by Aer-ki Jyr
“You said that’s for the planet?” Morgan repeated.
“Yeah, the planetary tag is right here,” Sam said, pointing to the top of the chart.
“That’s helpful, but not necessarily representative of the overall V’kit’no’sat social structure.”
“She’s right,” Jason agreed, “but it gives us a start. So who was tops down here?”
“I don’t recognize that symbol,” Sam said, pointing to the top left, “but that’s Oso’lon.”
“So the T-Rex isn’t tops,” Jason sniped. “Spielberg would be crushed.”
“Ari’tat?” Paul asked, referring to the singular race on the second tier of the chart. The tiny dinosaurs were smaller than Humans, and as far as pure size went, one wouldn’t think they would have had such high standing.
“That is surprising,” Jason agreed, moving his eyes down to the third tier. “Rit’ko’sor, and two others I don’t recognize. Can you pull up a profile?”
“Good idea,” Sam said, looking around the system for how to do that. “This may take a while.”
“Look at this,” Ryan said, pulling their attention back to his console. “The Humans have some type of clan markers in their files, if I’m reading this right. Those that appear to be soldiers are different from the techs, so it’s either a ranking system or biological.”
“Maybe both, if they’re split up into castes,” Paul pointed out.
“I bet that has something to do with the security measures,” Morgan added. “If all of them have access to the pyramid they’d need to restrict database access to those they wanted, hence the access key in the ambrosia.”
“So the others don’t take it, or don’t take as much?” Ryan asked.
“Davis was able to see the ring around the door,” Paul pointed out, “but not the symbol. If everyone took it, but didn’t do the training necessary to increase their dosage, then they’d conceivably be able to see which areas were marked as ‘restricted access’ without being able to enter.”
“The door controls might be set to register a higher amount of ambrosia by touch than is required for the vision augmentation,” Jason added, thinking along the same lines. “And if their Human society is divided into castes or something like it, then information might be withheld that a certain caste wouldn’t need to know about. This is the first access we’ve had to a planetary map, which suggests there is some sort of compartmentalization going on.”
“And we’ve just found out that we’ve had the access key all along,” Morgan commented.
“Access key to 100,000 year old data,” Paul amended. “As valuable as all of this is, who knows what they’ve come up with since then.”
“Or they could have had a technological backslide,” the Acolyte countered. “They’ve never tried to resettle this colony, so something must have happened.”
“I agree with the second part, but not the first. I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky.”
“Neither do I, but they obviously restricted access for a reason, and by some quirky luck we ended up with that access. That’s a masterstroke if there ever was one.”
“More like a massive mistake on their part,” Jason said. “Masterstroke implies that we created the situation, not got lucky.”
“We didn’t luck into our training,” Ryan pointed out.
Jason wavered. “Ok, you have a point there.”
“Access,” Paul repeated. “Do you suppose we’re able to fire the weapons?”
Ryan cringed. “Buried underground with a factory on top of us?”
“I meant…”
“I know what you meant,” Ryan interrupted him. “If we can see the data on the systems then there’s a good chance we can access them…though it’s possible it’s code-locked.”
“I meant could Humans fire the weapons, or was that reserved for the other races.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say we could, based on the way this system is laid out,” Ryan said, searching around a bit.
“Well don’t try,” Morgan scolded him.
Ryan turned around and glared at her. “I’ll be careful,” he scoffed.
“Guys, I think I found something,” Sam said, having brought up the appropriate files on the top ranked race icon that they couldn’t identify. In addition to a myriad of floating text, the hologram resolved itself into the 3D picture of another dinosaur…this one with fins rather than legs.
“Garas’tox,” Paul read aloud. He recognized it as some type of plesiosaur, but couldn’t exactly place it. Obviously a swimmer by the fins, the Garas’tox had a long neck and equally long tail that, when stretched out, resembled a sea snake with a bulbous central body. The only exception was the four limb-like fins and shark-fin stretching out down the center of its back. The head was arrow-like, with rows of tiny teeth that made the creature look as fearsome as a dragon…except this one was real and not a figment of Hollywood’s imagination.
“I thought Davis said there were no water dinosaurs?” Morgan reminded them.
“I guess they don’t interact with the common folk,” Jason said sarcastically, referring to the compartmentalization of information again.
“I’m betting those other two are swimmers,” Paul said, referring to the other unidentified symbols on the third tier, which Sam was now quickly able to confirm, bringing up an image of a hammerhead-like, thick bodied ‘tank,’ followed by a much more streamlined ‘super shark.’
“Earth is a waterworld,” Jason offered. “It would make sense why they’d have a higher priority for colonization.”
“Except there’s no competition between the land and water,” Morgan pointed out. “There’s got to be more to that priority chart than we’re aware of.”
“Just a question,” Paul added, not liking where he was going with this. “But if the Raptors rebelled, how would they kill the swimmers?”
Jason’s mind flashed back to the reports of the large ocean creatures that Star Force had been continually encountering the deeper they expanded their seafloor habitats. “No…”
“I think we need to dig deeper into the battle records,” Paul suggested. “We need to know exactly what happened here.”
Ryan and Sam exchanged glances, then both pushed aside what they were working on and began sifting through the databanks, looking for any data on underwater habitats.
6
July 14, 2112
Paul woke up at the sound of his wristwatch alarm, blinking off the haze of the past eight hours of sleep and sitting up in bed, suddenly remembering where he was as his brain caught up to reality. He climbed out of bed and hopped into the bathroom in the small quarters he’d been assigned in what the pyramid research staff referred to as the ‘hotel.’
Sitting a couple of tiers below the command deck, the hotel was the housing facility that Star Force had built inside the pyramid so the staff could live inside without having to commute back and forth, thus increasing the security of the site. It sat in the northwest corner of what had formerly been the Brat’mar ‘embassy.’ Each of the various races within the V’kit’no’sat appeared to have been given specific sections of the pyramid for their own uses, with the Human levels residing at the apex.
The Brat’mar, or Triceratops, had several larger rooms within their domain at what Star Force had previously believed to have been at about center level within the pyramid. What the ridged, wide open areas were used for hadn’t yet been determined, but it made sense for the hotel to be placed in a central location to facilitate the local commute to their workstations, given that some of them had miles to travel inside the twisting confines to get from one portion of the structure to another.
Shaving then taking a quick shower, Paul readied himself for another long day of exploration and headed over to the cafeteria for a bit of breakfast before meeting up with Jason and several other Archons for a morning run around the command deck. It had been a long flight in that first day, and with all the excitement of new discoveries being unlocked
they’d worked right through their normal sleep period and into the next day. As much as Paul wanted to be back out there digging through records and exploring the various chambers he and the others knew that they needed sleep, so he’d resigned himself to getting a good 8 hours in last night.
Normally a light sleeper, Paul hadn’t woke once during the night, underscoring how much he’d needed the rest to defrag his brain. The morning run would help salve their missing training time, as well as let them explore the huge room as they crisscrossing the distances between cushioned pedestals while keeping up sub 6:00 pace. By the time they’d made their first lap Paul and Jason had picked up 22 other Archons following in their wake in a long, single file line. Two other groups were also running the deck at various points, either far behind or far ahead of them, but none of them were ambitious enough to hit the access ramps, given their steep incline and irregular footing.
Paul got in an hour and a half, then broke off to head up to the newly discovered holographic sparring program and give it a try…at the beginner levels. What Rafa, Oni, and Davis had accidentally reactivated was a level 54 program and they were lucky no one had been seriously hurt, for so far their investigations had yet to reveal any sort of safety protocols in the programming.
As much as he wanted to linger there, he knew there was much more to see so he bounced around explored sections of the pyramid, running to and fro to save time in transit and to give him a little bit more of a workout. There were hundreds of rooms at the top of the pyramid that had been reserved for Humans, with the slightly larger Raptors also occupying levels above the command deck along with 4 other ‘small’ races.
The internal structures within the separate ‘embassy’ zones were drastically different, with the Rit’ko’sor construction being choppy and elevated. There were no hallways or pathways that didn’t have perches or stepping blocks jutting out at irregular points, all of which led to other access points. Moreover, the chunk of the pyramid that was reserved for them wasn’t split up into levels like the Human section was, it was broken up into bits and pieces off oddly sized rooms everywhere, resembling a weird cross between a rookery and a hamster cage, right down to the tube-like connective tracks.
The Ari’tat section was accessible to Humans, but only if they liked crawling as much as walking. Their passageways were more traditional, but diminutive. Paul spent about ten minutes working his way around the nearest chambers then gave up, deciding it wasn’t worth getting a crick in his neck just yet when there was so much else to explore.
In stark contrast, the tiers below the command deck held huge architecture to house the embassies of the larger dinosaurs, all of which gained entrance via a series of external doors on the 5th tier that connected directly to the large ramps that led up and down within the pyramid, topping out at the command deck and bottoming out at what Star Force had thought was the pyramid floor on tier 18. Yesterday that assumption was disproven as the Archons were able to open massive floor doors that exposed additional ramps heading further down.
Paul didn’t know much more than that, having gone to sleep as those reports started to come in, but intended to head down there during the afternoon after he checked out the hangar bay where Davis had told him several V’kit’no’sat ships still stood. The bay was also located on the 5th tier, with the smaller upper half having a secondary entrance/exit point on the 4th tier.
He entered on the 5th, which was entirely dedicated to one massive flight deck with 13 ships spread out in the otherwise empty hangar. Ten of them had been partially dismantled, including a ridiculously massive one that Paul recognized as an Oso’lon transport, with some active work crews present in the bay running additional tests while three copies of the smallest ship design appeared to be still intact.
“Impressive, no?” a tech asked as Paul walked up to him as he was pulling a crystal tray from the underside of a medium-sized ship…or so far as Star Force scaling went. For the V’kit’no’sat it was pathetically small.
“Very. Any new insights?”
“Bits and pieces every now and then. Nothing major. These are modular control crystals,” he said, holding up a hexagonal tray with dozens of crystals slotted into it. “Some of their equipment uses these like program uploads. Swap out modular weaponry or other components and likewise swap out part of the computer system. We’ve been trying to build a reader of our own, but so far the best data we’ve been able to pull off of one of these is a basic holding structure. I’m running an upgrade to our sensor against all the different crystal types, hoping we pick up something more from at least one of them, then we’ll go back and try to build a better sensor and repeat ad nausea.”
Paul nodded, understanding the painstaking nature of the work the Star Force researchers were doing with technology far beyond their comprehension. “Mind if I go inside?”
“Help yourself,” he said, waving him towards the port access hatch.
“Thanks,” Paul said, walking down the length of the smooth hull and stepping inside. There wasn’t much room, but there were two distinct sections…a cockpit and personnel bay. Early on this type of ship had been tagged as a ‘gunship’ by the Archons based on the data sent back to Atlantis, but other than basic schematics and other technical jargon, no data regarding the ship’s purpose had ever surfaced. That was, until yesterday.
The secure files they’d been accessing tagged it as a small Human troop transport/cargo ship, designed primarily for atmospheric purposes but also capable of short range space flights, such as out to a planet’s moons and back. It was ill suited for combat against the other V’kit’no’sat races’ ships, but then again that was never a design consideration and it did serve the Ter’nat as a viable and capable gunship in their often one-sided battles against other races within the galaxy, delivering special ops teams behind enemy lines to cause all sorts of mayhem, as well as functioning as a point to point rescue craft.
Paul counted the seats, two rows high. A catwalk passed a foot over his head, functioning as the floor for the second level, accessible by a short, spine-like ladder on either end of the elongated cabin. There were 12 seats on each of the four rows, minus two were the port hatch was, giving the gunship a carrying capacity of 46 plus cockpit crew. He also knew that the seats could be removed, on both levels, along with the catwalk to open the hold up for cargo crates or small equipment pieces, accessible by a rear hatch that otherwise remained sealed as a bulkhead.
All the seats were oversized, which was understandable given the larger size of the Ter’nat. The walkway between the rows seemed small though, and Paul thought the Knights would have had trouble fitting in without kneeing each other. Apparently once the hold was filled people weren’t supposed to be walking around. That certainly clashed with Star Force’s design motif, but Paul understood the tactical significance of stacking as many troops inside as possible to minimize the number of ships necessary to deliver an assault force to any given location.
Paul walked forward and into the bottom half of the cockpit. Above his head was another compartment with a half ladder above his head as the only means of climbing up. He saw three seats on the lower level, situated west, north, and east if the hold were to be considered south. There was barely a square meter of floor space available between the backs of the seats, bracketing him in and furthering the claustrophobic nature of the craft.
He slid into the forward pilot’s seat and ran a hand over the control boards. There were a number of ‘hard’ buttons arrayed for the most basic of tasks along with two rotational handles. From the research reports he knew that the one on the left controlled the lateral spin the craft was capable of in a gravity well. Turning the handle to the right would spin the ship clockwise, left the opposite direction while maintaining its upright position on its anti-gravity engines.
The other handle wasn’t secured on a central pivot point, instead it could ‘float’ around the board a few inches with the direction of the handle always being parallel to the
orientation of the ship. The farther one pushed the handle to the right the ship would drift laterally. Forward and reverse worked the same as well as diagonal vectors.
Height over terrain was regulated by a slide lever, while rotation was controlled by a thick icon that represented the ship. Rotating the icon would tip the ship, which apparently did not have to stay upright in order to maintain its anti-gravity lift capability.
There were other controls that handled the primary thrust, which was unrelated to the lifting technology. This allowed the craft to obtain its tactical speed, as well as orbital maneuvering capability, and accomplished it through a series of 6 engine pods half buried into the hull of the ship. An odd-looking joystick that had the ability to rotate the handgrip forward handled the more traditional piloting capabilities for dog fighting or space travel, but the bulk of the pilot’s control systems were currently inaccessible.
Paul fixed that by hitting the cabin power-up button. As a few interior running lights came on, so did the holographic controls which filled the space around his head, boxing him into a small cubicle of light. He resisted powering up any other systems, given the partially dismantled nature of the ship, and settled for a quick work-through of the data systems…most of which were offline, thanks to the removed crystal tray.
He passed his hand through the viewscreen, which superimposed over the forward windows, then tagged the solid hologram to his right, bringing up a navigational program.
“We are so dead if they come back,” Paul muttered, thoroughly impressed. He wished the hangar doors weren’t covered in dirt, otherwise he would have seriously considered taking the gunship out on a short test flight, security concerns or no.
“You think they will, after all this time?” the tech asked, appearing behind him in the hold.