by David Edward
“What our real options are.”
Everyone, even Logan, sat in expectant silence.
Odessa had not shared her larger thinking with anyone. She was known to be wise in this area.
“First, let me explain why I think it is best to compartmentalize and to focus on one part of the possibilities at a time.”
She was speaking softly, logically. “Plans can change. Strategies need to be adopted for new information or when things do not go as thought.
“It all depends upon what level you are working at.
“Our overall need—all of us—is to save our clanmates and to find a way to have a life. That can be achieved in a lot of different ways. Depends on a lot of different things.
“I can see us returning to Machi, given I believe they tried to warn us. We have friends there even if we are all that is left of our clan.
“I can also see us being outcasts, forced to stay here on Alethia.”
She gave a slight pause indicating this might be a real negative possibility.
“But until we know what we are dealing with—what is on the other side of that mountain range, where they took our clanmates and what they are doing to them, what kind of resources we can marshal from the ancient Machi crafts—it is impossible to predict what we should do other than what we already laid out.
“We need to visit the twelve pre-ether ships and inventory them now.
“We need to retrieve the E2s we lost and X4 now.
“We need to recon the off-limits area and see what we are dealing with now.
“And we have to do all of this without alerting whoever or whatever it is that we are still alive.”
Logan then laid out the plan.
He and X7 would visit the twelve abandoned ships and inventory them. They would not attempt to take anything from them, just create a list of what was available.
The E2s would return to the Thorik and, as inconspicuous as possible, inventory the state of the downed etherreals and any other assets that looked salvageable. From the way the other hundreds of ships had been ignored, everyone felt reasonably certain that whatever it was that was going on, the ships themselves were not viewed as valuable to their foe.
Odessa and E7 would do the hard work. They would scout the other side of the mountain into the off-limits area and bring back a report on what they could see, what they could discover safely.
Today the goal was to gather information. Tomorrow the goal would be to act on it.
Without the aid of a hub, Odessa had to try and remember the terrain that separated the Thorik’s landing sight and the best way to approach the off-limits area. Also calculating, or trying to, the best approach to remain unspotted.
It was nearly impossible to do this, given their limited information about the area.
As they prepared after the other teams had left, Odessa asked E7, “When you scouted the ship you found with the active localhub, did you record or notice anything that might help us to figure out the best way to approach and scout the other side of that mountain?”
E7 crossloaded for just a micro measure. “No, ma’am. Unfortunately, my primary assignment was scouting the area as it related to the Thorik, then the discovered craft. Knowing the mountain represented a boundary to the mission, I did not include anything on the other side of it in my analysis.”
“Okay,“ Odessa said, “as we travel today, start localstoring everything from our trip. The landscape, things we see. Start to build up a library so we can begin the process of putting together our own datagrams. Send that command to X7 and the E2s as well. I should have thought of it sooner.”
E7 sent the command peer-to-peer.
Both Odessa and E7 were equipped with hand-to-hand bracings. These were additional metal materials that followed the contours of the hand down the forearm, extending past the elbow slightly and ending in a point.
An experienced user could deliver devastating blows with them. They naturally and organically followed the body contours and esthetics otherwise.
Neither carried a shooter. Odessa believed, probably correctly, that if it came to them needing to shoot their way out of anything, that the mission would have already been lost. If they were discovered, calling more attention to themselves would not help anything. Or anyone.
As they walked out of the villa, the grandeur of what the ancient city had once been was obvious. With the luminary rising, the large stones were highlighted. There were many mysteries here that, under normal circumstances, would have deserved exploring and much attention.
Once clear from the higher buildings and roofing structures, they activated their quick-flight belts and took to the sky. Instead of accelerating quickly, they gently glided off the ground and took flight at a leisurely pace.
They flew close to the ground. This would add time to their travels. But time was not the driver, caution was. Odessa knew they could have all the plans they wanted as long as their survival remained undiscovered. If found out, everything would change.
Eventually, they reached terrain that started to look familiar. They could see faint smoke in the distance, the remnants of yesterday's battle near the Thorik. Odessa knew that the E2s would be there now, inventorying the site.
She stayed far in the direction of the rising luminary, a good many measures away from the location.
They approached the forested area and the gradual rise to the mountain range that was the border to the coordinates they had been originally given. There were ridges and crests on the mountain range and a clear mountain summit. The summit had very high elevations—so high, the tree line of the forest stopped near the top, the highest points of the summit too high for the foliage to grow.
They would not need to traverse those peaks. There were many ravines cut from when the ice melted and turned into water. It accumulated at higher elevations then ran down the rocks after thawing, cutting into the mountains over thousands of years.
They found a ravine—a long, winding trail—that went all the way from the base of the range to a ridge near the summit. The temperature was well below freezing, but the luminary was hot. Where its light landed on any standing water in the ravine, the water turned to steam in places. The running water did not. It was too cold and moved too quickly.
Over the course of the colder cycle, the river would eventually freeze. It was still flowing now because it was so early in the season.
An advantage to the magnetic belts was that they were silent. The only sound was the flapping noise of the air friction as they darted left and right to navigate the rocky waterway in their slow winding ascension.
Finally, they reached the end of the ravine. It was close to the top ridge of one side of the mountain range. There were still trees and good cover. They slowed and landed on some relatively flat ground. It would still be a few micro cycles of a walk to be able to see over the ridge, but this felt like the safest approach.
It was cool, and there was snow on the ground about as high as Odessa’s ankles. As they walked, they could eventually see over the ridge. The first thing they saw was another range of mountains off in the distance. The area between the two ranges was very wide and very deep. It was not a valley, though; there were small hills, rivers, and lakes dotting the area but not a lot of flat ground.
Odessa was not sure what she expected to see, but this was not it. She did not see anything other than Alethia’s natural landscape. She did not dare to turn a scanner on. Any usage of fabric-based technology could be an alert to whoever was down there. All they had was visual scanning and the existing etherreals’ peer-to-peer connections at their disposals.
“E7, I don’t see anything,” Odessa said, some just to hear herself talk.
E7 looked over to her, then back out over the environment. “We could continue on. Try and remain low and out of sight should there be anything down there.”
Odessa had already considered it. “The risk is too high. If we are found out, we lose all chances for the rescue and
most probably for survival.” She looked back the way they had come. The mountain range was high and provided a view far in the direction of the abandoned city they had found. But you could not see it from here; it was several times farther than the horizon, even from this elevation.
“E7, will the peer-to-peer connections make it from here back to the city?”
“No, ma’am. The maximum distance is only about a third of the way between here and there.”
“Can you reach the E2 units working at the Thorik now?”
“Yes, ma’am. Would you like a status update to their findings?”
Odessa smiled a shallow smile. “No, thank you. But here is what I do want you to tell them…”
The luminary was setting, and the weather was changing. Storm clouds were blowing over the mountains, and a front was moving through.
The change for the city would be welcome, the change in the mountains a challenge.
Odessa landed outside the villa in the abandoned city and walked into the main living area. Logan and X7 were already back, as well as one of the three E2 units.
Since she had returned without E7, she had no way of updating Logan. While the etherreals had their peer-to-peer communications, both Logan and Odessa’s battle armor only had localhub and ether access through the fabric, making it useless as long as they were in hiding.
“X7, any update from E7?” Odessa asked. Her return flight had taken half a micro circle so there could be news waiting.
“No, ma’am. I am in contact with her via the E2s, but she has nothing new to report. She has seen no signs of any activity.”
Odessa’s plan had been to leave E7 on watch over the area. Since they needed to stay in contact, two of the E2 units had found locations where they could, between the two of them, extend communications from the mountain range to here in the city.
In one corner of the large social room, there were several piles of a round starchy vegetable they had found growing in abundance in several of the abandoned farm fields. There were enough for dozens of days in the piles and an almost unlimited supply growing now wildly in the fields.
The vegetable provided enough liquid and solid nutrients for an extended period of time before any nutritional deficiency would become a problem. They were portable and could be eaten raw and tasted surprisingly good.
Logan had been eating one when Odessa entered, and she walked over and selected one from the pile herself and started to cut it into bite-size pieces using her hand-to-hand bracings.
As she worked, she asked, “So we know my news. What did you find with the inventories?”
Logan nodded to X7 so he could continue eating.
“Ma’am. We have good news all the way around, starting with the ship inventory. Each of the twelve ships we visited was in good condition. Each one could almost certainly be made space-worthy on its own. Having as many as we do virtually ensures we can create a new vehicle to replace the Thorik. So, we can choose to leave Alethia on any schedule as long as we remain undetected.”
X7 floated the idea just to see what would happen. Nothing did, so he continued.
“For the androids, again, unusually good news. Eight of the twelve ships must have been from a time when the hostilities in the circle were exceedingly fierce as they were using military combat model androids, the outlawed models.”
There was a time in the luminary circle when the races were at war. As with all wars, there were times when the hostilities became amplified. So much so that all sides, even though at war, could agree there should be boundaries, humane ways of dealing with fellow combatants and non-combatants alike.
For a period of maybe fifty prime cycles, the wars had become inhuman. Brutal. Crossing the line between what it meant to be civilized.
Regard for wounded combatants and civilians fell to the side.
During that time, advancements were made in robotics. It marked the beginning of the events that led to system-wide weapons controls and the abandonment of independent android forms replaced by etherreals.
Etherreals had several built-in failsafe mechanisms. They were built for servitude with combat abilities, not the other way around.
The final military combat model androids were straight-up killing machines.
While they still held close to the bio form, unlike the new automatons they had encountered at the Thorik, they had enhanced strength and assertiveness. Extended tracking and targeting. An aggressive combat chassis and armaments.
X7 kept going with the inventory. “Each ship has a contingent of thirty-five androids. That means we have two hundred and eighty combat models and one hundred and forty standard models. The standard models are still excellent combatants.
“The armaments in the various ammunition depots hold to the same level of quality. I can provide the exact list but suffice it to say in summary that there will be few heavy arms fire scenarios we want to pursue that we cannot plan for and execute.
“The news from the Thorik battleground is that X4 and twenty-six of the E2s appear to be repairable. Also, an interesting observation. Several of the automatons that attacked us are salvageable.
“I do not suggest we attempt to repair, but we could easily disable their transponders and perform a local interrogation should we wish.”
Logan had been nodding along, already familiar with the details. He watched Odessa as the news was provided. While it would not be correct to say her mood lightened, given current events, she looked as though she was more hopeful than before, if anything.
Then Odessa had a thought. “X7, if it were up to you, given what we know now, some of the variables have changed for sure. Would you try and save the diggers or attack for revenge like we discussed this morning?”
“Ma’am,” X7 answered quickly with no crossloading, “I do not see the two as mutually exclusive. As I mentioned, I believe once we are discovered, we will have truly little influence over our demise. It seems to me the one chance we have to influence our fate is what we do up until the moment of discovery.
“Then if we are able to damage our foe’s ability for a counter strike, so much the better.
“However, I also believe, as I have already noted, that the events here on the planet are secondary. The fact that a truth-teller modified information to us and ‘set us up’ per se has far-reaching negative connotations to our survivability in general.”
Logan listened intently.
He realized he had dismissed X7’s insights earlier when he attempted to teach X7 about decision-making paradigms.
That might have been an oversight on his part.
“X7, I think you might be correct here. Odessa, what do you think? Us simply trying to rescue the diggers might make things worse off in the long run. We might need a broader plan than we discussed yesterday.”
Odessa had been listening and contemplating. “I agree. X7, thank you for sticking to your viewpoint and for being diligent here. We are only going to get one chance at this in a surprise capacity. Because of today's excellent results, we must make the most of it.”
Day Two
Around midnight, E7 reported seeing lights and movement far in the distance between the two mountain ranges. She could not make anything out, but it at least confirmed the general location.
The two guardians slept as the E2 unit, and X7 stood guard.
It was another uneventful night.
Upon rising, Logan and Odessa decided to walk around the city some to get a feel for their surroundings. The etherreals had scouted the area a couple of days ago and declared it safe, but they had no sense of wonder and a much more practical sense of curiosity.
The construction was megalithic. It was also majestic.
The smooth lines of the structures and the sloping angles to the buildings presented a strong confidence in the construction. A knowing wisdom to the arrangement.
Whatever culture had been here was gone. Some things would be impossible to reconstruct or recreate.
As they wa
lked from building to building, avoiding here and there a tree or overgrown bush, there developed a sense of calmness and harmony.
There were no computers or technology remnants. As a result of the amount of time it appeared the city had been abandoned, too much had been lost. Anything made of paper or fabric, or even metal, would have long ago faded away, eroded by time.
The city was old, but not old enough to have been from the first cycle. Not old enough to contain oldtech.
There was no writing anywhere either. Nothing that could be used to identify for sure that this was ancient Fovian. The only markings, here and there, were circles with geometric patterns in them.
The circle was the predominant cultural, political, and religious symbol in the greater luminary. So that was no surprise. The geometric patterns looked familiar to both Logan and Odessa, but they could not place them.
There was something familiar to them for sure.
They could not dedicate a great amount of time to their explorations, only to the buildings within a few measures of the villa they were using.
After the brief excursion, they set about the day’s activities.
Following some debate, it had been decided to activate the androids in place. The original thought had been to bring them back to the city and use the larger warehouse buildings nearby to house and repair them.
That turned out to be unnecessary.
They could save the buildings for repairing the damaged E2 units and X4.
Instead, X7 was tasked with going to each ship and charging the android units. They should be charged overnight, and by tomorrow, he could return and activate them.
Odessa recalled E7 deciding that they had learned what they could learn, and she could be more useful assisting with the retrieval from the Thorik site. That freed her up and the two E2 units that otherwise would be dedicated to being communication relays.
E7 and the E2 units were tasked with retrieving the downed etherreals. They also collected one of the downed enemy automatons, removing its communication array before leaving the site and returning it to the city.