry OS, such a classic!”
The lights of the cabin flickered again before returning to normal. She noticed a message appear on one of her displays, a display that had been rendered useless by the reset.
“Configuring,” she read. “So far so good. Though, I hope it’s not the 7.0 release. It was so buggy—”
A whirring noise filled the cabin as the environmental systems and main engine came back online. The front display flickered to life. Ragged bands of white ran across the panel.
“Come on, don’t glitch,” she thought out loud.
Looking closer, she noticed the lines weren’t from the display matrix, but rather the actual view outside the ship. Arcs of energy leaped like dolphins in water across a massive wall of asteroids.
The ship’s gentle tremors subsided, and she peered over the navigational display. The sensor array appeared back online, from the renewed stream of data before her.
She watched them pass through an opening in the asteroid wall and into a massive hollow in the nebula. “Huh. We drifted into a channel.”
Mini-T and Bob reappeared in a fountain of light. “There you are!” Mini-T said. “We were worried when we lost contact with you! Eyani was ready to dispatch Una.”
“We’re okay for now,” Toriko said, proud of her creation. Of course, by the way Mini-T worded it, she was physically with Bob and not attached to the ship. Did this mean Mini-T was no longer physically bound to where Toriko put her?
“Some systems are still reporting as being in standby mode,” Mini-T said, looking at a small diagram of the vessel. “Did you reboot everything?”
“I had to,” Toriko said.
“The hull has sustained some electrical damage, mostly just outer-skin stuff.” Mini-T assessed the ship. “Perimeter scans reporting— What’s that?”
Toriko looked at her display. Inside the pocket of the nebula, there wasn’t just a wall, but rather a shell of asteroids around the space. Arcs of power, far too numerous to count, bounded across the structure. While impressive, it was the massive planet and two orbiting moons located at the center of the expanse that piqued her interest.
“There!” she cried out.
“This must be what we’re looking for,” Seigie said.
“Something is very wrong with that planet,” Mini-T said while she reviewed scans of the world. “The entire thing is dead. Not a single creature on it.”
“Nothin’?” Naijen said, suddenly attentive.
Toriko reviewed Mini-T’s data. “Something is very wrong. No lakes or oceans, no snowcapped mountains. Just a gray, desolate world. Except the dirty purple atmosphere.”
She scowled at the readings. “No energy signatures or communication frequencies in use either.”
“I detect structures on the larger moon,” Mini-T said. “Still no life readings. Though there’s
a strange energy signature from the bigger one.”
“Let’s start there,” Mencari said.
As they drew closer, a mammoth structure appeared on the surface.
Seigie peered at it. “What is that?”
“A temple,” Toriko replied, fascinated. It looked like the mighty walls and soaring towers were shaped right from the moon’s surface. Vertical strips of stained-glass windows depicted robed figures, and were dotted with emblems of two interlocking crescents.
“Those crescents,” Toriko said. “They match what I saw from the Tertrn crystal from Nicia!” Right after she spoke, a row of lights illuminated across the surface, and a pattern formed before her eyes.
“A landing strip?” Mencari said. “Are you sure there’s no life readings?”
Toriko checked again and shook her head.
“Take us in,” he said.
CHAPTER 12:
The Gateway
“We haven’t seen this technology from any other race,” Mencari replied. “Let’s go inside.”
“I ain’t goin’ in,” Naijen spat, and leaped up to the roof of the structure.
Seigie looked up at him. “And where are you going?”
“Gonna look around. Need some space, not get boxed in with you again.”
He looked toward the temple, glowed brightly, and disappeared in a streak of light.
“Ready then?” Mencari said. “Just be ready.”
Toriko smirked. There’s that phrase again. What did that mean? They were always as ready as they’d ever be. She looked around, fascinated by the technology all around her as they floated down the narrow corridor. The very walls and floor had no power source, just like the lights of the landing strip. How did they work?
She noticed the composition of the walls looked much like the temple did, as if they were shaped straight from the moon’s surface. There were no visible seams or evidence of construction. Beyond that, she noted the ornate tribal patterns and pictographs that appeared across just about every surface. What did it all mean?
They stopped before a display of three garments hung by their hoods. A dusty yellow robe with a dark crescent was first. The second, a longer, white robe with a blue crescent hung next to a pure black robe with a bright yellow crescent.
D'mok Revival: The Nukari Invasion Anthology Page 53
