The Circle and Star

by John Foster

  It took several tries before they found the first shaft to the lower corridors and it didn’t look too promising. It was a vertical shaft that had no attachments or other means other than a straight drop into inky blackness. After finding a third similar shaft, they stopped in confusion around the top.

  “What’s the point of all these shafts if there’s no way to go down them?” asked Madison looking down a blackened abyss. The team looked at her and nodded.

  “Yeah, we don’t have spider grips and even if we did, it wouldn’t be long enough for the drops we’re looking at,” said Curt as he looked at his HDA.

  “We need to view this logically,” said Amal her right hand rubbing her chin. “There are vertical shafts in the buildings and in the streets, that connect to passageways that have rooms connected to them, so that means they’re meant for people to use.”

  “Yeah, but no machinery to use them!” said Cesar interrupting her.

  Amal looked askance at Cesar but continued, “That means there is something else that provides support for transit and we just don’t see it. There are no attachments and no obvious buttons or levers that have to be activated.”

  Madison was nodding her head, thinking about the problem, and in a thinking out loud mode, she said, “We know there is power, since the buildings have lights and we have accidentally activated some of it just by being close to it. What if the equipment is at the bottom of the shaft and it activates by our presence.”

  “But what is this equipment and what does it do without machinery?” asked Cesar.

  “I remember reading several scripts in the Cyclops that the Kaa’s researched gravity and spent a lot of time discussing practical applications for it.”

  You mean just stepping into the shaft and hope it catches you in a gravity beam or something?” said Curt looking dubiously at the open shaft.

  “Yes, or something,” said Madison who was starting to act like her old self and had a gleam in her eye. She now stood and started to pace back and forth while talking, “It must be some type of sensor array in the sides of the shaft that activate when the right size or right components, say a carbon-based life form, enter its field or operational zone, it then fires up, provides a gravity beam for that individual and lets them drop or ascend depending on factors that I don’t yet understand.”

  Volkum who had been quiet up to that point said, “But it didn’t work in the red building and we had to use ropes and a hoist there.”

  While Volkum was saying this, Madison had walked to the shaft entrance and then without a word dropped into the opening with a look of horror on her face when she heard what Volkum had said.

  They all sat stunned looking at the shaft and then West jumped to his feet and ran to the shaft. As he approached he saw Madison slowly twirl up out of the shaft and lightly step out onto the pavement next to West. Her face lost its smile when she looked at him. West stepped back and he felt the disappointment but gave a brief smile. He wanted to hug her that she was alive but he held back.

  She stepped around him to address the others and said, “It’s like I said, there’s a gravity beam that’s activated by sensors that are probably in the walls of the shaft. I noticed as I went down that there were tiny lights in a vertical strip on the side that provided a visual clue about the speed I was going. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to go up or down but all I had to do was turn clockwise and I would go up and counterclockwise to go down, the tighter the turn the faster you can go. I didn’t get to play with it much, but it’s our ticket out of here. Volkum mentioning the red building shaft got me good, but then I remembered that that building had one whole side destroyed and that must have damaged the gravity beam or beams.”

  “Very good, now we can go,” said West as he walked up to her side. His face was a mask but he was so relieved that she was all right.

  “We’ll go down with Curt first and then Volkum in the van,” said West and they pulled out their hand lights and stepped to the shaft edge.

  Curt looked to West and said, “You sure about this?”

  “Yeah, you saw Madison do the same thing, and I suspect it will even hold you up,” said West nodding.

  Curt didn’t look so sure but took a deep breath and stepped into space.

  After a few moments of turning back and forth they quickly took to this form of transit and were speedily moving down the shaft. It was obvious that this shaft wasn’t meant for two-way traffic.

  “It must be some form of maintenance shaft, or possibly emergency exit for the lower tunnels,” said Curt looking up to the others as he sped downward.

  At two hundred feet, they could see a light come up at the bottom of the shaft. They had passed several other side passages but they were at the wrong depth and they bypassed them to reach the deeper corridors.

  Curt went ahead and when he reached the bottom he flicked his light off and on to the others who had waited a hundred feet above. They then descended and came out one by one. The immediate area was well lit and the lights came on as they moved along the corridor. They were following the direction of the HDA that indicated the general direction of the Cyclops. West felt reasonably certain that they would find the red building shaft but would avoid that and try to find an alternate entrance. Amal had hinted that the Cyclops was similar to ships that the Soshi had found hundreds of years earlier and they had succeeded in getting some of them to fly again but had abandoned them when several went missing with crews aboard. Amal said that they didn’t know what had happened to the ships nor where they had gone when they had disappeared. With that news, West, his brows furrowed, said, “That’s not welcome news. That’s something to keep in mind if we fly out of here in one of these things.”

  As they got closer to where the red building shaft should be they could hear the sounds of beams and blasters in the distance. They stopped to listen and West said, “That would be one of the beam platforms still firing in the shaft. That means that the Sovar haven’t gotten into the ship yet and that’s good news.”

  The rest nodded and they moved faster, eager to take advantage of the time the firing platform was giving them, to reach Theo and the rest of the crew.

  They had turned off their hand lights as these corridor lights were activating consistently and almost none of them were faulty. They crossed several passages but they all seemed to head in directions away from their goal and so they kept to the main corridor. The passages were clean and almost no debris was present, indicating that there was some active and ongoing maintenance and West hoped it wasn’t something that might try to clean his team up.

  They paused to take a break and could hear explosions from the direction they were heading, and they shared troubled looks as they glanced at each other. West turned to Amal and said, “Have you been on these ancient ships?”

  “Yes, some I know well but other types just a few times. All of us in the fleet are required to serve on one for an interim period to familiarize ourselves with the potentials of alien technology.”

  “Are there other entrances to these ships?” said West wincing when he heard another round of explosions.

  Amal shuddered at the shock waves that were coming down the corridor but said, “Yes, most have at least two and some have four entrances. The kind you’re describing is the larger of them and in my experience, have four entrances, one at each pole of the ship.”

  “Alright, we know where to go when we get close to the red building shaft. I just hope there is access to each entrance down here,” said West.

  They continued to move down the main corridor and in the distance, they could see flaring light and bursts of bright beam weapons hitting the ground in the distance.

  “We’d better find those alternate passages soon or we’ll be getting some nasty headaches,” said Curt looking ahead and seeing dust billowing in the distant corridor. They could see that the lights in the passageway had been blown out and they pulled their hand lights out to have them ready if they proved to be nec
essary. Just as it was becoming unbearably loud they found a side passageway that split off to the right and left of the tunnel they were in.

  “This has got to be it, we’ll take the one with the lights still on,” said West moving down the passageway to the left. The bitter smell of explosives permeated the air. They started to run when the heard a major explosion behind them and could hear debris falling to the bottom of the shaft.

  “That has to be a weapon platform falling to the bottom of the shaft,” said West.

  “I thought the weapon platforms could only be controlled from the Paradig?” asked Volkum looking back down the corridor.

  “Individual units can be programmed to your HDA and I assume that’s what Theo has done,” said West as he moved down the passage.

  They all ran harder and started to notice that the walls of the tunnel were bending around in a semi-circle and this was welcome in that it meant that they were heading to the quarter point of the ship and that meant another vertical shaft.

  They stopped a moment and gasping for breath, Volkum said, “How come we didn’t find any of these extra entrances when we first found the ship?”

  As West pondered this a moment, Madison said, “The doors only open when they sense the right person is there and that’s why only I could access the bridge and engine room initially. As we ascend my presence should be enough to open the hatch or door or whatever it is. The main corridor we found in the Cyclops wasn’t closed and I can only assume it was left open on purpose by the Kaa.”

  In a few moments, they could see another larger shaft in the distance and they ran faster to reach it. Gasping from the exertion they gathered around the shaft entrance. It was as large as the one at the red building and as they looked up through the door and lights within the shaft turned on and they could see other passages above them.

  “At least the lights are working,” said Curt looking up into the shaft.

  West looked up and said, “Here we go,” and with that he swung into the corridor and slowly rose upward and accelerated as he ascended. The others followed and when they reached a hundred feet, the HDA indicated that the Cyclops was adjacent. West slowed and stopped and then turned to face the direction that he thought the ship should be in and waited a moment, and then a shimmer appeared in the wall in front of him and a door edge appeared then it opened into a corridor of the Kaa’s ship. He stepped through and was followed by the others.

  “Let’s find Theo,” said West and off they went with the sound of beam weapons and explosions ahead of them.

  West and his team ran down the corridor and guessed the various rooms they passed were some type of community area with long narrow tables and seating on opposite sides. Some of the other crew ran by in the main corridor, skidded to a stop, looked down the corridor and cheered when they saw West. West seeing Rae run by, yelled to her and she stopped in surprise, and turned to them, “Where’s Theo?” asked West.

  “Down the main corridor to the red building shaft,” said Rae pointing down the corridor she had been running to fetch medical supplies.

  West noticed this and motioned her to continue down the corridor and while running next to her asked, “Any casualties?”

  “A few have been injured but nothing we can’t handle yet, but it looks like they have breached the shaft and are starting to lob grenades down the corridor and that’s doing some damage.”

  “Madison? I’m going to send Theo down here to the engine room and see if you can help him get this beast going so we can get out of here,” said West.

  Madison looked like she was going to argue but thought better of it and turned and ran the other way to the bridge. West and the rest of the party continued while getting stares from the crew at the sight of Amal.

  “Who’s that?” asked Rae as she ran with them.

  “Our new ally,” said West and seeing her look uncomprehendingly he said, “A Soshi.”

  The explosions ahead were nearly deafening and they could see the flares of beam weapons that flashed off the corridors as they were scorched. Eventually, West could see a make shift barricade set up behind a still firing weapon platform that Theo had managed to drag halfway down the corridor from the shaft. Theo was crouched over talking to one of the other crew when he saw West and the others. A smile broke out on his bearded face and he stood, heard a blast, ducked, and then ran to West giving him a huge bear hug. “Ha! I’d knew you’d get back, Dickens said you’d run away, but I knew you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Dickens said that?” asked West, a frown forming.

  “Yeah, but you know Dickens, he’s off somewhere staying out of sight,” said Theo.

  “Let’s not worry about him now. How are we doing?” asked West hunched over and winded from the run.

  Theo bent down and spoke close to West’s ear, “We don’t have a chance, they’re shooting grenades down here and as soon as one more hits that weapons platform they’ll come after us in force. Then we’ll be done.”

  West’s face grew pensive with this news and realized that Theo was probably right. They couldn’t hold off military shock troops and even if they could, they’d lose too many of the crew in the process.

  “Okay, you’re right, I’m giving the order to evacuate the ship and Cesar will show you to an escape route that will take you under the ship and away from here.”

  West motioned Volkum and Curt over, “We’ll rig a set of small explosives, nice and loud, and then a series of container fires behind the barricade to make it look like the main ship is on fire, then run for the escape hatch.”

  Both Volkum and Curt nodded.

  As Theo got up to help, West motioned him to come closer again. “Is there any way you can get this ship flying in the next 20 minutes or half hour?”

  Theo looked down and shook his head. “I wish there were but there’s too much we don’t know and I don’t want to crash this baby.”

  “Okay, that’s all I wanted to know, tell Madison to help with the evacuation, she knows how to get out and I’ll follow along and delay them as much as possible. Try to find as defensible a place as possible and hunker down with all the weapons, food, and water you can bring. Theo, make sure you take as many explosives and remotes as you can, we need to equalize the opposition as much as we can and ambush is going to have to work for us. Oh, one last thing, take some tunnel rats too, we may have some use for them.”

  “Right, how long are you going to stay here?” asked Theo.

  “Don’t know but as long as I can. I’m keeping Volkum and Amal with me. Use an infrared marker to indicate your path in the tunnels and I’ll have Volkum find you that way. It won’t be obvious to the Sovar at least in the short run.”

  Theo stood, shook West’s hand, and then ran down the corridor gathering people in his wake as he headed for the bridge.

  Amal watched him go and looked to West and said, “They’ll find us, won’t they?”

  West looked up to her and nodded his head, “Yeah, probably, but we’ll make it hard on them just the same.”

  The platform gun continued to thump, thump, and sent blasts down the tunnel, picking up on any movement and destroying it. West could see on its remote monitor that the weapon was actually intercepting grenade launches and that was probably why they had held out so long. That would make it extra hot on the attackers to have their own munitions exploding just after they were thrown. West knew it was but a matter of time before a lucky shot would take the cannon out of action and they had to be ready for it. The fires and smoke they were rigging had to look hot enough to keep the Sovars’ out of the corridor until the Terrans were safely out. It would probably take the Sovar a while to figure out where they went but it should give them enough time to escape.

  Curt and Volkum returned with some portable cooking stoves they had brought from the Paradig as they had yet to find out how to cook in the Cyclops using the equipment in the ship. For that matter, they hadn’t found any kitchen at all nor any bathrooms.

  A
fter a few minutes, the explosives were rigged and the fire pots set up. They left a small camera to view the scene remotely and then with the wiring set, they ran back to the alternate hatch. West could see that their weapon platform was rapidly starting to overheat and it wouldn’t be long before it went critical and West didn’t want to be around when it did. They ran back down the corridor to the central hub area of the ship.

  As they hurried through the corridors they ran into Theo who was arguing with Madison. Theo looked to West and the others and said, “She wants to stay and get the ship in the air and she won’t listen to me.” Theo then turned back to Madison and yelled, “It’s not possible!” Madison turned to look at West and he could see the frustration in her eyes and she set her lip, turned and ran down the corridor to join the others fleeing the ship.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Theo.

  “Long story, and not a happy one either,” said West. “We’ve got to go; the beam platform is about to burn itself up.

  “Right, I’m behind you.”

  The small group ran down the length of the corridor and a small buzz issued from West’s HDA and he looked just in time to see the beam platform explode in a shower of sparks and flame. The secondary explosions dutifully went off creating quite a spectacular firework and then the fire pots ignited causing smoke to fill the area and that effectively ended the video feed.