by Dan Worth
‘As you wish,’ Mentith replied. ‘However our offer of assistance still stands, should you require it.’
‘I intend to strike as soon as possible,’ said Haines. ‘Morgan is assembling his fleet in Spica, gathering his available assets into one large armada. We’ve intercepted re-deployment orders recalling much of Southern command to the Spica system and have monitored corresponding movements of ships in that part of space. We have a list of vessels that we believe are under his command. Currently it seems that he has a dozen complete carrier groups with a similar number en route to the rendezvous including a complete Marine Corp task force. However, the Spica system is all but cut off to our ships. Morgan has blockades in place and is only allowing ships to enter or depart that have been pre-authorised. Essentially nothing gets in or out except his fleet and his supplies. My guess is that Morgan will make straight for the core systems within a matter of weeks once his fleet is assembled and supplied. He may strike at Earth directly, though my guess would be that he would attempt to establish a forward base in a nearby system before attempting to tackle the defences in this system to prevent his supply lines becoming over extended.’
‘Aside from the Marines, what other ground forces does Morgan have at his disposal?’ Mentith asked.
‘In that respect it seems we’ve been lucky,’ Haines replied. ‘The Army appears to have escaped enemy infiltration and the higher echelons are still entirely loyal to the government. However, I believe that this was entirely intentional. Morgan doesn’t need to hold territory; all he needs to do is cause as much chaos as possible to weaken the Commonwealth as a prelude to a full scale Shaper offensive. If he strikes at the heart of our civilisation, paralyses our government and military via a full scale decapitation strategy, we’ll be left wide open. My real worry is that we’ll find out that the government has been infiltrated at planetary and system level and that we’ll end up with a full scale civil war on our hands. I’ve recommended to the interim government that they initiate screening programmes of all parliamentary members and local officials, but the sheer scale of the task means that it will take a great deal of time to complete. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of individuals scattered across every system in human space.’
‘It troubles us that our recon flights have not revealed anything about their fleet movements,’ said Beklide. ‘We would have expected to see some signs by now. If they can conceal their ships this well, it does not bode well for us when we come to fight them in the open.’
‘The activity at the galactic core?’
‘It continues, though it is hard to get good intelligence data. Our detection arrays have trouble penetrating the storms of radiation that surround the entire region. All those closely packed, ancient stars and exotic objects, not to mention the Maelstrom itself, make our task exceedingly difficult. However it is clear that the high energy emissions we picked up earlier are still sporadically occurring, though to what end, we cannot say. Nevertheless, our fleet remains at a full defensive posture and new ships come on line almost daily.’
‘We’ll move as soon as we can to finish this,’ said Haines. ‘Morgan has to be stopped. Admiral Chen, when the time comes, I’m placing you in charge of the defence of Earth.’
Chapter 36
Rekkid floated gently in the air amid the branches of a silicate tree, buoyed up by anti-gravity fields provided by the ship. His papers, notepads, various data-pads and his computer were strewn about him, similarly suspended in empty space, forming a scattered shell of assorted academic untidiness. Below him, Katherine sat with her back against the smooth trunk as she tapped away on her own machine, the delicate branches of the ancient alien tree sheltering her from the glare of the artificial mid-day sun here in the Shining Glory’s arboretum.
Since the ship had successfully tied the records that they had uncovered to the galactic map already in their possession, the two archaeologists had made great strides with their research. The map had given the vast collection of documents both chronology and order, allowing them to place the events they described in both time and space. Though it would still take years to sort through the information, they were better able to cherry pick information that related to Shaper war stratagems and battle tactics and the methods by which the Progenitors had sought to combat them, both successful and otherwise.
They had elected to stay aboard the Shining Glory, even when the vessel had reached the Black Rock facility, now floating between the two shattered halves of the Dyson sphere. The tranquillity and calm aboard the ship helped them both to concentrate on their work after their hectic and traumatic experiences in the Hadar system and besides, the ship had still one secret of the galactic map to crack. The map had highlighted two key systems above all others. The Progenitor home system, and the system now known as Fulan; home to the Progenitor portal device. However they had also uncovered a large number of documents linked to another system located near the galactic core. The documents relating to the first two were extensive, providing a rich and detailed description of the worlds that had formed the cradle for the galaxy’s first interstellar civilisation and detailed technical specifications on the portal inside the planet Maranos in the Fulan system. Of the third system there was nothing, not even a name or a catalogue number, just co-ordinates and the physical and spectrographic details of the two main stars, a red dwarf binary with few listed planets. All documents relating to this system were protected with such fiendish and complex levels of encryption that not even the supreme computing power of the Shining Glory’s AI had succeeded in breaking them.
The cat padded lightly across the blue-green grass-like sward, its tail held high and its face wearing a supreme expression of feline satisfaction. Its long silver fur sparkled in the light of the artificial day as it approached Katherine and without warning, jumped onto her lap. She placed the data-pad she was holding on the ground and stroked it, still experiencing mild disbelief after weeks in the creature’s company that the metallic looking fur actually felt like the fur of a real cat. She wondered to herself why it didn’t mimic the look of a real cat and preferred to maintain its silvered appearance. Perhaps, she mused, the ship didn’t want people to entirely forget just what the creature was.
The car purred loudly, and then spoke.
‘I am rather pleased with myself,’ it said. ‘I have decrypted a heavily protected file in that map of yours. It was so heavily encrypted that its levels of protection drew attention to it, from the perspective of one such as I. Two solid weeks of brute force calculations came to nought I’m sorry to say. It was only when I realised that the key lay in combining the co-ordinates of every star listed in the map and then in the correct order that I had the breakthrough.’
‘You just… happened to realise this?
‘No, but an element of me had pondered the possibility that the key might lie in the map somewhere. Once I had hit upon the idea of using the co-ordinates, it was just a matter of combining a hundred billion or so sets of figures in the correct order.’
‘And… how long did that take?’
‘Oh, only a few hours. All very tedious.’
‘I see…’
Katherine looked into the cat’s dark eyes and had the distinct impression that some sort of caged hurricane of computing power lay behind them.
‘So - oh modest ship of the Arkari Navy – what did the file contain once you’d managed to open it?’ said Rekkid from his lofty perch. ‘I certainly hope it was worth the effort.’
‘Not a lot, as it turns out,’ the cat replied. ‘Merely a set of co-ordinates. However the file itself was linked within the map to this particular system. If I compared the co-ordinates to the original dimensions of the Sphere before its destruction the two intersect if one assumes that the starting point for the co-ordinates is the centre of the Bivian system’s sun.’
‘You think it’s a location on the surface of the sphere?’ said Katherine.
‘Yes indeed.’
�
��Begging your pardon but that doesn’t really narrow it down,’ Rekkid interjected. ‘How do we know what axis or points of reference the Progenitors were using?’
‘The co-ordinates were also accompanied by a second set of references in the form of distances and angles from certain surface features. I compared the map of Bivian in the files to the features that we can see now. Despite the level of destruction and decay over the years I managed to correlate the two. I believe that these co-ordinates point to a concealed bunker of some kind, buried with the base material of the Sphere.’
‘Any idea what it might contain?’ said Katherine.
‘No I’m afraid not,’ the cat replied. ‘However, what is interesting is that the file I decrypted was linked to three systems in the map. Bivian, the Progenitor home system and the mystery system that has all those protected files linked to it. That, and the high level of encryption drew my attention to it’
‘Any luck decrypting those other files?’ said Rekkid.
‘Sadly, not yet,’ the cat replied.
‘We need to have a look at this bunker,’ said Katherine. ‘I think that the people who built this place have left us a trail of clues to follow. You just said it yourself; the file drew your attention. I think that was the intention. Someone wanted us decrypt it and make use of its contents.’
‘Agreed,’ the cat replied. ‘I will prepare a shuttle and a dig team for you right away.’
The silver, bird-like form of the shuttle skipped low over the inner surface of Bivian. Katherine peered out at the dimly lit, broken landscape rushing by below, entombed in its blanket of ice. Broken structures jutted out from the gloom like the shattered teeth of frozen corpses. Eventually the small craft began to bank to the left and then set down in the crumbling remains of two towers. The buildings still rose for twenty stories or more, rising out of the mound of ice-clad rubble that had formed the upper floors.
‘Looks like we’re here,’ said Katherine to Rekkid, who, like her, was clad in a padded vacuum suit. In the rows of seats behind them, a dozen Arkari archaeologists and technicians from the ship had begun to gather their equipment from overhead compartments.
Outside the ship they walked amongst the eerily silent ruins, the only sounds their own breathing and each others’ voices on the suit comms. Katherine felt the glittering snow under her feet – the frozen remains of Bivian’s atmosphere – crunch under her feet, but in the vacuum it of course made no corresponding sound. Following the co-ordinates provided by the Shining Glory they trudged towards the wrecked towers ahead. Hovering pallets trailed them, loaded with their equipment. The suits they wore were of Arkari manufacturer, lighter and more flexible than the human equivalents, and able to reshape themselves to suit different physiologies. Katherine still found hers restricting and claustrophobic, though at least it smelt better than most of the human made suits that she had borrowed over the years.
Eventually they stopped at the foot of the mounds of debris. The jumbled pile of fallen material dwarfed the tiny, suited figures and sparkled in the wan light from the white dwarf star above. The thousands of tonnes of fallen buildings were sitting right on top of the location that they had been given.
‘Huh,’ said Rekkid nonchalantly. ‘It looks like we’re going to need bigger shovels.’ He turned to the most senior of the archaeologists from the ship. ‘Arrakid, what do you think? How the hell are we supposed to move all of this lot?’
‘Not by hand, that’s certain,’ Arrakid replied. ‘We have some AG field generators with us, but they aren’t designed for lifting loads of that size.’ Though he could only speak in his native tongue, as a courtesy to Katherine his words were translated on the fly via his suit systems. ‘I think our best solution would be to consult the pilot of the shuttle that brought us here. I believe that the ship is equipped with tractor beams that may suffice. Failing that, we’d have to contact the Glory and wait for further assistance.’
‘Okay, it’s worth a try,’ Katherine replied. ‘Let’s contact the shuttle.’
The team had withdrawn to a safe distance. Under their instruction, the shuttle’s pilot instructed his craft in to a hover a few metres above the rubble pile. Then carefully, he had the craft adjust its tractor beam and focused it on the area indicated by the co-ordinates.
As Katherine watched, a ten metre square area of the debris pile seemed to explode in slow motion. The gigantic chunks of metal and smashed pieces of the mystery material from which the buildings had been ‘grown’ began to lift and separate until they hung, impossibly, above the ground. With infinite care, the shuttle moved up and away, dragging the tonnes of material with it before carefully depositing it some distance away, then it returned and repeated the process until a suitable amount of material had been cleared and a door in the nearest building had been revealed.
Rekkid checked the co-ordinates in his suit’s display.
‘That’s it. According to these numbers the bunker lies in the basement of that structure. Arrakid, we’ll need those AG generators online. I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t trust the structural integrity of that building.
They crept gingerly inside, torches washing over the long abandoned interior of the collapsed tower. The place with thick with dust and the ceiling sagged ominously. In places, ice and snow had filtered through cracks in the structure and accumulated in formations that ran down walls and formed pillars from ceiling to floor. Arrakid’s team took one look at the ceiling and began to deploy one of the portable AG generators beneath it.
The section of the building that they had entered appeared to have once formed a lobby or reception area of some kind. Beyond it, through a pair of broken double doors was a much larger open space that remained largely hidden in the darkness.
Rekkid led the way. Squeezing carefully between the buckled doors in their fragile suits, the team made their way deeper into the building. As they panned their suit torches around the larger space it became clear that this part of the building was in a far worse state. A large chunk from one of the upper stories had crashed down into the centre of this section and plunged through a number of floors before coming to rest in the second sub-basement. The large fragment itself had survived the fall and lay at angle, forming a steep ramp down to the bottom floor.
The team peered over the lip of the hole, taking care not to stray too near to the fragile edge. Sections of broken floor hung precariously in the air around the edges.
‘It’s definitely somewhere down there,’ said Rekkid, shining his torch down into the pit. ‘In fact, look,’ he pointed. ‘There’s a couple of doors down there. I’d say that they looked far sturdier than the others in this building. That must be it.’
‘That’s great Rekkid, trouble is; how are we going to get down there?’ Katherine enquired.
‘Oh, that’s easy,’ Rekkid replied. ‘These suits that my people provided have in built AG devices. We can just jump down.’ With that he strode to the edge of the hole and jumped off, disappearing down into the darkness.
Katherine watched him land heavily at the bottom and heard him swear over the suit comms. She took a few steps back from the edge, took a deep breath, then took a running jump and followed him.
With the whole team and their equipment down in the pit, they were able to examine the doors that they had spotted from ground level. Meanwhile, Arrakid’s team set about making the area safer with AG units and field generators to brace the ceiling and walls. Arrakid himself was peering at the area around the doors with great interest.
‘See anything?’ Rekkid asked.
‘Hmm, I think you are correct Rekkid,’ Arrakid replied. ‘These doors do seem to be far more resilient than the others in this building. Their mere appearance tells us that much. It also seems that they were hidden by a false wall that has since been destroyed by the internal collapse. See?’ He indicated to a broken line that projected up from the floor and met with the smashed remains of enclosing walls. ‘Judging by the small gap between t
his and the floor, I’d say that this was designed to slide into place and conceal the entrance.’
‘So the Shapers could have missed this when they came to Bivian to erase all presence of the Progenitors?’ said Rekkid.
‘Possibly, yes.’
‘We still have one problem,’ Katherine commented. ‘How the hell do we get inside those things?’ She gestured towards the heavy doors in front of them.
‘My team has cutting gear,’ Arrakid replied. ‘But it could take some time.’
Arrakid’s assessment was correct. The doors proved to be extremely tough to cut through, composed as they were from a number of layers of dense armour plating and shock absorbent materials sandwiched together. It took over an hour for the team’s plasma cutting torches to create a hole big enough for them to squeeze through. Passing one by one through their newly created entrance they found themselves in a series of smaller chambers sealed for over four billion years.
They were in pristine condition. Untouched by time the smooth, seamless walls of the chamber shone in the reflected light from the party’s torches. A short corridor led forward to a circular chamber from which a number of other chambers, - labs or offices it was hard to tell – led off. They appeared exactly as they had at the moment when the Progenitors had abandoned them. Sheaves of notes and printed documents lay in drifts across organic looking desks along with unknown electronic devices, even the dust remains of abandoned meals and withered pot plants. In the right hand chamber immediately inside the entrance, Katherine found a holographic image of three figures: two graceful adults and a child that smiled upwards at her from a sunlit scene. They were humanoid, with intelligent, familiar faces and light brown skins.