Starfade

by Gary Swaby

  The cage crashed to the floor as Vraxen’s hand reached her again. She wasted no time shuffling her body out of the opening.

  For a moment, she considered trying to bind the cage back over the hole. She thought that maybe Vraxen could push himself down after her. But although his limbs were flexible, the rest of his body mass would be too bulky.

  “Sorry, Vraxy; catch you later,” she said.

  When she turned, she was now facing the garden full of dead plants. The foul stench made her lip curl. A shuffling sound came from the floors above and Chiaki ran to the first door on her left in response. She felt somewhat bad for ditching Vraxen after hearing his story; but he was loyal to Pearson and that meant he was ultimately against her.

  When she entered the room, a light sensor turned on. She noticed cameras, but after some inspection she realized they were off. There were rows of computers in front of her, and the sight of them raised her spirits. To Chiaki, computers meant purpose and possibilities. There were always new things to discover when entering a room full of computers away from her home on Flade.

  Before turning on the computers, she tip-toed over the sides of the tables, observing where the cables led. She saw that they were all connected to a hub at the other side of the room.

  “Chiaki, it would seem that these computers are on a separate network from the sever rooms below,” said Tobi.

  “I think you’re right,” she said, walking to one of the computers. Clearly these computers were all hooked up to their own private network, the questions was whether each computer would boot into its local desktop or if it would boot right into the network login screen. As expected, the screen blinked right into the network’s login screen. This meant that Chiaki would need to hack the network connection from the hub first. From there, she could figure out how to obtain an admin login for herself.

  “Tobi,” she said, as she connected her Comm-link to the hub. “Once I crack this, I’ll need you to read out any data you can find that’s relevant to the Thundercloaks, New Yoy or the Galactic Alliance. I won’t have time to sit around here reading everything.”

  “Noted,” said Tobi.

  The way connections worked in the Milky Way was that satellites and spaceships allowed for mobile and Comm-link devices to access their own wireless technologies. Through these built-in technologies, one would have access to the galaxy-wide Internet service. It was then up to individuals and corporations on each planet to secure their own private networks so nobody could access their data. As of now, Tobi was able to access the galaxy-wide Internet, thanks to New Yoy’s satellite, but once Chiaki worked her magic, he would be able to explore whatever data was stored on the private network in the room they now stood in.

  Without Vraxen there to break her concentration, Chiaki was able to focus entirely on her cracker software. When she’d hacked the door earlier, she’d had to rely completely on the software’s automated feature. But with no distraction, she could manually input characters alongside the automated cracker to try and figure out the login faster.

  It took her around five minutes to crack the login, and she used it to set up her own user login with full access to the network. She did the initial setup from her Comm-link, but decided to test out her new user login on one of the computers. Only then did she see that she didn’t recognize the language written on screen, all she knew was that there were two text boxes, one for Username and one for Password.

  “Nova, I’m picking up Vraxen’s signal again,” said Tobi.

  “Dammit,” she said, as she watched the computer log onto the network successfully. “Alright, Tobi, scan the network and read me anything you find.” She turned the computer off and crept over to the window facing the garden. There was no sign of movement so she crept through the door and dashed for the room on the other side of the floor, in search for a way down below.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE ROOM WAS DARK, leaving Chiaki on edge. There was something about the dark that made her uneasy. In the dark, she had no control over the uncanny. She was so used to being able to manipulate things around her that she just couldn’t deal with the hopeless feeling of being in darkness.

  The room would have to stay dark for now because a drone had hovered in from the other side, as if emerging from nowhere. Chiaki guessed the stairway to the levels below was somewhere back there. She pressed her back against a set of cabinets, wondering why the room didn’t have a light sensor like the last one. It wasn’t a good idea to activate the neon light strips on her skinsuit in case the drone detected her. She was forced to somehow get past the drone in darkness and silence. She was unable to talk to Tobi, as she was close enough to the drone to have her voice picked up, but thankfully, Tobi would be able to speak to her through the headset. There wasn’t much he could do in terms of detecting the drone’s signal, because it worked differently from a Comm-link signal. But she hoped he would speak to her eventually so that she didn’t feel so alone in this situation. She had just ditched Vraxen to be alone, and now she wished she wasn’t; the irony.

  She peered around the side of the cabinet, watching and listening. Her ears told her that the drone was behind her to the left. There seemed to be some hall lighting in the distance on her right. That was where she needed to be. She could probably make it downstairs without dealing with the drone at all, but if Vraxen was clumsy enough to be discovered by it, it could put her life in jeopardy. The question was, did she want to destroy the drone or hack it? She had just one mini-EMP left at her disposal. She wouldn’t be able to use the EMP on the android downstairs because androids were too high voltage; but who knew what else she may need it for later?

  She made the decision to destroy this one. This meant that she’d need to get behind it and catch it by surprise. Drones had a high sensitivity for noise and could send alerts within five seconds of detecting something. But Chiaki knew that security drones had what was called a suspicious filter built in. This was an algorithm that assessed whether a noise may have been made by a conscious species or an animal. Too often, wild animals would trigger a drone’s alert system and spam its owner with false warnings. That was why the suspicious filter algorithm was created, so the drone would have some sense of judgment.

  After hours of trolling her own drones, Chiaki figured out that she could distract a drone by making distant sounds as long as there wasn’t too much impact behind it. Chiaki took the micro-SMG from her hip, trying extra hard not to make any noise. She fiddled with the bottom of the handle, where her star pendant was attached. The drone’s hovering was getting nearer. Finally, she had the pendant detached and as she looked down at it in her palm, she hoped not to lose it. Her brother had given it to her long ago.

  Chiaki tossed the pendant across the room and heard it make contact with a cabinet. The drone’s hover paused, and she heard the mechanical sound of it doing a three-sixty turn. She could see the reflection from its search light as it hovered to the source of the sound. If the drone had thought the noise came from a conscious species, the alert would have already been sent and she’d be in big trouble.

  With the drone now facing the other way and its search light providing enough light to aim, she stood and raised her SMG, aiming for the weak point where its frame connected. The drone must have heard her movement, as its red light blinked, initiating the five second alert phase. She squeezed the trigger in panic, feeling the bullets tear out the nozzle. The drone collapsed and shattered on the ground. She tip-toed over the cabinet to see what state the drone was in before approaching, she didn’t want to be picked up by it’s camera if it was still functioning. Thankfully, the drone appeared to be completely offline.

  She ran around the set of cabinets to retrieve her pendant and then she ran towards the right side of the room. She didn’t want to linger around here too long after opening fire, even though her SMG was good at suppressing noise.

  She found herself in a tight corridor with a blinking light. There was an elev
ator on the right side, but she didn’t want to take the risk of using it.

  “Nova!” Tobi called in her ear.

  “Oh there you are. Where were you when I needed comfort?”

  “Sorry, but you told me to find useful data. If you need me to multitask then I need more RAM, you know how this works.”

  “Oh, I see your sassy module is working fine,” she said. “What do you have for me?”

  She had now reached the stairway. It was the kind of stairway that spiraled. She decided not to go down while she was talking to Tobi, in case her voice was picked up. She moved closer to the elevator and leaned against the wall opposite it.

  “There are many logs that are written in languages not recognized, but I’ve managed to find some in languages that can be translated. I will read one now,” said Tobi.

  “Go for it.”

  Thanks to the traveler’s appearance, we now know that the loss of our ancient power was at the command of our ancestors from Yoyvis. Though we’d heard of the planet’s demise long ago, we never knew that others from the planet had escaped before it was destroyed. It seems they blamed magic for the death of Yoyvis and thus they wished to cast it away. Simply put, I believe that landing on Earth poisoned their minds.

  “What does this all mean?” she asked, once Tobi stopped talking. “He mentions somewhere called Yoyvis, so I’m guessing that’s the old-Yoy, right?”

  “That is my guess,” said Tobi.

  “And he talks about an ancient power, and magic? Are you sure he wasn’t writing Potter fan-fic or something?”

  “Potter is only considered a classic peace of twenty-first century literature on Earth…”

  “Yeah, I know that,” she said. “But there’s no such thing as magic, only science.”

  “Well it would seem that they believe otherwise; but it gets more interesting, let me read you another log.”

  In an act of desperation, the Alliance sent a high ranking operative to gather Intel on us. His name was Jonathan Flurwick, and we almost killed him as swiftly as the marines sent here before him. That day, The Traveler had been present, and Flurwick was fortunate for it. The Traveler saw the deep glimmer in his eyes that alluded to his Yoyvis blood. Flurwick was a descendant to the people of Yoyvis that fled to Earth, and for that reason we spared him. We seized the opportunity to keep The Traveler with us, while sending Flurwick into Relaun to retrieve the Celestibus.

  Chiaki asked Tobi to reread the log as there was so much information to decipher from it. “So, the Alliance has been sending marines here to die for some time. That asshole Pearson didn’t mention that,” she said, slamming her fist against the wall behind her.

  “Did you follow the part about the marine called Jonathan Flurwick?” Tobi asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “So, he’s somehow a descendant of the people of Yoyvis? And it seems like these Thundercloaks here on New Yoy are connected to that Yoyvis planet.”

  “Indeed, and judging by the logs, Yoyvis is a planet that was destroyed many years ago. People fled Yoyvis and ended up on Earth.”

  “Which means that they must have bred with humans for many generations,” said Chiaki. “Oh my, Tobi; if all this stuff is true then it could mean that the first-contact between humans and aliens happened long before meeting the Stowyth’s on Mars.”

  “It could mean many things, Nova. Let me keep searching for data that might be of interest.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” she said, becoming suddenly aware that she was lingering in the corridor for too long.

  She walked to the stairway and slowly made her way down, thinking about the weight of these new revelations. This wasn’t even the data she had come for and already she had obtained information that could alter history as she knew it.

  Below her, the android’s footsteps tapped against the floor. Androids were made up of so many materials that it was a challenge to build ones that were light on their feet. Chiaki knew of some private tech companies who had patents for stealth androids, but they weren’t affiliated with any particular organization in the Milky Way, meaning that their androids weren’t widely distributed.

  When Chiaki was halfway down the staircase, she could see the android from behind. This droid had a smooth olive exterior. It was expensive to build androids that mimicked the appearance of humans or other species, so unless you were the Galactic Alliance—or wealthy—it was likely your android would have a simple color or two-tone design. Droid heads came in many shapes and sizes, this one’s resembled a human head except that is was slightly longer at the chin. Its ears pointed at the helix, resembling two antennas at the side of its head. Its fingers were longer than usual. The Thundercloaks had clearly done some modding, but it was all cosmetic. Everything inside the droid was likely the default stock build.

  Chiaki’s nose wrinkled when she saw how dark it was below. The android would have the advantage here because night vision was so cheap to implement in them that it was pretty much default. Luckily, they couldn’t see through walls or solid materials; at least the cheaper models couldn’t. The android’s head moved left to right as it walked; scanning the area. Chiaki saw an oval shaped room in front of the droid and it aligned correctly with the location of the server room that she’d seen on the infra-red.

  She had a small window of opportunity before the android walked back towards the stairway and noticed her, so she crept downstairs until she was on the ground. She found cover against a plain glass wall to her left. She could easily be seen through the glass if she stood, so she knelt in a way that she would be hidden by book shelves inside the room.

  Chiaki heard the droid’s footsteps coming back down the hallway so she crept around the other side of the wall and continued to move forward; passing the android on the other side of the glass room. If she kept up this this momentum, she could snatch the data from the server room without even needing to shut down the android.

  When she was one room away from the oval room, she glanced above her, in search of any cameras or security equipment. It seemed that these Thundercloaks relied heavily on their drones and androids. But Pearson had mentioned that this was an old data center, so it could just be the fact that they’d moved their most expensive security resources to their new facilities.

  Chiaki took a glance around the corner to observe the door leading into the oval room. It was a rotating door with tight segments, possibly there to prevent someone from removing large equipment from the room. This worked in Chiaki’s favor, because the oval room didn’t have glass walls like the other surrounding rooms and the rotating door meant that the droid wouldn’t easily be able to see into the room and notice her. The only problem would be going through the rotating doors silently. Rotating doors weren’t the quietest method of entering a room. She observed the outside of the room some more, looking for vents, but she couldn’t see the other side of the room from where she was knelt. Her options were to either attempt to get through the rotating doors, or sneak past the android again to check for vents on the other side.

  Her excitement of the server room being right before her eyes made her impatient and reluctant to backtrack. She would attempt to get through the rotating doors. Once she made it through them, there was a chance the droid would come to investigate the noise; so she would hide somewhere in the room until the coast was clear.

  And then, Chiaki’s heart skipped a beat as she started to hear the android’s footsteps behind her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE ANDROID WAS STILL too far behind to notice Chiaki. It was just cornering the glass room. The android would soon detect her if she didn’t make a move.

  She dashed forward, making her way towards the rotating door, but in her haste her foot collided with an uneven floor tile, sending her body front ways to the floor. “Shit!” she cried under her breath. The android’s footsteps were now fast approaching and in response, Chiaki got up and flattened herself against the wall that it would be emerging next to.
She grabbed the SMG and held her breath, waiting for the droid to stray into her sights.

  A loud crash came from the direction of the stairway and the android’s footsteps came to a halt. Chiaki listened closely for any follow up noises. Unless there were new enemy sentries on the premises, it had to be Vraxen.

  The android was moving again, but she could hear that the footsteps were trailing away further from where she stood. It was going to investigate the noise and although Vraxen being discovered could potentially lead to her death, she was thankful for the disturbance.

  Chiaki shuffled to the other side of the wall and peered around to see the droid enter the stairwell. She waited a few seconds before dashing towards the oval room and pushing her way through the creaky rotating doors.

  Inside, Chiaki took a moment to observe the room. Racks of networking equipment circled the room in a one-hundred-and-eighty degree span. Each rack had around thirty inches of separation. Despite the facility being deserted, the room was cooled, but she heard no air conditioning unit or fans. She looked up and saw a caged vent guard at the center of the roof. The ceiling was domed and it was higher than the ceiling level of the outside hallway.

  At the center of the room was a round, erected surface that was a foot smaller than Chiaki was at her incredible height of five-foot four-inches. A computer terminal sat atop the surface. She approached the terminal and circled around it, looking for any security triggers. The terminal’s wiring was hidden inside the circular stand, and she could see that the cables ran under the flooring beneath her. She was stood on a mesh strip that housed a number of cables running from the terminal. She followed the cables so that she could locate the equipment that the terminal was connected too. In the worst case scenario, she could pull the cables and shut down any tracking or security software. The many cables branched in different directions, connecting to devices sitting on top of racks at the opposite end of the room.