by Terry Mixon
“It’s not going to happen all at once, but it’s going to happen. We’ve already got all of the people who are now Marine Raiders that have those nanites in their bodies. By the time we get back home, I suspect that a significant portion of the people on this mission will probably be upgraded. The admiral isn’t going to believe that it’s right to keep something like this to just an elite few.
“And besides, the emperor has them. Do you think that Karl Bandar will deny his people the same kind of blessing that he has? We can’t make a decision about everyone today, but I’m pretty sure I know which way the wind will blow.”
“I’m good with that upgrade,” Olivia said. “Maybe in five hundred years, I won’t feel the same way, but I’ll still be around to make that decision. I can always deactivate them if I get tired of living, then I’ll just live out my remaining years as a normal human.”
Elise frowned slightly as the lift doors opened. “That’s a question that I hadn’t considered. Why would Jake Peters keep his nanites online when he didn’t have any hope of rescue? Couldn’t he have turned them off and just grown old and died?”
“No,” Lily said. “The deactivation process requires someone with specific equipment and knowledge to turn the nanogenerator off and disable the nanites. It’s not something that he would’ve been able to do by himself.
“Though I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be feasible to allow a user to put them into standby mode. Of course, that’ll also mean that they can always turn them back on. I’ll tag up with Carl to discuss it.”
Lily led them across the corridor and into the primary medical center on the ship. It wasn’t the only medical center, because the entire ship was dedicated to medical care, so there were numerous facilities, but it was the largest. And it was where Lily’s office was.
The interior was bustling with activity even though there were very few patients in evidence. The ship was large enough to handle injuries from across a fleet that had just been through a battle, so they were basically in standby mode themselves. Elise was certain that the doctors didn’t mind the lack of business.
“Okay,” Lily said. “Hop up on the table and lie down while I figure out what’s going on.”
Elise did as instructed. A few moments later, Lily initiated the scan, and her eyes grew unfocused as she began going over the data that the table was providing through her implants.
After about fifteen seconds, her eyes widened, and she frowned. “That can’t be right. Hang on a second.”
Five seconds later, Lily grimaced, and her eyes refocused on Elise’s face. “I’ve got it figured out, but the problem is a bit more complex than I’d anticipated. You might want to step into my office so that we can discuss this in private.”
Elise sat up and shook her head, her stomach churning a little bit as she started anticipating bad news. “Just tell me. I’d rather my best friends know what’s going on and not leave them guessing.”
Lily shot her a skeptical look but then shrugged. “Okay. After our adventures on Terra, I never thought about this possibility, but the EMP must’ve damaged your contraceptive implant. You’re pregnant.”
5
Kelsey stared around the plateau and gawked at the obelisk as she came down the ramp of the pinnace that had brought her down from Persephone. She was so engrossed with the massive structure that she almost missed Carl lugging a heavy box of equipment past her. She shook off her stupor and took the box from him. With her strength, she was able to carry it easily.
He nodded his thanks, and they headed around the structure to where an area had been cleared of snow. Interestingly, the ground was rough, natural stone, except for an oval patch perhaps ten meters across at its narrowest that was the same green as the mammoth monument and smooth as glass.
Gathered nearby were Jared, Talbot, and Jake Peters. She stepped over and gave her husband a quick hug. “You find the most interesting things. Any idea what this is?”
“Not a clue,” he said with a shrug as he moved to help Carl.
Jared half turned so that he was facing them but still had a view of the monumental structure. “While it wasn’t meant to stand out from space, I’ve already verified that it’s visible for quite a distance from this range. The sunlight hits it in such a way that its color pulls in the eye. Add to that the fact that it’s transmitting a signal meant to garner attention, and it’s obvious that whoever built this wanted it to be found.”
“Have you detected anything underneath it?”
He shook his head. “We can’t even detect the rock under the surface. That’s the biggest hint that there’s something down there.
“The biologists have done some DNA tests on the samples that Talbot shipped back. Those velociraptors—or whatever they are—are definitely of terrestrial origin. The plant life also shares a lot of features that one would associate with terrestrial vegetation.
“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to duplicate an entire ecosystem thousands of light-years from Terra in a backwater system that doesn’t even sit on the regular flip point network.
“Also, they had to have done so millions of years ago. Sadly, we may not get an answer to our questions anytime soon, because we don’t have the time to dig into the mystery right now.”
Kelsey understood that. Every day they delayed getting to Twilight River increased the chances that the AIs would decide that humanity needed to be eliminated.
“Do you think these aliens are connected to the people that created the Pandorans?” she asked.
Her brother shook his head. “Since those people used human DNA to create the Pandorans, that had to have taken place relatively recently on a cosmological scale. Modern humans just haven’t been in existence long enough for it to be anything more than two or three hundred thousand years.
“I’m told that velociraptors existed between seventy-one and seventy-five million years ago. That’s just too big a gulf. My money says it’s two different species.”
Something sounded wrong about that to her. “If this was done seventy-plus million years ago, shouldn’t the animals here have evolved? Nothing stays the same. Even the ferns that you were telling me about should’ve morphed into something else during that time.”
He nodded. “That’s where the first surprise came in. Those critters have nanites inside them, and so do the plants. Not medical nanites like we have—not precisely—but something that seems to be diligent in correcting genetic drift.”
She turned to face Jared squarely, her eyes wide. “Really? And they’re still working after all this time? We have nanogenerators to refresh ours because the nanites decay and have to be replaced. What kind of generator does that for plants?”
“And there’s the trick,” Jared said with a half smile. “They make themselves. More interestingly, they don’t migrate outside strict boundaries. If they enter a different kind of host, they deactivate.
“Our people found them in the living creatures and plants and are trying to figure out how they work. It certainly looks as if they have a finite life span, but they construct other nanites from the host’s mass. When there’s a seed created or a creature has an offspring, the nanites are passed along with it.”
She turned back toward the obelisk and stared up at its tip far above. “Why would they do that? It’s not like dinosaurs were an intelligent species. Are we thinking that they took a liking to Terra back in the day and wanted to recreate it here as a theme park on a planetary scale?”
Talbot laughed as he rejoined them. “I think we saw those movies, and they didn’t turn out well. Let’s hope that the aliens were smarter than that.
“If we can get inside the structure without too much trouble, maybe we can find the answer. If we can’t do that relatively quickly, we’re going to have to move along.”
“Talbot’s right,” Jared said with a nod. “Since we still haven’t found a viable path to Twilight River, we need to do some probing back along the path we’ve already blazed to see if
there are any unexplored branches that lead to our destination. This is an interesting mystery, but we have more pressing matters on our plates.”
Kelsey was about to respond when her implants notified her of an incoming communication being relayed by her pinnace from Persephone.
“Bandar here,” she said out loud, letting the com unit attached to her parka carry her voice back to the Marine Raider strike ship.
“It’s Angela,” the voice in her implants said. “The FTL probe that we left in Y-73598F-8A just detected a lot of ships coming in through a far flip point that we didn’t know about. They aren’t bothering to hide their presence, so we’re still getting information about them. Fiona has tentatively identified them as Clan warships.”
“Send the information on to Invincible. I’ll get back to you when Jared and I review it.”
“Copy that.”
“Thanks. Bandar out.”
Judging from the way Jared was frowning, her brother had just gotten the news. He gestured for her to walk with him and started toward the pinnaces.
“I assume you just heard about the Clan warships?” he asked.
She nodded as she walked into the icy wind. “Yep. They’re going to bang their heads against Twilight River’s front door. Since they’ve been planning for this over the last five hundred years, they might even have brought enough ships to make some magic happen.”
“Come with me back up to Invincible, and we’ll work out how we need to react to this,” he said. “This might be the opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”
“Or it might be an unmitigated disaster,” she said gloomily. “These days, it’s a little hard to tell them apart at first glance.”
Carl finished setting up his equipment around the green oval set into the stone of the plateau. It looked like the same kind of material that the monolith was made of, but he’d have to do some tests before he could be sure. He’d read the reports that the other scientist had written based on their attempts to scan the area beneath the structure and concurred with their opinion that there was a stealth field of some kind in place.
Since this had to be a door of some kind, he was sure that there would be a trigger. Perhaps some of the monitoring equipment would pick up a frequency that had some sort of clue and that would allow him to generate a signal of his own to make it open.
Once he had the equipment scanning for said signal, he took out a small chisel and attempted to get a sample of the green material. The stone resisted all attempts to mar it, telling him very clearly that this wasn’t jade or anything even closely related to it. He even tried a laser cutter, with an equal lack of success.
Whatever it was, the material was extremely tough. There’d be no getting through it by force without causing massive destruction, something he wasn’t willing to contemplate at this point.
“Something wrong?” Talbot asked from where he stood nearby.
Carl glanced up and saw that the admiral, Kelsey, and Jake Peters were no longer in view.
He frowned. “Where’d everybody go?”
“Big things happening back in the system you just came from. Apparently, the Clans decided to raid via a far flip point we didn’t know about. Looks like there’s going to be a big honking battle. Kelsey and the admiral went back up to Invincible. Jake’s taking a stroll around the perimeter.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Carl admitted. “We knew this was coming. Once somebody stirred the hornets’ nest, the Clans were bound and determined to fight the Rebel Empire. And after all this time, they had to know the master AI was at Twilight River.
“Still, I wish they’d held off on this part of their war a little bit longer. I thought they’d go the long way around to get to the master AI.”
“Maybe that’s what they wanted the AIs to think,” Talbot said with a shrug. “Get a strong enough force marauding through enemy territory, and you’re going to pull defenders out of place. That attack could’ve been a huge misdirection, trying to uncover the master AI for a major strike force like this.”
Carl shook his head skeptically. “You didn’t see the defenses. If they wanted to crack this particular nut, they’d have to bring a lot of force to bear. More than the admiral brought with us, for sure. A lot more.”
“There’s no telling how long you’re going to have to work on this particular mystery, so focus,” Talbot advised. “What do you think this weird oval is? And by the way, I’ve had the marines search all the way around the plateau, and this is the only spot like it.”
“I’m not sure,” Carl said with a shrug. “The material is tough. I’m hoping that we detect a signal from underneath the obelisk that allows me to establish some kind of communication with the structure. It can’t have anything alive inside it after all this time, but the AIs have already proven that if you’re advanced enough, you don’t have to be biological to be intelligent.”
Carl was about to say more when one of his instruments beeped. “Well, well. It looks like there is a very low-strength signal on one particular frequency. It’s not like the beacon. This is something that would only be detectable while we’re here on top of this plateau.”
He went to his instrument case and dug out something he could use to transmit on that frequency. It wasn’t very powerful, but he didn’t think it needed to be if he could send something that the device would recognize as the appropriate key for this lock.
Carl suspected that if he could just send a signal on the same narrow frequency, perhaps even just repeating the tones that he’d detected, that would be enough. It only took a minute to configure the device the way he wanted, and he stood beside Talbot and triggered a signal to mimic the one he was receiving.
Nothing happened.
“Well, that was something of a letdown,” Talbot said.
“Wasn’t it, though?” Carl answered with a chuckle. “I’m not sure exactly what it’s looking for, but maybe it needs to sense someone on the oval. Otherwise, you could send a signal from anywhere on the plateau. Maybe it’s not a door. Maybe it’s a lift that goes down into the plateau instead.”
“I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” Talbot said. “Come on.”
The man led the way into the center of the oval, and Carl followed. “You know they’re going to say we’re stupid for doing this, right?”
“I’m a marine. I do stupid things before breakfast.”
Carl laughed and triggered the signaling device again. This time, something happened.
Unfortunately for his peace of mind, it wasn’t as simple as the oval area sinking into the ground. He and Talbot floated off of the ground and began rising into the air at a good clip.
Carl’s heart lurched in his chest, and he thrashed a bit. He’d have expected to feel completely untethered, being lifted into the air like that, but even his uncoordinated movements didn’t cause him to shift his position at all. It was like he was being gently held in place by some unseen force.
The marines below shouted in alarm when they noticed what was happening, but before anyone could intervene, he and Talbot were at the top of the obelisk, and the stone just below the tip vanished.
There hadn’t been any indication that there was a door there, and moments later, the two of them were inside. The door closed, leaving them trapped in darkness as they began to descend into the alien structure.
6
“Excuse me?” Elise demanded.
“You’re in a family way,” Lily said sympathetically. “The scans indicate that you’re about six weeks along. And to add to your consternation, you’re carrying twins.”
Elise was flabbergasted. She sat there with her mouth hanging open, totally at a loss for words.
When she finally gathered her wits about her, she shook her head emphatically. “That’s not possible. It’s been half a year since Terra. Trust me when I say that if my contraceptive implant had failed, I’d have found out a lot sooner than now.”
“It’s possible that it only failed rec
ently. Or it may still be partially operational, and you just got unlucky. Or lucky, if that’s how you choose to take it.
“Your contraceptive implant is Pentagaran in manufacture, so I don’t really have any insight into its internal function. I’ll need to remove it to be certain that it doesn’t interfere with the pregnancy, should you choose to proceed.”
Elise was still trying to get her head around what was happening as Olivia pulled her onto her feet and into a hug. Moments later, Julia joined in, and so did Lily.
“It’s going to be okay,” Olivia said. “Women have children every day of the year, and with modern medical technology, it’s not going to be a problem for you, if you want children.”
“Of course I want them,” she said a bit crossly. “I just wasn’t expecting them now. I figured I’d have years to grow comfortable in my marriage before we had children. I know Jared will be thrilled, but this is really crappy timing.
“These are going to be the royal grandchildren—princes or princesses of the blood. One of them will rule the Kingdom of Pentagar one day. It doesn’t matter what I might have wanted, though, because now that they’re here, I’m going to have them. Thankfully, that’s what I’d have done anyway.”
She took a deep breath and pushed the other women back slightly. “I wasn’t having any menstrual periods. I’d have figured I’d have at least one if my implant had failed that badly.”
“Looks like you caught it on the first time around,” Lily said. “The children seem healthy, and I can even tell you the sex if you want to know. The scan was able to determine that via their DNA.”
“Tell me.”
“Congratulations, Mommy. You’re going to have identical twin boys.”
Elise tried to marshal her thoughts, but she couldn’t seem to catch them. It was as if they were chasing one another in a whirlwind around her as she stood there completely bewildered.