by AZ Kelvin
A large chamber with slender triangular pillars in the middle loomed around them at the end of the hallway. A walkway circled the pillars around the perimeter of the room. CJ followed the blood trail clockwise around the room until it led up to another corpse. The body lay face down with one arm stretched out over the head. A handgun was close to the dead and shriveled hand. A short distance away was a third corpse crumpled on the floor next to a command station.
“It would seem that the Blood Stars were the aggressors and the defenders,” Cal said.
“Captain, over here,” Gina called. CJ walked over beyond the command station to find Gina, where she stood next to a decorated console embedded with one-hundred-twenty-two square buttons in rows of eleven by eleven.
“This is it—the device from the image.” CJ ran his hands over the edges of the device. “And no power to operate it. We should have brought a blasted power cell.”
“You really want to try to hump a power cell all the way out here, Captain?” Gina asked.
“Wouldn’t be my first choice, no, but what else are we going to do?”
“What I wouldn’t give for one of those hovering work platforms right about now,” Gina said wistfully. “Too bad we couldn’t fit a cargo lift in Moonshadow.”
“No, but we could fit a med-bed in there.” CJ had a thoughtful look on his face.
Gina caught on right away. “Right. If they can lift Bernie, they sure as hell, can lift a power cell.”
“Exactly, but, it’s still gonna be a bear to get it back here.”
“Can’t we just do a little trimming?” Cal asked.
“The canopy branches are heavy and intertwined, Cal. If we try to blast our way in or out, we’re likely to bury this place before we even get in, not to mention starting the mother of all forest fires.” The rising mist caught CJ’s attention. “Come on, we should seal this place back up before it’s completely filled. We’ll come back after tomorrow’s patrol.”
They did the best they could to seal the chamber from the ambient moisture of the steamy environment for the night.
They hiked back to Moonshadow; along the way they left markers to help them find their way back to the root-enshrined outpost. Gina got them out of the forest and back into space where the Altered Moon jumped in to pick them up. GABI jumped the ship out before anyone noticed they had been there.
*~*~*
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The journey back the next day took only half the time; it was far more difficult to find a route in a wilderness than it was to hike an established one. Katy joined them on this trip so they could have two people per med-bed. The gravity field generators on med-beds were strong enough to carry even the heaviest Human being, but limited to about a meter in terms of the distance they would go off the ground. The contribution as load mules, however, was greatly appreciated. One of the med-beds carried a power cell strong enough to bring the outpost’s main systems online if they were still capable of activation after almost two hundred years. The extra med-bed was empty, with the hope it would carry back whatever it was they found inside the outpost.
The sheer thrill of being here and going after ancient treasure was enough to energize CJ’s spirit of adventure. The fact that they were dinking around behind enemy lines in a war with the Kang was a small concern to him, way down here among the roots of the forest. The terrain was strenuous, and the visibility was poor, but this is what CJ thrived on. The gleam in Cal’s Human eye, as he hopped over a root and landed in a hunter’s crouch, told CJ he felt the same way.
Katy seemed excited to be on the planet and studied everything around her on the way to the outpost. The chief engineer didn’t make the away team roster very often, her job being a critical one to the Altered Moon’s continual operations. CJ needed a fourth player in today’s game and he wasn’t comfortable bringing Pene. On the other hand, he wasn’t comfortable leaving the Moon without her chief engineer at this particular time, either.
A look of wonder crossed Katy’s face when she saw the room at the bottom of the stairs. CJ and Katy had the power cell hooked up in a matter of minutes and the outpost’s systems whined and hummed as they woke from their long slumber. Several circuits overloaded and sparks popped out from control panels around the room, but the main systems continued to charge and power up. Alarms sounded off, as the habitat sensors read a breach in the outer hatch. Cal discontinued the alerts and cut the upper-level room out of the sensor loop.
The pillars in the middle of the room drew their attention right off the bat as the lights came to full standard. Eleven carved Blackwood pillars stood in three rows with four on each of the outer rows and three in the middle row. Each triangular pillar was just less than three meters tall with all sides about ten centimeters wide; all of them were mounted to disc-shaped plates at the floor and ceiling.
“Eleven pillars—eleven rows on the device,” CJ said.
“There’s a door here,” Katy called.
CJ and the others came over to see the double-wide door she found, which had eleven large exterior dead bolts around the two sides and across the top.
“Eleven again. Somebody’s got a thing for the number eleven,” CJ said with a sarcastic snort. “The pillars, the puzzle box, and the door locks have got to be linked somehow.”
“Well, we won’t be jimmy’n this door open.” Cal ran his hand along the edge. “It’s like a friggin’ vault door.”
“It is a friggin’ vault door, Cal.” Gina chided.
Cal turned away from Gina and scratched the back of his head with his middle finger up. Gina laughed quietly.
Katy ran a test on the air quality. “The air reads clear. Can we take these things off?”
CJ double-checked the air quality. “Yes, we’re good. This room is sealed and vented.” CJ removed his respirator mask just as everyone else did, and they all got a nose full of nasty dead smell. “Ungh, did I say vented?”
“You know, the sense of smell is trigged by microscopic airborne particles of whatever it is that you smell at the moment,” Cal shared with the group. “So right now, there are little pieces of dead guy hangin’ out in your nose.”
“Eww, that‘s gross, Cal!” Gina frowned at him and put her respirator mask back on.
“What, it’s not me, it’s just the way things are—it’s physics.” Cal shrugged.
“No. Shut up,” she grumbled.
CJ and Katy shared a smile at Gina’s behavior, and then Katy quietly turned away and slipped her own mask back on, too.
“Gina, come on.” Cal laughed a little.
Gina went over to the dead guy by the command station, pulled out her Rellia K-13, and shot him in the head.
“Gina!” Katy exclaimed with a shocked face.
“I didn’t like the way he smelled.” Gina seemingly tried to keep a straight face.
“Well, he’s gonna smell worse now!” Cal joked as he waved his hand in front of his face for show.
“You know, you’re gonna get a bad rep with dead guys if you keep on shooting them in the head the way you do,” CJ said.
“Hey, look—pillars!” Gina pointed to the closest one to change the subject.
The group laughed as Cal and Katy joined her at the pillars, but CJ couldn’t take his eyes off the device. The image did the device a great injustice when you stood next to the real thing. The craftsmanship was incredible; every hand-carved star across the top twinkled with a tiny prism of its own, and the Starfire blossoms sparkled in the light. The puzzle box was integrated into the command station, but hadn’t powered up with the rest of the systems. He lightly ran his fingers around the edges of the device, yet didn’t find any hidden catches.
“CJ,” Katy called over.
CJ broke away from the intriguing device to join the others, “Yes, wifey?”
“Look at these pillars, hubby. They’re carved Blackwood, and the carvings are very strange.”
Blackwood was aptly named due to the main color of the hardwood,
but the grain, which sparkled with tiny silver specks, was what made it unique. The carvings on the pillars differed from side to side, and no two pillars were the same. The silver specks in the wood’s grain gave the etchings and carvings on the pillar an unusual depth. CJ reached out to touch the pillar and found, to his surprise, that it spun in place. The rest of the group picked out pillars of their own to play with. Cal got three going at once and tried for a fourth.
“Ugh,” Gina scoffed and shook her head. “And you’re older than me?”
Cal stuck out his tongue and wiggled his head at her in return.
“All right kids, that’s enough,” CJ scolded them. “Cal, please don’t break the ancient machine.”
“Oookaaay.” Cal acted hurt, as he quit spinning the pillars.
“Wait!” Katy said quickly. “Keep doing that, Cal. Here, look.”
CJ stood behind Katy to see what it was she looked at. Katy spun the pillar in front of her at the same time as Cal on the other side. Something flashed every now and again as the pillars spun around and around. CJ had to readjust his position a little back and forth to catch a glimpse of the vague and elusive image. “What is that? Is that—people?” CJ squinted his eyes to see better, which didn’t help at all.
“That’s a skirt,” Gina pointed out.
“And, that’s a crown,” Katy added.
“They’re queens!” CJ, Katy, and Gina all said at the same time.
“Spin them all if we can.” CJ moved through and spun each pillar he came to.
“Hey!” Cal said in surprise when hidden images began to randomly pop up throughout the group of spinning pillars.
“There’re queens here,” Katy tried to spot the different images before they disappeared again. “There’s an angel and another, and I see dogs, too.”
“But what are they trying to tell us?” CJ asked.
“Maybe we have to spin the pillars at different speeds,” Cal suggested.
Over the next two hours, they tried every permutation of speed combination they could think of with no results. Not sure what to try next, they sat and munched Ergbars for a break. CJ, restless as usual, got up to wander around the open walkway surrounding the pillars. He stopped suddenly; then he backed up, and then he did it all over again.
“Come here, all of you.” CJ moved into the pillars to adjust a center one. “Walk by here and look through the pillars as you do.”
“Whoa!” Cal did what CJ told him to.
“Oh, wow, they don’t have to be spinning.” Katy walked back and forth and back and forth again.
“They just have to be spun to the right spot.” CJ finished her thought and sentence. “So, when you have them all in the right positions, you see an entire scene as you walk around them.”
“That’s amazing,” Gina said, as she walked by and watched four queens walk arm in arm, in perfect stop-action animation, up to a festival in front of a castle. The pillars in the back row lined up with both the pillars in the middle row and the ones in front to create different three-dimensional images, one after the other when viewed from around the perimeter walkway.
“Here.” CJ moved to a middle pillar. “Tell me when this one lines up.” He rotated the pillar until the girls told him to stop.
“Cap, spin that one,” Cal said from the other side of the pillars. “There’re six dogs on this side goin’ after a smaller dog.”
“That’s a fox, Cal” CJ replied.
“Which is a small dog, yeah?”
CJ couldn’t argue that point.
CJ and Cal turned the pillars, guided by the others until CJ came to the last one. “Okay, here we go.”
CJ spun the pillar only halfway when several loud thunks could be heard. Dust puffed out of hidden seams throughout the room, and the lights along the side of the puzzle box came on.
“Yes!” CJ pumped his fist and started for the puzzle box.
Cal checked the vault door; it was still firmly secured.
“It was to gain access to the puzzle box.” CJ noticed a bright sparkle from the very last pillar as he walked by. It was a golden star exploding into a glare of sunlight on an ocean, which drained away to reveal four diamonds on the sand. “Heeey, GABI said there may be a primer for the puzzle box, and I think the pillars are it. Look, a golden star that turns into an ocean with four diamonds. Everything seems to start at golden stars. What does the next one in line show?”
“Ah—three trails branching off in different directions,” Cal said after he checked the pillars.
“Okay, that’s diamonds first, I’ll bet, then paths. Keep going.” CJ made notes as they went around. The stop-action images moved and changed, one image after another, as the crew walked around the group of pillars. When they came to the eleventh one, the pattern started again. By the time they had gone all the way around a third time, CJ had the sequence and was ready to match it up against the puzzle box.
“So tell me again, what the plan is,” Katy said.
“Okay. I think the golden star,” CJ told them, “starts out both the puzzle box sequence and the pillar images. The pillar images lay out what sequence to follow on the puzzle box. The golden star on the pillars flares up over the ocean with the four diamonds. So the first row down will be four spaces over from the golden star on the puzzle box. The first Starfire flower is on the left side of the lamppost, so we go four spaces to the left. Then just reapply the same format to the rest of the rows.”
“And, what happens if you’re wrong?” Gina asked.
“I haven’t a clue. But, it’s usually nothing good.”
“What’s the sequence from the pillars?” Cal asked.
CJ read from his list and matched them to what side of the lamppost the Starfires were on. “The four diamonds are first, according to the pillars, and the first Starfire is on the left, so that’s four spaces to the left on the first row from the top. Three paths to the right. Three ghosts to the right again. Six hounds to the left. One chance to the right. Seven stars to the left. Four scouts to the left. Three queens to the right. Five bandits to the left. Seven demons to the left. Two angels to the right. So, from the golden star top to bottom it’s four left, three right, three right, six left, one right, seven left, four left, three right, five left, seven left, and two right. Those are the buttons we need to hit.”
“Sounds as good as any to me, Cap,” Cal spoke up. “Honestly, if I was on my own, I would’a left beaten and brokenhearted by now.”
“Well, there’s one way to find out.” CJ went over the notes on his datpad. He moved to the device and poked the fourth button to the left of the golden star on the top row. The button stayed down and the lights along the left side began to flash in unison.
“Hmm, is that good or bad?” Katy asked, as they all watched the lights for a second.
“Okay, so far, I guess.” CJ shrugged. He reached up to poke the next button just as the top light went dark and stayed dark. “Huh, maybe not.”
“I think you need to go faster.” Gina urged him on.
“Right, what’s the next one?” CJ looked down at his notes.
“Three paths, three paths—right, go right three spaces!” Katy excitedly read over his shoulder.
The second light down from the top went dark.
“Shit. Right three, got it!” CJ hit the next button.
The third light from the top went dark.
“Hey, the lights are going faster!” Cal pointed out.
“I see that!” CJ tried to remain calm, as he pulled out his datpad and held it out. “Here, somebody read off the next one.”
Katy grabbed the datpad. “Ah, three, right.”
“That was the last one!” CJ grumbled.
“Three right, again!” Katy grumbled back.
CJ hit the button and the fourth light went dark while the rest started to flash faster. The fifth light went dark before CJ even hit the next button.
“Quick, what’s the next one?” CJ asked in a hurry.
“Six left!” Katy blurted out.
Another button was pushed and another light went dark. Five lights remained flashing and seven buttons were left to push.
“What’s gonna happen if we don’t make it?” Cal asked.
“Shut up, Cal! Hurry, CJ!” Gina urged him again.
“One right!” Katy read off quickly.
CJ found and pushed the button as fast as he could.
“Seven left!”
They gained some ground as CJ quickly hit the next button before the next light off.
“Four left!”
CJ hit the sixth button just as the seventh light down from the top went dark, which left four lights and five buttons. The race was tight, but not lost.
“Three right!”
CJ hit the button.
“Five left!”
CJ hit the eighth button just as the eighth light went out. Deafening klaxons suddenly went off and red warning lights flashed at every station.
“Cap, we should go!” Cal screamed to be heard over the noise.
“No, it’s just a scare tactic! Katy next one!”
“Seven left!”
CJ again pushed the button.
“Two right!” she yelled the last one to him.
CJ pushed the last button, which sent the klaxons and warning lights into double time, joined by a constant bell ringing.
“Seedge?” Katy looked at him nervously and held her hands over her ears.
“Okay go! Go!” CJ started to corral his crew toward the stairs when a sudden silence followed the chaotic cacophony.
They relaxed as no explosions went off over the next minute, and then one of the massive dead bolts opened with a loud snap. The remaining ten followed suit at five-second intervals until all of them had retracted and the door creaked and groaned, as it lifted up and away.
The four of them gathered in the doorway to look upon the treasure that was worth so much trouble. A short corridor led back to a small alcove, where two long and tall chests sat in the middle. Excited smiles crept across their faces as they moved in and around the chests.
The chests hummed from internal power sources of their own; control panels were built into their sides. Katy gasped, as she brushed aside the dust of the ages and recognized the control configuration. “CJ these are quantum sleep chambers, occupied quantum sleep chambers.”
