The tunnel was moist and smelled of rust, rock powder, industrial lubricants, and the sharp ozone taste of discharging capacitors. It also didn’t bother sporting any shockcreate or internal reinforcement bracing that a tunnel built for passenger travel would feature. Stray rocks coming loose from the ceiling didn’t pose much threat to industrial machinery. They did pose a pretty big threat to the four unprotected heads and their squishy brains walking through the cavern at the moment. Benson regretted not searching the shed for safety helmets.
“Everybody keep an eye on the ceiling. If you see any rocks that look shady, call them out and move around them.”
“On it, coach,” Korolev said, pointing the light and muzzle of his rifle at the roof of the tunnel.
“Just don’t shoot them, Pavel. That won’t help.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
The procession moved cautiously down the perfectly circular hole carved through rock that had lain undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years, pausing only to avoid any portions of ceiling that appeared prone to collapse. No one spoke, their eyes were too busy chasing shadows. The tunnel was not a straight shot downward into Gaia. Instead, it meandered like a river, following the rich vein of ore through the rock.
“Losing my plant signal, coach,” Korolev said.
Benson glanced up at the signal strength indicator in his peripheral vision. It flashed red, then went to a solid crimson “X” with his next step. “Yeah, same here. Too much rock above us.”
“Poor babies,” Sakiko taunted. “Stuck with just the senses Xis gave you.”
Benson glanced back at Kexx. “You don’t beat her enough.”
“Now, now, Benson. Let’s not skip directly to child abuse. There are other remedies we might try.”
“Loader’s ahead.” Korolev’s voice held an edge that put an end to their banter. The blocky yellow loader was little more than an oversized rock cart, but it took up almost the entire tunnel’s width. It was difficult to discern the front from the back of the automated vehicle, as it lacked a cab or seat for a driver. Indeed, it was probably designed to work equally well in either direction. The loader’s hopper reached almost all the way to the ground, leaving only a few centimeters of clearance.
“Don’t suppose you can shimmy under there, could you Sakiko?” Benson asked.
The teen squatted down to get a better look at the gap. “That’s a no. I could probably go over the top, though.”
“Here, take my light.” Benson handed her the hand torch. “And don’t be stupid. If you see anything dangerous, turn your butt right around.”
Sakiko nodded understanding and tucked the light into one of her traditional Atlantian wristbands, giving her light while keeping her hands free, then hopped lithely onto the face of the loader. She scampered up like a cat climbing a tree, then disappeared over the lip of the hopper.
“It’s empty,” she called out. “Must have been on its way back to refill when it broke down.”
There was the sound of feet shuffling, a little grunting, and the bouncing of the hand torch’s light against the ceiling.
“I’m on the other side,” Sakiko shouted back. Benson couldn’t see any part of her through the loader. Anxiety washed over him. He’d sent her because she was the smallest, and the most agile. Sakiko was so near to adulthood that for just a moment Benson saw her as another member of the team, instead of his dear friend Mei’s priceless little girl.
Because of that mental slip, his favorite niece was alone in the dark and cutoff from immediate help. The command to abort and withdraw was on Benson’s lips when Sakiko’s shriek filled the tunnel like a flood.
Twenty-Five
With extreme caution, Benexx laid out the materials ze’d absconded with from the bomb factory onto the floor at zer feet. Six bricks of explosives, each weighing two kilos; three blasting caps; a couple of small wire coils; small radio receivers with built-in battery packs; and even a remote detonator.
At least ze was pretty sure that’s what everything was. It wasn’t the first time Benexx had envied zer parents’ plants. Ze could’ve been running an app to track zer movements and automatically map out the portions of the cave complex ze’d already covered. Ze’d be able to look at the components in front of zer and get a detailed breakdown of each item individually, as well as instructions on their use to foolproof the process. With all that memory and information on demand, ze’d hardly have to learn anything at all.
Instead, Benexx and every other Atlantian was mired with the devastating handicap of having to absorb and retrieve knowledge the old-fashioned way. It put them at a distinct disadvantage to their human peers in ways most of them couldn’t even fathom.
But ze could. Ze saw it in real time while ze struggled to pick up and retain new information that they could download in a blink and retain with perfect clarity indefinitely. Zer parents were very good about encouraging zer, reassuring zer that ze was a fast learner and smart. But that just made it all the more frustrating.
Still, ze’d adapted. Zer tablet was never far from zer side and functioned as a sort of external plant much of the time. Ze’d developed quite a knack for tinkering with software, finding backdoors and work-arounds in user interfaces. Ze had a talent with electronics, and what was a bomb but a short-lived circuit board?
Which was why Benexx was like, ninety percent sure ze had everything ze needed to make an extremely crude, but still effective bomb that ze would even have the luxury of triggering without having to commit suicide. Ze had zero experience with explosives, but if the corny action movies ze’d watched with zer dad growing up were anything to go by, there was enough boom here to do some Van Damage.
Ze had to be sure. Which was why Benexx busied zerself rigging up the system, minus the blasting cap and explosives. Those, at least, ze was sure of based on the copious warning labels alone. Ze could’ve carried more of everything out of the bomb builder’s alcove, but ze’d been cautious, nicking only as much as ze realistically thought could go missing without triggering an inventory check. Still, ze’d been sure to get far, far away from where ze’d stolen them before stopping in a secluded chamber to test the components.
Benexx measured out two lengths of wire, then bit them off between zer teeth plates and carefully stripped the insulation off the last few centimeters of each end, exposing the bare copper. These ze threaded into the small ports in the receiver marked (+) and (-). The receiver had a variable channel dial on its side marked 0–9. There was a corresponding dial on the remote detonator. Benexx sucked air through zer plates. If there were any other bombs rigged up within the range of the remote, there was a one in ten chance zer little test would set them off. Of course, if one of the bombs did go off and kill or maim one or more of zer kidnappers, Benexx wouldn’t feel particularly torn up about it. Ze just didn’t want to risk alerting them to zer new capability before ze was ready. Still, it would mean they kept bombs with primed blasting caps in place and receivers powered up. Anyone with such Godsawful safety protocols deserved to be minced.
A ten percent chance was already low, but Benexx figured ze could improve zer odds even further. Zer haul from the factory also included a pair of pressed yulka cakes. Ze munched eagerly on one while tackling the problem. After a moment’s consideration, ze set both receiver and remote to channel two. The numbers three, five, and seven were considered lucky by various sects of humanity, while Atlantians had a particular affinity for three, four, and eight. Of the remaining numbers, poor old boring channel two seemed the safest bet.
Now ze just had to hope the bombmaker didn’t think just like ze did.
Small green LEDs signaled a strong connection between receiver and remote. Ze’d have to cover those up with… something. In zer free hand, ze picked up the exposed wire ends and held them only a few millimeters apart. Out of excuses, Benexx took a deep breath, said a little prayer to whichever god or gods might lend zer an ear, and pulled the detonator’s trigger.
A tiny blue arc o
f electricity jumped across the gap between the leads and connected the circuit with a quiet buzz. If the blasting cap had been plugged into them, zer hand would’ve been blown off.
Instead, the little electric arc light cast its shadow across a smile that curled up menacingly at the corner. The rifle ze’d taken from Jolk was purely a weapon of last resort. The moment ze fired it, everyone in the caves would come running with rifles of their own. Benexx would like to think ze’d die bravely and drag a few of them along on zer return to Xis, but ultimately, that’s the only way it would end.
But this… this was different. This bomb was an offensive weapon. Ze now had the capability to pick where to strike, when, and do so without revealing zerself. Ze could hurt them, badly. Use it as a diversion. Use it as a booby trap. Use it to cut off a path of pursuit. This gave zer options. This changed zer from a fleeing dux’ah to a stalking ulik, if only a singleton “pack.” Benexx hastily disassembled the test rig and shoved everything back into zer bag. Sula and zer conspirators had tried their best to blow Benexx up, might still have succeeded in blowing up zer father.
It was time to repay their kindness.
Twenty-Six
The alien iconography blinked above the projected surface of Gaia, taunting Jian incessantly. He checked his plant’s chrono. He’d been down in the pit for eleven and a half hours already. His eyes felt like they’d been plucked out of his skull, lightly marinated in lemon juice, dipped in sand, and stuffed back into their sockets.
Jian grabbed a water bottle and squirted a short stream onto his face to wash away the sweat and give his eyes some moisture. Then he dug into one of the pockets on the arm of his flight suit and retrieved a pair of pills from a small cylinder. One red, one yellow. The red was a reasonably strong painkiller he hoped would blunt the coming headache he felt developing behind his right eye. The yellow was a strong stimulant, a nozey-dozey as the other pilots called them. They were supposed to keep a pilot alert during long-duration flights, but they often found other uses for them.
He’d wiggled out of the cumbersome and hot expeditionary suit hours ago. It sat crumpled behind the map room’s chair like a discarded layer of skin. He’d need to don the suit again before returning to the shuttle to resupply in another day or two, but in the meantime Jian lounged in the relatively unencumbered comfort of his flight suit. Although even that was starting to itch.
He rubbed his eyes until streaks of light wandered across his field of vision. It felt like flight training all over again. Sleepless nights spent cramming for exams, flying high on strong tea and stronger drugs just to keep awake. Except this study guide was written in a language Jian couldn’t even read, he had no idea what was on the final test, and if he didn’t pass, his friend would probably die. No pressure.
Jian stood with a groan and stretched. His legs threatened to fall asleep if he didn’t get up and work some blood into them every hour or so. Slowly, he paced back and forth on the catwalk bisecting the map room, careful to stay away from the edges. Whoever built the facility hadn’t seen the point of handrails, either because they didn’t have hands, or because they figured anyone dumb enough to fall off the edge of a catwalk deserved their fate.
Behind him, the now-familiar-but-still-kinda-creepy scratching of Polly’s insectoid legs against the deck followed as he paced. Like a loyal pet, his little autonomous friend hadn’t left his side since they’d exited the Buran. Polly seemed worried about him. Of course, it was just as likely Jian’s brain was anthropomorphizing the little bionic bug, but that’s how it felt whenever he glanced over at his trio of peering green eyes.
The expedition hadn’t been completely fruitless. Jian had figured out how to manipulate the map of Gaia, zoom in on items of interest, and select them to get more detailed information. Of course, that information still popped up in a language he couldn’t read, but at this point he was willing to embrace the small victories. The level of detail the projection had available was insane. Jian had spotted one of the drone cargo ships plying trade between Atlantis and Shambhala by the wake it left on the ocean. The display’s resolution was enough to read the registry number off the side of the drone’s hull. Data spooled out next to the ship’s image. He’d tagged those characters in his plant’s translation matrix as probable speed and bearing data and gave it something to chew on for a while, hoping it could pick up on new patterns.
He’d made a couple of dozen similar assumptions as he jumped from one point of interest on the map to the next, trying to give his plant enough connections to make a breakthrough. But there was a big risk in doing so. When he looked at the data streaming next to say, Shambhala, he was assuming the ancient alien intelligence that programed its user interfaces found the same sorts of things interesting about the city as he did. For all he knew, the beings that built the facility couldn’t care less about population figures, resource consumption, or construction rates and instead focused on the total weight of potassium contained in the city’s inhabitants or the number of windows in its buildings.
Aware of the monkey wrench cultural assumptions could throw into the translation process, Jian tried to be as general in the connections he made for the program as possible. But he had to balance that caution against being too nebulous and giving the matrix connections so broad as to render them effectively useless.
Frustration gripped Jian. He wasn’t used to having so little control over a situation. He was a pilot; maintaining control was kind of central to his profession. This sitting passively on his hands, waiting for something, anything to happen… it wasn’t exactly his speed.
Jian glanced back at Polly scurrying along behind him and stopped, then held out his forearm, inviting Polly to climb up to his perch. The tiny creature complied eagerly and soon clung fast to the fabric of Jian’s flight suit.
“We’re going to be here forever, aren’t we?”
Polly held up his manipulators.
Jian sighed heavily, then looked at his feet. The situation was rapidly approaching hopeless. Jian could spend months down here in the bone-dry chill of the map room trying to learn this dead language without making enough progress to matter. Benexx would be long dead by then, and his whole insubordinate expedition would count for nothing. He’d have wasted his career on a crazy plan that any sane person would have known was doomed from the… start…
Polly had held up his claws in a “no idea” gesture. Like he understood what Jian had asked. Or at the very least like he’d known he was being asked a question but didn’t understand it. Either way, holding up his claws was a human gesture. It was something Polly had learned from Jian.
Jian had taught it to him.
Jian smacked his own forehead with an open palm. “Fucking duh,” he said aloud. He’d approached this entirely backwards. He was trying to learn the alien super-intelligence’s language, when he should have been trying to teach it his language. If the nerds back on the Ark were right, that’s what it had been built for in the first place. To act as a bridge between the past and the present, adapting to whatever cultural and linguistic drift had occurred over the eons.
He sprinted back to the chair and plopped into position, as awake as he’d felt since entering the chamber. Jian zoomed in to the projection of Shambhala and selected it. The now familiar, yet still unreadable text began to spiral inward next to the city. Jian cleared his throat.
“Shambhala,” he spoke clearly and loudly, careful to enunciate each syllable.
The text next to the city froze in place, then disappeared entirely. In its place, a pulsing white oval circle appeared. Something was listening to him.
“Shambhala,” Jian repeated.
A curved, flowing character appeared in the air, followed by another, and another. Three characters, three syllables in “Shambhala.” They were syllabograms, not unlike Chinese or corresponding Japanese characters, Jian was sure of it.
Jian tagged them in his plant’s translation matrix and assigned the correlation a ninety-nine perce
nt certainty. Then he moved to Shambhala’s harbor and selected the beanstalk leading up to the Ark.
“Space Elevator.”
Five characters appeared, the first separated from the other four by a tiny curving slash mark that Jian recognized from the other texts. It was ubiquitous, like a period, or a comma. It was used to separate the symbols, he guessed. To delineate a pause, a start of a new word. A press of the space bar was his assumption. He moved on to other icons, repeating the process and tagging the results.
Then, Jian decided to push the envelope. He held two clenched fists in the air.
“Zero,” he announced, then extended a finger. “One.” He extended another finger. “Two.” He repeated the process. “Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”
When he ran out of fingers, Jian put his hands down and waited. The projection flashed, processing what it had just seen. Then, a new character appeared in blue, harder edged than the ones it had been using to catalogue Jian’s map labels. Then another crimson symbol followed in line behind it, this one attended by a bright green dot below it. And another, this one with two bright green dots, another with three dots. The pattern continued until thirteen characters hovered in front of him, zero all the way through the ancient program’s base-twelve numerical system.
Jian’s chest flooded with satisfaction.
“Now we’re talking.”
Twenty-Seven
“Sakiko!” Kexx shouted, but Benson was already moving, clawing his way up the back of the loader in a desperate bid to reach the girl in time. Kexx moved even faster, barely slowing down as ze transitioned from flat ground to scrambling over the yellow beast. Atlantians weren’t worth a cup of hot spit in a sprint, but bloody hell, could they climb.
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