by Aer-ki Jyr
But now, he discovered with applicable awe, they had also accidentally gained access to their secure systems via the enhanced ambrosia. When Davis’s scientists had originally replicated the compound they had no idea what it contained, let alone the access key to Zen’zat systems, which by nature reached into each and every race they served, as well as detailed military records of which they were an integral part.
To top that off, Ryan had confirmed that they did indeed have access to the firing controls for the pyramid’s weaponry. If they wanted, they could target a ship in orbit and fire right through the factory above them with little affect on the energy beam, the dynamics of which the scientists were just now beginning to scratch their heads over. They’d concluded that it wasn’t a laser and it wasn’t plasma…beyond that they didn’t have a clue what it could be, but the statistics available to them, relayed through Archon eyes, made it easily the most powerful weapon in the star system and probably the only one capable of defending against a V’kit’no’sat attack if they should ever return.
The Ter’nat wouldn’t have had access to those weapons, even if they’d retained possession of the temple, but the Zen’zat did, trusted as they were by their masters and, like it or not, Paul and the others Archons had accidentally inherited that mantle, bypassing the pyramid’s seemingly impregnable computer security measures not by hacking into them, but by training their way into them.
That thought made him smile every time it crossed his mind, knowing how ‘normal’ Humans were lazy enough that even if they had by chance come across the enhanced ambrosia it would have done them no good. Only those who trained at a very high level would gain the concentration necessary within their bodies to gain clearance to Zen’zat areas and tech. According to the records it took newly minted recruits more than a year to absorb enough of the ambrosia to be able to gain access to the doors, and several more years after that to gain computer access.
The fact that Davis had managed a peek at the markings indicating the sealed doors was a feather in his cap, and Paul made a mental note to relay that fact to him the next time they talked, but his utmost respect went to the V’kit’no’sat for designing such an ingenious security protocol. If the Ter’nat didn’t know of the enhanced ambrosia…which by the way the records were written it appeared they weren’t…then they would have been completely incapable of gaining control or data the V’kit’no’sat didn’t want them to have, and even if some of the ambrosia shipments were mixed up, it wouldn’t have an appreciable effect for years to come, and only then if a sufficiently intense training component was added.
“I think we just sucked up our quota of luck for the next millennia,” he said, shutting down the holographic interface and jogging back down the stairs. He ran back to the entrance he’d come from, using the green line as his guide, then headed down the insanely large ramp and back to the ‘hotel’ to get something to eat and find the others.
A group of 13 of them were clustered around two of the tables, swapping stories and intel when Paul arrived. Andy looked up at him as he approached and frowned, sensing something was up.
“What?” he asked as Paul looked down on all of them. The other turned to look at the new arrival when Andy asked the question, pausing their previous conversations.
“Zen’zat,” he said simply. “We have access because the pyramid thinks we’re Zen’zat.”
8
Emily walked up to the massive door on tier 23 and touched the tiny imprint on the center near the floor…which was situated directly underneath a much larger imprint located well above her head and out of reach. As soon as her ambrosia laden fingers touched the stone-like material the door bisected along an invisible seem, cutting the circular dent in half as either side retracted into the walls.
“Now that’s interesting,” Megan said from beside her as large metallic skeletons were immediately visible inside what was a cavernous room, far bigger than most they’d been exploring in the sub tier 18 region that had been previously inaccessible to the research team.
“Exoskeletons?” Emily guessed as they walked inside the well lit fitting area and into the wide, dino-sized walkway that separated the nearest two rows of crane-like apparatus holding the skeletons in place. Off to the left and right were more rows, filled with all sizes and makes of the technology.
“These aren’t listed in the database files,” one of the three techs accompanying them stated as she looked around, using a head-mounted camera to take visuals for analysis at a later time.
“Not surprising since they’re in a secure area,” one of the other techs pointed out.
“Multiple races,” Megan added, “and we saw some of the Raptors wearing them in the assault on the pyramid.”
“I don’t see anything that small here,” Emily said, squinting to try and make out the furthest ones away, visible only through the mess of metallic structures cluttering the bay floor. From what little she could see of the far wall, there weren’t any small scale stations.
“Big boys’ hangout then?” Megan guessed.
“Looks like it…wait, no, I see something in the middle. Two somethings, actually.”
“Got it,” Megan said, searching for more of what looked like Human access stations…which would make sense, given that the door had an access point for them as well. She began walking off in that direction along with Emily, while the techs had to hustle to keep pace behind them.
On their way to the closest station they walked underneath one of the metallic spines that stretched out more than 100 meters, resplendent with a helmeted head and ‘ribs’ coming out at random points along the length of the construct, but it had no legs…as if, whatever it was for, it was worn as some type of backpack on one of the long necked dinosaurs.
In another section of the bay they could see different sized skeletons, and some of them did have legs…two legs jutting down from a spine segment that had both a helmet and tail cap. Another had a split skeleton, running two spines laterally with a large open area in the center, connected between helmet and tail cap.
“Battle armor?” Emily guessed as they approached the station.
“With all the exposed area?” Megan differed.
“Shield emitters?”
Megan hesitated in giving an answer, then swung around behind the inside of the control booth that was a bisected circle containing two 180 degree arcs separated by a narrow walkway that provided entrances on either side. “Let’s find out.”
The control panel responded to her touch and a flurry of holograms arose above the keyboards, detailing three distinct sets of skeletons. Megan tagged one of the long-neck versions with her index finger and it superimposed over the others, offering more detailed schematics. The word ‘shomul’ac’ appeared on a small floating button beneath the hologram, prompting a lip-biting grimace as the Archon tried to figure out what they were looking at. The V’kit’no’sat word meant ‘deployed,’ but what there was to deploy she didn’t know so after a few fruitless seconds of thinking she decided to tap the button and find out.
“Told you,” Emily said, thoroughly impressed. The holographic image of the skeletal construct mechanically expanded, branching out to cover a much larger area with spider web-like connecting ribs that outlined the full body shape of an Oso’lon. Once that grid was in place, the empty spaces in between filled in with material until the entire suit of armor was complete from head to tail.
“Just like the regenerators,” Megan said, referencing the medical devices that would alter their shape to fit the patient. They had flowed as if liquid metal…and the holographic schematic had moved in an eerily similar manner.
“I doubt these are medical equipment,” a tech told the Archon.
Megan glanced back at the man. “Duh.”
He frowned. “I only meant…”
“This is all military,” Emily cut him off, “or at least has a military aspect. They could be construction or environmental suits too, but we definitely saw them being
used as armor during the battle.”
“Which is probably why this bay is located in a secure area,” Megan added, beginning to search through the local database. One of the first things that popped up was a maintenance log, with the most recent entry flagged. She brought it up and read through a brief account of a suit being damaged from some type of physical impact…she couldn’t identify the vocabulary used…and the repairs that had to be instituted, which began with them having to cut the Era’tran free in the field. They’d hauled the deployed armor back inside and set to work micro-repairing the connective structure enough to get the pieces to finally retract.
An update to the log indicated that some sort of reprogramming had been scheduled, along with replacement parts ordered, but that was the last entry. Apparently the local rebellion had occurred prior to the repair work being completed.
“Don’t supposed you can see any of this either?” Emily asked the techs.
All three shook their heads ‘no.’
“Alright, start taking notes,” Megan said, sifting through the interface to try and find a root menu to start them with.
“What did you find?” Paul asked, returning to the command deck on Jason’s request.
“Plenty,” his friend said, staring at a detailed inventory list in holo. He shifted it aside with a few button presses and brought up the planetary map that they’d all grown accustomed to using the past couple days. He zoomed in on tropical Antarctica and the surrounding regions prior to the rebellion, which Paul noted due to the presence of the lakes that had been later drained to cover the pyramid.
“Not fish ponds,” Jason said, highlighting several submerged buildings. “These were specifically built for the swimmers and connect to the base of the pyramid,” he said, shifting the hologram into a 3D schematic of the mammoth building with the bottom portion highlighted. “All five base tiers belong to the swimmers.”
Paul looked closer, then reached over Jason and adjusted the hologram, zooming out slightly. “What are these nubs?” he asked, pointing to little dots lining the underground tunnels.
“They’re air breathers, like us. Lungs, not gills. Those spots are air pockets.”
“There are more tunnels,” Paul pointed out, seeing five extra large versions located at a lower depth than the others that connected to the surrounding lakes.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Jason said, zooming back out until they could see all of the southern continent. With the tap of a few buttons the underwater highways became visible, connecting to five locations around the perimeter of the continent, giving the swimmers access to the oceans.
Another few button presses and underwater infrastructure was highlighted at each connection point, as well as others within a few hundred miles out into the ocean surrounding each ‘port.’
“How do they get there?” Jason said as Paul began to speak, anticipating his question. “These bigger tunnels are actually split into two segments. The top segment flows out, the bottom one flows into the pyramid.”
“Flows?”
“More like squirts, but use whatever word you want. Point is the current carries them along at insane speeds, faster than any of our bullet trains or aircraft.”
“Have we gotten into the basement yet?”
Jason shook his head. “No, the search teams are being methodical and cataloging the top ones first. In a couple of hours I’m going to jump ahead of them and see what’s down there. Wanna come with?”
“Dumb question.”
Jason smiled as he adjusted the hologram again. “I haven’t got to the best part yet. Earlier I was studying the orbital traffic records going back to the founding of the colony, and you’d be surprised at some of the types of ships that showed up for the construction. Massive things, plus a lot of others that look like something straight out of a bad scifi film. I couldn’t even guess at the functionality of some of the designs, so I’m figuring they must be some sort of aesthetic. That’s not the point though. When I input some search parameters I accidentally scrolled to the last contacts detected and found this…”
Jason pulled up the telemetry data again, showing 16 bulbous ships in orbit. “Look at the timestamp.”
Paul’s eyes flicked over to the V’kit’no’sat numbers. “Someone came to check up on the colony?”
“That was my first thought until I played through their tracking data,” he said, bringing the same up on the screen and running it through a pretagged loop at accelerated speed. “They weren’t coming, they were leaving.”
Paul stared in awe as the 16 ships lifted off from beneath the ocean’s surface and flew over to the pyramid, then headed up into space, eventually leaving the star system. “I guess that answers that.”
“About there still being some around? Yeah, I don’t think that’s the case. I’d guess the Raptors couldn’t get to them under water so they torched what they could from the air and left, but that included the entrances to the underwater highways. They dug down into the land just off the ocean and destroyed them. I’m assuming the ships came out to the pyramid to pick up survivors that got trapped on the other side.”
“Water filled ships, huh?”
“It gets even better,” Jason promised.
“Go on.”
“I think the swimmers are in charge.”
Paul frowned. “How so?”
“Well, this colony’s priority chart indicates that they’re towards the tops, but we were figuring that was because this was a waterworld. Now I’m not so sure. I did a search upstairs for information about other V’kit’no’sat worlds and found some interesting patterns of racial deployment.”
“You couldn’t access it down here?”
“If there’s a way to enlarge these holos I haven’t found it yet, so using the map room is a lot easier…plus I had some help and there’s a lot more legroom up there.”
“Point taken. What patterns?”
“Shared worlds. As far as colonies go, most are either binary arrangements or solos. They don’t share a lot, but wherever the swimmers are there are dozens of races on the same planet. I couldn’t find a single world that only had swimmers, even a few true water worlds with only a trace amount of land still had dozens of enclaves on them. There was even one with no land at all and four other races had built their own version of Atlantis to give them some living space.”
“There’s more,” Jason said before Paul could ask another question. “I did a similar search for patterns amongst the ground pounders and flyers. The Oso’lon are in the same boat as the swimmers. Where they go, others go. I couldn’t find a single Oso’lon only colony, and in more than 80% of the cases the Oso’lon and swimmers occupied the same worlds.”
Paul thought for a moment while Jason waited for him to catch on. “Longnecks?”
The Archon nodded. “For whatever reason, the longnecks appear to be dominant.”
“Have you found priority charts for any other colonies?”
“Yes, and the pattern holds with a few exceptions,” Jason said, pulling out the planetary holo until it became a system-wide view, then he input some hard key strokes and it suddenly shifted to a different star system, then he zoomed back in on another planet, this one with no visible water on it.
A few seconds later he had the priority chart for a world named ‘Kikkorop’ floating in front of Paul for his inspection.
“No swimmers, and the Oso’lon are second tier,” Paul noted. “Behind the Hjar’at.”
“Now look at the population statistics.”
Paul watched as the planet came alive with tiny dots representing numerical numbers of the inhabitants. A few Oso’lon blue dots dominated one city, while a few yellows and reds were clustered elsewhere, but all across the planet’s grasslands green dots were present in the thousands.
“It’s a Hjar’at world,” Paul guessed.
“It might even be their homeworld,” Jason guessed. “I can’t confirm that yet, but it would make sense that the hom
e race would have more pull on their own turf than any other faction.”
“Where do the flyers fit in?”
“That’s another interesting point,” he said, sending the holo back to Earth and highlighting a few scattered cities. “The I’rar’et are the only flyer race present in this colony, but I’ve found three others, and Ryan found another one this morning. They appear mid level at best, and never in the top three tiers on any of the worlds we’ve looked at…though our sample size is proportionately very, very small.”
“I’m not sure which is harder to pronounce, I’rar’et or Pterodactyl.”
“There is another larger race called the Les’i’kron. They were not on Earth at any time, I checked through the entire timeline record and they never appear, but I think you’ll find them very familiar.”
Jason brought up a profile on the larger flyer race and looked at Paul for his reaction.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.
“That was my reaction too,” Jason said, glancing back at the image of a thick, but lean body supporting massive wings and a medium-length neck, on which sat a squarish head that reminded him more of a T-Rex than anything else, though even the Era’tran couldn’t match the sheer fear factor that the ugly face imposed. The Les’i’kron also had a thin, long tail that ended in a bony, double fin that probably functioned like a rudder in flight…or as a blade in combat.
But as alien as the creature looked, it was the spitting image of a dragon from medieval lore.
“That wingspan is bigger than the Mantis’s that we flew in on,” Paul noted.
“And yet these guys seem to have very few colonies, though their numbers are greater on the more densely packed worlds. There are millions of them on the V’kit’no’sat capitol.”
“Remind me to take that off our vacation hit list,” Paul said sarcastically. “You said there were five flyers?”
“So far. The database doesn’t have a comprehensive list to search through, so we’re having to find them through links from other data. A bit odd, but then again nothing in here is structured the way you’d expect. It’s functional, once you get used to the layout, but it’s no Wikipedia Gold.”