by Jim Rudnick
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tanner took the stairs two at a time and got up to the second floor pretty quickly, Alver pounding along behind him. At the landing going up to three, as Alver didn’t slow, Tanner guessed that the commander’s office was up another floor, and he scurried to stay ahead of Alver.
Alver laughed right out loud, as he ducked out of the stairwell on the second floor and raced down the hall to the right.
Damn, Tanner thought, goosed by a marine.
Yet he too laughed right out loud.
At the doorway about halfway down the hallway, the words Planetary Administration hung out on a placard stanchion, and Alver waited below.
“So, let’s see … one round I won getting off the shuttle quicker than you … and another by getting to the commander’s offices ahead of you too …” he said as he clapped Tanner on the back.
“You cheated in the shuttle—you climbed up and over four rows of seats to get to the boarding ramp ahead of me—and the four rows of marines you climbed over too,” Tanner protested, and that got them both laughing.
Good to see a friend like Alver again, he thought and hoped the upcoming meeting would not be hard on either of them. The fact that the commander reported to him now, as the Barony admiral was one thing, but the man ran all of Ghayth for the Barony, and Tanner had long ago learned that a pissing contest helped neither side.
So I take it easy here, he thought.
They walked into the reception area and up to the counter where a corporal—a marine corporal at that—who wasn’t even looking up said, “Help you two?”
They said nothing.
After a moment, he looked up from his tablet and his face turned white.
“Admiral on the deck,” he screamed out, and the personnel behind him spread out over the whole large reception areas jumped to their feet at attention.
“Major Stal on the deck,” he added and then snapped a salute to them both.
Tanner nodded at the corporal, saluted back, and said, “As you all were.”
The corporal looked at them and said, “Sirs—I take it you’re here to see the commander?” as he half-turned to a very attractive lieutenant commander who was seated at a desk beside the closed door with commander labeled on same. She nodded to the corporal and then stood to come out to meet the two of them.
Tanner could instantly see the smiles that both the young woman and Alver had for each other, and it all became clear to him at once. This was Alver’s girl, he thought, which got a big smile on his face, and he nodded to her.
“Admiral Scott and Major Stal to see the commander, please? We have no appointment, but if he has a few free minutes, we’d be much obliged?”
She smiled widely. “Sir, yes, Sir. He said to go right in when you arrived, Sir, so please just follow me?” she said as she went to the end of the reception counter and lifted the gate to allow them into the offices beyond the counter. She knocked on the commander’s door but didn’t wait at all. She just opened it and ushered in the two of them.
As he went by, Tanner noted that her name-tag said Williams. Yup, this is the one, and he grinned to himself.
Inside, the base commander was up and ready with the salute first, then the handshakes all around, and he grinned at Alver like an old friend. Tanner knew they were just that as they’d been in the same marine squad on Turljis for a full deployment or two. Buddies who bonded during combat were the solidest of friends forever, he thought as he sat and got comfortable.
“Commander,” he began, “nice to actually meet you in person—I’m Admiral Tanner Scott and I wanted to check in with you soon as we got here,” he said nicely.
Alver nodded. “Bill, we just got off the shuttle down from the Atlas, and I agreed it’d be best to meet up here with you to get the rundown of the latest intel on Ghayth from you—the source, so to speak,” he said as the commander nodded to them.
“As I expected you, I’ve got, yes, a report to let you and the admiral know where we are, ancient-relic-wise, as well as I’ve got a speedy shuttle and hot pilot standing by too. I suspect that after you see this report, you’ll be wanting to go and look over some of these places yourself, Sir,” he said as he hit some buttons on his tablet and the wall display monitor came to life.
“AI—full security on my offices, please, ComCode zero, nine, nine, eight,” he said, and while it was his imagination only, Tanner thought about huge steel walls lowering themselves around the office’s floors and walls and ceiling turning the place into a Faraday cage.
Or something like that, he reasoned and that got a smile at least at the corners of his mouth.
On the screen, the Barony logo of the twin crowns on the fields of red and blue appeared, along with a time stamp and a security notice, and then the screen faded to black.
Suddenly they were flying in a shuttle almost on the deck, and ahead was ice pack, floes, and the frozen wastes of the ultra-north. The ice was so old that it looked almost blue as the shuttle made its way toward a small group of what looked like icebergs in the distance. Tanner did know that icebergs was probably an improper noun to use, but there were jutting-up shafts of ice and what looked like huge frozen snow chutes ahead. As the shuttle got closer and went up in elevation to a few hundred feet, one could see a landing circle on the ice fields, huts that indicated civilization, and even a few people walking or using motorized sleds to get around. One of the faces on the bergs ahead had a huge opening down at the grade level, and even from the fast-moving shuttle that was slowing, one could see some kind of tracks had been laid inside.
“Tracks are for?” he said.
“Ease of exporting out what we found,” the commander said as the screen showed the shuttle slowing and touching down on the landing pad. As the camera then moved from the shuttle to the tracks, it was plain to see that the person doing the vid recording was now in some kind of a motorized train-like unit, as it went into the iceberg itself.
The tracks ahead went only about thirty feet inside and then began to descend and slowly curve to the left. After curve after curve and dropping many feet per loop, eventually the icy passage, looking like it’d been lasered it was so smooth and blue, emptied out into a huge chamber below the ice cap itself.
“Depth of the ice cap there is about one point three miles; with the camera now recording at only two hundred feet down, we found this,” the commander said, and he hit a button on his tablet.
Instead of the point of view of a rider on that tracked unit, the whole of the huge underground warehouse came to light. Big was one word, Tanner thought, and blue and fully lighted too.
“Is the light of our doing?” he asked.
The commander shook his head. “Not at all—whomever built this warehouse added in some kind of bio-lights to the ceiling and walls—the light is natural, and we as yet can’t even get samples to test to see what’s what with that lighting source. But it’s what’s lying out on those—well, we call them pallets as that’s the function that they’re serving—is what’s really neat!” he said, and his voice was bright with promise.
On the pallets—some kind of a platform that sat on the smooth ice floor that supported what lay on top—were transparent cases of the anti-grav plates they all knew came in blue and copper colors. Columns of blue and copper in those transparent cases were arranged in rows on those pallets—thirty columns per pallet. And there were, if he could estimate, Tanner thought, at least a hundred pallets in a row; and there were hundreds and hundreds of rows of those columns of plates.
“And yes, we’ve done a count, and it’s over nineteen thousand matching sets of blue and copper plates. I’d say our needs for anti-grav devices is going to be looked after for a few years,” he said dryly, and that got a chuckle out of the three of them.
“Gel—gel that the ancients used is the purple kind—more potent by a large factor than the orange kind we got from the Seenra, and yes, this whole warehouse is recreated a level down from this one, and yes, it’s ful
l of vats of the stuff. We’ve at random broken out some plates and gel to test, and yes, they work perfectly,” the commander said.
“One more thing? The cases that those plates sit in—the transparent ones? It appears that they are a steel alloy but transparent steel. Never seen that before, and our metallurgists are going crazy on that just like our lighting technicians on the lights. We can’t seem to get by the basics without saying ‘hey, how’d they do that?’ and that’s got us all working long, long shifts,” he added as the screen went dark.
Tanner looked at Alver and then back at the commander and nodded.
“Thanks for the intel, Commander. And yes, I’d love a trip up north to see what’s what for myself. Might I ask if you’ve also any news from the wrecked alien ship and our xeno team down there?”
He knew the skinny already as the xeno leader, Professor Reynolds, had to send him a weekly report that was EYES ONLY, but it was good to see what the commander knew too.
“Sir, the wreck will be the most interesting find we have on Ghayth, I’d think. The xeno team has gotten access to the bridge—bridge-lite they call it as the whole ship is run from three consoles only. They also can get those consoles to activate—but, of course, haven’t pushed a button on any of them. Like us here, the facts that there is power and it works after what they estimate to be twenty thousand years of inertia is one thing that they too can’t get over. Nothing more than that at my levels, Admiral,” he said and sat back.
Tanner offered up a thought. “Is there any way to consider what we have found here on Ghayth, as anything else than the warehousing of products and items that may be needed in the future for these aliens. That they used the planet to store items on, figuring that in the future, they’d need to simply go to Ghayth to get what was needed. Least that’s how I’m figuring it … comments here, fellows?”
Alver went first.
“As far as I see it then—and yes, I think that this may be the case—then there’s a lot more warehouses that we’ve not found as yet,” he said as he looked first at Tanner and then at the commander.
“While it’s not in my report, as I’ve not gotten the field leaders report as yet, but there are some anomalies in an area of the close southern continent in a desert setting that shows that there are some underground chambers. They’re doing some kind of testing today, but I’d be not too surprised to learn that they’ve found another set of warehouses. Reports to follow, Admiral,” he said, and that got them all quiet again.
Did make sense though, Tanner thought.
If you came a long, long way to establish a new area, you brought along the items that such a new empire might require. So you find secure places and store the products there. If your technology is greater than what’s in the area, you are safe from the curious and the investigator types.
Wonder what else might be here … more ancient relics perhaps …
#####
As the Majestic flew by the triple suns off to port, she was bathed in the blue and red lights and looked like a postcard, the second lieutenant thought, as he got a great video back from the probe he’d launched ahead.
As there was a nebula here, on the northern borders of the Michi quadrant, he had launched the probe ahead of the ship to run diagnostics to search for any particulate matter at all in their way. After getting caught just a few months back when he’d run the Majestic through the arm of a nebula, he had no intention of ever getting caught like that again.
Not knowing something was bad. But knowing and then not protecting his ship would mean he’d repeated the same mistake, and that was a career-limiting move in anyone’s life.
“Not again,” he said as he watched carefully the intel from the probe that ran ahead of the ship.
Nothing to report, it said, on his monitor.
No particulate matter, which did make sense as the suspect nebula was more than five lights off their course.
But better safe than sorry, he thought.
Previously, the mistake he’d made had cost the ship almost ten hours of downtime with no FTL at all.
All the arrays outside the ship had been tested, and all the offending input equipment devices had been replaced, tested, and tested again. Then the Majestic went back into FTL toward Juno.
Of course, information had been diagnosed, and they found that over the almost two and half months that their arrays had been tainted with the nebula particulate matter they had been about nineteen lights off course.
Not a big number, but one that meant they’d not be able to make up the time—the top speed of the Majestic was still only two lights a day.
“So we get to Juno about ten days later than when we were scheduled to arrive, no biggie,” he said to himself.
The ship plowed on, as the probe led the way, and well ahead, the sun of Juno could be seen in the very center of the view-screen, only a scant nine months away.
What’s a few days over a three-year passage, he thought, and he settled back to watch the probe ahead and enjoy the colorful display of the Majestic as she traveled through this sun-rich area.
#####
On Amasis, the days were longer than most, as the planet’s rotation was slower than most, taking almost thirty standard hours to revolve between night and day. That gave their society more daytime and had been the real reason that the massive surge in manufacturing had occurred a few thousand years earlier. Longer days meant longer shifts, and longer shifts made more products, so an accident of nature had made Amasis the manufacturing power that it was.
The planet used the old parliament style of elected representatives to send officials to their House of Commons in Seville, the planetary capital, to sit and govern. And the current prime minister, Hector Lazaro, had sat in power via his leadership of the Labor Party for more than thirty years. To say that the Labor Party was well entrenched in the Amasis society was an understatement. Yes, there were other political parties in the House—the Blue Party was the official Opposition Party. But it had been so long since they, or any other party, had run a real election campaign that the citizens of Amasis never looked any further than the spot to put their X beside the Labor Party.
And so it was easy to understand why the whole planet was in a turmoil since their prime minister had taken ill—been rushed out of the House of Commons from a budget committee meeting by ambulance to General Hospital just down the street in the city. He’d been on life support, it was reported now for almost five days, and while the prognosis was guardedly optimistic, those in the know were worried.
Parliament had shut down, with a recess called by the deputy house leader, and the throngs of elected officials that sat in the waiting rooms at General Hospital were massive. So massive that the hospital implemented strict waiting hours and rules to try to govern the representatives and where they could wait. More than five dozen took shifts down in the cafeteria, waiting their four hours to come up to floor seven to replace the same numbers or so, who went down to the cafeteria.
Captain Lazaro, of the Barony Navy, sat in the private ward room with his brother, two sisters, and mother. On the bed beside them all, Hector Lazaro was still in a coma, plugged into many machines around the head of the bed. He looked at his mother for a moment and then had to turn away as her eyes were welling up again. He nudged his sister Klara once again with the edge of his foot, and she got up and went over to their mother, putting an arm around her shoulders, and urged her to come for a walk, maybe go and get a tea perhaps. Her mother nodded and sniffled into a tissue. She stood and the two of them left for a while, as there was not a thing any of them could do. Medical teams and the head doctor had all said the same thing.
Prime Minister Lazaro, had had a heart incident—a mini-heart attack, which meant the heart muscles themselves had not been deprived of much blood in the attack itself—troponin levels had been elevated but only slightly, the family had been told. The team had said they believed this was an NSTEMI heart attack, which was less severe, yet for som
e reason, the patient had been put into a coma by the attack. That they had said was because the heart attack had cut off blood supply—oxygenated blood—to the brain. The doctors called it hypoxia.
That was what un-nerved the family, as anyone might imagine.
To counteract the attack and to build the body’s natural defense mechanisms, the patient was receiving linoleic acid as a part of his current medication, and the dosages of same were high at first. They’d come down after a full twenty-four hours, they were told, but still it made the sitting and waiting and not knowing the worst thing of all.
Plus at the end of this twenty-four-hour medication period, the team had chosen to induce hypothermia as the normal process used to bring coma patients back to full consciousness as that was the best technique for all of its comatose patients that suffered from cardiac arrest
“Dad’s color is better—you think?” Kasmer said to Kondo, as the two of them were closest to the bedside.
Kondo nodded. His father’s color did look a bit better, his chest rose and fell in regular breaths, and his eyes were closed too just like he was asleep instead of in a coma. Only nine hours more and then the team would begin to lower his temperature to get him out of the coma. While it had not been said out loud, Kondo felt, as did the rest of the family too, that this would be the real test of what kind of damage the heart attack had had on his father.
He said, “Nine more hours, Kasmer … is all we need to wait. At least for now,” and the two of them leaned back and watched the rise and fall of their father’s chest.
Kasmer stood and went over to the glass windows that looked down on the hospital grounds way below. He was eight years younger than Kondo, and he valued his relationship with his big brother, and yet when he turned back to him, his face was contorted with fright.
“Kondo … Dad had a heart attack, they said, and that meant his brain didn’t get oxygen. When and if they bring him out of this coma, then, as they said, he may be a vegetable. No brain sentience at all … that’s what they said might have already happened,” he said, his voice cracking with the stress of the realization their father might not pull through.