by J. N. Chaney
I eased my way over to the nearest pillar. Dressler could speculate all she wanted, but the simple truth was that this device was foreign in all the wrong ways. She said it was a means of transportation, but we had no idea how it worked or what other capabilities it had.
How the hell did a giant egg double as a transport, anyway? I couldn’t see how that was even possible, since the damned thing was locked into the floor.
“I’m powering it down,” said Dressler. “Wait a moment.”
The humming sounds decreased steadily, the glow of light inside fading with it until both had died away completely. I paused, waiting for something else to happen, wincing inwardly as I anticipated a possible explosion. When nothing came, I continued my cautious approach, treading lightly as I walked, stepping carefully towards the machine. It seemed that the entire structure had powered down. I inspected the pillars from the safest distance that still afforded me a view.
The problem was immediately apparent. On the first pillar, scorch marks at least fourteen centimeters long marred one section. With power to the device now off, it no longer crackled.
Everything else looked fine, as far as I could see. I double checked once more around the outside, inspecting as well as possible without knowing anything about Celestial technology, but I found nothing. Confident that the danger had passed, I chanced walking warily up the ramp and standing on the platform within. It didn’t look like anything particularly special. Just empty with nothing inside but the flat surface of the grate beneath my feet.
“Well?” called Abigail. “Anything?”
“Just a little damage on this side,” I replied, descending the ramp more confidently than I had ascended. “Other than that, nothing. What about you, Doc? How’s it look from over there?”
Dressler continued moving from one holo to the next, swiping them away as she sorted through the data. “There’s a wealth of information here. It will take time to decipher all of it. I think we can run it through Sigmond and get a better analysis, but we’ll need to connect it to the network. This room appears to be self-contained.”
Dressler rubbed her head again and looked a little worse for wear. She’d likely been riding on adrenaline from her near death experience and subsequent discovery of the room. Now that the excitement was over, all the pain and exhaustion would take its place. Right about then, I felt like I’d been thrown from a shuttle without a jump rig, so she had to be feeling the same..
“Let’s regroup with everyone, check on the wounded,” I said, making sure my voice left no room for argument. “And get you looked at. As soon as we assess what happened out there, we’ll come back with a full team.”
* * *
Back out in the hangar, the aftermath of the fight was evident. Several ships still had smoke rising from their hulls. The space was so massive that the material damage didn’t make much of a difference compared to the greater whole, despite our earlier encounter with the enemy. I supposed that spoke to the size of this bay.
The lives lost were another story. At least five dead, Sigmond had said. I hoped that would be all of them, though there were injured who might die from their injuries if left untreated. Anger, white hot, flashed through me. They had taken Lucia and Athena from us, had almost killed Dressler. I would have to inform the families, which was something I had, sadly, grown used to.
Major Sanchez stood with another Sarkonian and Lieutenant Rackham. His eyes widened slightly when he saw me. I didn’t know what I looked like right then, but I could only assume the phrase “beat to shit” would have been an accurate description. He said something to Rackham and jerked a chin in our direction.
Rackham and Sanchez walked our way and I slowed so they could intercept. “Major, glad to see you made it,” I told him.
“Hughes.” He nodded at Abigail and Dressler. “Glad to see you in one piece. Sigmond told us about your request for more troops. I have them en route as we speak.”
“We got ambushed by a Celestial in mobile armor, then one of the Berserkers tried to take out my scientist,” I said shortly. “Let’s secure this area as soon as possible. I think we’ve just stumbled onto something important and I’d rather not let the enemy take it back from us.”
Rackham nodded sympathetically. “You look ready for the med bay. Need any help?”
I glanced back at Dressler. She gave a little shake of her head. Abigail looked kilometers better than both me and the doctor. She only had a few cuts and bruises to show for our trouble.
“We’ll make it,” I told him, waving off any assistance, “although we appreciate it.”
“Let me know when you’re patched up, Hughes,” said Rackham. “I think we may have our work cut out for us.”
* * *
While Dressler recovered, I focused my thoughts on the most immediate problems. With Carl’s memory fragmented, Athena’s fate was unfortunately still unknown. We simply didn’t have a clear idea of how many Celestials might be loose on the ship or how they had avoided our initial scans.
The discovery of the hangar was a positive step forward, despite the casualties. A whole fleet of advanced spacecrafts, ripe for the taking and analysis. They had the potential to provide us with a wealth of information on our enemy. I couldn’t say with any certainty whether or not the end result would be worth the cost we had just paid, but I remained hopeful for it. Only a handful of the ships had been damaged during the attack, which left plenty for our engineers to check out when the time came.
I circled back around to the Celestials that hadn’t escaped, trying to work out what exactly had happened between the time we had arrived here and today. Carl had mentioned only a handful had been on Tartarus to begin with, and we’d certainly killed more than a few of them by this point. That suggested, if he was telling us the truth, that there couldn’t be many more left to find. In fact, there was a decent chance that the Celestials we’d encountered in the shipyard had been all of them, but it would serve me better to think otherwise. He’d also mentioned another means of getting off Tartarus without the use of any ships, and if Dressler was right about the egg, we’d just found that method of escape. All that was left was to figure out how it worked.
She’d also said that it had not been activated recently. I wanted to believe that no one had gotten off the ship, including Athena, and that we’d find them all eventually, but I couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was wrong and that we were chasing ghosts. If they’d managed to use the pod to get off this ship—or found some other means of escape—then we’d have to follow them. Getting that egg operational might be the only solution I’d have.
Still, all I had were questions. Questions about the egg-shaped machine sitting in that landing bay, questions about the armored suits. All of these new discoveries that continued to add up to an end I couldn’t see.
I opened the med pod and began to climb out.
“Sir, the pod has not finished its sequence,” Junior said. “I really must protest.”
“Stow it, Junior. Where’s Abby?” I asked, stumbling to pull on my gear again.
“In your quarters, sir.”
I rounded the last corner that led to my quarters and ran into Abigail, who was obviously alerted by Junior and coming to check on me. There were no secrets, it seemed, especially with a nosy AI monitoring your every movement.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked upon seeing me. “You’re supposed to be recovering.”
“Athena is still on Tartarus,” I explained. “At least, that’s what I’m going to assume until I learn otherwise. And if that’s true, then it means I need to get back to work. Dressler still needs a bit longer to recover, but I’m fine, and there’s work to be done.”
She nodded emphatically. “I think you’re right.”
“Carl and Sigmond should be just about done, hopefully,” I went on. “Maybe the Celestial can tell us something about Athena’s location.”
“I believe I can,” a calm and modulated voice
stated from behind us.
Abigail yelped and I jumped, whirling around, startled by the sudden appearance of a bald man on my ship. He looked vaguely familiar and I wondered if he was Union or Sarkonian. “Who the hell are you?!” I snapped.
“Carl,” he told us. He smiled. “My systems have been partially restored, enough that I was able to construct a hard light fixture of myself, thanks to Sigmond.”
The rendering on his avatar looked golden, similar to Sigmond. He wore a one-piece jumpsuit and had the appearance of someone in their thirties. He also had no eyebrows or any hair to speak of whatsoever. A strange choice, I decided, but given his inexperience with humans, I supposed this representation wasn’t altogether terrible.
“Where’s Siggy?” I asked.
“Right here, sir.” Though I’d long ago grown accustomed to Cognitives blipping around and appearing from thin air, it gave me another jolt of surprise.
Sigmond appeared with a smile.
I cocked an eyebrow and regarded him suspiciously. “I feel like you do that on purpose.”
“Certainly not,” said Sigmond, giving me a slight nod.
“You mentioned Athena?” asked Carl.
“Yeah. She’s on the ship somewhere. Has to be,” I said, tilting my head back to him.
“Not to interrupt,” said Abigail when I’d finished. “But maybe we should move this conversation to the lounge.”
In my excitement, I’d nearly forgotten we were still in the hall. I didn’t want to stop the discussion, but she had a valid point. Once we’d moved to the lounge, I had Sigmond put up a map of Tartarus. “Mark everywhere we’ve seen activity from the Celestials,” I told him.
I strode over to the main display to study it. The holo object spun slowly, reminding me of the hidden sphere.
“Carl, you said you can help pinpoint Athena. How?” I asked.
“The Celestials who have her were focused on two things. Escaping Tartarus and extracting data from Athena,” explained Carl. “Aside from my hub, there’s only one place to do that. The Archive server room. It was one of the first of my memories to be corrupted. It is also a natural location to take Athena’s memory drives, aside from my own chamber. If you’ll give me just a moment, I’ll attempt to verify this hypothesis.”
“Okay, but don’t tip them off that you’re looking,” I warned.
“Of course.” His eyes flickered for a few moments, just like Sigmond’s did when he was processing something complex, and then he was back. “I am detecting something resembling Athena’s digital signature.”
“Can you put it on the map, please?” asked Abigail.
Carl flicked his wrist and a marker appeared on the holo on one of the lower levels, a place we hadn’t come close to exploring. As it stood, we’d only ventured to the fifteenth floor below the surface, but this was easily double that. No wonder we hadn’t found it.
“Captain, you have an incoming transmission from Lieutenant Rackham,” informed Junior.
I’d forgotten all about the Union in all of this. The others would need to prepare for an offensive attack, so it was decent timing on the lieutenant’s part. “Put him on,” I said with a smile. “I’ll need everyone’s help if we’re going to pull off a rescue mission.”
17
“You want to do what?” Vick looked at me with a confused look on his face.
“Encirclement ambush,” I repeated. “The structure of Tartarus gives us a variety of strategies. If we have teams surround the room and—”
The vice admiral held up a hand, interrupting my explanation. “I know what a damn encirclement ambush is, Hughes, but we need to assess more of the situation before we rush in with guns blazing. We could be running straight into an ambush ourselves. Let’s not forget that the location was given to us by a Celestial.”
Sigmond stood beside me, his golden aura glowing gently in the air around him. “Apologies for my interruption, but if I may clarify something?”
Everyone looked at him.
“The one named Carl is not a Celestial,” said Sigmond.
“Excuse me?” asked Vick.
I was equally confused by the new information, but I said nothing.
“He is an artificial construct with full sentience,” said Sigmond.
“He’s an AI?” asked Rackham.
Sigmond shook his head slightly. “His features and capabilities more closely resemble a Cognitive.”
“But he has a body,” said Davon.
“Correct, but it is entirely artificial. His mind is capable of leaving the body if he so chooses, though he has been restricted by certain protocols to prevent him from accessing particular systems,” explained Sigmond.
“You’re telling me that the Celestials have their own Cognitives?” asked Vick.
“Not in the same way,” said Sigmond. “Carl has far more restrictions placed on him than I do. After analyzing his systems so thoroughly, I believe he and others like him are used for very specific purposes. In Carl’s case, he serves as the navigator for this vessel, but lacks access to other subsystems.”
“Does that mean there are other Cognitives on this ship?” asked Rackham.
“No, sir,” said Sigmond. “Every other system is maintained by a lesser algorithm, but due to the complex nature of the vessel and its navigation systems, a greater and more complex intelligence is required. In this case, the responsibility was given to Carl.”
“Be that as it may, it doesn’t mean we can trust what he’s telling us,” said Vick.
“I disagree, with all due respect, sir,” said Sigmond. “I have concluded that Carl’s words are sincere. I believe he holds no attachments to his former masters.” He paused. “Though, in anticipation of your response, I have also analyzed his data and ensured its accuracy. The information Carl has provided is, by all available accounts, trustworthy.”
Vick still didn’t look convinced. “There’s a lot of variables here. On the one hand, you could’ve been corrupted while inside his systems, so maybe all of what you’re feeding us is false information.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” I snapped.
He put up a hand. “Still, I’ll trust that it’s not for right now. If we had more time, I’d assign a team of engineers on the both of you to make sure everything you’ve said is true, but the fact of the matter is that we have to move.”
I was surprised to hear him say that. It wasn’t like Vick to throw any level of trust behind me or the people under my command. Then again, we’d been working together on this little venture for a few weeks, and he’d had to rely on me more than a few times. Maybe he was finally beginning to ease back on his animosity.
Or maybe he wanted answers as badly as I did.
“You’ll have all the soldiers you need on this,” Vick continued. “Don’t get us all killed if you can help it.”
“Now that we have that taken care of,” Sanchez began. He pulled out his data pad and gave it a quick scan before continuing. “Let’s get down to the business of our attack strategy, shall we?”
* * *
I had Carl join the meeting once the others had agreed to hear him speak.
The Celestial Cognitive stepped forward and flicked his wrist to bring up another holo. A dossier type file depicted a Berserker. “As you all know,” began Carl, “there are various classes of Celestials, although we ourselves do not have designations that would accurately translate to your language. The Berserker, as you call this one, is specialized for physical assault. It has very few weaknesses besides its general lack of speed. I’ve located at least two of these in the Archives where Athena’s drives are being held.”
“At least?” I questioned. “You aren’t sure?”
He shook his head. “Unfortunately not. My systems are still unable to get a clear enough scan of the Archives to verify.”
I didn’t like that, but at least we had something to go on. It was better than going in there completely blind.
The image changed again, th
is time revealing a small Celestial, though still taller than the average human. Like a Scout, it was thin and light. “I believe the most similar term in your language is ‘Ranger’. They are significantly smaller and lack the hypertrophy muscling of the Berserkers. Their specialty is long range weaponry. I must offer a word of caution. Rangers possess a high degree of accuracy when in combat. They are intended to complement Berserkers.”
“So, we take them out first before we get too close to the Berserkers, got it. Anything else?” I asked.
“They have excellent low-light vision and acute hearing. I’ve located at least two of them as well in Archives.”
“Oh of course they have perfect senses, wouldn’t want this to be easy. Didn’t you mention something about Engineers the last time we spoke?” I asked.
He frowned and switched to the next image. “Yes. I have data to offer, but no Engineers have appeared in any of my scans. It is unclear whether they have all perished or have escaped.”
The Engineers looked more humanoid than any of the others to date. They still had the smooth white skin and hairless features, but proportion-wise, their faces and bodies were closer to regular humans than the Berserkers or Scouts.
“What are their abilities?” Dressler questioned.
“Excellent question, Doctor,” said Carl. “Engineers are highly intelligent when compared to the other classes, designed to be the thinkers of the species. A few select features are enhanced, of course, such as advanced healing and attuned senses to better assist in their work. They have continuous variable cathemerality.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It means they don’t use a regular day and night cycle,” said Dressler. “For comparison, humans are diurnal. We’re naturally awake during the daylight hours.”
“Correct,” acknowledged Carl. “There is no need for such a cycle, due to the perpetual night of space. They are also largely responsible for the advances you see around you. They were also one of the earliest classes of Celestials and spearheaded the creation of most of the others. The Scouts, for example, and the Berserkers are both products of the Engineers’ tireless research and experimentation.”
