Rivera began to pull the panel apart and gain access to the strange ancient wiring on the side of it. It looked like white and green crystals with blue dots of light flowing through it.
“Careful, Chief,” Williams said.
“If we’re going to be staying here, we need to learn how their tech operates.” Rivera’s hands moved some of the crystalline electrics aside and took additional scans with her EAD. “I’m going to assume this is a data port.”
“It would appear to be so, Chief,” EVE said. “I may be able to interface with it so long as your EAD remains in proximity.”
“Commander?”
Williams shrugged and looked at the holographic screens that displayed words written in the Lyonria language. “Why the hell not? I can’t make head or tails of how to use this stuff.”
“Very well,” EVE said with static once again, making it harder for them to understand her. “Attempting . . . Interface—
Williams tapped his EAD as a connection lost error message appeared. “EVE?”
“The storm is interfering with the probe’s ability to relay data between the Carl Sagan and us,” said Rivera while she reached for her holo pad. “I’ll try and reposition it someplace better.”
Tolukei sat down on the cold, dusty, white floor and placed his hands over his face. Williams frowned the longer he looked at him in distress. “Yo, T’ if you need to head back up—”
One of Tolukei’s eyes looked up and at Williams. “What did you call me?”
“T’?”
“T’ is not my name, it is Tolukei. And do not be concerned about me.”
“You’re part of the crew.”
“Am I? Or am I your means to psionic support and teleportation which your species lacks?”
“Dude . . .”
“My name is not dude, it is—”
“Commander, I believe I have gained access to this structure's computer network,” EVE’s voice returned with slightly less static. “Furthermore, I am in the process of learning how Lyonria programming works.”
“Anything useful so far?”
“The device in the center of the room appears to be a wormhole generator.”
Williams and Rivera looked at the oval device laying front and center. “Really now?”
“That is the best I could figure out as the Radiance database has limited information pertaining to Lyonria language,” EVE said. “Fascinating, Commander, this device appears to have been used approximately ten years seven months ago.”
“And that’s important, because?”
“The Lyonria race was thought to have gone extinct nearly two hundred thousand years ago.”
“And then someone ten years ago used it while we were still in cryo.” Williams stepped closer to the wormhole. “EVE, can you open it?”
Rivera winced. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, why would you want to do that?”
“It’s a wormhole, and to my understanding, they can theoretically connect two points together thus forming a gateway,” Williams said. “The Lyonria probably built this as a means of travel between different regions in space. We might be looking at the doorway to their home world.”
“Or a gateway to hell.”
“What like Paryo? If that’s the case, open it up I’d like to avenge my parents’ deaths.” Williams saw Rivera stare toward him turn to a negative one as if she was highly offended at what he said. “What? The Hashmedai made me an orphan.”
“Their species isn’t pure evil.”
“Tell that to the two billion dead humans and Radiance rangers being killed daily on the frontlines of war with them.”
“Vengeance only forges a path of destruction and endless conflicts,” Rivera said. “The Hashmedai are a beautiful race of people who were led astray by an Empress that wanted vengeance.”
Rivera’s words triggered him. He wanted to shoot back with stories of the horrific things he saw during the invasion of Earth, put her in her place, and remind her that her hippy and peace and loving ways have no place out in space. In the end Williams chose to swallow his pride and keep quiet, he and Rivera were on the same side and members of the same crew.
Unless of course she was an HLF sympathizer, then that would change things, a lot.
“This the part where you tell me not to walk the same path of the Hashmedai Empress?” he said.
She lowered her holo pad. “This is the part where I tell you we need a leader that isn’t going to stray from the mission, especially if we don’t get the Captain back—”
“I did it, Commander,” EVE’s voice interrupted.
The wormhole in the center of the room began to power on and established a connection with another wormhole someplace else in the cosmos. Williams slowly looked away from Rivera and to the wormhole with a frightened look on his face and his eyes wide open. “You did . . . what?”
“You said ‘open it up’ so I did,” EVE said. “The wormhole is connecting to its most recent destination now.”
Williams stepped away from the wormhole quickly, worried at what might come through. “Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean that literally, EVE!”
The center of the wormhole glistened, flashed, and transformed into what appeared to be the inside of a ship. Distressed and tattered people wearing robes were seen in the distance while armored alien soldiers marched out from the doors behind. Other armored aliens that had been resting on the floor for some spaced-out reason rose up to their feet and pointed arm-mounted weapons at Williams and Rivera.
It was the sight of weapons that got Williams to dive for cover behind the nearby terminal and reach for his ePistol. “EVE, if you can close it, now would be a good time!”
“Attempting to—”
Static. Their connection to the Carl Sagan was lost again due to the storm. “EVE? EVE?”
Rivera hunkered down in her spot next to the opened wall control panel as her hands frantically interacted with her holo pad. “It’s the storm, Commander. Again, gimme time to find a better spot for the probe.”
Williams peeked over his cover and saw the robed people flee through the wormhole, many of them had been chained up and struggled to move quickly. Some tripped over and nearly got trampled, other’s handed children off to those that had been ahead of their escape. None of them looked hostile to him, just insanely scared and running for their lives as the hostile armored aliens behind began to open fire with their laser weapons. Williams saw four robed people fall over dead with blackened, burning wounds to their backs and arms.
“Dom?” A familiar voice called out from inside of the wormhole.
Williams peeked up above his cover and saw Foster amongst the fleeing robed people. It looked as though she was trying to get them all to flee.
“Becca?” He called out to her.
Rivera saw the good news before them. “Captain!”
“What are you doing there?” Williams said.
Foster ducked from a blast of laser fire. “No time to explain!”
Robed people are good, armored ones are not, Williams thought as he aimed his pistol forward to lay down covering fire for the fleeing people. His magnetically accelerated bullets created enough noise for the armored aliens to focus their attacks on him and less on everyone else.
Most of the fleeing robed people had left the ship through the wormhole. All that remained was Foster, and one other who was pinned down behind a crate, plus the hostile aliens up front making it impossible for her to exit without getting shot up like several dead robed people on the floor. Williams ducked behind his cover, escaping from a barrage of laser fire that flew over his head. Looking back, he saw Tolukei on the floor unmoving, passed out he hoped.
“Tolukei!” he cried out to him. “Tolukei, get up, we need your assistance!”
“This just gets better and better doesn’t it, Commander?” Rivera shouted to him.
Williams’ pistol alone wasn’t going to get Foster out to safety. Rivera not firing hers wasn’t helping the problem.
“This is Commander Williams to any UNE navy personnel,” he began to transmit. “We are under attack and require evac!”
“No use, Commander, unless someone is close by, this storm is gonna muck up our com lines,” Rivera said.
Several laser-wielding grunts managed to limp through the wormhole and slowly began to close the gap between them and Williams and Rivera. Williams held on to his weapon, cleared his mind of all unnecessary thoughts, then sprung up to continue to play his role in the battle. The grunts had no shields, which was good. But they also kept on standing despite Williams putting six holes through their bodies. It only added to the anxiety he was trying to keep suppressed since he lost track of where Foster was, nor had he heard her voice recently.
“Commander!” Rivera shouted. “Give me your piece.”
Whatever Rivera had planned he hoped it would get them out of this mess quickly. He tossed his pistol through the air, she caught it only to throw her pistol back toward him. A quick three-second look at her pistol revealed that some quick modifications had been made to it.
This better be worth it, he thought, and returned to the battle. The modified pistol roared rapidly, putting more holes in his targets at a faster rate, and eventually bringing some of them down to the floor. “Impressive work, Chief!”
“I’m recalibrating the computer of the pistol, making it fire shots in a more rapid succession.” Rivera’s handiwork turned the pistol into an SMG. Williams fired more shots rapidly, it caused their advancing adversaries to think twice about their actions. “It won’t last for long, the heat sinks aren’t big enough to sustain that type of firepower,” Rivera said.
“I was just going to say why don’t all our pistols work like that?”
“Rifles have the size needed for large heat sinks, pistols don’t!” Rivera slid Williams' original pistol across the floor to him.
He held onto both pistols and grinned as his dual wielding SMGs dropped three more armored aliens. He lowered himself behind his cover as reinforcements from their ship entered spraying laser fire all over the place.
As much as Williams enjoyed the extra heat he was packing, it left Rivera defenseless. “Two? What are you gonna use?” He asked her.
“Remember my Zen thing?”
“Chief, this isn’t the time for nonviolent pacifist stuff!”
“I prefer not to personally use violence against a force that we didn’t try to speak to.”
“They’re shooting at us, and you wanna talk?” More laser fire flew over his head.
“This could be a misunderstanding.”
He sighed, and sarcastically said. “OK, go on and talk, I’ll wait you’re also multilingual.”
“Oh, um well . . .”
“What was that, Chief? Sorry, can’t hear you over the noise of these Star Wars lasers zipping over my head. Something tells me these assholes are in the exact same position! So, now that we’ve determined that talking ain’t gonna do shit, why don’t you help me out here?”
An overlord alien armed with a spear stepped next to Tolukei examining him. It quickly ran back to the rest of its kind speaking to them in a shocked manner. Williams curiously watched them from his cover, wondering why Tolukei’s presence got them so worked up and eventually forced them to retreat back through the wormhole, shooting toward Williams and Rivera in the process.
Williams with his dual might rose up from the chaos to let loose another wave of weapons fire when suddenly the wormhole shut off. “Oh, what the hell?”
“Commander, I have shut down the gate as per your request,” EVE’s stable voice revealed.
“Chief?” Williams asked as he began to look for Foster amongst the dead bodies and robed people.
“I got the probe in a stable position,” Rivera said. “I didn’t think she was going to shut it down so fast.”
Williams double-checked the bodies on the floor and the crowd of terrorized people that escaped the ship. Foster was not among them to his anger, she never made it off the ship. The only silver lining was at least she wasn’t one of the dead bodies below him.
“I don’t see the captain,” Rivera said.
“Neither do I,” he added as they both looked at the dormant wormhole.
“Should we open it back up?”
Williams considered that thought for a moment only to look at the displaced people around them. Many of them were in need of medical attention and still shaken up from the battle. Then there were the aliens at the other side, who was to say they weren’t standing guard waiting for them to reopen it? Williams and Rivera were just two people, two people who weren’t soldiers. They weren’t set up for a large-scale battle to start with, or a rescue mission.
Getting the people around him into the hands of doctors was his top priority, Foster risked her life to get those people out of danger. If she had been killed and he abandoned these folks, then her death would have been for nothing. Then there was Tolukei who was still out cold on the floor suffering from something, while his presence made the aliens retreat.
“We need to get this situation under control before we act further,” Williams said. “Need a damn transport to get these people out of here.”
“That storm,” Rivera reminded him.
“I know, I know.”
“I could modify the shields of some of our transports to give them an extra kick.”
“That requires you to be back on the Carl Sagan doesn’t it?”
Rivera approached him while she brought up a holographic map of the planet on her holo pad. “If we have a transport from our newly established colony fly close to the ground, they might be able to survive the trip here. From there it will be a task of flying away from the storm while keeping low, then back into orbit.”
“That’s gonna take time, but I guess it’s the only option,” he said, then established a communication link. “Williams to Carl Sagan, have Dr. Kostelecky and a medical team head to the surface and await further instructions.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Rivera, when the transport arrives to pick you up, we’ll have the doctor do what she can for the wounded.”
She nodded. “Let’s hope they get here fast.”
18 CHEVALLIER
Ocean surface
SC-149, Sirius C system
May 21, 2050, 12:01 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Chevallier’s hand wrapped around the first solid object she encountered during her twelve-hour tour of the ocean via the tsunami express. Whatever the object was, it was stationary, and put an end to her drift in the currents as she tried to reorientate herself and get used to the feeling of not being tossed about by raging waters.
She activated the headlights on her damaged helmet lighting up a path within the darkness that had now enveloped her and the region, all while continuing to ignore the low oxygen and shields down alarms that had been screeching repeatedly for gods knows how long. She glimpsed at her hand she had used to catch a hold of the object keeping her in place, shining her helmet light on it. The object she held onto was metallic, something constructed by an intelligent being. She saw more of the object as she turned her head to the side, it was large and part of it was above the surface of the water attached to some sort of craft. She found large grooves on the side of the craft and used them to pull her body up along it and out of the ocean.
Nightfall had fallen, tiny clouds in the skies obscured many of the stars above including Sirius B, which looked like a full moon on Earth. Chevallier was able to get a better look at the craft now that her head was above water. It was definitely a ship, though the make of it was unknown to her as she climbed up top as it floated on the violent waters. Rust was a prominent feature on the exterior of the ship while the sides of it showed signs of fires that had once burned uncontrollably, melting 60 percent of its surface.
She discovered what looked like a doorway into the ship, perhaps an airlock when it was spaceworthy. Both of her hands slid between the slits of the sliding door and forced it to sli
de open, the sounds of rusted metal grinding against its nonfunctioning joints were irritating. The interior of the ship was dark as expected though a few floor lights were still active, an indication that its reactor still had some juice left.
She pushed on deeper into the halls, her helmet’s lights guided her and prevented her from walking into walls while her HUD relayed tactical data back. This reminded her. She loosened her helmet and deactivated its life-support systems, taking in the fresh air around her. It made her gasp at first, the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere of the planet were a lot lower than she had been used to, and the sweltering heat that slipped into her suit didn’t help. But when you have less than twenty minutes of air left, you don’t complain. The downtime gave her the chance to scroll through the various error messages on her HUD. Low oxygen and shields she knew of, she flicked those messages away and began to eye the others she was oblivious to.
“Aw shit . . .” she moaned upon learning of the damage done to her suit.
The emergency broadcast beacon she had activated ceased to function shortly after the tsunami had hit. She was no longer transmitting a distress call to the Carl Sagan, so her only hopes of rescue now lay in the Carl Sagan picking up the first few minutes of her beacon before it was cut off.
The old rickety floors made a pathway through the corridor into the bridge, cockpit, command center, whatever the hell it was. She saw computer screens everywhere, on the walls, hanging down from the ceiling via a rectangular pole, and six up front neatly lined up with each other. Most were inoperable, the shattered screens were a dead giveaway. Those that still operated, flicked on as she stepped closer, some form of motion sensor detecting her presence as she sat down on a chair, its material showing the signs of aging over the years that had passed.
Familiar letters appeared across the screen of the newly activated computer to her side, she leaned her face closer to read the green, white, and black colors the screen projected. The text was written in the Linl language, a language she knew all too well from her earlier days in the navy, and the on again, off again relationship she’d had with the former shipboard psionic of the ESV Wilfrid Laurier.
The Siege of Sirius: A Splintered Galaxy Space Fantasy Novel Page 16