by Mark Wandrey
“Kind of useless isn’t it?” the sergeant snorted.
“Something with this old script is never useless,” she replied and tried a couple combinations.
Two more rings of script popped into existence, hovering in the air. Her brain read them and she sensed this would initiate something. But what?
“We need to mess with this later,” she finally decided and deactivated the PCR.
It flashed, just like a portal being deactivated, and again became a simple clear crystalline rod. It went back into the cache box, and that was when she noticed the data chip.
“Hello,” she said and snatched the chip. It was painted blue, just like the sapphire hanging around her neck.
Even though they’d already been on this planet far too long, she had to see what was on the chip. Out came her tablet and the chip went into one of the ports. Instantly a data script appeared. This was the type her brain translated without the Weaver modifications. And a line of text appeared:
“Sapphire, I couldn’t be around to give you the keys to success, so here are fifteen keys to the galaxy instead. Chriso.”
What had he meant by the keys to the galaxy? Maybe the unusual PCRs were to unlock the ones that are locked? She removed the chip, dropped it back in the box, and into her pack. “We’ve trespassed long enough,” Minu told the men.
Her PCR activated the portal in the center of the mining camp, data transferring from the glowing arch to hover over her rod. Destinations programmed into this portal were displayed there, along with the next step after those. They were at the end of a long network of portals and many would have been lost. She memorized many hundreds of locations and could recognize hundreds more. She quickly recognized one of them in particular. She was about to program that one when she looked a destination down from one of the other choices, and it matched the new address her father left her.
She made a snap decision. Her fingers moved in the holographic interface, and the portal came to life.
“Time to go,” she said, replaced the PCR, unslung her shock rifle, and off they went.
Chapter 66
June 20th, 534 AE
Undesignated Planet, Contested Territory
They took the movement through the two portals with extreme slowness and the maximum amount of caution. Especially at the first jump while leaving Wiggin, as it was a higher order species territory.
The first world was unnamed. A small settlement that looked like it had last been used before mankind discovered fire. Strangely enough, the town square which once served a modest population held three portals in a triangular formation, all facing each other. Minu stood in the center of the formation and looked in confusion at the arrangement.
“This isn’t very normal,” Aaron noted right away. Serving for years as a Scout had given him more field experience than she sported.
The Rangers all stood around examining the square, shock rifles clipped to their chest harnesses and one hand on them to be ready. They used the multi spectrum scanners in their helmets to watch the perimeter as their sergeant stood at attention near Minu.
“No, unusual,” Minu agreed after a few minutes. “You men picking up anything?”
She sometimes regretted using the term men, since two in the squad were women. It was a normal military convention though, so she stuck with it.
Selain surveyed his Rangers before turning to her and shaking his head. The settlement was blank of all unusual sensor readings.
“Very well then,” she said and took out her PCR. Sets of script appeared for each portal, showing destinations. The one they’d come through was the one she’d known about from Wiggin, its destination already available to her and where she’d planned to go (considering the address noted in her father’s coded diary entry). The others were more interesting. One showed no addresses programmed, and the other only one.
Over the years of exploring the galaxy she’d come across a few orphaned portals (as her father called them). Just like these they often made no sense by a disproportionally small settlement would have multiple portals, and then some of them not programmed at all, just like one of these. Why here? Why unused?
She knew portals were horribly expensive to have installed. In fact, she realized she’d never seen a portal purchased and installed. She’d seen several on Bellatrix relocated to the fortresses. It involved a special PCR and a code unique to each portal. The Tog had to provide those codes, of course. She wondered for a moment if the superscript codes provided by her Weaver modified brain that would allow her to do that without the codes. Well, that was for another time.
She accessed the portal with only one destination and examined the script that marched across her PCR. Like the rest of the situation, it was unusual. Part of the script made her special knowledge access awaken, but only part. What the heck was this all about?
“I can read some of that,” Aaron said, “but not the other part. Is your brain handling it?”
“Yes,” she said and tried to concentrate. Like all the Weaver-supplied abilities, the harder she tried to think about it, the less it worked. Rather like looking at something out of the corner of your eye, if you tried to focus on it, it would suddenly disappear. She sighed and just let her brain work with a meditative trance, and it came to her. This portal had been reprogrammed by someone. And that person knew some of the special script.
“Someone has been at this portal,” she said and gestured with the PCR, “and they had some of the same knowledge I have.”
“Maybe the Squeen?”
“That’s possible, they seem to know as much or more as I do.”
She looked at the script again, her fingers operating on automatic.
“But they did some of this in a very circuitous manner. Kind of like climbing in through a second story window, going downstairs and unlocking the door, then climbing back out the window to go down and come in through the door.”
“Sounds like an idiot,” Selain scowled. “Only an idiot or someone setting a trap.”
“Or just making do with what they had,” she mumbled. It piqued her curiosity, regardless.
Making another of those snap decisions, she flipped the PCR up and activated the portal. On the other side of the portal was a brightly lit town square in better shape than where she stood, the light there tinted to a greenish tinge. An avenue led away from the portal, showing an arboreal forest with huge trees and ferns. The doorways of the visible buildings were quite wide and the windows artfully flecked with speckles and flecks of color.
Minu double checked the programming of the portal on the other side, having been trapped before by a dead end, before deciding. “I want to have a look over there,” she told the men.
Aaron looked dubious but she held up a hand.
“I think this is worth investigating,” she insisted. “Besides, I’m in charge.”
Aaron chuckled. “I’ve known that for years, dear.”
A minute later they were organized and, as was her tradition, Minu stepped through first. Her helmet visor was down, oxygen mask in place so she was only breathing filtered air, and armor energized. Many years of experience told her caution was always the best policy, especially when things seemed the safest.
The heads up display of her helmet told Minu that the atmosphere was safe almost instantly after arriving on the unnamed world. The Rangers came through right behind her and quickly spread out around the square in a defensive perimeter. Aaron worked with the Ranger specialist and deployed instruments to examine the area.
“Really clean,” he pronounced in a minute. “Looks like no-one has been here in a very long time.”
“With that strange programming I’m not surprised,” said Minu as she flipped up her visor and removed the breather mask. “How long?”
Aaron consulted the Rangers’ readout again. “More than a hundred years. It’s hard to be more specific.”
“Everyone spread out,” she informed them, “perimeter search. Anything out of the o
rdinary, fifteen minutes.”
The Rangers broke up and quickly spread out in pairs. An entire fire-team led by Selain stayed to guard Minu and Aaron. Minu was slowly coming to accept her shadows and their leader’s over the top protective nature. She still had plans to get even with Gregg when they got back home for saddling her with more than a dozen nannies.
The atmosphere had a rather nice flavor, the nearby forest scenting it with pine and a nearby stream. Years of searching on the frontier and following breadcrumbs left by her father should have prepared her for almost anything. It almost did.
“Commander,” her radio chirped.
“Go ahead,” Minu replied instantly.
“Ten meters to planetary north east, down an alley. We’ve found a body.”
“Species?”
“Human.”
Minu blinked once in surprise then headed that way. The squad left to guard her started to move to follow her but she stopped them. “Hold the portal, Sarge.”
“Ma’am,” he started to complain.
“The team that called is there, I’ll be fine.” He narrowed his eyes and Aaron shouldered his shock rifle, holding it at low port, before following her and left the Sarge watched with trepidation.
Around a quick corner and behind one of the buildings fronting the square, she found the Ranger team. They were both standing over a half rotted storage crate, weapons slung over their shoulders and imaging equipment held loosely.
As she came up, she was filled with a feeling of dread. Was she about to see the body of her father? What she found was as far from what she was expecting as was possible.
“What do we have?” she asked as she approached, Aaron trotting up behind her. They just shook their heads and one pointed with his instrument, so she leaned over and looked. It was a human corpse, all right. But it was what it wore and carried that was more interesting than a human body thousands of light-years from their normal area of operation.
The body was thoroughly decayed with only thin parchment like skin stretched over the head. The lips were peeled back in a rictus of death and its eyes were empty staring sockets. The uniform was peeled and partly decayed, and in a camo pattern not completely foreign to what the Chosen scouts wore. The resemblance ended there.
The person (soldier?) wore a sort of battle harness of decayed strapping that held various pouches around his (her?) waist. The boots were similar, but different as well.
But it was the helmet and rifle that brought Minu up short. She’d first seen their like years ago, during her Scout training as a Chosen. Examples of old equipment in a museum on Tranquility, she’d since gotten to be moved to her War College on permanent loan.
It was a United States Kevlar helmet and M-4 carbine, circa early 21st century on old Earth.
“Is that…” Aaron asked.
“Sure looks like it,” Minu answered without needing to hear the entire question. “Is the body clean?”
“Bio scan is clear,” one of the Rangers announced.
“What’s the details on the body?”
“Human for sure, male, about thirty standard years old.”
Minu leaned down to start inspecting the equipment. “Cause of death?”
“Self-inflicted firearms wound to the head.” There was a small hole under his chin and the back of his uniform was stained a rust color. She nodded her head and took the weapon. She had to break two of the man’s fingers to get it to release.
Minu popped the magazine release. Standard 5.56 millimeter stamped NATO on the head stamp. Twenty-nine rounds in the magazine. The weapon was marked Colt Firearms on the side and was an identical match to several in the museums on Bellatrix.
Dozens had been brought over by the soldiers who established the beachhead on their new homeworld and saw service for more than a century until they either could no longer reload the bullets, or the weapon succumbed to internal malfunction.
On his belt was a service issue Glock 19 as well. This weapon also a perfect match for one in the War College museum.
“Check the corpse over,” she instructed, “I need to see everything.”
She needed to know when this man had arrived here, and from where. The only tribes who could have fielded this soldier were Plateau and New Jerusalem. The latter was unlikely, because the Israelis who formed that tribe wore different camouflage uniforms and carried the Tavor battle rifle (a bullpup design firing the same cartridge though) and though some carried Glock pistols, they seemed to favor FN and Desert Eagle’s more often.
In a minute, all he had on him was presented on a small tarp he’d carried in his pack. No food, there was a pile of emptied ration packs nearby that matched what she’d seen in the museum as well (MREs from the USA again). A camp stove with a few fuel pellets left. A combat knife/bayonet (USA issue), ten magazines for the M-4, three for the Glock, and cleaning kits for both weapons. Compass, a GPS device (USA issue, batteries long dead), a computer tablet (common design, also dead), and a wallet.
Minu picked up the last item. She’d seen them before but such items were not in vogue on Bellatrix in her lifetime. It was a little brittle and cracked when she opened it. Inside were several plastic cards with numbers and names embossed on them, and an identification card that read ‘US Army – Dexter Ambrose, ID Number 559-66-1011. Special Forces, Staff Sergeant’.
She looked at the rest of the data then back at the body before taking out her tablet and accessing one of the files. It contained a complete list of every man, woman, and child that came over from Earth to Bellatrix during the exodus. There was no Dexter Ambrose listed.
Chapter 67
June 21st, 534 AE
Undesignated Planet, Contested Territory
They’d made camp while Minu and Aaron tried to piece together what they’d found. Once they had a secure camp on the outskirts of the village (standard Scout procedure), the body and his gear had been gently relocated there so they could use more sophisticated instruments to perform scans and take samples.
It was late that afternoon when the second bombshell landed. The corpse had been only dead one hundred years, maximum.
“So,” Aaron summed up what they knew, “we have a man equipped like an old Earth soldier, in old Earth equipment matching the period, after Earth was destroyed, on a planet humans have likely never set foot on.”
Minu nodded.
“To make it more interesting, there is no evidence he was a colonist to Bellatrix, and he died only a hundred years ago. Further there is no Dexter Ambrose who ever lived on Bellatrix, or even that name Ambrose either.”
Again she nodded and added more information from her instruments. “The dating of the metal in the weapons confirms they are only one hundred years old, plus minus ten.”
“Those guns were never manufactured on Bellatrix, not even after the Chaos era,” he said.
“Correct.”
“But weren’t there some old rifles found in a cache a hundred years or so ago? That might account for this.”
“The guns were made on Earth, so they’d still date as over five hundred years old,” she insisted.
Aaron looked befuddled. She felt sorry for him. If he’d been born into her family, he’d be used to unsolvable mysteries.
“There are more detailed files on Bellatrix,” she noted, glaring at the man’s staring eye sockets. “I believe even a detailed tax record from the year before the Exodus. We can at least confirm if this person existed with matching birthdate.
“If he did, we have a real problem.”
“Any chance the atmosphere is screwing up the aging?” the sergeant asked. Even though he was not a scientific type, Minu included him in the powwow. Unconventional ideas sometimes came from unconventional sources.
“The instrument uses carbon dating,” she told him, “based on decay of carbon atoms in the metal. If you have a baseline, it can’t really be wrong. Laws of physics and all.” The soldier nodded and shrugged. “But I’ll take whatever I can get, Sarge.”
“So what do we do with him?”
“Bury him,” Minu said. “Take all the gear, even the weapons, ammo, and used ration packets. Leave no trace. We’ll bury him a few kilometers outside of the village. But if you consider he’s been lying here for a century and no aliens have found him…”
“We’re way off the beaten track,” Aaron agreed. He’d taken a squad of Rangers and swept the village for salvage. They’d found absolutely nothing of value. “Sarge, please detail a team to move the body and provide for burial.”
“Yes sir,” he nodded and moved to give the orders.
“How do you live with all these mysteries?” her husband asked.
Minu sighed and looked into the cool light from one of their field lanterns. Powered by a tiny EPC, it would run for almost a year at full power. How it managed that was itself a small mystery, that being the light generation principles. “Some things you just get used to.”
Aaron moved to sit next to her, putting one of his strong arms around her shoulder. She resisted at first, knowing the Rangers would see, then gave in and put her head against his chest. Their baby was growing inside her, and she would take what little comfort there was to be found in the universe whenever it was offered.
* * *
The planets sun had just peeked through some of the trees as the last shovel of dirt was packed in place. The grave site was a hundred meters off the old avenue which led away from the village, visible through the portal. There would be no reason for anyone to look for this spot but she’d still had it concealed in a patch of ferns. There was no marker for SSGT Dexter Ambrose’s grave; the least he deserved was an undisturbed rest.
The humans who’d settled Bellatrix had left most of their faith behind. Chriso had told her when she was a child that losing your world was hard to survive with faith of an all-powerful protecting deity intact. That made sense to her. Still, he deserved a few words.
“We don’t know what brought you here, Sergeant Ambrose, or why you decided to end your life.” Minu spoke, the Rangers in a defensive perimeter with Aaron to one side and Selain the other, both with heads held down.