by Aer-ki Jyr
“Sorry, did I disrupt your work?”
“No, no…just saw the lights come on and wondered what you were up to.”
“Just looking around,” Paul said, spinning his seat halfway towards the rear so he could look at the man. “And to answer your question, yes I do, though something has obviously prevented them from doing so all this time. Whenever that changes, I imagine they’ll want their colony back.”
“You a pilot?”
“We all are, among other things. Can you see these holographic displays?”
“Sure. Something wrong with them?”
“No, just wondering if they were security locked. Some of the others in the pyramid are only visible to us, given our ambrosia levels, we think.”
“I heard about that yesterday. The database team nearly flipped their wig when they started to find new access.”
“Well, they can’t see any of it, so we have to translate for them. Frustrating for them, I’d imagine.”
“I don’t think so,” the tech disagreed. “They’ve been trying to hack their way into greater access for years without success. Having to run the information through you guys is a gift by comparison.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way. I was judging their reactions.”
“How’s your V’kit’no’sat?”
“Ha, well that might be part of the problem. We’ve been learning the language for longer than most of you have been alive and I know some of the lab coats don’t like us having more knowledge in their area of expertise than them.”
The tech frowned. “How old are you anyway?”
“87.”
“Bullshit.”
“Ambrosia plus training,” Paul said, smiling. “Works wonders.”
“You look like a college freshman…not my grandpa.”
“The Ter’nat lived thousands of years.”
“Who?”
“Sorry, that’s what the V’kit’no’sat called their Humans.”
“Thousands of years?”
“Yeah, can you imagine how strong and skilled they could get in that length of time?”
The tech looked around the cockpit. “Must have some damn good pilots then.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Paul said, pointing up.
“Oh, sorry,” the tech said, stepping back into the hold.
“Auxiliary cockpit?” Paul asked, climbing.
“That was the initial theory, but we’ve kind of nixed it. We’re not sure what it is, except that it’s not redundant.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The system’s not responsive, and the hand controls don’t match up to any ship functions we can identify.”
Paul stepped off the hold and walked forward into a small compartment that had a single seat ringed with what looked like double the holograms that the pilot had been enveloped with.
“I think I know what the problem is,” Paul said after sitting down and tagging a few of the icons, accessing the ship’s comm system.
The tech popped his head up the ladder. “What?”
“Can you see these holograms?”
“Holograms?” he asked, climbing up and squeezing in behind Paul’s seat. “We’ve never been able to access any up here. What are you talking about?”
“Can’t see anything?”
“Nope.”
“Try something for me,” Paul said, touching one of the solid holographic buttons and holding his finger in place. “Try to put your index finger next to mine and see if you feel anything.”
The tech frowned but did as he was told.
“What the hell?” he said, feeling something invisible on his fingertip.
“Now pull back an inch.”
The man drew back his finger and Paul did likewise. “Now try again.”
The tech pressed his finger back to the same spot but it passed through as if nothing was there.
“Now that is impressive,” Paul commented. “It becomes solid to my touch, otherwise it’s pass through like the others.”
“I’ll be damned,” the tech said, waving his hand around through the glowing icons that only Paul could see. “What have you got?”
“Comm system came up by default, but there are other options,” he said, digging through the localized computer network using the invisible buttons. “Some of the stuff is offline, probably linked to the components you’ve pulled out, but this appears to be some type of command and control post to link in with other assets in the field. Maybe a combat controller to coordinate ground ops. I also have a fleet interlink prompt that’s blank.”
“One of the crystals I’ve pulled is communications related…I think.”
Paul leaned back and rubbed his chin. “So their pilots aren’t required to take ambrosia. That doesn’t make sense.”
“The ship is also for short range cargo hauling,” the tech reminded him. “Maybe it’s that way so the civilian pilots could fly them.”
“Doesn’t feel right,” Paul said, standing up. “I’m going to go check on something. Nice meeting you…”
“Ericson,” the tech offered, along with his hand before backing down the short ladder.
“Paul,” the Archon said, hopping down once the tech was clear.
“That a first or last name?”
“The only one I have. My full designation is Paul-024.”
“Well, Paul-024, thanks for that breakthrough. More than we’ve learned in years.”
“Happy to help,” he said as the pair left the ship. “Some of us are going to be sticking around a while, so hopefully we’ll be keeping you guys busy.”
“Bring it on,” the tech said, anxious. “This is what we live for.”
Paul bowed slightly. “Challenge accepted,” he offered with a sarcastic smile then jogged off, heading back to find a database access console, knowing that the ones on the deck were mostly limited to the bay functions.
7
“Hey, you need a lift?” a female technician asked as Paul hopped up out of the segmented ramp and onto the command deck.
“Do you know where I can find an unused terminal?” he asked the woman just now climbing onto a beefier version of the Star Force mongoose. It was parked next to two others that apparently weren’t in use, which allowed the researchers to motor across the command deck rather than walk the spanning distances between pedestals.
She frowned, thinking. “One and two are in use, I know, but we might try three. I’m headed off to 27, so I can take the long route and find you one on the way.”
“Appreciated,” Paul said, slipping into the passenger seat next to her.
“Not enough of these around for all you guys, huh?” she asked, accelerating the oversized 4-wheeler down the ‘highway’ marked by a cluster of three painted lines that shot the gap between the two nearest pedestals.
“We don’t mind running,” Paul assured her. They’d deliberately tried to avoid using the limited number of transports to keep from dispossessing the permanent staff…that and he doubted the techs were fit enough to hoof it back and forth on a daily basis.
“So I noticed. How fast can you guys go?”
“Sprinting, most of us can get past 25 miles per hour without breaking a sweat.”
“Miles? You American?”
“Was…haven’t been back there in a long time.”
“I know the feeling,” she said as the lines split and she followed a green one to the right. “Before this place became home, Atlantis was. I haven’t been back to Sweden in a lifetime. What do you need the terminal for?”
“A hunch I want to follow.”
“Concerning?”
“The restricted access. I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Well, you’re certainly making our jobs a whole lot easier. Davis should have brought you guys down here sooner.”
“That’s what we’ve been telling him for decades. What are you working on?”
“Tri-coding.”
“Trinary?” he asked, refer
ring to an alternate form of computer processing, but to his knowledge the dynamics of the V’kit’no’sat computers didn’t look anything like theirs.
“No, sorry. Just a bit of slang. I’m working on the computer coding for the Triceratops systems. Each one is separate and structured differently, to keep others out, we think. It makes any attempt to hack into them insanely frustrating, because if you have a breakthrough in one it won’t carry over to the rest.”
“But they can all get into the restricted files, yes?”
“Seems so, though I don’t quite understand that bit yet. Being able to see what you guys see would help, though.”
“I think a few of you need to devote yourselves to a training regimen to get your ambrosia levels up to the point where you can have access. Davis could make out a little bit, which suggests it might not take that much to be able to access the systems.”
“I heard you were flying others in to check on those levels?” she said as they passed another 4-wheeler going the other way. She waved at the three techs before turning to follow the curve of the line around the perimeter of one of the circular pedestals to the foot of a stairwell. She pulled off and parked next to it.
“If we are I haven’t heard about it, but it makes sense. There are non-Archons on ambrosia at a variety of dosage levels.”
“Have a look,” she prompted, staying seated. “I’ll wait.”
“Thanks,” Paul said, running up the stairs and stopping at the top. He turned back to look at her and waved. “All clear. Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, waving back and driving off.
Paul watched her go for a second then turned and walked over to the Human-access console bank off to his left. On his right, more towards the center of the massive pedestal, were metallic pads imbedded into the floor. He’d been told they were some means of dino-access to systems that they hadn’t been able to crack yet, possibly because of a genetic marker they didn’t possess.
He knew that the Ter’nat serviced the larger races, which was why they had access consoles on many of the pedestals, but he wondered how well a four-legged monster could punch computer keys, holographic or otherwise. Vocal input was always an option, but he didn’t think that would be the primary method. He didn’t have a good guess at what the metallic pads were for, other than maybe holographic generators, but he wasn’t going to spend time working on that problem now. He had something else to check.
As soon as Paul got to the Human consoles he accessed the restricted records easily and used the search function Liam had discovered yesterday to look for ambrosia, though that was their word for it. As far as the V’kit’no’sat were concerned it was just a chemical compound with a serial number, which was what Paul searched for.
Fortunately their number system was the same as Earth’s, based on tens, with only the symbols being different. Vocally, zero through nine were: Ex, At, Pa, Tre, Qua, Cho, Ic, Feir, Ren, and Vir, which Paul recited from memory as he input the 12 digit serial number.
It immediately found a match, with a host of stats attached, along with a descriptive text. As he read down through it all his eyes widened.
“Bingo,” he said, identifying the fact that this was an altered version of the stock Human ambrosia. Apparently a group identified as the Zen’zat got the altered version, which was listed as being more concentrated. An addendum noted that there were also small variations in the mixture for ‘security’ reasons.
The V’kit’no’sat word was highlighted as a link, which Paul tapped to bring up a side menu with additional data explaining in detail how the ambrosia altered the user’s physiology enough to enable touch recognition above and beyond the basic genetic locks. It also outlined the visual properties they’d experienced, plus a communications bonus with a lot of vocabulary he couldn’t understand.
Paul tagged the Zen’zat link and brought up the profile on what he had been originally looking for…a subsect of higher ranking Humans.
As he read he felt a headache developing. There were lots of missing terms that made comprehension difficult, plus the glowing nature of the holographic symbols made them bleed a bit, causing one symbol to resemble another if he didn’t look closely. If they had been English letters it wouldn’t have been a problem, but V’kit’no’sat symbols weren’t nearly that familiar to him, so the flash recognition process wasn’t so readily available, meaning he had to concentrate when he was reading as if he was back in 3rd grade all over again.
According to the information before him, the Zen’zat were both the Human leaders and those responsible for serving the other races. The rest of the Ter’nat were isolated into their own holdings.
“They had their own territory?” Paul mumbled as he dug further.
The information wasn’t laid out in an overview of Ter’nat society, which would have been extremely helpful, but he assumed that was less about security concerns and more about cultural common knowledge. Why put into records what everyone knows already?
Because of this fragmentation it took Paul more than four hours to get what he needed to form a basic picture of how the Zen’zat functioned…which then led to answers for many other questions they had, such as why was the sparring program in the secure area of the pyramid. The answer to that lay in the fact that the Zen’zat were the elite Ter’nat warriors, and only they received the equipment and training necessary to bring them up to what the V’kit’no’sat considered ‘par’ for field operations.
All Ter’nat, he discovered, did take ambrosia, but it was the Zen’zat that had the specialized version…and since they served as the inter-racial wing of the Human subsect of V’kit’no’sat society they were based primarily out of the pyramid, which was why the ambrosia stores that Davis had initially recovered from there had held the altered version rather than the generic, which was available through the Ter’nat colonies.
There were none on Earth, however. For whatever reason the Ter’nat had not been given colonization rights. Whether that was standard practice for their status within the Empire or just unique to this planet Paul hadn’t been able to discover, but that did mean that virtually all the Humans on the planet had been Zen’zat and there to service the other races, so no trace of the original ambrosia was produced or imported to the planet.
Furthermore, when the Rit’ko’sor had torched every city on the planet they weren’t looking for any Human settlements, so those survivors that must have become Paul’s most distant ancestors came from the Zen’zat stationed at various colonies around the planet, which the Raptors either missed in their purge or didn’t care to hunt down. Without access to any of their advanced technology or additional ambrosia supplements it was remarkable that they’d survived to repopulate the planet…though Paul didn’t envy the denigration they must have endured.
To go from a space-faring race of superhumans to a collection of primitives suggested chaos and anarchy, with those who had the knowledge unable to pass it on to successive generations. They probably also had to resort to barbarism to survive, given that the foodstuff production facilities had been obliterated by the Rit’ko’sor warship along with every other structure on the planet during the purge, save for the pyramid. Its stone was too resistant to energy weapons to destroy with a single ship, so instead they had flooded it, breaching a number of elevated lakes that surrounded the low region it inhabited and completely covering the structure.
It was air tight, of course, but not only did it cut off access to any potential survivors, it erased it from the landscape, as the Raptors had done with everything else V’kit’no’sat on the planet, including their own cities, before they rounded up all their own and abandoned the frontier colony to continue the rebellion elsewhere.
Had Paul survived that attack he would have made a serious attempt to swim down and gain access to the pyramid, rather than be forced to hunt and kill wildlife to meek out a pathetic existence, though he acknowledged that if no one had survived on the southern continent
then the oceans would have kept any other survivors from reaching the pyramid, given that the Raptors had destroyed all aircraft on the planet, along with every other large piece of technology they could find.
That was partially guesswork, Paul admitted, for the pyramid’s records didn’t detail their motivations, only their movements around the planet and a few visuals of the purges recorded by orbiting satellites until they too were destroyed. It had taken the others a long time to compile all that information, but for the first time in Star Force’s existence they had a decent picture of what had happened to bring them to this current point in history.
Like it or not, Earth just wasn’t very important to the V’kit’no’sat. The Rit’ko’sor didn’t care to keep it, and the rest of them had never reclaimed it…though the outcome of that war might have changed things in ways Paul had no way to even guess at. The long range communications relay system had continued to feed information to the submerged pyramid for years after the rebellion on Earth, then the data had suddenly stopped coming in, probably because the nearest relays had been severed but there was no way to be sure. One way or another Earth had been completely cut off and the fate of the V’kit’no’sat Empire was unknown, though Paul seriously doubted that the Raptors alone could have done them in, based off of what he’d already learned of their military and economic strength.
Which meant that Earth was still on the frontier, now populated with renegade Ter’nat who knew nothing of their past, and would be target practice if the V’kit’no’sat, or any of their constituent races returned, given their zero tolerance policy on any independent factions.
However, due to the chaotic nature of the rebellion and purge on Earth, and the lack of a follow up expedition to clean up the mess afterwards, the V’kit’no’sat had left the keys for Ter’nat ascendency behind. They had their independence, which was probably little more than an oversight, but anonymity was probably the best defense any opponent of the V’kit’no’sat could probably have. They also had recovered an intact pyramid, buried as it was at the bottom of an extinct lakebed, with intact databases and larger pieces of technology, some of which Paul still had on his ‘to see’ list.