Invardii Series Boxset

by Warwick Gibson

  CHAPTER 22

  ________________

  In the end Celia decided against peaceful means. Capturing an Olongetti and fitting the individual with a translation belt, then keeping him or her captive long enough to build up a large word base would take too long – and may not lead to a peace deal with the warlike Olongetti anyway.

  It was Habid who suggested a diversion. If the Olongetti had their attention fixed elsewhere for a while, a research team should have enough time to enter the plateau. Celia requisitioned another shuttle for the diversion, and it wasn’t long before they had a plan. Shortly after sun up the next day, that plan was put into action.

  “Approaching the top of the ridge now,” said Andre, as the shuttle homed in on a prominent spur that ran along behind a concentration of Olongetti villages. It was an area several kilometres to the west of the Lizard’s Head plateau. Habid and five more Hud pilots on the shuttle prepared themselves for the drop off.

  The team trying to get the door in the alcove open would have Tunak and the last Hud pilot as security.

  Andre had a surprise for the Olongetti, and he switched on the external speakers as he came in low over the villages. Moments later, for the first time ever on Orouth, the full-throated roar of an African lion bellowed across the forest.

  “That’s scattered the scoundrels!” said Andre triumphantly. He was glancing sideways at a ground sonar scan. Jeneen looked at the screen as well, then looked at him. “Scoundrels?” she asked.

  “You know, ne-er do wells, blackguards, incorrigibles, miscreants,” he said.

  “You’ve been reading those romantic period novels again, 14th century Earth, haven’t you?” she said archly.

  Andre nodded, grinning happily. He liked an opportunity to ‘get into character’ as he called it, and the chance to be involved in a medieval-level military operation like this one was too much for him to resist.

  “I swear, I’m going to have your brain wiped clean,” said Jeneen, patting him on the shoulder from the co-pilot’s seat.

  “Later,” said Andre. “I’m a bit busy right now.”

  “Over target . . . now!” said Andre over his shoulder to the pilots, as he hovered over a patch of scrub on the top of the ridge. Habid unrolled ropes on either side of the doors for a rapid descent, but most of the pilots just jumped the distance to the ground, bending their legs to absorb the shock.

  Once the pilots were away, Andre put a safer distance between the shuttle and the ridge and began what he called ‘operation Rolling thunder’. Celia had rolled her eyes as he gave a cover name to everything that was in the plan for the diversion, but if it got things done, she could live with it. Andre had certainly come up with some good ideas.

  The Olongetti had never seen a fireworks display before, and that was nothing compared to what Andre could do with electronic trickery. Loud booms shook the walls of their huts, and blazes of light shifted at great speed about the sky.

  Using the display as a cover, the Hud pilots spread out along the ridge and advanced down the slope across a wide front, driving increasing numbers of bewildered villagers before them.

  They were carrying the stun guns, but their main weapon was a stage prop, something that boomed and spat fire, not unlike the flintlocks of Andre’s ancestors, but did no harm.

  As soon as Andre had landed the ground force, the second shuttle appeared over the plateau, and touched down gentle on top of it.

  “Let’s go, people,” said Celia. “We don’t know how much time we’ve got while the Olongetti are distracted, and we can’t assume it’s going to be easy to get the alcove to cooperate!”

  Celia and Roberto would try and work out what the alcove protocols were with Jeneen’s help from inside the shuttle. First though, they needed to negotiate the steps at the side of the plateau. Tunak went in front of them, and the second pilot followed behind.

  “All set up here,” said Celia into her commslink not long after, and began to scan the back of the alcove with a number of frequencies. Jeneen started compiling the scans into an overall picture of the alcove at the shuttle. Cantoselli and her two Mersa technicians worked diagnostics on the pictures as they came up.

  Celia noticed a distinctive clunk from the back of the alcove as soon as they began scanning, but nothing else happened.

  “There’s some sort of mechanism within the door itself,” said Jeneen, some time later. “It has changed its position, which might mean it has disengaged, but you say there’s nothing happening at your end?”

  Celia confirmed the lack of activity in the alcove. Cantoselli suggested a new approach to the problem, and that took quite some time to run, but there was no further progress.

  “Run that past me again,” said Celia, as Jeneen gave her and Roberto a commentary on what she was seeing inside the door.

  “I said, there’s a metal laminate on the other side of the door,” said Jeneen, “and some unusual circuitry in the wall above the door. The rest of the circuitry looks like motors and switches, probably an opening mechanism, but this circuitry is different. I can’t make much sense of the way it’s laid out, but I might guess it’s got something to do with audio.”

  Could it be that simple? thought Celia, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Then she remembered the archive at Ba’H’Roth. Finch had spoken into the air of the cargo bay, and the next thing the research team were inside the archive.

  “Rothii archive,” she said, firmly and clearly. “Research team wishes to enter. Please provide entry.”

  Roberto looked sideways at her. He was about to speak when Jeneen’s voice burst to life on the commslink.

  “Something’s happening! I’m getting energy readings all through the plateau now. It’s like the archive has dropped its shields. What’s happening down where you are?”

  Further discussion was forestalled as the stone wall slid sideways, revealing a small room.

  “I think that’s our invitation,” said Celia to Roberto, and then she told Jeneen what had just happened. Celia stepped into the space that lay before them, and Roberto followed. One of the Hud pilots stepped in as well, and the other stood guard outside the alcove.

  Celia wondered what the purpose of the small room was. Where was the main archive? Jeneen had said a whole complex had powered up inside the plateau, what was she supposed to do now?

  Some distance away, sheltering behind a tree trunk and motioning to the left flank to fall back slightly, Habid was wondering much the same thing. The Hud pilots weren’t to actively engage the Olongetti, but they could only do so much before their opponents figured out this wasn’t a serious attack. If they staqrted wondering why that was, they might think of the plateau, and rush over to defend it all over again.

  “Paper Tiger to Real Deal,” he said into his commslink, “how is it going on the plateau?”

  These were names Andre had thought up for the diversion, and the second attempt to open the alcove door. Celia had been ready to tell him the joke was over when the Hud pilots enthusiastically embraced the names. She almost had to bite her tongue to stay silent.

  “They’re in, Habid!” said Jeneen excitedly. “Well, the door has opened, anyway. The plateau has powered up, I can read anything like that now, but there’s been no comms from Celia for a while. Let me get back to you!”

  Habid wondered if the pilots should start pulling back. The Olongetti were getting bolder now, darting from tree to tree and getting within throwing range with their war clubs. His team would have to stun a few of them shortly, to keep them at a distance, and that might set off a fully-fledged charge. If that happened there was a greatly increased risk of somebody getting injured, whichever side they were on.

  “Pull your boys back, Habid,” said Andre, who had been listening on the same channel. “I’ve got a surprise or two left that will push the our little ratbags back when it’s time to evac, and give you time to get on board.

  Habid acknowledged, and gave the signal for an orderly retreat.
>
  Back at the plateau, there was nothing orderly about what was happening to Celia and her team.

  The door in the alcove closed, locking Tunak’s supporting pilot outside. Then the room moved sideways, no more than a dozen paces if Celia judged it correctly, and stopped. The wall they were facing slid back to reveal a large workplace, similar to the one they had discovered at the archive on Ba’H’Roth.

  Celia couldn’t judge exactly how far they were underneath the shuttle, but there was a lot of rock above them. She checked her commslink and found she could reach Jeneen easily enough. Then she gave the order for the Hud pilot who’d been stranded outside the alcove to rejoin the shuttle, and for Jeneen to vacate the area.

  The Olongetti would check the plateau sooner or later, and there was no point in aggravating them. The shuttle could collect Celia and her team later. With any luck they would be exiting at another point.

  The three members of the team inside the plateau stepped out into the larger room, and the small room that had transported them whirred away out of sight, presumably to reset itself behind the alcove door.

  “Air smells fresh,” said Sallyanne, “for 200 thousand years old.”

  “Passive recycling,” said Roberto briskly. “The air’s filtered in from one underground cave system, and discretely exited into a higher one.”

  Celia looked at him with raised eyebrows. How had he deduced that? Roberto waved a small sample analyser. “I’m picking up minute chemical traces of animal habitation in a moist environment, and that suggests a cave system.”

  “It’s much smaller than the Rothii archive on Ba’H’Roth,” said Celia, looking around.

  “And it has different fittings to ours,” said Roberto, who was now examining one of the work stations.

  “That bears out what Andre was saying,” said Celia. “The Rothii archive on Ba’H’Roth was built in the cargo bay from what the archive already knew about us. That’s why our processors fitted the connection slots exactly.

  “This stuff was built at least 200 thousand years ago, and the Rothii didn’t know then exactly how we’d turn out, so all this stuff will be strange to us. Maybe it’s just their best guess at what we would need.”

  “How are we going to talk to the archive AI?” said Sallyanne, poking at some of the buttons on the work station in front of her. “We’re going to need help here.”

  “That’s another problem,” continued Celia. “Does this archive have our language yet? Could the archive on Ba’H’Roth possibly have sent our language to this one?”

  “Indeed, that has already been done,” rumbled the same Rothii voice that Celia had heard at the Ba’H’Roth archives, a rasping voice with a breathy dryness that she would have recognised anywhere. It came out of the air, as before – this time from the wall above one of the central work stations.

  “Verifying language authenticity,” it continued. There was a pause.

  “Activating subject test programs. Please to be seated and guided by the station protocols.”

  There was a distinct click, and the work stations began to hum busily to themselves. A soft blue glow appeared on the screens, and a faint gold sheen surrounding the larger controls.

  Celia looked at Roberto. Apparently they were going to have to sit some sort of test. Then she looked at Tunak. What would the archive make of him?

  CHAPTER 23

  ________________

  The room under the plateau was bare, apart from the five work stations that ran around two of the walls. Celia, Roberto and Tunak took a work station each, and began to follow the prompts on the screens. These soon moved to voice commands, and then a 3D display. The systems were new to them, particularly Tunak, but it wasn’t long before they were familiar with basic procedures.

  In this first session the archive appeared to be getting to know them, and Celia was reminded of the same approach at the Ba’H’Roth archive. The archive there had seemed to have its own agenda at times, and this one too would not be deterred from the set of tests it kept firing at them.

  Perhaps an hour had gone by when Celia started to feel like a break, and Roberto muttered that he was getting hungry. They got up and stretched, and Celia reported back to Jeneen in the shuttle. Jeneen had pressurised the shuttle and taken it to a pass high in the mountains behind the plateau.

  Cantoselli joined in the conversation, and passed on the news that the combined efforts of the Orouth Freighter and the shuttle had not been able to uncover anything more than the complex under the plateau. There was a lot of machinery dug into the rock around the room they were in, which was interesting, but any other Rothii sites must be keeping their shields up at this stage.

  Celia acknowledged the call, and then she and Roberto got back to the tests the archive was setting up for them. Tunak got up from his work station at that point, looking rather crestfallen, and told them the archive appeared to have ‘failed’ him. It had made some comments about sociological perspective that might have made sense to Sallyanne, but certainly didn’t have any meaning for him, and then closed down.

  Celia patted him consolingly on one massive shoulder, and told him it was probably a matter of his young age. He would be able to answer questions like this once he had more life experience. Tunak brightened up a little at this, and decided he would wander over and take images of the inscriptions that covered the far wall. It was a long wall free of work stations.

  As Celia and Roberto got into the harder part of the testing cycle, Habid and his pilots had already withdrawn from the densely populated area of Olongetti villages, and been lifted to safety by Andre.

  The visual effects Andre had employed to give them time to evacuate had been impressive. Ever since that first space flight from the medieval conditions of his home planet, Habid had seen wonder after wonder. He had thought he was growing immune to astonishing displays of technology, but Andre had made fire rain from the sky, and that had touched something primeval in him. He figured it would probably have done the same in any race that had mastered fire somewhere in its development.

  The first balls of fire had slammed through the foliage and into the ground in front of the line Habid and his troops were holding. The flames spread quickly along anything they touched, and it soon looked like the forest was on fire. A fierce heat developed with the flames, but Habid wasn’t convinced. He looked more closely, and saw that the leaves were not burning off, the branches not catching fire. Then Andre called him on his commslink.

  “That should hold them for while! Get your people out of there, Habid. I’m back at the open ground on the top of the ridge.

  “You might want to hurry, the Olongetti will see through my little ruse soon enough.”

  Habid got his people moving. By the time they got to the top of the ridge there were excited whoops along the line the pilots had been holding. That had to mean the Olongetti wouldn’t be far behind the pilots.

  The shuttle was further off the ground this time, but ropes were belayed out of the side doors. The Hud pilots went up them like it was a race, their great strength making light of the work. Then the shuttle swung away, and Andre turned in his pilot’s chair to congratulate them.

  “That was some nice work down there, gentlemen. Your squad work very well as a team, Habid. I’d love to see you fly the Javelins in formation, it must be quite a sight. Now let’s head back to the freighter and get you some food, and a chance to relax!”

  Back at the archive underneath the plateau, Celia and Roberto were starting to sweat – well, mentally at least. The test problems had become more about ethics over time, and now the two of them had been given a number of seemingly insoluble problems, where people were going to get hurt, or worse, whatever they did.

  Then, suddenly, it was all over.

  “Are you getting the recorded message I’m getting?” said Roberto, in disbelief.

  “I think so,” said Celia. “It appears to be Rothii speak for ‘thank you for participating, you will be notified of your resu
lts in due course’. Something like that?”

  “Yep,” said Roberto. “Exactly. So, officialdom exists even in an alien culture and innumerable light years from home!”

  Celia laughed. “It looks like you’re right about that one. What do you think the archive wants the extra time for?”

  “My best guess?” said Roberto. “I think it will send everything to the Ba’H’Roth archive, and probably several other archives we don’t even know about, to make a collective decision.”

  “It’s still good news,” said Celia. “We’re being tested for something, which suggests there might be a worthwhile prize if we pass.”

  “Or our race gets wiped out if we’re not good enough,” said Roberto. “They must have transplanted us to Earth for a reason. If we haven’t turned out like they hoped, we might get put in the waste materials bin now the experiment is over.”

  “You are a bundle of joy!” said Celia. She knew that logically Roberto might be right, but she didn’t think so. Everything she knew about the Rothii so far suggested they were benevolent. Whatever the Rothii were up to, all she and Roberto could do was wait for the results of the tests.

  Celia contacted Jeneen in the shuttle, and arranged for them to be picked up. Andre had transferred Habid and another Hud pilot to Jeneen’s shuttle before he returned to the Orouth Freighter. That gave Jeneen three of the security guards, and Habid was still with Celia. The four of them should be enough to deal with any situation.

  Celia had hoped to be somewhere else inside the mountain by now, examining wondrous Rothii technology Earth could use against the huge fleets of Invardii ships, but that hadn’t happened.

  Jeneen called her back on commslink as the team inside the plateau prepared to enter the small room that had transported them the short distance from the alcove to the archive. Celia hadn’t decided what the room was for yet. An extra layer of security perhaps?