by Mark Wandrey
But when she remembered Atlantis, it didn't lead to a clue specifically. Instead it was a working factory, the only one any human had ever seen to still be working and manufactured by The People. She'd come here to Dervish because it was next in the logs, a logical choice.
Her father had wrote that he was sure almost no-one had visited this station. He outlined how they had gotten here from a backwater world only barely able to support human life. That Portal was hidden in a nearly demolished industrial complex that showed no evidence of ever being explored. It had detailed an arduous quest to reach this point. She smiled a little. Father never thought his little girl would be cavorting around the galaxy in a starship.
“There are no more starships,” he had told her when she was small.
Now she smiled: “Surprise, Dad.”
“What was that?” Aaron asked her.
“Oh, just thinking aloud. Kal'at, can you use the directory to locate the energy storage system?”
The Rasa tapped at the icons on one of the terminals by the room’s doorway and quickly had results. There were hundreds of bays holding EPC storage arrays, but only one main handling system.”
“That is our destination,” she said with certainty.
“The power handling system is a dangerous area of the station,” Lilith cautioned.
“All the more certain then,” Minu said again.
As a team they moved out into the station, following Kal'at's directions to a tram station which took them many kilometers deep into the ancient structure. Dozens of stations went by, one after another, each looking identical to the last.
Then suddenly the tram shot out into a transparent tube and over a vast open space. The circular shape of the station was visible as it curved away to either side. It was an amazing vista, but more so the reason of the space. “Look!” Aaron called and pointed.
Running on huge spiraling tracks, hundreds of robotic manipulators moved along placing, removing, and carrying things from notches in the walls.
As they sped along the axis of the space, Minu watched one such arm pass by. Instead of a hand it sported a specialized manipulator capable of holding four large cylindrical items. With a shock she realized they were massive EPCs. Before she could share the fact, Pip did it for her.
“This is one big EPC warehouse,” he observed.
“How many?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“Ten, twenty thousand?” he guessed with a shrug. “These are bigger than any EPC I've ever seen.”
“The units are class one EPCs,” Lilith told her, evidently listening in on the conversation.
“How much power is in each one?”
“Each unit is capable of fully charging a Kaatan class cruiser. Some classes of ship use multiple capacitors. They are sometimes employed to power terrestrial facilities as well.”
“You could probably run our planet for a year off one of them,” Pip said. You couldn't tell by looking or listening to his voice, but Minu knew he was impressed. Some of the old mannerisms were still there.
Ahead of their course was the center of the cylindrical storage chamber, a tube-shaped structure hundreds of meters across and half a kilometer long. All of the tracks for the robotic EPC handlers ended there. This was obviously the control center of the power handling operation.
The tram came to a stop and the doors slid open noiselessly. Just like the rest of the station, several little crystalline bots were busily performing unknown maintenance even in the tram station. They took no notice of the visitors even though they might have been the first to set foot in the structure in a million years.
There was only one exit, with one of the holographic interfaces the People favored. Everyone spread out, humans in front and Rasa behind, led by Kal'at, as Minu addressed it.
Minu examined the ancient script for a moment as the part of her brain modified by the Weavers worked on the puzzle. Without conscious thought, just like usual, she reached out and began manipulating the icons. Her waking mind knew she was entering a master code, the highest level cypher there was. She'd only entered one of its kind once before, at the firebase where they'd claimed the Kaatan. The door instantly began to slide open.
The Rasa soldiers had weapons at the ready. After the run in with the Squeen back on Atlantis, they were on the ready for the unexpected.
The door revealed a nondescript hall like every other one they'd seen on the station. The Rasa stood at the ready as Minu walked in, smiling and shaking her head. She'd known the way the cypher was coded. No-one else was inside.
The hall consisted of a series of control rooms for the robotic handling systems, with the main operations center at the end. Pip studied the systems for a minute before speaking. “The energy storage and handling functions could all be handled from here.”
“How did they ship out the EPC?” Minu asked.
“There must be a group of Portals here somewhere.”
“He is correct,” Lilith spoke in her ear.
Minu used her script ability to unlock the storage controls. The cylindrical room came alive with floating displays a lot like Lilith used in the Kaatan CIC. She touched one of the displays, experimenting with the power management system.
In moments she was moving displays around with quick deft flicks of her fingers. The system displayed matrixes of stored EPCs; types, sizes, amounts of power in each one, and current reserves in the stations own power banks.
Another control told her the current amounts of power available to be stored and historical quantities in complicated graphs. Being able to see the immense amounts of energy the station had harvested over eons was amazing.
The storage regime was systematic. Along the wall were rows upon rows all ordered according to capacity, current storage, and destination. But there, in the middle of a thousand huge EPCs all fully charged, was a single empty one.
“What have we here,” she thought aloud and accessed the system’s logic routine. Vastly simpler than the Kaatan's artificial intelligence, these routines were simple and straightforward. It only took her minutes to find here the code had been modified. That specific EPC was exempted from the handling protocols, in essence locked in place. “I've got something here.”
Minu easily overrode the lockout and ordered the questionable EPC brought to the control center. Down the hall was a maintenance bay where EPCs could be examined in detail by bots. The capacitive batteries were simple devices, essentially nested arrays of many smaller capacitors all interconnected with small computer to control output and monitor the entire setup.
Outside in the vast storage chamber robotic handlers stopped their automated routine and moved in response. They arrived at the location of one of the largest EPCs, secured it via two attachment points, and slid it from its notch in the bulkhead. Then working together, the slid along their tracks and quickly towards the main module.
“Let’s go check it out,” Minu said and headed toward the door.
The maintenance section was located at the rearward section of the control center. It was basically an open cylinder whose walls were studded with maintenance bots and analytical computer. Stores of spare parts to repair common failures in the EPCs themselves were in place as well.
As they entered there were two other EPCs in the space, both being worked on at one of the dozen repair stations. Seeing the EPCs up close for the first time really put the view outside in perspective. They were easily five meters long and four meters in diameter, nearly the size of Minu's aerocar back on Bellatrix. She shook her head with the thought that one of those modules could power their entire planet for months, maybe a year.
The opposite end had just produced an opening through which the new EPC was passed by robots outside. On first appearance it appeared identical to the other two already locked into recesses in the wall.
Pip had moved to the side where a pair of operator’s stations were located. He was manipulating script as bots inside the maintenance room were moving the EPC to lock it
onto a wall. Diagnostic tools built into the bay quickly linked with the module and fed data to Pip's workstation.
“Anything unusual?” Minu asked him once the data began to be displayed.
“Nothing normal,” he replied. “The module is empty.”
“You mean no power stored?” Kal'at said.
“No, I mean empty. There is no power storage equipment inside the module.”
“Then what is inside?” Aaron asked for everyone.
“Let's find out,” Pip spoke and manipulated the script.
Two more crystalline bots were extruded from a glass panel to move over with the other two already working on their suspect EPC. In moments they split the external covering in two and deftly moved it aside.
Inside, instead of racks of arrayed smaller EPC cells, was a dualloy frame cut to allow room for four large standardized Concordian cargo modules arrayed like cylinders in the old design Enforcers.
“Looks like your father again.”
Minu nodded and told him to have the modules removed from the framework so they could have a better look at them. The handy bots performed the actions in only a minute and then they were moving in to look as Minu examined the code pads.
“We could just have the bots cut it open,” Pip suggested.
“Considering my father, that might not be the smartest course of action.”
She entered a code into the locking mechanism. The first try was a standard high level code used commonly by the Chosen. The container code pad flashed white, code refused. Next she tried one from her father's diaries, the one that had worked last time she'd found one of his special caches. It was refused as well.
“Huh,” she grunted and scratched her chin. He was being more obtuse this time.
Minu stood and considered the options. Her father had carefully detailed, in his diary, dozens of the codes he’d used during his years as Chosen.
There were codes for use in temporary safe stores, codes for long term cache, and codes for some of the items he termed 'personal'. She looked again at the four gleaming cargo modules. Not personal, unless he'd hidden a house full of furniture. And there was no way it would be one of the Chosen high level codes.
Dervish was not in the Chosen database. The star system was cataloged in the Concordia books, but only by its identifier. And since there were no planets in the trinary system, who would ever come here?
“Pip, how long has this been here?”
He consulted the station’s computer. “The record locater was locked thirty-four years ago.”
Minu chewed her lip and tried not to look as consternated as she felt. Thirty-four years. She had been born thirty-four years ago; subjective years, of course, since she really wasn’t even thirty. Faster than light travel played hell with your time sense. How old would she be when they got back to Bellatrix, she wondered.
The hidden modules were intended for only one person to find. Minu pulled out her tablet and accessed the diary of Chriso Alma. A few moments of accessing the unencrypted files located his index of codes. She looked in the list of personal ones, and they were in order of date.
She ran down the list and stopped at December 5, 499. Fifteen days after she was born. It was a code of the more advanced, old Concordian script. It had meant nothing when she looked at it years ago when the diary first came into her possession.
Since then, her brain had been altered with knowledge of the founding Concordian species, the Lost; a codex of passwords and encrypted algorithms that allowed her brain to decipher almost any locking mechanism from the million years gone species, and program portals by hand, something no-one else knew how to do.
The script rearranged itself in her mind, instantly translating into a comprehensible word for her. Sapphire.
“Son of a bitch,” she said.
The others all just watched her as she coded in the script. Instantly the code panel flashed white, and the module broke open. They all stepped back as the mechanism unfolded the protective shell like a complicated puzzle, pealing back in on itself and changing orientation to forty five degrees as it revealed its contents.
“Son of a bitch is right,” Aaron breathed as they beheld what was inside.
“Is that what I think it is?” Cherise asked.
Of those present she'd never been in battle against or with a higher order species of the Concordia. Minu and Aaron had, more than once, and Kal'at's Rasa, worked with the T'Chillen many times before their falling-out. Pip would know because, well, that's what Pip did. So he was the one that spoke.
“That my dear Ms. Macubale, is a combat suit.” If Minu didn't know better, even he sounded a little awed by the sight.
“Not only that,” Minu spoke as she moved closer, once the module was finished its high-tech origami act. She examined some of the script markings and leaned in even closer to see how it was configured. “This is made for one of The Lost to use.”
“Wait,” Aaron said, now getting even more excited, “we're damn near physiological matches for the Lost, right? Does that mean what I think it means?”
Pip nodded and was already working to interface one of his many omnipresent tablets with the suit. It only took moments for him to activate the machine.
Minu hopped back as it came to life, holographic panels in front of the open operators place in the center of the chest lit up along with rows of lights and virtual switches.
Micromotors whirred to life after untold millennia of waiting and the machine leaned forward to step from the module. The deck plate reverberated slightly as it stepped down; more than a thousand kilos of ultra-sophisticated dualloy and moliplas armored killing machine.
“Why do I feel like whistling the theme from Terminator?” Aaron asked. Even Pip had to smile as the humans chuckled. They were popular though cheesy sci-fi movies back home.
The Rasa soldiers were chittering excitedly in their native language, the translators unable to keep up, while Kal'at examined the machine and talked with Pip, his own tablet out as the two talked shop. Each of those present saw something different.
The Rasa saw unbelievably powerful war machines that only higher order species owned or dared employ in battle.
Pip and Kal'at saw a living example of technology that no longer existed in a place they could see and touch. Here was a chance for them to learn things that were unlearnable only minutes ago.
Cherise saw the wealth these could represent to humanity. She often dealt in offworld trade and knew these sort of machines never, ever came up for sale. Even if they did, humanity would never even be offered the chance to buy. Both because the big boys didn't want little species to have such power, and because they just wouldn't be able to afford it. The planet’s entire economic output for a year wouldn't buy of one these, and here were four.
Aaron's thoughts were leaning toward a hybrid of Pip and Kal'at and the Rasa soldiers. As an industrialist he saw the potential boon these might provide to his corporation, and thus the planet. But also as Chosen, he knew they were to humanity like a firearm in a world where everyone else had rocks and sticks.
All of their thoughts went through Minu's mind in moments before she quickly settled on something much closer to home. Her father had found these shortly before she was born. Like many discoveries, he had never brought them home. He had carefully cached them away in a place on he, or someone with his diary would find them.
Not only someone with his diary; but someone who knew him well enough to guess at the code.
While everyone else was jabbering and drooling over the armored combat suit, she moved around and examined the cargo module's control area. A tool rack nearby, meant for the maintenance crew, yielded a driver set with which she carefully removed the control panel. Inside she found additional wiring, obviously not part of the mechanism. It was human manufactured, though skillfully added to the modules photronic circuitry.
She'd removed three more panels on the module before Pip noticed and was drawn away from his examinations w
ith Kal'at. When he moved to look at her work he gave off a low whistle.
“That's quite a little surprise your father left,” he said, admiring the work. “More than enough to make me glad we didn't cut it open.” Hidden in the module's shell and scattered all round its workings were dozens of high explosive charges. Not only enough to destroy the suit, but all four of them.
“The explosive charge would likely have detonated the other three as well,” he remarked.
“And that may well have breached the station,” Aaron agreed, having joined them.
“And set off a catastrophic chain reaction,” Kal'at added, indicating through a transparent view port the thousands of huge EPCs only a few hundred meters away.
“My father was nothing if not thorough.”
She moved on to extracting the other three suits while setting Kal'at and his more technically oriented soldiers to stripping down the modules. The explosives were too useful to leave behind. As she was standing the last suit up along one wall with the other three, he reported on the demolition charges.
“They are set into the modules’ computer systems to trigger after six failed password attempts,” he told her. “In addition, they are linked into the modules’ communication systems.”
“So they could be detonated remotely?”
“Without a doubt. The module’s structural integrity sensors are also linked. Any attempt to force the module, disable the lock or cut it open would have triggered a detonation. I cannot be sure, but it may also communicate with the other three and detonate them as well.”
Minu examined the charges, now completely removed from the modules and stacked on the floor. C-6, a precursor of the new C-7 being used by Ted's weapons development team. A militarized Concordia explosive intended for civil use; humans had become adept at re-tasking commonly available non-military goods and pressing them into service for the Chosen.
The C-6 was nowhere as devastatingly powerful as the scratch made C-7, but considering there were twenty of the five-hundred gram tactical charges laid out before her, that hardly mattered. She'd seen a single half kilo charge used to turn an old junked tractor into debris. No piece had remained bigger than her hand.