Star Force: Zen'zat (SF14)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  That comment caused Paul to have an epiphany. “Has anybody stumbled onto any training programs for children?”

  “Not that I know of, why?”

  “Maybe these systems aren’t comprehensive, and only data that isn’t widely known is logged. Having a list of races is pointless when you already know their names and can search directly for each one.”

  “A bit egotistical assuming everyone will already know and remember,” Jason said, catching himself. “Right…forgot who we’re dealing with here.”

  “Add in the compartmentalization and there’s no reason to give easy access menus and lists to help people find stuff that they should either already know about or not have access to.”

  “An insiders system,” Jason summed up. “That makes sense, especially considering that I can’t find so much as a floor plan for the swimmer sections of the pyramid. Either I’m missing it or what they’ve got down there isn’t something the rest of the pyramid needs to know about.”

  “You really want to wait a couple hours?”

  Jason hit a button turning off the hologram. “Not really,” he said, smiling. “Let’s go.”

  9

  There were no doors blocking access to the lower tiers of the pyramid as there had been on the bottom of tier 18, but the ramps did end prematurely, spilling out into another large chamber that mimicked the dimensions of the command deck. It was smaller, by far, and had large pools replacing most of the pedestals, but the overall feel was the same.

  “There’s still water in them,” Paul commented as they walked inside and over to the nearest of the artificial ponds that sat on the border between the water pads and the land pads. “The pyramid must be replenishing the water somehow, or else it’d evaporate away.”

  “Doesn’t feel humid either,” Jason added, looking down into the crystal clear water and sighting several connective tunnels in the cliff-like walls of the pool. “You think the lower tiers are all submerged?”

  “Gotta have air pockets somewhere,” he reminded him. “And if they used Ter’nat to service this area there’s got to be access corridors somewhere.”

  “Alright, let’s start looking,” Jason said, breaking into a run to save time. Paul followed him as they wove their way through the padded pedestals and around the ponds, searching the massive chamber.

  It took them more than half an hour before they finally found what looked to be an exit shaft in the opposite wall, Human sized, that looked totally out of place. Nothing was nearby it, save for ponds, and all the lower sections of the pyramid had dino-sized doors…which begged the question, where and what did it lead to?

  Paul went in first, traveling down a very narrow hallway that would barely have allowed him and Jason to stand shoulder to shoulder if they tried, but like the rest of the Human architecture the ceiling was high, allowing for the taller Ter’nat. The claustrophobic tunnel ran straight for more than 50 meters before exiting into a slightly larger crossing tunnel that ran parallel to the wall of the secondary command deck.

  “Access shafts?” Paul guessed.

  “Looks like,” Jason agreed. “Right or left?”

  “Right.”

  Jason headed that way without further comment and they followed the once again ovoid tunnel past several connective hallways, checking out each as they passed. Most dead ended into specialized rooms with stacks of crates or equipment, while a few appeared to be dormitories, apparently so the Zen’zat in this area wouldn’t have to make the trek down from the top of the pyramid on a daily basis.

  After they’d searched 16 of the offshoots they finally found one that led to a staircase that descended lower in the pyramid. Taking it they climbed down and down, as far as they could until it bottomed out at what they guessed was tier 30, though it was hard to know for sure. They walked across a small landing and then out through a door that had a partition in the central compartment that blocked the view coming directly through. Paul passed through the open doorway, turned left and walked around the tip of the divider, then back right and out through the second doorway, whistling appreciatively at the view.

  “That’s some fish tank,” Jason agreed as they walked out through the clear tunnel that led across the bottom of a huge, water-filled chamber. He felt like a hamster in a tube, but was glad that the material was keeping the monstrous amount of fluid from crashing in on him. The view was so clear and the water so pristine that they could see everything everywhere, with dozens of tunnels crisscrossing the interior, not only along the floor where they were now, but rising up at angles and intersecting with higher ones, making for a navigational hazard for the swimmers that would have concerned the Archons had there actually been anyone left swimming around in the tank. He didn’t know strong the material was, but a collision seemed like it could be disastrous.

  Along the floor were clear domes with wide openings and tunnels connecting to them. In fact, everything down here appeared to be transparent material, save for the walls that appeared bone white, giving the entire place an eerily synthetic feel to it that was in stark contrast to the stone-like construction of the rest of the pyramid.

  As they walked they looked up towards the ceiling, spotting several faint dots in the distance that they guessed were the connective tunnels coming down from the ponds on the second command deck, which would mean that the entire bottom base of the pyramid was one giant, water-filled chamber…at least as far as they could see. Everything was brightly lit with white light, but there were so many domes on the ground and connective tunnels going every which way that they couldn’t see the far walls, wherever they actually were.

  “We could be in here a while,” Jason said, still in awe at the grandiose design. Given that the base of the pyramid was wider than the top, the dimensions of this underwater chamber had to be larger than even the primary command deck.

  “A mongoose would be nice right about now,” Paul thought out loud.

  “A bit bumpy on the stairs, but yeah, it would.”

  “Back to running?”

  “After you,” Jason said, following his friend down the clear tunnel until they came to the first branch, then hung a left to head a quarter mile down an offshoot towards one of the domes.

  “Dead end?” Paul asked when they came to a closed door.

  “Hardly…probably an airlock to keep the tunnels from flooding,” Jason said, looking the door over as they approached. “If the swimmers have to breathe, then I bet the domes have air inside.”

  “Good, because I don’t feel like swimm…” Paul said as the door suddenly opened on its own in front of them, revealing a slightly shimmering energy field in its place.

  “That’s new.”

  “If that’s what’s holding the air in,” Paul said, stopping short of actually touching the field.

  Jason did reach out a hand and touched the crystal-like field…but his hand pushed right through, feeling a bit tight on the other side. He pulled it back and flexed his fingers. “Just stops the air, apparently.”

  “After you.”

  “After me,” Jason echoed, closing his eyes as he walked through. He was hit with an immediate wave of tight, moist air, realizing that the pressure was higher given to the compacting effect of the water above them. He took several long breaths, letting himself adjust, then waved Paul through.

  When the other Archon entered and they walked a few steps down what was left of the tunnel, the solid door behind them closed again.

  “Air pressure is high,” Paul commented. “And warm.”

  “Guess they like the heat. All the worlds I’ve seen them with colonies on have been tropical at minimum.”

  “How many swimmers are we up to now?”

  “With the two that Sam found earlier today, that puts us at 14 total, 8 here.”

  “So, 83 overall, if you count Humans,” Paul said, doing the math as they walked out of the open ended tunnel and onto the dome’s arc-like half ring of ‘land’ that surrounded a shallow lagoon split up in
to sections by low, submerged bumps, beyond which was the deep water half of the dome that connected down and out to the rest of the water world by a subsurface access duct. All together, the dome was the size of a football stadium.

  “Sleeping chamber?” Jason asked.

  “No clue, buddy,” Paul answered, spotting another of the Zen’zat computer consoles that seemed to be everywhere within the pyramid. “Let’s have a look.”

  “Hey,” Jason said, pointing down into the nearest of the lagoon nooks. Paul followed his finger line until he noticed several shiny discs on the bottom…same as the ones they’d found on the pedestals on the command deck and elsewhere.

  Paul slipped behind the small ‘desk’ and powered up the holographic interface, finding a list of items being the last thing that whoever had worked this console had been viewing 100,000 years ago.

  He pushed it aside and brought up the main menu, then dove into the specialized files for this location…which were many. In fact, it seemed like there were twice the amount of menu items available as there had been on the upper tiers of the pyramid. Jason immediately noticed that too.

  “Race specific data?”

  “Or more compartmentalization,” Paul suggested, bringing up the information on this particular dome. “Communications hub?”

  “Look there,” Jason said, pointing at the schematic. “Another force field to keep the water out.”

  “It’s not out, though.”

  Jason snapped his fingers as he caught on. “Air pressure. It keeps the water from making it too dense in here. Either for us or this is the pressure they prefer to breathe at. A lot of their worlds are higher gravity, so it would make sense that this is the norm for them.”

  “Here we go, Dino email,” Paul’s face scrunched up as he started to read one of them. “Love letters?”

  “Really?”

  “No,” Paul said deadpan.

  Jason punched him in the shoulder, thoroughly had.

  “It’s an information request to the Oso’lon asking for updated reports on the Rit’ko’sor rebellion, specifically which clans were involved,” Paul said, reading further. “It looks like they were concerned that the fighting could find its way out here and wanted to verify whether or not their Raptors were kin to the traitorous sects or not. Apparently their knowledge of the Rit’ko’sor social structure was limited, because there’s an addendum to the original message asking for a structural overview so they could better make use of the original data they’d been given.”

  “Never took the time to get to know their underlings?”

  “Sounds that way,” Paul agreed.

  “I’m surprised we even have access to their messages.”

  “I…think that’s because the Zen’zat transmitted it for them. There’s a list of what look like official emails rather than personal ones.”

  “Personal assistants?”

  “Pretty much…and they never logged out.”

  Jason made a ‘tisk, tisk’ sound. “You can get fired for that sort of thing.”

  “I think running for your life from a hoard of angry Raptors might make for a legitimate excuse.”

  “The V’kit’no’sat strike me as more of a ‘zero tolerance policy’ sort of group,” Jason said sarcastically. “Besides, do you really think they got down here? Unless they go for a swim there’s not much fighting they could do, and it’d be a tight fit for them in the tunnels.”

  “More likely they got called up top to fight and just left their workstations where they were.”

  “Well then, that’s not abandoning their post, it’s following orders. Perfectly acceptable workplace behavior when the bosses are getting their asses kicked.”

  “Still hard to believe they pulled it off.”

  “The warship helped, I’d imagine.”

  “True,” Paul admitted. “But the little ones taking out all the others…they couldn’t have seen that coming.”

  “The element of surprise is highly underrated.”

  Shifting aside the communications data Paul went back to the main menu and brought up a schematic of the underwater levels…something that hadn’t been available in detail up top.

  “It is one big room,” Jason said, studying the new hologram. “With subdivisions.”

  “Different races, different billets,” Paul said, locating their position on the map. “We’re in a Sess’nat dome.”

  “Sess’nat?”

  “Sort of a shell-less turtle, shiny scales.”

  Jason frowned, then his memories realigned. “Right,” he said, getting confused with so many new races being added to their list.

  “I remember because they have four subgroups,” Paul said with a smile that Jason couldn’t place.

  “I didn’t take that close of a look,” he admitted.

  “Greg decided to nickname them the Leonardos, Michelangelos, Donatellos, and Rafaels.”

  Jason burst out laughing.

  Paul pointed to a different section on the underwater map when he managed to clear the smile off his face. “Garas’tox section is here. I say we hit that then head back up. It’ll take us weeks to search through everything down here.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jason said, heading back to the airlock. Paul powered down the console and followed him.

  “Donatellos,” Jason whispered when they pushed their way back through the atmospheric field and resumed their exploratory run.

  “I know,” Paul said, snickering. “Wish I’d thought of it first.”

  10

  July 19, 2112

  Paul unshouldered his duffle bag and handed it to a Star Force tech as a gentle shower of snowflakes fell on the rooftop landing pad of the foodstuff factory. The man hurried off to tuck it into the waiting Mantis’s cargo compartments as Greg and Jason waited with the unofficial fleet commander for the other Archon leaving Antarctica.

  They weren’t the first to go. Four others had already left even as the first construction crews began arriving to build a new sanctum within the pyramid itself. Others were scheduled to leave later in the week, and still others were staying around on an indefinite basis. The long term plan was to keep at least one of the trailblazers on site at all times with a handful of other Archons to assist with the secure access research while the others would rotate in and out as they chose.

  None of them wanted to go…the pyramid was like a giant amusement park for them to explore and with the various training chambers they’d discovered there were challenges galore for them to sink their teeth into, but Paul and a few of the others were needed back in the field sooner rather than later, with Davis having been the first of them to leave.

  “If and when they can get a working prototype we’re going to need more numbers,” Greg pointed out, carrying on a running conversation they’d been having the past few days.

  Paul nodded. “They say it won’t be anytime soon, but I’m already making plans. Our best bet is Epsilon Eridani, if we can confirm the clear routes in through the dust cloud.”

  “No Ross 248?” Jason asked, giving the Earth classification of the nearest star system with a habitable planet according to the pyramid’s databanks.

  “Not for the big push, no,” Paul said, seeing Morgan coming up out of the factory to join him on the flight back to Atlantis. “Too cold, plus Eridani has multiple habitable planets in addition to Corneria. The extra distance and restricted approach vectors may be a headache, but it’s our best option for significant expansion.”

  “Are we bypassing the others then?” Greg asked.

  “No, no. We’re grabbing up everything we can get, but we’re not going to go full bore to colonize an ice cube,” Paul said as Morgan handed her duffle off to the waiting tech and joined the group.

  “Did I hear you say Corneria?” she asked with a devious smile.

  “Yes you did,” Paul said, holding a steady gaze.

  “It already has a name, you know.”

  “It has a catalog number,” Paul correc
ted her. “Besides, no reason we have to let the V’kit’no’sat name everything. 50 light years out and their survey ends, so we’ll have to be naming those anyway.”

  “Getting a bit ahead of ourselves,” Morgan pointed out.

  “Doesn’t hurt to plan ahead,” Greg said, coming to Paul’s defense.

  “We haven’t finished colonizing this star system yet,” Morgan reminded him. “And we have no way of getting to another one.”

  “That’s what we were discussing,” Jason said. “We found some additional schematics that should help the techs with the gravity drives. Sort of an ‘Idiots guide to star travel’ that the Ter’nat had in their racial files.”

  “Given to them?” Morgan asked.

  “Looks like it,” Paul answered. “It’s old data, but was probably given to them at some point so they could start constructing their own ships.”

  “I thought Cora said all their ship production was done at other races’ shipyards?”

  “Not quite true…all Ter’nat shipyards are paired with others, for oversight purposes, but they have to build their own tech.”

  “I stand corrected then. How long do you think it’ll take to get a functional prototype?”

  “Decades, minimum,” Paul said with a mixture of anticipation and regret. “Even the basics are still over our heads, but we have something to gear our research towards now. If and when that day comes we need to have a plan already in place, which is what we were discussing.”

  “Sure you don’t want to stay?”

  “Can’t,” Paul said, grinding out the word. “Got a fleet to run, training to do, Acolytes to catch.”

  “Ha, good luck,” Morgan said, slapping him on the shoulder as she walked off towards the Mantis. “It’s cold out here. I’ll give you some pointers on the trip back.”