by Aer-ki Jyr
“More than that,” Davis said evenly as he took the stairs two at a time, “they can unlock some of the sealed doors. I think it has to do with the concentration of ambrosia within their systems,” he said, hurrying over to the nearest terminal where Sam and Ryan were standing, their eyes glued to a holographic display as they flipped through previously untouched portions of the pyramid’s database.
Suddenly the two Archons smiled and fist bumped, then turned back to look at the newcomers.
“What did you find?” Greg asked, knowing those smiles meant something big.
Ryan laughed once, then answered for the pair. “The pyramid has weapons.”
3
“Weapons?” Jason asked, jumping up the last three stairs.
“Oh yeah,” Ryan said, pointing to a holographic display floating over the control console he and Sam were using. “At’se bellet.”
Jason looked at the alien script that read ‘primary weapon’ at the top of a long list of other systems, most of the vocabulary he didn’t recognize. “Schematics?”
Ryan tapped the solid holographic words and a 3d diagram of the pyramid manifested itself in place of the list with the top tier of the pyramid highlighted and connected by several root-like shafts reaching down and around the command deck to the power generation systems below.
“Wait a minute,” Sam said, looking at the diagram. “That’s bigger than it should be.”
“30 tiers,” Paul counted. “Our map only has 18.”
“Looks like we’ve got a lot more doors to unlock,” Greg commented, coming up and placing a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “We think the ambrosia acts as a security key. One of the permanently sealed doors opened up for us, and we were able to see secret markings on the walls that the research team couldn’t.”
“That’s probably how we got access then,” Sam said, nodding to the console. “We were running through the databanks and followed a link to the main system inventory, something he said they’d never been able to access.”
“Sam, what are you looking at now?” Davis asked, walking up beside him and the other Archons while the tech hovered around behind them, trying to get a better view.
“It seems to be a large weapon mounted atop the pyramid,” he said, pointing to the highlighted spot.
“Interesting…because I don’t see anything at the end of your finger.”
Paul glanced at Davis, then back at the hologram. “Invisible holograms too?”
Sam frowned. “You mean you can’t see the pyramid here?”
“No, it looks like the hologram isn’t even turned on. You said there are 30 tiers?”
Sam recounted. “Yep.”
Davis turned to the tech and pointed a thumb over his shoulder to the prefab structure sitting off a few meters to their right. “Get the word out that I want all the Archons to rendezvous back here and I want all the staff to do likewise.”
“It’ll take some time,” the man said, knowing how spread out the teams were. They’d actually had to set up base camps on the various levels, the pyramid was so vast.
“I know,” Davis said, with the tech nodding and heading to the door to access their comm equipment.
“If I’m reading this right,” Ryan said, pulling up some additional text, “it’s some form of energy weapon with an insane range.”
“That can’t be right,” Jason said, doing the mental math.
“Past Luna?” Sam asked for confirmation.
“That’s how I’m reading it. Paul?”
“Same here. And those power levels are nuts.”
“Would someone mind translating?” Davis asked.
“Sorry,” Paul offered. “There are statistics with the diagram, and the primary weapon seems to be for orbital defense, with a firing range of half a million kilometers.”
“You said it was located where?”
“At the summit.”
Davis nodded. “There is a large dead zone there that we’ve never been able to access.”
“Time out a second,” Sam said, with the other trailblazers turning their attention away from the hologram. “I thought all the V’kit’no’sat took ambrosia. Who is this meant to be hidden from?”
“An excellent question,” Davis acknowledged, still annoyed at not being able to see the new data. “These systems were clearly designed for Human use, but the ambrosia…if it really is the ambrosia…suggests that not all Humans were trusted with the same level of access, both to the computer systems and to certain regions of the pyramid. If there are another 12 missing tiers that’s a huge area being blocked off, considering how each progressive tier gets larger the further down you go. What we find there should give us some answers.”
“Unless those are dino-only regions,” Greg noted.
“That’s a possibility,” Davis admitted. “But we know we at least have access to at least one new area up top.”
“What’s up?” Sara asked as she hopped up the stairs with Jace and Zak in tow, followed by a couple of scientists.
“We’re going to split up into search teams,” Greg said, walking a few steps away to fill everyone in as they arrived while the others kept digging into the computer system.
“Where’s ground level supposed to be,” Jason asked, fiddling with the controls.
“Here,” Ryan said, hitting a few keys on the control board. Suddenly surveillance footage of the exterior popped up around and replacing the diagram, showing a tropical rainforest. “Ok, that’s not exactly what I expected.”
“Timestamp,” Paul pointed out, floating above the pyramid. It took him a moment to translate the date, given that the V’kit’no’sat didn’t base their measurement system off of Earth’s orbital length, but rather had a standard system used throughout their empire. “100,000ish years ago?”
“No way,” Sam said, slightly nudging Ryan aside. “He reached down and touched the base of the hologram with two fingers and pulled them apart, enlarging the map until several burnt out tracks of forest were visible. He looked around for the time controls, but didn’t see any floating in mid air so he tried the keys.
“Battle scars?” Ryan guessed, looking at the damage to the forest…then suddenly the damage disappeared, replaced by full grown trees as Sam found the skip/rewind button. After several minutes of experimenting and learning how to dial down the sensitivity of the time jumps he brought it to the point where the trees had gone missing.
“What kind of weapon is that?” Ryan asked as a wave of what looked like slow moving, neon blue/green water spilled down from overhead and disintegrated the vegetation.
“Can you run that in real time?” Jason asked.
“That is real time,” Sam said, checking once again anyway.
“What’s that?” Paul said, pointing to the center of the destruction. The neon ‘water’ collected on the surface, slowly dissipating while it spread out and revealed three objects beneath that had been undamaged in the attack, protected beneath some kind of invisible dome that was keeping the ‘water’ at bay around their thick feet.
Suddenly one of the three spike-topped aliens let loose a cascade of energy, apparently emitting from its spikes, into the forest ahead, targeting some unseen attacker as tiny bolts of green energy amassed in droves from elsewhere in the forest.
All four Archons fell silent for a long moment, watching the battle take place. The three Hjar’at held their position while the blue goo disappeared, then a wave of tiny metallic-looking chickens broke through the brush and leapt at them. Two were caught in mid air by another spike-generated energy blast, but there were too many to stop. Four more slipped alongside the centermost Hjar’at and fired at its neck with their tiny weapons, pumping round after round into what, upon a closer zoom of the recording, appeared to be heavy battle armor that the dinosaur was wearing.
Sam paused the footage, zooming in again and finding that the camera view could rotate and spin about, as if the entire battle had been recorded in 3d. The camera view he had moved int
o the gap between the center and left Hjar’at, then he flew it in up close to where the ‘chickens’ were attacking its neck.
“Rit’ko’sor,” Paul identified the ‘chickens.’
“They’re both wearing armor,” Jason added, referring to the Raptors and Stegosauruses.
“I don’t know what’s recording this, but there are dead zones,” Sam said, pointing to the visible underside of the central Hjar’at, where only a wireframe connected the left and right side of the beast. He spun the camera around a bit and noticed that the trees near the pyramid were also wireframe only, save for the canopy which appeared in full visual view.
“Backtrack to that big weapon hit,” Jason said, “and zoom out. Let’s see where it came from.”
Sam worked the controls, now getting more familiar with the feel of them, and brought them back to the impact of the neon ‘water,’ then zoomed out, revealing that it came from a point on the third tier of the pyramid.
“Point defense?” Paul suggested.
“That doesn’t hurt the Hjar’at?” Ryan added.
“Let it play through,” Jason prompted.
Sam zoomed back in a bit and released the pause, watching the odd weapon tear away the forest, the spike-generated energy blasts, and the Rit’ko’sor rush. When they got back to the point where they were at the center one’s neck blasting away at point blank range the much more massive dinosaur jerked to the side and pointed its helmeted face back towards the pyramid, whipping its huge tail around in a 180 degree arc and crushing two of the Rit’ko’sor on impact.
There was no sound accompanying the recording, but to Paul it almost felt like he could hear the crunch of their armored plates as the two smaller Rit’ko’sor were knocked back the way they’d come, flying into still more pouring out of the jungle, not all of which were wearing armor. The newest arrivals had a spine plate and helmet, but the rest of their tough skin was visible, making Paul wonder if they were seeing different classes of warriors, with maybe the first wave being the more elite troops now being followed up by their version of ‘grunts.’
The other two Rit’ko’sor deftly jumped over the swinging tail, one of which landed on top of the twin row of spike plates on the Hjar’at’s back. It fired down in between them several times, then jumped free as another energy cascade spread between the plates. Its twin, meanwhile, leap forward again and pumped more and more tiny green blasts into the damaged neck armor and finally drew first blood a moment before the Hjar’at curled its neck down and tucked its head, shoulder rolling to the left and impaling the Rit’ko’sor with one of its forward spike plates, nearly cutting the other alien in half.
It blew the mortally wounded dinosaur off its skewer with a cascading energy blast as more and more Rit’ko’sor emerged from the charred and smoking tree line. Most of the fully armored versions were gone, replaced by the augmented ones, but they still had the same green forearm-mounted weapons and they swarmed against the bloody breach in the Hjar’at’s neck armor. Blast after blast expanded the gap, and eventually the massive beast went down.
Another neon ‘water’ attack fell on top of the two surviving Hjar’at and the dozens of Rit’ko’sor surrounding them. From the camera viewpoint, which Sam had lowered down to their level, everything disappeared in the tidal wave, then as it cleared the tops of the Hjar’at sparkled with some type of an energy field that was repelling the attack, while the Rit’ko’sor and the wounded Hjar’at were incinerated on contact. The smaller dinosaurs disappeared entirely, but a smoking lump only a fifth the size of the former monster remained behind, marking the spot where it had been felled.
As more Rit’ko’sor reinforcements appeared, seemingly in identical numbers to the other waves as if they were staggering their attack, an artificial icon appeared in the air over the battle, denoting something that none of the Archons could recognize. It flashed three times then faded away as the battle continued.
“Zoom out,” Paul suggested. When Sam did so he pointed to the opposite side of the pyramid. “Swing around to the hangar.”
Sam touched various points on the 3d map and physically swung the whole thing around as if he were manipulating a touchscreen, only with the extra dimension added.
“I think that icon was a perimeter breach warning,” Paul explained, pointing to a tiny line of quickly moving Rit’ko’sor entering the pyramid through some sort of service entrance next to the main doors, which were still closed. Next to them were several large corpses, accompanied by hundreds of smaller ones…the defenders no doubt that had been overrun by the numerically superior Rit’ko’sor.
“Rewind,” Paul said, pointing to the service entrance. “I want to see how they got inside. Explosives won’t work on the stone…at least not anything we have access to.”
Jason finally glanced back at Davis, who was standing quietly by listening. “Still can’t see anything?”
“I’m afraid not,” the Director admitted.
“It’s a battle record, and if the timestamp is accurate this could be the attack that ended the V’kit’no’sat presence on Earth.”
“I’d gathered as much,” he said as Jason’s eyes were drawn back to the invisible hologram.
“There,” Paul said, pointing for Sam to zoom in closer. “Some sort of lock pick,” he said, referring to a small, shiny device about the size of his head that the Rit’ko’sor had placed on the door.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sara asked, finally stepping up behind them along with half a dozen other Archons.
“We’re just beginning to find stuff,” Paul told her. “Battle records included.”
“I think we can safely say why there’s restricted access,” Jason decided, facing Davis. “You’ve been working with civilian access. This is military.”
“Plausible,” Davis considered without jumping to any conclusions. “With the amount of ambrosia needed to be able to see what you’re seeing, it’s possible that only warriors would put in the amount of training required to raise their thresholds to that level.”
“That’s one bit of good news,” Morgan said, just arriving to the group after Greg had filled her in on the basics at the top of the stairs.
“How so?” Davis asked.
“Because it means that training wise we’re on par with at least their junior warriors, else we wouldn’t have access to this security measure.”
“Finally something to measure against?” Paul asked in agreement.
“And if these are military records, there might be a great deal more to compare with.”
“I’ll leave you to the records search then,” Davis said, politely extracting himself from the group he suddenly found himself inadequate to be a part of. “I’ll split the research staff up and have them lead the others around to the sealed sections and see how many doors we can open up.”
Jason nodded to the man as he left, then turned his attention back to the battle records as another glob of ‘water’ shot out from the pyramid and burnt a second gaping hole into a section of forest that they couldn’t see any troops within, nor anything else due to the thick canopy covering that region.
“Sam, back it up again. Let’s see how all this started.”
4
“Here it is,” Davis told Rafa and Oni as they got back to the set of doors that they’d initially unlocked. “Can you see the ring and symbols?”
“Yes, clearly,” Rafa attested as Oni nodded her agreement.
“This is as far as we got before we decided to get everyone squared away,” Davis told him, holding his hand out. “After you, and let me know if you see any other markings.”
“Will do,” Rafa said, stepping across the threshold and into the sealed section. It was little more than a straight hallway with doors set into either side, 8 in total before the wide walkway split in two and circled around a central room. They found five other such hallways radiating off like spokes around the circle, with only one set of already open doors granting them access to the central cha
mber…which was empty save for a console on the far wall, which was also curved to match the interior wall of the ring-like corridor.
The ceiling was high and had a domed curve that reached to an apex as smooth as the rest of the chamber. It was also dim, with only trim lighting and the buttons on the console providing any illumination, other than that spilling in from the well lit hallway.
“Ideas?” Davis asked as they walked across the center of the room towards the console.
“Floor is soft,” Rafa commented.
“Walls too,” Oni said, driving one of her little fingers into the dark red material, which depressed a couple of centimeters. “Padding of some sort.”
“Training area?” Davis asked.
“Maybe,” Rafa said, walking up on Davis’s shoulder as the director touched a few buttons on the console.
“If you see any holograms let me…”
Suddenly the lights flashed on and a person appeared a few meters behind them, as if running into sight from an invisible hideaway. The tall Human took five steps forward and brought an elbow down on top of Davis’s head.
The blow knocked the Director down, but didn’t fully land as Rafa hurled himself at the attacker, blunting most of the strike as the pair wrapped up and fell to the ground. Oni dragged the stunned Davis aside and scanned the area, trying to figure out what was going on while Rafa disengaged himself, rolling to the side and up onto his feet, then taking a large hop backwards to clear fighting space as the man swung at him with a leg sweep that missed inches short before he too rolled up onto his feet and charged at Rafa.
“Move,” Oni told Davis as he held his head, blinking away the pain and haze. Seeing no one else in sight she pulled him by the elbow towards the door as Rafa exchanged forearm blows with the larger man, being driven back a few steps by his superior strength but holding him at bay long enough for Oni to get Davis clear.
“Call the others,” she told him at the doorway, referring to the earpiece he’d picked up below, before turning about and heading back in to help Rafa.