Chung carried his well muscled body with no false modesty. He had experienced enough family orgies on the manor property to really care about others seeing him au natural. His clothes were in hand, and he would dress when he could. But right now there were other things on his mind.
Chung reached his station chair, the marine tactical command seat for the fleet. The general in nominal charge came in an instant later, saw that Chung was occupying the hot seat, and took the assistant’s seat next to the Colonel. Chung nodded acknowledgment at the man, glad to see that the man knew his place. Looking at the image of the Admiral in his command chair on one of the repeater screens he wished that everyone had enough sense to make things run smoothly.
Then Chung’s attention turned to the matter at hand, and he looked on the compartment’s main viewer at the space station they were coming to rest near. At least it isn’t blaring out threats of death and destruction, he thought, looking at the massive structure to their front. Not like the last one.
They had all stopped at the deadline of the control station when they had come to it, and Chung still thanked the Gods that they had the foresight to come to a stop at a sufficient distance, otherwise they all would have suffered the same fate as the battleship that had been sent to scout out the ancient defenses ahead of the fleet, not decelerating along with the rest of the vessels. And they were defenses that still chilled his soul, something that they had not the most meager protection against.
The chosen battleship had passed the deadline without incident. Then it had glowed a silvery light for an instant, before it started to crumple in upon itself. The screams of the crew came over the com for a couple of seconds, then ended with finality. The ship continued to collapse on itself like a ball of foil crushed in the hands of a child. With a last glow it disappeared, then erupted outward in a gigaton explosion that lit the night of space. When the light died there was nothing there, and the sensors showed space flooded with hard radiation.
The engineer had surmised that some kind of gravitic device had been involved, something that had projected and concentrated gravitons over a distance, creating a gradient with the power of a neutron star in a point of space. The ship had been compressed to neutronium, and when the device had been deactivated the pressure of that matter compressed into a point had been too much to remain stable. It had exploded outward in a wave of fast moving particles known as pure energy.
Chung had felt sorry for the crew of that ship, and thankful that the Admiral had not charged the station with the entire fleet in an attempt to overwhelm its defenses. He was sure that the attempt would have led to a dozen more points of compressed matter exploding into space. And an end to his mission, with possible disastrous consequences to the Church and nation.
“We’ve found multiple entry points,” said a voice over the com.
“You hear that, Chung?” asked the Bishop Admiral. “You want to prepare an assault force to enter and search the station?”
“What about the ancient ship?” asked Chung, looking at the display of the station, or as much as they knew about it, which was very little.
“Our cameras show that it was on the other side of the station when it disappeared,” said the Admiral, his eyes flickering from screen to screen. “I would hazard a guess that they entered the internal hangar, and are now inside the station.”
“Can you blow through the door to the internal hangar?” asked Chung, thinking it might be their best bet to overwhelm the enemy’s ship first, then go stalking them through the station.
“I wouldn’t want to risk that,” said the Admiral. “There’s no telling how this station would react.”
“I want you to take out the door to the hangar, and launch an assault that way,” said Chung, holding up his hand before the Admiral could speak. “I will launch the rest of my men at the smaller airlocks, so that they can get into the station.”
“But, my ships?” croaked the Admiral, his eyes widening.
“Damn your ships,” yelled Chung. Men turned on both the bridge and the marine assault center to stare at him. He didn’t care. Mission came first. “Your life is forfeit if we fail in our mission. As are all of ours. So think of that before you protest my orders.”
The Admiral looked at him for a moment with hate and fear warring across his face. Finally, he nodded and looked down at the floor. “We will do as you say,” he said.
The screen went blank and Chung smiled in triumph. If the fool had listened to me earlier, we wouldn’t find ourselves in such a predicament. He looked over at the marine Brigadier General with a tight smile on his face. “Prepare your men for an EVA assault. We’re going to take that station, and with it the people who led us here.”
The General nodded and started speaking into his command circuit, while Chung leaned back in his chair and smiled.
Chapter Twenty-one
The two ten meter wide doors slid aside as soon as the team approached. Inside was a thirty meter wide hall that seemed to stretch to infinity, until one focused on the other end and saw that it was only a kilometer, or maybe a little more. Benches and small gardens ran down the center of the hall, a two meter long double sided bench every ten meters, with a four meter square plot on each side. Potted plants and trees sat near the walls. One meter off the floor was a two meter wide walkway, with a slanted ramp leading up to the walkway every ten meters.
Set in the wall were the curved tops on side pillars they had seen on the holo, one every ten meters. The wall on the opposite side of the hall had the same arrangement. Alyssa did a quick calculation in her head and came up with between two hundred and two hundred fifty gates, with as many in the room they couldn’t get into. In just a small wayside station of the great empire.
“These don’t seem to be functioning,” said Derrick, walking toward the wall. A metal surface denoting some kind of machinery was visible on the other side of the framing, set about a meter back.
“Maybe that’s why we were allowed in here,” said Alyssa, her heart sinking at the thought that they might have found the gateways of the ancients, only to find that they no longer worked. “But this was the hall that the robots came through, after coming from the Galactic control station. So it should have some working gates.”
“I’m still not sure we want that gate to work,” said Derrick, making a gesture of his religion. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like the idea of facing a bunch of alien shaped robots. Or even robots that look like beautiful women. Not if they’re trying to kill me.”
“Well, just be careful and let’s check this place out,” said Alyssa, walking down the center of the hallway to one side of the benches. Shadow walked slightly ahead of her, alert and checking out everything with eyes, ears and nose. Alyssa could pick up all of his sensory input and added it to her own. Derrick paced her on the other side of the benches, his attention on that row of gates, while Patrick trailed, forming both rear guard and reaction force.
“I’ve got a working one over here,” said Derrick.
Alyssa turned and found herself looking ahead about thirty meters to where a silver shimmer sat within the frame of the gate. It looked like a perfect mirror, but also unlike any mirror she had ever seen. It seemed to be both silver and made up of every color she knew, and some she didn’t. “It’s beautiful,” she said in a hushed voice, walking toward the gate.
“I wouldn’t touch it until we know what happens,” said Derrick, moving up beside her.
“We have a good idea what happens,” she said, looking over at Derrick, then back at the gate. “You step through and you’re someplace else. Maybe someplace a hundred thousand light years from here.”
“And you get back how?” said Derrick, staring at the mirror surface. “Through the same one? Or are they only one way, and you have to find another gate to come back. And if there isn’t one? You’re stranded a hundred thousand light years from here with no way back.”
“It would be worth it,” said Alyssa, think
ing of all the sights to see out there in the Universe, away from this one backwater, out among the remains of a civilization so vast it covered the entire Galaxy, and maybe beyond.
“I still think it would be crazy,” said Derrick, reaching a hand out to come near to brushing the mirror surface, but stopping centimeters away. He looked back over at Alyssa. “Sure, you might be the greatest explorer of an age. But what good does it do if you can’t get home with the information?”
“Shadow,” she yelled at the cat. “You stay away from that thing.” She sent out a mental command at the same time, and did not like the response she got. Like the cat was ignoring her, something he had never done in the past. Or like he was hypnotized. And even as she yelled out for him to stop he jumped through the mirrored surface and was gone.
Alyssa started to move forward, but Derrick put out a hand and grabbed her arm, stopping her forward motion. “Don’t,” he said. “See if you can establish a connection with him. See what’s on the other side. See if he’s even alive before you go jumping into the rabbit hole.”
Alyssa nodded and closed her eyes. She established instant connection with her cat, the quantum entanglement working no matter the distance, just like it was supposed to, in theory. She looked through the cat’s eyes, seeing a world in a different color scheme than her own eyes would see. In a couple of moments her brain adjusted to the input and the room appeared in the same colors that a human eye would see.
The room was very large, and she thought that must be true of all gate rooms. In layout it was much like the hall they were in, with rows of gates along opposite walls, though not quite as long. There were maybe thirty of the gates in the room. The cat’s view moved around the room, and most of the gates that came into view were dead, though a couple here and there shimmered with wormhole fields. Alyssa started to worry that Shadow might become confused and jump into a different gate. And moving through the maze of connecting gates would eventually become lost to her.
“Ship,” she asked into the air. “What is that place? Where is it located?”
“That is a gate room under a central pyramid of a small habitable planet about thirty thousand light years from this station,” said the ship. “Though not an important planet in and of itself, it was a popular destination for station personnel for R and R.”
“Central pyramid?” asked Alyssa.
“Most planets of the empire, if they had reached a certain population threshold, had a central building that contained the majority of the gates, allowing the planet to enforce customs or medical quarantine on the gate system if necessary. The building was customarily built in the shape of a pyramid, though sometimes a step pyramid was used.”
“What the hell is that?” asked Alyssa, seeing movement out of Shadow’s eyes. The ship sent her an interrogative and she linked in her vision from the cat to the computer. It looked like a mechanical spider, and it was coming toward Shadow in a rapid crawl.
“That is a vermin control robot,” said Daedelus. “It must think your animal is some kind of pest.”
“What will it do?” she asked in a panic, the same feeling coming from the cat.
“It will dispose of the animal, as it is programmed to do.”
“Stop it,” she yelled, stepping toward the gate surface. Derrick grabbed her from behind by the arms and kept her from going forward.
“I have no control over that robot,” said the Daedelus, and Alyssa felt her level of panic rise until her breath was coming in gasps.
The view of the machine changed, and Alyssa knew that Shadow was backing up, the head turning this way and that, looking for a way out.
“I’ll get him,” said Patrick, and before anyone could do anything to stop him, he leapt into the mirrored surface and across the light years.
“Crap,” said Derrick, letting go of Alyssa’s arms and looking at the now distorted surface of the wormhole.
Alyssa could see the monk come out the other end at almost the same instant he jumped in. Shadow looked over at him and she could feel the relief the cat was experiencing seeing a familiar human. Then Shadow’s attention was back on the robot, which scuttled forward and fired some kind of netting that wrapped up the cat. He thrashed in panic again and tried to fight his way through as the robot moved in, something long protruding from its front.
The sword blade came in and swiped through the robot, cutting it in half to fall sparking to the floor. Then Patrick’s face came into focus as he picked up the cat and tried to pull the netting from him.
“It’s too tough,” he said, carefully putting his sword blade into the net and slicing through.
“Don’t hurt him,” whispered Alyssa to herself. She was sure the Monk would be careful, but with that killer sword anything might happen. But he cut through the net in several places and then worked it around the cat, who was staying as still as possible to let Patrick work.
“He’s free,” said Patrick, putting the cat on the floor, sheathing his blade, then picking the animal back up. “We’re coming back. Before he gets into more trouble.”
Alyssa back away from the portal and stood there wringing her hands together. She was still wondering if the gates went both ways, or if Patrick would have to find another one to return, if there was an active one that led back to this place. She didn’t have to wonder long, as Patrick came stepping out of the mirrored surface as if he were coming up out of water.
Shadow jumped out of his arms and ran over to her in a couple of leaping steps. She reached down and he jumped up and snuggled into her arms. “You little shit,” she said, squeezing the cat close to her. “Don’t you ever do that again.” At the same time she sent the emotions of love and anxiety over to the animal, letting him know she cared about his safety, while concerned about her actions. Not that his safety is guaranteed, she thought, holding on tight to the muscled ball of fur. Every time he went on a mission he might be killed. And then she would lose a part of herself.
“Let’s continue to check out this place,” said Derrick, looking down the hall. “There’s sure to be some more of these working portals, and some might lead to someplace that’s more interesting than some resort planet.”
“How are you going to find out?” asked Patrick, looking over at Shadow. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to send the cat through another gate without knowing what’s on the other side.”
“Oh,” said Derrick with a smile. “I’ve got that covered with what’s in my pack. So don’t worry your primitive head about it.”
Alyssa glared at Derrick, wishing he would just let it go. But nothing seemed to get through to the man. From the look on Patrick’s face, he wasn’t really bothered by it. She wished that he was bothered, and that maybe he would do something about it. She was sure a good ass kicking would put Derrick in his place. She also was pretty sure that this was not the time or the place for that.
Just as that thought left her head the floor shook slightly underfoot. It shook once again, then shuddered like something heavy had struck the station.
“The visitors are attacking the station,” said Daedelus though the link. “They are trying to break through the hangar door, among other places.”
“Can the station fight them?” asked Alyssa, hoping for an answer that she wanted.
“The station has some defenses,” said the ship. “But it is not a military fortress. It possessed enough weaponry to battle small pirates or individuals bent on its harm. But not large warships.”
“Of course, these warships are well behind the ancients in tech,” said Derrick with a predatory smile. “Order the station to fire upon the invaders.”
“I can only take that order from a commander,” said the ship, and the eyes of Alyssa and Derrick fell expectantly on the Monk.
Patrick hesitated for a moment, and Alyssa knew he had to be thinking about the wrongness of ordering the machines in the station to fire on living entities. The floor shook again and he seemed to find his resolve. “Order the station to op
en fire on the Theocrat ships, and any men that attack the station outside of a ship.”
“Relaying commands to the station,” said the ship. “It is opening fire.”
“Let’s keep on searching this place,” said Alyssa, starting down the hall. “If they break in and start heading this way we can think about what we’re going to do.”
Patrick nodded his head and followed the woman, this time Derrick falling in as rear end.
Chapter Twenty-two
The kinetic round hit the big hangar doors and bounced back into space. Nathan Chung watched the show on his own visual cortex as he followed the rest of the assault team toward the airlock they were tasked with taking and entering. Twenty-nine other teams of squad strength moved to other locks, while platoon sized assault groups made ready on the ships to follow up whichever entry looked promising.
Damn, he thought as the thousand kilo kinetic round flew away into space at the same rate it had accelerated into the door. The round was distorted from the impact, but the door seemed none the worse for wear. A second round plowed into the door, then a third and fourth, and the door looked to be in good shape, with possibly a few minor scrape marks on it.
“We’re almost through the door, sir,” said the young officer that was leading this assault squad.
Chung looked over the shoulder of a trooper, and saw that the laser cutting torch had cut enough of a gap in the metal between the valves to put an opener in place.
“How hard was the metal to cut?” he asked the officer as the man started up the crank.
“Pretty damned hard for a civilian work hatch, sir,” said the officer as the opener began to pull the valves apart. “But nothing like warship armor.” The opener was struggling some to pull the door open, but it was slowly coming free.
Theocracy: Book 1. Page 24