by Tobias Roote
Table of Contents
Title
Description
Other books
Copyright
Disclaimer
1 - Transition
3 - Transformation
5 - Transhuman
6 - Trap Sprung
7 - Discovery
8 - Hidden
9 - Bolt Hole
Sky City (Part 1)
The Pattern Universe
BY
T O B I A S R O O T E
AMAZON DESCRIPTION
The race to defend Earth against the oncoming storm of Nubl hordes has begun.
Humanity is on a knife-edge, despite surviving the first invading fleet of Shadow ships, a repeat attack would seriously damage Earth - it might not be able to survive.
While Space Island frantically shores up Earth’s defences, increasing its chance of survival, scientists and politicians recognise the need to protect humanity from eradication. Plans are put into effect and decisions made to ensure civilisation and newly discovered technology is protected in the hope that one day the Nubl will be defeated, and planet Earth recovered.
One man, extremely powerful and very determined, believes he has the answer to ensure his personal survival. He sets about to beg, borrow and steal everything he needs to achieve his ambition. When he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, he discovers the ultimate irony - that to survive, he must be the first to die.
Part 1 of Sky City is the first in a three part standalone novel that weaves an intriguing storyline between Pattern Ship, POD and Nubl Wars.
TOBIAS ROOTE NOVELS
Books in the Pattern Universe series
1) The Pattern Ship
2) POD
3) The NUBL Wars (due May 2015)
4) Sky City - Part 1
and coming Soon (in grey)
5) Sky City - Part 2 (April 2015)
6) Sky City - Part 3 (May 2015)
more titles to follow
Other Pattern Universe Series
RIGA/AI Space Adventures
1) EPSILON GAMMA (due 2015)
2) ARTIS PRIME (published)
3) ZETA NINE (due 2015)
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
THE PATTERN UNIVERSE and SKY CITY are subject to copyright 2013/2014 by Tobias Roote. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For further information, please contact [email protected]
PUBLISHED BY
ROOTE PUBLISHING LTD
DISCLAIMER:
This book has been written and edited in the United Kingdom. As a result, some of the words and spellings may not conform to US dictionaries.
These books are works of fiction, they should be read for entertainment purposes only. In addition, some of the technology and much of the science is unlikely to relate to anything in the real world. This is intentional.
SKY CITY - PART 1
Xerac sat in front of the terminal typing in data from a notepad. When he finished, he looked up at the empty holographic display as if expecting to see something, then remembered that he needed to activate the holodeck for it to become operational. It would only be necessary the first time, afterwards it would activate automatically from within.
He input the encryption code and passkey, and leaned back in his chair. It would take a few minutes for all of the optical connections to synchronise. He sat patiently, waiting for the three dimensional map to generate the millions of quantum equations that had been compiled over a year ago, ready for this event.
The software developers had all been sent onto other projects within his organisation, although he had considered having them terminated, they were still too useful. Now, he was alone as it should be. Nobody needed to know what it was he had been getting them to develop.
They thought they had been creating a three dimensional algorithm to map the stars. Well, it might well apply in that sphere of science, but this wasn’t going to be just any three dimensional map. This was going to be the one and only unique experiment that a life-time’s research had taken him to achieve.
The last pieces of the puzzle had fallen into his lap just a few weeks ago, and had given him answers to the questions eluding him for fifteen years. Following the attack of the Nubl Shadow ships, the recovery of thousands of AI remains allowed Space Island to obtain a clear picture of the enemy, its physical make-up and complete details of its technology. Although Earth had since advanced Jenari technology a long way beyond the initial patterns provided, the Nubl remnants provided additional knowledge which was being put to good use.
Aware of the technological advances being discovered in Nubl artefacts, Xerac had stolen select items from the Space Island complex. It had been an expensive acquisition, fraught with danger to his team. Especially since the SC security had been increased after the Nubl attack had destroyed so much of the Earth’s infrastructure. Frank Garner had taken control of all of the global peace keeping and law enforcement agencies so that transportation of supplies and personnel were controlled by the SC exclusively.
The SC President had taken action on the pretext of ensuring nobody starved and everyone had fair distribution of materials for rebuilding. However, Xerac could clearly see that power was what it was all about. He was jealous of Garner’s influence, it was something that he felt belonged to him, and he intended to take that power from him, just as soon as he was able.
Xerac Industries was already the most powerful contributor to the growing economic power of Space Island. Whilst he had access to the Island, they kept their main technological advances close to their chests, only drip feeding the world and his organisation with small gifts of useful designs, and all available in the public domain. Still, it took a company like Xerac Industries to put those designs into workable products and he had cornered the market in churning out finished products for military and civilian use.
He returned his attention to the work in his highly secure basement complex. The recovery of an alien AI body had allowed his team to overcome the limitations in managing complex data flow. Despite the massive supercomputer power he had running, it couldn’t compress and expand data sufficiently fast enough to provide the reaction times they needed. They had reverse engineered the alien brain and cortex assembly right down to the component elements and discovered that they could recombine them in the supercomputer matrix to provide the solution very easily. It had taken only a few weeks to build and test the new fibre array which exceeded their expectations.
From there the work progressed swiftly to its culminating build sequence, and this morning Xerac had been in extensive surgery while the last stage of his project had completed. This was now the final sequence that would activate his project. A project that was so far advanced of anything else on Earth, that in a few years his progress would become unstoppable and his power increase exponentially.
He looked at the chronometer on the wall. Ten minutes so far. The hologram was beginning to actively swirl into a rainbow of colours as elements of the equations created physical representations in the virtual world in front of him. It was like a forming image of a super nova in microcosm, at its heart a button of intense white representing its core.
It continued to grow in size. Now, roughly the size of a human
head, the image continued to pulse as colours melded, exploded then re-combined to form shadows and contours. Large dark holes appeared, while elsewhere ridges erupted and the image compressed itself until its shape, though still irregular, began to resemble something more recognisable. Stray colours zipped into place as their designated position was found, the patterns and shapes seeming to fight for the same position in the three-dimensional space of the hologram projection.
As Xerac watched, mesmerised by the very first rendering of his life-long project, he felt excited to think he was the first, the very first human to have achieved what he was building here. The shape continuing to squeeze, expand and alter, although minutely now, also began to fill in the dark shadowed areas. The colours once shimmering every shade and hue of the universe now seemed to disappear, to be replaced with lighter tones of more, or less equal shades. Then, as if looking at a puzzle, the image formed and became instantly recognisable.
Xerac smiled. Perfect. He looked at the chronometer again, Fifteen minutes exactly, just as predicted.
“Wake up,” he said confidently to the image suspended by the hologram in virtual reality.
His voice caused the image to respond as if a switch had been flipped. Two eyes opened and below them a mouth slipped into a ghost of a smile. The deep blue eyes looked directly at him, unblinking and penetrating. Xerac shivered in excitement as he peered closely at the face of the person looking back at him.
The face was patient allowing him time to examine it. Receding hairline, swept back salt and pepper hair, furrowed ridges over the eyes, bushy grey and black eyebrows in need of a trim. Aquiline nose, and firm, if not a little cruel looking, mouth followed down by a strong square jaw, but narrowing chin. To view the head from the side was to see a view of someone for the first time from that angle. A peculiar feeling took hold of Xerac and he shuddered involuntarily as he continued his inspection of the animated three-dimensional head.
Eventually, as Xerac tired of this he sat back in his chair and looked into those hard blue eyes - and asked the all important question.
“Who are you?”
The thin lips smiled, dropping slightly on one side; the skin around the eyes crinkled realistically and a sparkle reflected outward from the irises. Furrows in the animation’s forehead appeared and the mouth opened showing a realistic set of teeth, one slightly skewed from an over exuberant rugby tackle, never repaired. Amazing, Xerac thought to himself as he continued to examine the head in front of him.
“Who are you?” he asked again.
The voice came back, perfectly synced to the lips of the virtual face which openly grinned as it spoke.
“Why, I’m you, Xerac! I’m your doppelgänger.”
“You sure about that? You look like a 3D version of me, but I have to say you look pretty realistic,” Xerac said to his virtual image on the hologram deck. He peered around looking from the side and was amused when the head turned around to face him.
“Keep still, I’m trying to check your pixel definition from all angles. I don’t want there to be any degradation,” Xerac said.
“No, you’re not, I know you – you're just vain and looking to see yourself as others see you,” his doppelgänger retorted.
“Hahaha! You’re absolutely right. Well, how do you feel in there?” Xerac asked himself.
“Now you come to mention it, bright and alert. I would hazard that the fourteen CRAY computer array in the basement has a lot to do with that though,” his talking image replied knowledgeably.
Xerac recognised the digital version of him was performing as expected. The upgrade from AI-status was on-target. His reality was Xerac’s reality. He felt at ease, able to talk normally as if the image was a person. Well, in truth, it now was.
“Yes, this is going to be a problem. You need to come up with a way of getting the collective power of those fourteen CRAYS inside your head.” Xerac told his counterpart.
“This is not so easy,” the machine version responded. “I have analysed the remnants of the Nubl that you secured from the Space Island complex. It is interesting because they use a multi-wafer array for their memory circuits.”
“Do you have any idea what metal alloy that is? We have been trying to trace it for several months now, and there is nothing like it on Earth,” Xerac asked. He knew his computer version had access to every single report and analysis available instantly at its virtual fingertips.
“I’m researching that outside of the complex as we speak. There are some early references in a newscast, when the alien ship first became known, that the hobo guy, Zeke Callaghan, had something like it in his head. There is extensive scientific research into the metal compounds and one reference to an alloy the alien called ‘Pheson Alacite’ that proved to be a match. I think with this alloy we could produce our own memory wafers that might meet the necessary criteria.”
Xerac looked himself in the eye and responded abruptly. “Find it, then. You have the resources. Leave no stone unturned.”
The image looked back at him, the impression given was that of an icy stare, but Xerac knew this one person above all others - it was himself. He knew he had pushed the right buttons. He smiled knowingly as he walked out of the room. The bodiless image of himself watched him go.
The hologram version of Xerac was already thinking to itself, and if Xerac could read its mind, which if he thought about it he probably could, he would have been both terrified, and proud.
Invisibility was a growing issue with the expansion of upgraded personal shields, now ubiquitous to the majority of the population. Despite cloaking being restricted for military use, the increasing use of cloaked shields that hid buildings and equipment in plain sight meant these days you could never trust your eyes with what you could see. A copse of trees could easily become a block of buildings, a small mound could hide an AG vehicle. The technology had almost out-invented its usefulness in that it was becoming a real problem for people. Accidents would happen, AG sleds flew into invisible towers, people walked into, or tripped over cloaked vehicles. There was talk in some government circles of licensing and providing warning sensors in city centres to protect the unwary. But, out here in the Swiss mountains, the valleys, peaks and cliffs, whole cities could be hidden and nobody would even know.
The cloaked AG craft slipped silently and unnoticed through the mountain’s lower valleys then climbed steadily towards a high peak area that appeared uninhabited. After a few minutes of searching for something around the summit area, it hovered next to a cliff, seeming to examine the rock face.
After a minute or two, the air around it shimmered as the AG sled matched harmonics, with something hidden within the mountainside. Even if it hadn’t been cloaked, there was no-one to see the craft vanish, it was such an isolated region, there had been no activity here for quite some time.
Once inside the protective barrier, still cloaked, the AG vehicle negotiated discreetly to one of the hidden entrances whilst avoiding registering on any of the alarms that had been placed everywhere. The sled’s neutralising emissions gave off readings that would fool the automated sensors into allowing them access without registering their presence. They probably needn’t have worried. There was only a skeleton crew of security at the abandoned Fortress, reportedly the mostly lazy and unprofessional workers, transferred here to keep them out of the way. It was unlikely anyone was even manning the security control room.
Using the same alarm bypass protocols, the AG sled quietly pushed through the cloaked hangar entrance. Inside it was dark and forbidding, most of the lighting was off with emergency beacons spaced throughout. The AG’s occupants couldn’t use lights as it would alert the Fortress’ dormant cameras, so they used night vision goggles to land the sled near one of the inner doors. Exiting, but leaving the sled cloaked against accidental discovery, the lead intruder clasped his hand over his arm to cover the sudden illuminated display of his armband.
Despite this, the glow still managed to light up his deeply tann
ed face as it indicated they had stopped at the correct door. It’s display provided the disarm code that would allow them to press the open button without setting off alarms.
The control box on the wall glowed red around its recessed edge until the black-clad intruder pressed a button on his armband display, wirelessly sending the key to the alarm’s receiver. A few seconds later the code turned from red to green and the well-oiled doors opened onto a long corridor, equally dark and unlit.
The group headed for the ramp, then jogged down six levels, deep into the mountainside. None of them had ever been here before, but they had detailed maps of the place purchased through a series of dead drops from someone in the security office of Space City.
This was once the Fortress stronghold of the enemy that held the balance of power against the now mighty Space Council. Back then though the SC were struggling to survive against the technical superiority of General Ferris’ forces. Now, the SC had no competition and ran the world the way they saw fit. The Fortress lay empty, its forces decamped to SC under the command of General Pennington after Ferris had been killed in his office in the top section, That part was sealed off and nobody was ever authorised to travel up there.
The infiltration team had no knowledge, or interest in any of this, they were simply a mercenary group contracted to enter the premises, extract science materials and leave the way they came, without alerting anyone. The client had assured them that the way in and out would be trouble-free provided they remained quiet, killed no-one, and didn’t come to the attention of the Fortress security system.
Panting lightly from the exertion of running, the leader stopped the group at the bottom of the ramp. He shone a torch onto the signage at the beginning of the corridor they had reached. It indicated they were at the right level. Walking cautiously now, they progressed half way down to a set of double doors marked SCIENCE LAB II.