Exodus Earth: The Complete Series, page 63
Based on its speed, I was running out of time to toss the disc. I had no idea if its main weapon was recharged and ready to fire again. This was a bit concerning, because I was about to stick my upper body through the opening of the door. Understand, I enjoyed a rigorous game of whack-a-mole as much as the next gal… but only when the game was played in VR and certainly not while I was the mole.
I dropped my shield.
“Harry, dismount. Run as fast as you can away from the opening. I’m about to prove just how stupid a human can be. I don’t want you to get hurt by my demonstration.”
I had expected some type of argument, but thankfully I didn’t get one. I gave the spider creds for reading the situation and not wasting my time. I gave him about ten seconds before I made my way back to the vault door. The ENO’s video feed told me I was basically out of time. If the beastie’s weapon was recharged and it had a quick trigger finger, the odds were good I’d never feel it and Matt would be eating alone for a while.
“Ah well, we can’t live forever,” I whispered to myself and popped out just long enough to toss the ring.
* * *
There was a loud ringing noise and a whole lot of red. I couldn’t decide if the ringing noise was the result of suit alarms or simply the result of the concussive blast that had been the result of the chief’s party gift. Turns out it was both. The red was also a mix of things. Red status lights and blood from a head wound plastered on the forward glass of my HUD. Yeah, I was definitely going to have to have that safety margin conversation with the chief.
As I watched, one of the red lights changed to yellow. My suit’s sophisticated automated repair system was working its magic. A progress display on my HUD showed an estimated two hours until repairs were complete. I was grateful I wasn’t going to need Sergeant Madison’s assistance to get my armor back in fighting shape. I wasn’t so sure about the chief though.
I looked around the room using the night vision built into my armor and not my own optical augments. I wasn’t quite willing to crack my visor back yet. The vault was a lot larger than I expected. Much of its contents were obscured by distance, dust in the air, and a lack of light. Even my night vision was having difficulties cutting through it. I had a search light built into my armor but given the amount of particulate matter in the air, a bright light would have only served to further blind me.
The limited amount of light emitted from my suit, at least when it wasn’t in stealth mode, was more than enough to see for a dozen or so meters in every direction with my night vision gear.
There was a lot more rubble in the vault chamber then I remembered. When I glanced at the door, I saw that it was now effectively sealed by debris from the outside.
This was one of those good news – bad news things… like when your mom tries to tell you the visit to the doctor’s office is a good thing because you’ll get a lollypop. The argument fails on the realization that you could go into any corner market and purchase the aforementioned lollypop and thus eliminate the middleman with the needles in the process, but I digress.
The good news was the enemy couldn’t get in. At least not quickly. The bad news was we couldn’t get out. At least not quickly.
As I cleared the suit alarms which were threatening to make my head split open, I continued to look around. I had been thrown back about ten meters from the vault door. That was pretty impressive given my suit’s tonnage and the fact that I was partially shielded by the armored door.
I remember tossing the disc and getting about two or three steps away from the entrance before the blast wave hit me. My armor and its shield helped to protect the chief, although I suspect given the protection the vault offered she would have been fine anyway.
Suddenly remembering guiltily that there was another person with us, I belatedly toggled my comms. “Harry, you ok?”
There was a pause before the spider answered. Just long enough for me to start to become seriously concerned.
“That depends. Are you done making loud noises?”
“I’d like to say yes, but remember that discussion we had earlier about the bad guys having the final vote? Same situation now.”
“Remind me not to go on picnics with humans in the future.”
While I was talking with the rebel leader, I made my way back to the rubble-filled entrance. I adjusted my combat laser to wide-field, low-intensity and slagged the rock covering the entrance. It wouldn’t stop the bad guys from coming through but at least they wouldn’t be doing it by simply picking up and moving stones.
They were going to have to cut or blast their way in. Since we had probably trashed the two cosmic turtle tanks that could have got the job done easily… the bad guys were going to have to bring some equipment in to get the job done.
The entrance blocked, I shifted my attention to the chief and made my way over to her side. Harry also shuffled over, arriving just a moment after I did. I noticed the spider was dragging a leg.
“You sure you’re ok?”
Harry turned his twelve eyes toward the damaged limb. “This? It’s nothing serious. A dislocation I suspect. Besides, God gave me plenty of spares.”
I nodded, although I doubted my companion would have been able to see it. I turned back to the chief.
“Roberts, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
I plugged a diagnostic cable from my suit into a port on her suit. The direct connect provided remote access and control of her suit’s systems. Her suit’s AI was fried. This was why the automated repair systems were offline. I knew the chief would mourn the loss of her AI. They had been working together for years. She had upgraded hers with a personality module and they had become friends.
For those who are curious, I don’t have permanently issued battleborn armor of any variety, and frankly I didn’t use armor often enough for me to justify having my suit’s AI similarly upgraded. Besides, Fitzy would be insanely jealous, and she was more than enough for me to handle as it is.
I tied my AI into her suit and brought up her medical support systems. Within a few minutes, medical nanites and various drugs were flowing into the chief’s body. She started to make wakey-wakey noises, so I told my AI to keep her unconscious until the med bots had a little more time to work on her. Spinal cords could be repaired, but it was a painful process. It also wasn’t one a suit could do quickly. Typically, the suit would implant a neural shunt to bypass the damaged tissue until a proper repair could be done. Without an onboard AI to manage the shunt, it would be useless.
“Computer, what’s the status of the backup control systems on Chief Roberts’ battle armor?”
“Backup control systems are offline.”
“Understood. What’s the estimate to bring them back online?”
“Bringing the backup control circuits back online will not be possible.”
“Why not?”
“These circuits are missing.”
Now things were beginning to make sense. I had a sudden thought.
“Computer, is Chief Roberts AI offline because the loopback data bus connecting it to the backup module is missing?”
“That is correct.”
“Computer, bypass Chief Roberts loopback data bus and reinitialize her AI. Give me an estimate to complete work.”
“Operation begun. Estimated time to complete repairs two minutes and forty-eight seconds.”
* * *
It took about an hour to get the chief back on her feet. Her spine was still broken. Her damaged, but functional AI was managing the pain and operating the neural link that allowed her to feel and move her legs. The feeling and movement weren’t perfect, but it got the job done.
She seemed a little snippy and irritable. I attributed it to being shot and blown up. Having your arse handed to you in a handbag was known to do that. It wasn’t until later that I learned she was actually livid with anger, not at the Aggressors or the spiders, but at me. It seemed she was having a hard time forgiving me for not waking her up in time to see her second little child, her words not mine, blow up.
Do you see now what type of stuff I often have to deal with? I bet you thought all admirals had to do was sit with their feet up, eat bon bons, and issue random orders from on high. Nope.
Once the chief’s AI was up and running, I was able to disconnect my umbilical and begin to explore the vault in earnest.
The dust had mostly settled and so it was a bit easier to see. The problem was the chamber was enveloped in absolute darkness. Aside from the little bit of light from the various bits of tech in our armor, as well as the spotlight built into my left gauntlet, the room had absolutely no illumination at all.
“Harry, I’m going to turn the lights on. Will you be ok? Human eyes react poorly to sudden changes in brightness.”
“Thank you for the warning. Assuming ‘react poorly’ means it will hurt, then yes, it will hurt. I will shutter those that can be shuttered and grit my teeth for the rest. You may turn the lights on at any time.”
I ejected a series of three ENOs from the cylindrical dispenser on my back. The ENOs used LIDAR to navigate so the lack of light wasn’t a big deal for them.
It seemed the vault chamber was massive. I would learn shortly that it was a found structure and not a built-by-the-spiders structure. The ENOs continued to climb to sixty some odd meters without hitting the ceiling. Given there was no sign of a dome this big in the ant farm and that the tunnels we had been traveling through were only a few meters below the surface… this raised an interesting question. Where in the hell were we?
24
ILLUMINATING
I told the three ENOs to hover at sixty meters and to separate from each other by twenty meters, forming a floating triangle in the process. I then ordered the ENOs to start emitting light across the visible spectrum. The human visible spectrum. The spider’s range was a little broader than humans but not enough to make a serious difference. The ENOs started glowing with a luminosity of just a fraction of a single lux. This was roughly the brightness of the moon as seen from the surface of the Earth.
The light intensity ramped up over the course of the next few minutes until its intensity on the floor between the ENOs was roughly that of midday. This gave us a view of the vault that extended for several kilometers. All without seeing a wall or the ceiling.
If you’re thinking, this must be Ancestor tech in operation, then you and I are on the same page.
Now, here is where things get really interesting. What are the chances that the spiders would find a cache of Ancestor tech on two different worlds?
We know that the Aggressors invaded the spider homeworld… which was not the world we were on now. They discovered the spiders were sitting on a treasure trove of Ancestor tech which they hadn’t attempted to learn to use. The Aggressors were not so reticent. They tore into the Ancestor tech with a passion. When the Aggressor-Spider hybrids took over, they utilized what had been discovered to launch a campaign of galactic genocide.
So again, what are the chances that only a handful of years later the new Aggressors would end up on this planet and discover a second Ancestor vault? Answer—slim to none. Maybe they discovered this planet because they discovered Ancestor tech first rather than the other way around. Maybe…
“Does it seem like this thing is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?” Harry asked, interrupting my thoughts in the process.
“It does,” Roberts agreed. “Something’s strange in the state of Denmark.”
“Rotten,” I said absently.
“Pardon.”
“The quote is Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, Chief.”
“Well crap. That doesn’t fit the situation nearly as well. I like my version better.”
“What’s a Denmark?” Harry asked.
I stopped in my tracks. It was fascinating, the holes that existed in the spider’s linguistic repertoire. Denmark was understood to be a noun but nothing more. On the other hand, phrases like stick it where the sun don’t shine were fully comprehensible. Ah well, this was a subject for exploration when we had time for the exploration. That was most certainly not this moment.
“Trust me, Harry. It’s not worth the time to explain. You are correct, however,” I added. “This chamber is too big and I’m pretty sure I know why. We know… especially those of us who have been to Midway Station… that time and relative dimensions in space are playthings for both the Jabesh and the Da’Tellen as well as, I’m sure, a handful of other ultra-advanced races.
“I suspect we’re in a trans-dimensional space. It could well be that multiple worlds have entrances to this same little corner of space-time. You step from one world into this chamber and then potentially step back out through another exit into another world.
“It explains a question that has been bugging me since we entered the vault. It’s clearly Ancestor-level technology.”
“And your question is how did my people discover two such caches of Ancestor artifacts?” Harry said by way of speculation.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “I don’t think they did. I think they discovered one cache that could be in multiple places at once.”
“So, ahhh… I hate to be the one to rain on a parade, but besides a big empty room, what exactly did we find?” Roberts asked. “It looks like a whole lot of nothing.”
“I do see what looks like a ship in that direction,” Harry offered.
I ordered the ENOs to float a bit higher and cranked their luminosity up to their maximum output.
I looked in the direction he was pointing. There was indeed something out there. I cranked up the magnification on my HUD. What I saw took my breath away. Trust me when I say, this was not a good thing.
Do you ever remember going to a carnival or state fair and seeing and smelling cotton candy for the first time? That sense of wonder and longing. That feeling that you and it were destined to become one. That all-consuming desire… in the very foundation of your soul… to have, and to possess, and to enjoy its sugary goodness.
This was nothing like that. It was the polar opposite. It was quite possibly the ugliest ship I had ever seen. Its hull was dotted with asymmetrical protrusions that screamed power but in an ominous and threatening way. The ship seemed to absorb light like it wanted to live in darkness. I couldn’t describe why I felt the way I did, but my gut was telling me this ship was the embodiment of evil. The absolute last thing I would ever want to do was to approach it. It turns out my reaction was not unique.
“Ahhh… Admiral,” Chief Roberts said slowly, and softly, as if she was afraid to wake a sleeping giant, “I know this is a democracy where yours is the only vote that counts, but if you’re open to suggestions… can I suggest we walk in a different direction?”
I glanced over at the chief. Understand, over the time I’d known her… I’d heard exasperation, frustration, adulation, jubilation, and even remorse in her voice. But, up until this point, I had never heard fear. When I turned back to look at the strange ship, I noted that even Harry was doing his little discomfort-shake thingy.
The rub is this… other than the mess we made near the door, and this ship, we hadn’t seen anything in here. Nada.
If we didn’t find what we were looking for and if we didn’t find another way out… we would be forced to dig our way out and into the waiting arms of the Aggressors. I didn’t see that as a viable option. The operable word being “viable.”
In my experience, the Aggressors tended to shoot first and attempt to ask questions second. Scratch that. They didn’t bother with the whole “asking questions” thing other than asking… Are you still alive? No…bang—let’s be sure. Yes… bang bang… go back to question one—let’s be sure.
“Chief, how many ENOs do you have left?”
“I’ve got five. Unless you’re talking about smashed little fist-sized paper weights. I have five of those as well… oh wait… those are the same five. My bad,” she said in a snippy voice. I think she was still mad at me.
So, no functioning ENOs from the chief. Ok, that wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but I could work with it. I had one left. I launched it with instructions to do a high-speed aerial reconnaissance of the surrounding area, beyond where our floating chandelier was illuminating the vault.
It took it about ten minutes to confirm my fear. Whatever else was down here… if anything… was a long way off and was going to involve a bit of a hike. I parked the final ENO within observation range of the buried vault door. This way it would be able to give us at least some warning before we had visitors.
“Guys and gals. I don’t like it any better than you, but we’re going to need to take a look at that ship.”
“Yeah. I was afraid you were going to say that,” Chief Roberts groaned. “So, ah… that being the case… you good with me going weapons hot? Sort of like a security blanket? Just something to help me sleep at night.”
“I wouldn’t have any other way, Chief. Going hot myself.”
We approached the strange craft slowly. The closer we got, the more intense our fear and trepidation got. About a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty meters away, Harry stopped. He was shaking so hard I thought he was going to hurt himself.
“I’m sorry, Admiral. I have to stop. I’m already starting to molt.” He lifted an arm which seemed to be sluffing its darker skin revealing a lighter-colored leg beneath it. “Whatever that thing is doing, I can’t go any further.”
“Don’t worry about it, Harry. Go ahead and head back to where we started. Unless I miss my guess, we’re dealing with some type of emotive projection field designed to keep people away from the ship. If that’s the case, then your species is most certainly going to be more suspectable to it. When we locate it and turn it off, you should be able to join us.”
