Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2
Page 23
Jazz relayed what Eupiar said to Veloshira. The Silver Raven arced upward to the skies and accelerated toward the source of their recent hit, the Abyssal Pelican. “What kind of data do you need?”
Eupiar pushed holoscreen over to Jazz containing a paused image of the video play back he and Vaishea recovered. “This wormhole is Lyonria in origin.”
“So?”
Chloe moved in closer toward Jazz to look at the hologram. She saw an oval shaped object resting upright on the floor of the ocean. One that looked just like the object she saw on Oyuri during her strange mind control trance. This device she looked at in the hologram however was larger, defiantly built to send a ship through rather than people like the one on Oyuri.
“How are we going to use it if we don’t know how their systems work or language? Well lucky for us I might have a solution,” Eupiar said. “I briefly came across a copy of translated files of the Lyonria language done by some scholar. If I had that data, we can better understand how to turn the thing on.”
The Silver Raven broke away from Rasi’s gravitational pull as it crossed the border into the realm of space. The Abyssal Pelican remained still and forced the Silver Raven to execute slick moves of rolling and dodging as a barrage of plasma missiles soared out from the gigantic dreadnought. Each missile that managed to crash against the Silver Raven dropped its shields by nineteen percent.
The Silver Raven was down to forty-five percent as they made their final stretch toward their target.
Abyssal Pelican, Rasi orbit, Barnard’s Star system
“The Hashmedai ship approaches,” Levea said to the bridge crew.
Peluei the former captain of the Abyssal Pelican debated on their next move. Jainuzei should be the one calling the shots. But he had retreated to his quarters, refusing to accept all requests for him to come to the bridge and take control.
“Bring us about to face to it,” he said. “Ready forward plasma cannons.”
“Shall I have our psionics continue guiding missiles?” said one of the main psionics on the bridge.
“How long until we are within weapons range for the plasma cannons?”
“Less than two minutes,” Levea said.
Two minutes, it’s possible we could have it destroyed by then. It’s also possible they’ll slip away if we are hesitant on using the plasma cannons. He thought about his choice awhile longer while pondering what might happen should they miss. The Silver Raven was after all in front of Rasi, a missed plasma bolt could hit the surface and potentially wipe out a city, or one of their ground forces below.
“Keep firing missiles,” Peluei said. “Helm keep us moving, when they are in range of our forward plasma cannons, let me know.”
Silver Raven, Rasi orbit, Barnard’s Star system
“Alright do your thing Mary Sue,” Jazz said to Eupiar.
Eupiar cracked her knuckles then began typing away on her holographic keyboard. She pushed aside the fact that they could be shot down any moment, an unnecessary distraction the task at hand. She looked at her screen and put her expertise to work.
Accessing Abyssal Pelican network.
Access granted.
Radiance Union Navy - Abyssal Pelican network:
Please state your request.
Search: User Ure Sinzihea.
Searching, please standby.
User: Ure Sinzihea found
Please enter password
***************
Access granted.
Show most recent saved files.
Data package 13539_9 sent by User: Ary Odelea
Download: Data package 13539_9 sent by User: Ary Odelea Y/N?
Select save location.
Datacrystal117:UserEupiar
Downloading files to Datacrystal117:UserEupiarNew files
0%
33%
64%
“Eupiar?” Jazz asked as the Silver Raven took another hit.
“Almost got it!”
69%
95%
Download complete.
Exit Abyssal Pelican network? Y/N?
“Got it!” Eupiar said jubilantly in English before she said to Veloshira in Hashmedai. “Nose dive us toward the surface.”
“Nose dive?”
“Just fly straight toward it Vel.”
Eupiar saw the freighting sight of the Abyssal Pelican move away from the windshield as the Silver Raven made a hard bank toward the left. Rasi came back into view, a view that began to swell as they got closer and increased speed ever so slightly. This was a nose dive if she ever saw one.
“Fire the plasma cannons, full power and spread, we need to melt a hole large enough for us to fit through,” Eupiar said.
Green lights ejected away from the Silver Raven in the form of plasma. It illuminated the thick and dark clouds they sunk into and crashed into the surface they were nearing.
“Can this even handle underwater?” Jazz asked.
“I’m assuming so,” Veloshira said. “It can operate in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.”
“Good enough for me.”
“We just need to keep the shields up to prevent water from entering the intake valves,” Eupiar said. “And to survive the impact diving in at these speeds, oh and the crushing water pressure we will be close to the bottom of the ocean floor.”
“What shields?” Veloshira asked. “The battle has weakened our shields.”
Eupiar checked the status of their shields, Veloshira was right; they were sitting at twenty-three percent. Too weak, we won’t make it now unless . . . “Vel, stop firing transfer weapons power to shields.”
“We haven’t broken through the ice.”
“Nope, we’re going to need some help with that,” Eupiar said as she brought up a holo screen of the estimated position of the Abyssal Pelican. It was a minute away from it aiming its forward plasma cannons toward them. “Slow us down, and let the Pelican shoot its cannons at us.”
Jazz looked at her with a worried look on his face. “You’re crazy.”
“I’m totally down for a better idea,” she said to him.
The Silver Raven slowed and began to circle around in the upper exosphere of Rasi. They evaded the scores of plasma missiles that rained down toward them, goading the Pelican to fire its plasma cannon. The Pelican cannons lined up with the Silver Raven, and fired. The Silver Raven quickly turned away from the blast, avoiding it as it descended toward the surface, while keeping the arcology directly below them.
No more plasma was fired from the Pelican, they weren’t going to risk vaporizing the colony along with their forces still inside. The huge ball of plasma they narrowly dodged however plunged to the icy surface, melting a gigantic hole in it in the aftermath of the explosion. The Silver Raven with its newfound shield power via taking its weapons offline dove into the waters below.
The impact into the ocean was rough due to the speed and angle the Silver Raven dove in. It sent a tremor throughout the ship and nearly shattering the shield power they had. The Silver Raven leveled off and moved through the ocean near its surface, to the amazement of everyone aboard. They did it.
“Anyone following?” Chloe asked.
Eupiar nodded no. “None that I can detect.” She looked at hologram relaying sensor scans of the surface above them. “Looks like they’re bombing the ice above us.”
“Let’s move out quickly then, before a glacier breaks off and slams into us,” Jazz said.
An hour later, the Silver Raven continued to swim through the ocean, its lights up front and the lights from its engines was the only thing that could been seen within the depths of the pitch black dark ocean.
The aquatic life periodically hit the sides of the shields
and skittered away in fear. Eupiar saw something that resembled a humpback whale with no eyes and tentacle like arms stretching away from its front. The tentacle arms worked like feelers for the creature as it swam toward the surface digging through the sand looking for food.
According to what was learnt from the data crystal Jazz brought aboard, the location of the wormhole was still another forty-five minutes to go. Eupiar pushed away all the holoscreens around her, and began to review the newly downloaded data from the Pelican. Her translation software auto translated the files into English. There was just one problem, Lyonria text . . . Odelea made some break through into not only discovering their language by translating some of it to Radiance. Before Eupiar could proceed further, she accessed the source code of her translator and started the tedious task of updating and reprogramming it.
“Done at last . . . fucking hell,” she said, thirty minutes later.
“What’s up?” Jazz asked.
“Had to add the Lyonria text into my translation software. Of course that scholar only had it translated to Radiance so . . .” She tossed a holo window toward him, showing translated Lyonria text found on Oyuri converted into English. “Here we go, Lyonria translated into English. Now to figure out how to use their tech.”
“Can’t you just hack into it like everything else?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she said. “Hacking into UNE, Radiance and Hashmedai is easy since all three programming languages are similar.”
“Really?”
“Radiance gave advance tech to the Hashmedai when they first meet, and therefore both computer systems operate almost identical. Humans reversed engineered Hashmedai tech while receiving Radiance tech and married it with their own. Once you master human computers, learning Hashmedai and Radiance is an easy task. Lyonria however . . . that’s computer technology that is truly unknown and alien. Whoever this scholar Odelea is, and the help she got learning about the Lyonria is helping us out a ton right now.”
“Odelea . . .” Chloe muttered upon overhearing Eupiar from the rear lounge area. She came back into the cockpit and asked her. “You have her files?”
“Yep.”
“I remember her,” Jazz said, “She tried to kill me after snatching Hannah.”
“Then she handed Hannah off to me,” Destiny said as she entered the cockpit as well. “Small world or should I say galaxy?”
The Silver Raven came to a full stop fifteen minutes later upon reaching their destination, the wormhole. Just like the holovids they examined from earlier, it was a giant shaped oval ten stories tall, five wide. Platforms surrounded it, built by Radiance to study it closer.
Many of the platforms had computers mounted onto them in which the cabling of them directly connected to the electronics inside the device, assuming Lyonria even uses something like that. The computer workstation installed by Radiance were still functioning, the wormhole generator itself however wasn’t, according to the poorly secured network connection Eupiar managed to access with her laptop.
“This looks like it,” Chloe said. “Our ticket back to Earth.”
“If we can pull this off . . .” Jazz said.
“Then those refugees with the Whisper can finally make it back home,” Chloe said.
“Guess that makes us the lab rats,” Eupiar said as she read over the newly scanned data.
“Those platforms, what do you make of it?” Destiny asked Eupiar.
“Seems Radiance . . . or the order whoever it was, was studying it, trying to figure out its secrets.” Eupiar brought up a holo screen containing Odelea translated notes. “Odelea’s package here refers more to some weird structure on Oyuri and how to activate it.”
“So it was her,” Chloe mumbled. “I was there, well in the other body that is, when that fortress started to power up suddenly. She not only figured out their language, but how to use it to activate their technology.”
“Odelea must be quite the prodigy then,” Eupiar said. “Because what I’m reading from the data banks Radiance couldn’t make heads or tails on how this wormhole device works, then there was still the language barrier.”
“Well Odelea was a language expert,” Chloe said. “It was the sole reason she was chosen to speak for Radiance when they first made contact with Earth. If I remember correctly, she speaks all six dialects of Radiance, Hashmedai as well as thousands of the languages spoken on Earth.”
“That’s fucked,” Jazz said. “After I learned Hashmedai and Rabuabin with those language learning interfaces, I tried to learn Linl . . . didn’t work out so well.”
“Well remember, you’re human, she’s Aryile, they might be more evolved than us,” Chloe said. “They already have higher resistances to radiation and are less likely to suffer from the bone problems we do from being in zero-g for long periods of time.”
As they talked, Eupiar hacked into the computers around the platform that were connected to the oval gate. Several key strokes later combined with her eyes moving back and forth from Odelea’s information and her main screen she revealed. “If we’re so inferior.” She pointed toward the windshield, lights around the oval gate powered on. “Then why did I just turn this thing on?”
“You’re half Hashmedai, you don’t count!” Jazz shouted.
“How the fuck did you do that so quickly?” Chloe asked her.
“The computer interfaces Radiance had along the sides of the gate linked into its systems,” she said. “Using Odelea’s notes and my newly updated translator, I basically used the Radiance’s computers to send a signal to the gate.”
“Just like that?”
“They weren’t that far off from figuring it out, they just lacked the knowledge of the Lyonria language and how their computers work to activate it.”
The center of the oval shaped gate flashed a bright blue, then transformed into stars hanging in the vastness of space. The water around the gate started to crystallize rapidly. “The water is freezing,” Jazz said.
“The gate directly connects to space so that would make sense,” Chloe said. “With that said, if we’re going to do this, we better hurry before the ice is too thick to break.”
Jazz instructed Veloshira to plow forward while strengthening the forward shields. The distance of six light years was crossed in a matter of seconds as the Silver Raven flew through the gate and smashed through the layer of ice forming around it. Behind them as they passed through was another oval shaped gate floating amongst dormant comets and tiny asteroids. From the prospective of those on the Silver Raven, it looked like a doorway in space, leading into the center of a dark ocean on an alien world.
The transition from light gravity to no gravity in less than a second was interesting to Eupiar. It wasn’t like traveling to space where the gravity slowly went away over a period of a few seconds. Eupiar checked the Silver Raven’s navigational systems to learn where they had landed. The locations of the stars were similar to the starts found in the skies of Earth. “We made it,” Eupiar said, with a glowing smile. “We’re back in Sol!”
“Where?” Jazz asked her.
Eupiar double-checked her computer as it completed its analysis and revealed their estimated location in the system. “Kuiper belt according to this, the ass end of Sol. It will take us at least five days to get to Earth.”
Jazz relayed their new discovery and game plan to Veloshira, she groaned and said. “Earth, we should return to the empire, we have the advantage now.”
“We still need a way to get those humans back to safety,” Jazz said to her in Hashmedai. “And I’m not going to lie, Destiny, Eupiar and I came out her to get Hannah back, would be nice if we can finish that task.”
Veloshira snorted. “Not my concern.”
“Sounds like there’s an issue?” Chloe asked.
“Veloshira’s just a little home sick,” Jazz said. “Our main job regardless is getting those humans through this gate and back to Earth.”
“We need to contact the UNE then.”
Jazz, Destiny and Eupiar all spun around and looked at Chloe with a ‘seriously?’ look on their faces. None of them were cool with UNE for various reasons.
“’Course you’d suggest that . . .” Destiny mumbled.
Chloe crossed her arms as she slowly floated upward. “If you got a better idea on getting those people back to Earth I’m all ears. Last time I checked your friends in the HLF are gone.”
“She’s, right,” Jazz said slowly. “Getting those people outta there is going be a major rescue op, one we don’t have the space to do.”
“We can tell the UNE of the location of this wormhole,” Chloe said. “They’ll send ships and a team of commandos in to get everyone back home—”
A section of the ceiling exploded unexpectedly, raining sparks and tiny burning bits of debris shooting down. The computer station where Eupiar plugged her laptop into sparked and flared seconds later. Everyone took cover, shielding their face with their arms until the sparks stopped spraying.
“The fuck is it now,” Jazz said, brushing away smoking from his face.
“Plasma conduit overloaded,” Veloshira said, climbing back into her chair. “This ship has taken a lot of damage.”
“Yep, that overload just fucked up this terminal.” Eupiar floated out of her chair to check the hardware below. “Oh yeah, she’s done,” Eupiar said as smoke billowed from the components inside.
“We got scanning, navigation, that’s about it,” Veloshira said.
“Any of you experts at repairing a Hashmedai ship?” Jazz asked in English.
“The computers shouldn’t be a problem if I can get spare parts,” Eupiar said. “As for everything else?”
“We’re fucked?”
“Wing it and hope for the best.”
“There’s still the issue of parts,” Chloe said.