by Aer-ki Jyr
“Yes, I picked up on the animosity earlier, but I couldn’t read its mind.”
“I can only get bits and pieces. They have some sort of unconscious telepathic dampening mechanism that prevents memory search. They can still be influenced, but information recall is minimal at best,” he said, finally finding the room he wanted.
There were shelves filled with large cubes that encompassed the small, squarish storage chaber that was far smaller than the others he’d been checking. When the pair walked in the cubes began lighting up as Riax activated a number of them. They floated out of their racks and began to unfold into small, bipedal walkers, barely half a meter taller than Riax.
“Follow,” he ordered, leading the automated workers out of storage where they’d sat inactive for 16,000 years.
Orrona watched silently, keeping about a meter off Riax’s shoulder, as she gleaned as much about the Human Empire as she could. So far her expectations had been validated . . . and then some.
Riax took the twelve machines to a maintenance bay, where he repaired and refurbished the minimal amount of decay that had occurred during storage, as well as fully recharging their energy cells. While he was working the Vespa caught up with him, absent her mercenary guards.
“Drones,” she commented, walking whisper quiet into the bay as Riax had the torso of one torn apart on a workbench. “And a Cres.”
“Yes, I have several other personnel on their way down,” Riax said, his head and focus buried inside the walker. “Might want to tell your mercs so they don’t get themselves killed in a needless fight.”
“You doubt the skill of my troops?” she asked as she touched a small jewel on her necklace, activating her communicator. She had a brief conversation in the commerce language, then reverted to her native tongue when speaking with Riax.
“Mine are professionals,” he added after she’d finished. “And they’re bigger.”
He pulled out of the drone as a stray thought occurred to him. “By the way, do you know what happened to the Kayna?”
“I’m not familiar with that race.”
“Bummer,” Riax muttered, digging back inside the drone.
“May I ask what you’re going to use those for?”
“I need the main bay dug out.”
The Vespa was taken aback. “You’ll risk exposing this facility.”
“Not all the way,” he said, finishing his internal modification and pulling out. A swirl of components lifted off from the workbench and began to fit themselves back into place as Riax physically and telekinetically began to reassemble the machine. “Just enough to get some bigger items out underneath the canopy. They’d have to have scouts on the ground to notice.”
“And do you plan to bring your ship here to load it?”
“Yes.”
“If they detect the ship it will lead them straight here,” she argued.
“We can use the gas giant to shield it from view on approach to the moon. Once inside the atmosphere it will be almost impossible to detect from range.”
“And when you leave?”
“We can circle around to the far side and exit on a trajectory that can’t be backtracked to this location.”
“I see,” she said, conceding the point. “Where then will you go?”
“We have a few options.”
“I meant ultimately.”
“I’d rather not say. Word could leak out through your mercenaries and that would make our journey more difficult.”
“I need to know if I’m going to move my fleet to escort your ship,” she said sharply.
Riax stopped his work on the drone and turned around. “Say again?”
“I do own a large mercenary fleet,” she reminded him. “I will order them to protect you until you reach your destination.”
Riax stared at her for a long moment, gleaning what he could from her mental state. “Cres space. Once there we’ll be safe.”
“How fast is your ship?”
Riax buttoned up the drone and reactivated it. “Slow, but I’m going to install some upgrades during our next jump. And you’re still not getting computer access.”
“That is not my motivation,” the Vespa said as Marren and Ella entered the room covered head to toe in golden armor. Behind them the two much larger Kayna thudded into the maintenance bay, sniffing in the direction of the Vespa.
“Ah, good,” Riax said as they entered. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. First item on the agenda is clearing off part of the soil above the main bay, but without toppling any of the trees while we do it. We need to keep the canopy more or less intact as camouflage. These,” he said, turning around and thumping the drone on its chest, “are automated workers. I’m outfitting them with digging equipment, and I’m going to need one of you to take them up to the surface and put them to work. I’ll provide you with coordinates.”
“I’ll handle that,” Marren offered.
“Be wary of the predators,” Riax warned. “Not sure how they’ll take to the ruckus, but don’t worry if you lose a few of these. I’ve got more in storage, it’ll just take some extra time to get them refitted.”
“A mobile shield generator would be helpful,” Marren suggested.
Riax pointed at the Cres. “Good idea, I’ve got some of those. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that.” He turned to Ella. “I need a lot of small cargo moved into the main bay. There are antigrav sleds that will train together and autonavigate, but they each need a point of origin programmed and I don’t have time to do it remotely. I need you to take each individual sled into the main bay and manually set that location, then you can take the sleds anywhere else in the facility, load them up, and they’ll find their way back to the bay.”
“How many sleds?” she asked, her voice somewhat metallic as it was processed through her helmet.
“At least 50,” he said. “I want Wes with me loading sleds while Steve unloads them in the bay . . . and you keep track of me telepathically and bring the empty ones back to refill.”
The Cres nodded her understanding.
“Orrona, I’ll have need for you later. Stick with me.” He looked over at the Vespa. “You . . . never got a name?”
She blinked once. “I am Lilitha’mulissasseverna’ya.”
“Right . . . we’ll go with Lilly. Lilly, do you have space on your landing pad for our ship. I want it planetside as soon as possible, but I don’t want it burning fuel the entire time.”
“That can be arranged, but I would suggest using the camouflaged hangar instead.”
Riax considered that. “No, I want her close. In fact . . .” he pointed at Orrona, “take a cloaking shield over to the Resolute. It will make it look like the landing pad is empty, just make sure you take the camouflage snapshot before the ship lands. It will automatically adjust for varying light conditions.”
“Can you arrange for transport back to your base?” he asked Lilly.
“I can.”
“Do so. Orrona, contact Jalia and get her up to speed.” He turned to the nearest drone. “You, come with me.”
Chapter 22
FOR THE NEXT several hours Riax was a blur of motion. He got Orrona’s cloaking shield out of storage, followed by a quick refurbishment and test of its functionality, then sent it up to the surface with her and the Vespa to wait on their transport. Then he got the refitted drones, portable shield, and the digging coordinates up to the surface and put them to work. Once satisfied that all was functioning properly he left them in Marren’s care and headed back down to get the antigrav sleds out of storage.
After a very cursory inspection and recharge he deemed them functional and showed Ella the way to the main bay. Inside were several odd-sized Human transports, all too big to take up through the canopy, along with several smaller craft. Riax told Ella to ignore them and park the cargo in a clearing
next to the wall, which was where she started to manually input the point of origin into each sled.
Meanwhile, Riax boarded three of the transports and moved them around the bay, clearing the area under which the new shaft would be opening. There were heavy bay doors covering the center third of the ceiling of the enormous chamber, as well as containment shields that would activate over their outer surface. When the shaft was dug, the doors would open partway to keep the rest of the dirt and forest covering the bay intact while still giving them their egress point for all the cargo, large and small, that he was going to pick up.
After moving the ships around, Riax took Wes and headed back down into the storage areas. A Human outpost such as this was designed to exist in systems not part of the Empire, and as such contained supplies for many contingencies, ranging from foodstuffs to computer crystals to the kelzats.
The outpost was the only Human facility in the system, and perhaps the local region, whose purpose was to provide sanctuary, resupply, or support to any Human or allied ships nearby. It also acted as a forward base of operations from which to mount exploratory, cargo, or combat expeditions from. Human territory accounted for less than .001% of all star systems within the galaxy, but their presence was felt in more than 50%, with the dangerous and largely unexplored galactic core skewing those numbers. The Human Empire had dominated the non-core galaxy, with outposts like this providing links to and in between widespread Human systems.
Riax was fortunate to have stumbled across one at all, let alone one in such good condition. Some equipment was missing, thanks to the Concordat, but otherwise the installation had apparently gone undetected since the fall of the Empire. He wondered how many others were out there and how intact they were. Discerning that, along with locating any remaining allies, were at the top of his priority list. However, for now basic survival was all that mattered, and the equipment recovered here would go a long way to that end.
Which was why he was going to pack the Resolute’s holds with as much as he reasonably could without overstaying their welcome. It was fortunate the Cres had acquired a cargo ship for transport, giving him ample room to take what he needed.
When he got to the first storage room he walked inside, glanced around, then started pulling out seemingly random items and laying them on the floor. When he finished, he left the room and moved on to the next while Wes loaded up the first sled Ella brought down to him in a long train of the hovering slabs, programmed to followed each other without any physical interlinks.
Room by room Riax picked out what he needed and left it to be gathered and hauled out, moving at a pace that his colleagues could match. He made sure to work his way through the cargo areas systematically so they would have a trail to follow and telepathically advised Ella of any change of location whenever he headed off to a new area. Given the size of the outpost, he had the Cres and Kayna running all over trying to keep up with him and a trail of technological breadcrumbs to follow.
After six hours he’d finally gathered most of what he wanted to take, save for a few larger items that he’d have to move himself. He left Ella and Wes to finish picking up after him while he went down to the lower regions of the outpost and began hunting around for some specialized elements he hoped were still in storage.
The facility had been powered by a Redonvan reactor and had completely exhausted its fuel supply while he was in stasis. Fortunately the subsurface outpost had been equipped with geothermal generators as a backup, and that secondary system had kept the reserve cells charged while the facility had been in power conservation mode. The geothermal taps didn’t generate even 1% of the power required to run the base, but the charged cells did, and would allow the facility to operate at reduced capacity for several months.
Primary power generation for nearly all Human infrastructure used a type of fuel known as L-type elements, which were a combination of lerons and corovon. The corovon acted as a bonding agent within the atom to hold the lerons together, creating extremely large, energy-packed atoms that could be used in fission reactors.
Originally discovered in the debris cloud of an ultranova, lerons were high energy subatomic particles created within black holes. Essentially a superparticle created from a mass of photons jammed together around a kelsa, they formed a tier 1 subatomic particle slightly larger than a proton and neutron, and twice as large as a corovon. Lerons were negatively charged in the presence of a magnetic field, but otherwise neutral and required corovon particles to bond them together to form larger elements.
Many different L-type elements were used by Humans as fuels, but Redonvan, otherwise known as Element L2C1, was the most basic and widely used in small scale fission reactors, though most reactors could accommodate a range of low mass L-type elements as fuels. The outpost’s reactor was classified in the small range by Human standards, and could have used up to Illicum to power it, otherwise known as L6C2.
Lerons found in black holes and black hole remnants existed in singular atoms, and with exposure to several tier 3 particles would disintegrate, essentially releasing the light energy that the black holes had compressed and stored in particle form. By using corovon to bond the highly repellant particles together, the potency of the fuel increased per atom, leaving the metallic corovon behind as recyclable residue.
The outpost’s reactor, metaphorically speaking, was fueled by the power of black holes and was capable of producing insane levels of output compared to any previous power generation technology.
And since the outpost doubled as a fuel depot, it also contained L-type fuel storage separate from the reactor, which is what Riax found when he inspected the lower levels.
There wasn’t much left, but he found four containers of Redonvan, each approximately the size of his chest, with sufficient fuel to power a frigate for more than a year of standard operation. Riax imagined the rest of the outpost’s surplus had been expended during the war and was glad to get his hands on even one fuel pod. The Resolute’s power generation levels were exceedingly primitive, and if he was going to make any major upgrades he was going to need a reactor with more kick.
The reactor itself he could build with the components he’d gathered. It’d take a while, but it wasn’t beyond his skill set now that he’d obtained a copy of the schematics. The hard part was acquiring the L-type elements, most of which the Humans had to synthesize or mine from black holes, neither of which he had the capability to do at the moment.
Riax stacked the extremely valuable pods on top of one another then carried them like a high stack of books on top of his hand, leaning them back on his chest for support, all the way up to the main bay where he stashed them inside one of the parked ships for safekeeping. L-type elements were fairly stable, but he didn’t want to take any chances of them being misplaced.
After securing that precious cargo he moved on to the larger puzzle pieces, starting with the small vehicle bay.
Originally the outpost’s surface had been level with the desert ground with multiple entrances. One of those led to the small vehicle bay, which fortunately sat as an adjunct to the main bay, given the amount of soil now covering it. He didn’t care to have to excavate multiple entrances and the large corridors within the outpost would have been difficult, if not impossible, to maneuver the vehicles through to get to the main bay.
There were large blast doors that doubled as part of the main bay’s walls, and he doubted the Vespa and her mercs had even noticed that they were there. Coming in from a different direction, Riax entered through a small personnel access door and saw that the bay’s complement was only at one-third capacity. Most of the rows of craft had been removed prior to the evacuation of the base and large chunks of the formation were missing, but what remained was still an impressive sight.
Riax walked over to the nearest of the armored speeders and inspected its condition. Its yellow/green coloration was emblematic of the Gammas, whom t
his outpost had belonged to, and clashed with the white hues of the facility. One would have thought that more color coordination would have been taken into consideration in the design of the outpost, but all Human infrastructure was predicated on a colorless design given the fact that such facilities would change hands depending on the outcome of the Trials.
Kadash identification was utilized by the illumination panels, which could easily be reset to any color schematic. Interestingly enough, this outpost’s illumination had been reset to neutral white when it had been evacuated. A symbolic gesture of the Gammas abandoning it.
According to the last log entries they’d been ordered to retreat in the face of an approaching enemy force that was too large to counter directly. How the outpost had been overlooked Riax didn’t know. Once the Gammas left no further records had been kept, but the systematic destruction of the system’s nexuses had been recorded by the sole surviving unit, so at least he had a date of the enemy’s arrival and activities. Given the fact that all other infrastructure had been purged from the system, he was forced to conclude that they’d simply missed the outpost.
Sloppy of them, but it did suggest that they didn’t have foreknowledge of its presence and they’d most likely just been making a sweep of the system . . . meaning that the outpost’s camouflage capabilities were at least somewhat effective against the enemy’s sensors. A useful data point there.
Riax knelt down and examined the underside of the bike. It was resting on the floor, but several hatches were reachable. He rubbed his index finger across one . . . but there was no response. He tried a telepathic link, but that was also a no-go. He guessed the bike’s power cells were completely dead and looked around for a mobile recharger.
He found one armature sealed up inside the leftmost wall and telepathically summoned it. Unfolding along several joints, it moved along an invisible track on the wall until it was close enough to service the bike, reaching out and attaching a flat hexagon to the aft section of the speeder.