“Oh please, do tell.”
Eicelea extended her tiny cupped hand upward. In it, a small projection displayed recorded HNI video from her mind. The video showed her standing along with several people excavating the ruins shining their flashlights on a shut ancient door.
“We can’t seem to open this door,” Eicelea said. “It’s receiving power . . . somehow from someplace else.”
Undersea Ruins
Takarius, Hyalur System
July 17, 2119, 13:41 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The ruins on the Javnis homeworld, first discovered by data Penelope extracted from Sarpanit, were buried deep below the ocean where the city of Mindoji sat next to. Like most early Radiance controlled worlds, all known Lyonria ruins had been discovered and studied to death, sometimes literally. The Hyalur system was no exception, every planet and moon that had shown signs that the Lyonria had once made it their colony, had been discovered and explored.
The reason the undersea ruins at Takarius went undiscovered for so many years, was because of that, they were undersea. Like Earth, and many other worlds with vast oceans, nobody had gotten around to exploring its deepest and darkest depths, especially when quakes were known to rock the ocean floors. It wasn’t worth the risk unless they knew something of interest would be there.
The ruins had been remarkably preserved for countless years, protected by a robust energy dome that had been buried by a number of quakes as the centuries and millennia passed. During the months when Rivera and Penelope were making their way to the planet, Radiance engineers constructed long tubes that launched rapidly moving elevators up and down from a platform floating on the calm waters above, through the ocean, and into the ruins deep below.
Exploration of the ruins had come to an end for the time being when the crew packed up and made their way home to rest for the night. It was a perfect chance for Eicelea and Vynei to lead Rivera and Penelope in with few questions being asked. Rivera’s wrist terminal pulsed with a notification by the time they made it to the large elementally withered door that puzzled Eicelea and Vynei and others.
“Transponder codes,” Rivera said, picking up the messages her equipment was pinged with. “It’s coming from there.” She pointed at what lay beyond the door.
Eicelea’s eyes narrowed, following Rivera’s finger-pointing. “As in there’s a ship inside?”
Rivera double-checked her wrist terminal. She’d check her HNI too if Penelope hadn’t locked most of it down. She couldn’t believe what the screens were telling her. “It’s a UNE IFF, the signal’s faint, but it’s there.”
“UNE signals.” Even Penelope looked and sounded confused gazing at the large door. “There’s no way a ship could fit in there.”
“Let alone be this far underground,” Eicelea said. “What ship is it?”
“Not sure it’s a ship,” Rivera said. “More like equipment.”
“But human equipment,” Eicelea said. “This still would have required a ship to bring it out here.”
They stood confused. While humans venturing this deep into Radiance space wasn’t uncommon, the likelihood that someone discovered the ruins before anyone else had and sent teams down with transmitting equipment was highly unlikely. Not, unlikely, impossible. Penelope had taken great steps to ensure Eicelea would be the first person from outside of the system to visit the ruins.
Of all the pondering as to how UNE transmissions were coming from the door, Vynei asked the one critical question neither Penelope nor Rivera asked. “Is there a reason why it’s only now we’re learning of this?”
“Because we discovered this section the other night,” Eicelea said. “And we were busy conducting archeological business, not scanning for human IFF signals.”
“None of you are from IESA or the UNE for that matter, anyways,” Rivera said. “I doubt you would have picked it up like I did unless you were on a ship.” Rivera stood ahead of the door, running her fingers across its surface covered in dust. “How do we get inside?”
“Bomb, maybe?” Vynei suggested.
“Vynei!” Eicelea spat at him. “Don’t give the humans stupid ideas.”
“Humans?” Penelope laughed.
“Linl?” Vynei asked as the two were dressed like them.
Penelope lifted her shades up allowing her red eyes to glow in the low lighting of the ruins, removing the wig in the process.
Eicelea took a step away from Penelope in shock. “Godsdamn it!”
“This going to be a problem, love?” Penelope said with crossed arms.
The Vorcambreum woman nodded no, though Rivera suspected it was out of fear that a Hashmedai made it this far into Radiance space.
An hour slipped by as they tried and failed to force the door open. They tried every idea that came to mind, nothing worked, not even open sesame. Only a control panel to the right side of the door provided clues, however, its parts and design were completely alien. It reminded Rivera of the time she, Williams, and Tolukei found an intact Lyonria structure in Sirius. EVE was able to access the electronics of the structure and use her computing power to learn how it operated.
She grinned.
They might have been light-years away from the nearest EVE unit, but they weren’t from a reprogrammed one that held the memories of Marduk’s wife.
“Sarpanit,” Rivera said, facing Penelope. “She had info on this place, right?”
Penelope’s lips twisted. “Hmm, yes, that is true.”
“Let’s let her out?” Rivera suggested. “She might be able to help us with this panel.”
“She may hurt you.”
“And you got the kill switch,” Rivera said as she stood before the door’s alien made control panel. “We might have the key to opening this in my head.”
Penelope’s hands danced across a floating holo keyboard, interacting with two screens in the process. When she was done, Rivera sensed her HNI once again take on a life of its own and Sarpanit appeared as a blue and white holographic EVE with emotions and a frowning face.
Before Sarpanit could rage, Penelope said. “Okay, no funny stuff.” She pointed at the panel. “You know where we are, right?”
Sarpanit looked around and then smiled. She then faced the panel in question, narrowing her eyes at it. “You’ve been browsing my files, I see.”
“Can you open it?” Rivera asked.
“You’re with the archeologist,” Sarpanit said. “I presume you wish to study this rather than destroy it.”
“Of course.”
“Rabuabin,” Sarpanit said to Vynei. “I want you to shoot everyone except my chariot if they breach this agreement.”
He scratched the back of his head raising one eyebrow. “Uh.”
Eicelea did the same, asking Rivera. “Chariot?”
She beamed as Sarpanit’s holographic figure vanished, entering the complex electronics of the panel. “It’s a long story, guys.”
Rivera and Penelope took turns explaining to Eicelea and Vynei what was going on, why they were there, and the Draconian’s mission to venture to the nebula with the Eyes of Tiamat stolen from Earth. When they finished their story, a loud rumbling sound roared.
The floor began to vibrate. At first, Rivera thought a quake was about to strike, they were, after all, in the hot spot for one. Turning around, she and the rest found their answer to the source of the rumbles and sounds.
“Sarpanit, you cheeky little bitch,” Penelope said, reading one of the holo screens.
“What’s wrong?” Rivera asked.
Penelope pointed at a diagram with computing processing spikes coming from Rivera’s HNI. “The level of activity Sarpanit is putting your HNI through is exactly the same as the activity that was going through your HNI at the time of the monolith encounter you found under Baghdad.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Rivera asked as the door slowly slid open.
“Meaning Sarpanit lied to you, Rivera,” Penelope said. “The monolith wasn’t reacting to you; Sarpanit was in
terfacing with it but failed to do anything else. Whoever designed the monoliths built this door.”
The four stood and peered out into the blacked space beyond the opened ancient door, where the source of the UNE IFF signals were.
37 Foster
XSV Johannes Kepler
Pria Orbit, Inadrai System
July 17, 2119, 23:06 SST (Sol Standard Time)
The ethereal fissure worked, throwing the XSV Johannes Kepler closer to Radiance civilization. After two months of space travel, having left the nebula, the Kepler dropped out of FTL within the heart of the Inadrai system.
Inadrai was, in reality, a trinary system consisting of a K-type main-sequence star Pria orbited around, and two brown dwarfs, taking turns circling around the primary orange glowing orb of the system.
Pria was like Earth, which was no surprise to the humans that looked at the Linl for the first time. If the Linl race were carbon copy humans, then their homeworld shouldn’t be any different. The ruins of a lost Lyonria city were spread across the surface of Pria’s moon, made visible when the Kepler went to enter the planet’s atmosphere. From what Foster was told, it was the ruins on their moon that encouraged the Linl to build ships to explore it and the rest of their system in search of the Lyonria.
That, in turn, led to the development of the Linl’s early sub light engines and their expansion into space. Unlike the other members of Radiance, the Linl achieved space flight on their own, though some argued that the Linl reverse engineered, in secret, pieces of lost Lyonria technology.
Finding what remained of the Lyonria had always been their driving force, which they believed were the creators of their species. One could say, the Linl were searching for God. What they found after building colonies in the local stars was Marduk in Sirius, and then the Hashmedai Empire just a few light-years away. Shaking hands and saying nice to meet you didn’t work very well for the two groups. The conflict that brewed after that forced the Linl to find a new God, rather Gods, being the three Radiance Gods after the Union made the offer to help the Linl defeat the Empire at a price. Complete cultural assimilation when they became the fifth race in the Union.
When the descent through Pria’s upper atmosphere was complete, and the red rippling waves of heat let up against the Kepler’s shields, Radiance command unexpectedly instructed the Kepler to wait for landing space at one of the starports in Jondia, the planet’s second largest city. The wait was expected to be at least an hour.
Jondia was apparently a port city, shipping goods to and from not only the rest of the system but exterior Radiance colonies located in Proxima and Alpha Centauri, and at one point, Earth, back before the wormhole network came online since it was only twelve light-years away. After that, it was faster to travel to the Luminous system, then through the wormhole there to get to Earth controlled space.
At twelve minutes into the wait, Foster retreated to her office and stood ahead of its massive floor to ceiling window up front, viewing the metropolis with a mug of coffee in hand. She went over in her mind what the crew’s next move would be after getting Chevallier the treatment she needed.
The investigation into the Hallowed Nebula and the ethereal fissures topped that. The fissures weren’t just a means of supplying the Union with energy; it was also a long-forgotten mode of transportation only the Kepler could use. Why only the Kepler? Nobody knew, it could have been due to Foster’s presence, or perhaps the vortex key, even though she didn’t use it and it was offline. Perhaps both.
She needed to figure out how, and they needed to figure out how the SOM knew. That drone’s mission was to force the Kepler through, she was sure of it. And the data crystal was the only proof that there was something going on in the nebula the cultists wanted, as did Jainuzei. She quickly drew up plans to head back through a fissure and find out, but first, they needed supplies, and the cryostasis chamber operational.
Karklosea was planning to take her leave once they made landfall, it was a liberating thought. Jainuzei didn’t seem to like her, and she didn’t like him. Knowing that one of the two conflicting people they picked up in Luminous was finally getting off helped soothe her mind. Now, if there was only away to get rid of the other.
The okay to land was transmitted by Radiance. Foster went to sickbay, smiling at Chevallier’s body perpetually frozen in medical cryo.
She’ll be back on her feet soon.
Eastern District
Jondia, Pria, Inadrai System
July 18, 2119, 00:28 SST (Sol Standard Time)
An orange orb hung in the clear skies. The early afternoon was in motion when the Kepler came to land at the starport’s platform and its entry ramp lowered. The first to leave the Kepler was Foster, Odelea, and Karklosea, pushing an antigravity trolley that held Chevallier’s medical cryo pod.
She paused after taking two steps onto the platform’s surface and shut her eyes. It was the first time in eight months Foster felt natural gravity pull at her limbs and fresh air blow across her brown hair. When she opened her eyes, she saw the clear blue skies that looked so much like Earth’s it might as well be it. And she didn’t need to wear sunglasses.
She needed another minute to enjoy the liberating bliss and then told the rest of the crew to do the same. They had all been stuck on the three-deck ship for months, a quick walkabout was in order. They just needed to be back in time for dinner, and it was rib night. Chef made amazing ribs.
Karklosea guided them away from the starport, into the urban jungle that awaited them. Behind, Foster saw teams of Radiance personnel refueling the Kepler, restocking its vital supplies, and hauling aboard replacement cryo pods for the cryo chamber. Their next trip into the nebula wouldn’t feel as long whilst they were asleep and frozen for several months, and the fear of dying of starvation could be thrown out the airlock.
The city of Jondia had a similar look to cities found on Morutrin Prime, which was once a Linl colony before Radiance came into the picture. Tall structures that looked like cylindrical or rectangular shapes arched up from the streets into the skies. None of the buildings Foster saw had real edges to them. They were all curved and smooth, reflecting the orange glow of the sun above from its pearl-white material and glass windows.
Two trains and a thirty-minute walk later and Karklosea guided the group into a basement-level unit below a skyscraper that looked like two ovals stacked on top of each other covered in windows. A door hidden behind a holographic wall gave them access, Foster came up with two words to describe the place, and shady was one of them, awesome was the other because of the holo wall. The front door was behind a holographic wall.
Linl, and probably some humans, as Linl wouldn’t be wearing baseball T-shirts, sat in the waiting room. Foster saw two Hashmedai in the corner, rambling about the heat. Given the space traffic and close proximity to Earth and the Empire, it was clear that the people in the waiting room were smuggled on the planet to see the good cybernetic specialist that didn’t care where in the galaxy you came from, and then secretly leave.
As they waited for the specialist, Foster glanced at the numerous cybernetic parts that were on display in a glass case. Robotic hands, arms, legs, psionic brain chips, and other wires and components she had no clue where on the body you’d shove them into, were laid out. It was like being in a jewelry store, only the super expensive items were implants and upgrades cyborgs and psionics needed.
Twenty minutes later and they were waved into one of the back rooms, pushing the cart that carried Chevallier’s cryogenically frozen body. A Linl man with short brown hair approached, his white coat waved about when he walked past a fan that sat next to dozens of operating tables, many of them held idle bodies of people undergoing cybernetic augmentation for the first time.
Odelea and Karklosea spoke to the man, pointing a finger at Chevallier in her pod. The man nodded at them then looked down at Chevallier after his hand removed a layer of fog off her pod’s glass case.
The three spoke again, and then wh
en finished, Odelea faced Foster, saying. “This is Wenadei. He’s the specialist we’ve been seeking. He says he’ll accept the job and wants payment up front.”
Foster pulled out a credit chit, a special one for the Kepler’s operations. All transactions made with it were billed to IESA and the UNE government. Tax payer’s credits were being used to help Foster save the galaxy. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, though.
After the transaction was complete, Wenadei hauled Chevallier’s pod into the corner and activated a number of scanning devices that outputted their findings via holo screens. The holo screens followed him around the workshop slash lab slash operating room.
“How long will it take?” Foster asked.
“Wenadei’s technique is old,” Odelea said. “Cybernetic augmentation with these parts might take as long as a month.”
“Damn.”
“And that’s for psionic augmentation,” Odelea explained while making quick translations. “Chevallier needs the implants for survival and to replace her missing arm which he’ll need to design and build with custom parts. Furthermore, there’s a small waiting list, her recovery might be longer once everything is done.”
Foster released a dejected groan.
“To be fair, Captain,” Odelea continued. “We’re still in Radiance territory, where we travel to next via FTL will still take months. Longer, if we investigate the fissures and the connection with the SOM.”
Odelea was right, much to the letdown that punched Foster in the gut. They had a mission to get back to, and a nebula to investigate. By the time the Kepler arrived wherever the hell they were to go next, Chevallier should have made a recovery. As for getting her back aboard the Kepler, that was another story.
Last time Foster checked, the two weren’t friends anymore. She only brought her here because the Kepler would have gotten to Pria faster than any other ship, and Foster wasn’t one to leave people hanging. Back during the invasion of Earth, you didn’t do that. A dead human was one less person to help people, one less person to fight the Hashmedai, and one less on the total population of the human race, which at the time was dropping rapidly. True, Foster did leave Boyd behind, but she had no choice. To go after him would have put the whole crew, and possibly the UNE, at great risk.
Hallowed Nebula Page 28
