by Aer-ki Jyr
Precision flying was the only way to get through, otherwise they’d have to wait in line and move with it. Neither trailblazer was going to be that patient unless absolutely necessary, so Paul took flight a fraction of an inch off the ground, then got even lower. His mind was used to precision naval maneuvers, and translating that to personal flight wasn’t that difficult. He was using his Yen’mer, just in case the artificial methods left something else detectable. They both worked in a similar manner, but there was some more exotic compounds in his armor to make it extra efficient that were not present in his body.
But his Yen’mer had been finely tuned long ago, and he slid across the ground with a 1/6th of an inch air gap in between his chest/knees and the floor a couple meters behind Sara. When she made it under the low bar ahead he followed, gliding by without incident, then she sped up and began zipping underneath the line almost as if she was racing him.
Paul lifted up a little bit more and increased speed, making sure not to brush his still flat and very wide pack against the sidewalls, but a couple minutes of that and Sara suddenly twisted to the left and got out of the line as they entered a larger chamber. Paul followed, coming to his feet and shrinking his pack back down into a narrower block set into his armor as he got his first look at the portals, which were clustered here and other places around the Temple, but this group was the nearest, and if Morgan and Ginsi had made good time, they should be here already.
He didn’t see any outlines, so either they were here and out of range, or they hadn’t made it yet…or maybe they’d already gone through. There were 8 different vertical rings set into the far wall, each some 22 meters wide, and the line of drones were busy loading up larger transport craft that the other trailblazers had labeled ‘puddle jumpers’ because they were cylinders that fit the dimensions of the portals perfectly to maximize internal volume.
Those were what he and Sara had to piggyback on, but it was obvious they couldn’t cling to the side walls or they’d be scrapped off when passing through…or maybe not. These weren’t stargates exactly, and when one of the puddle jumpers finished loading and dipped into the shimmering effect, it didn’t go all the way in. It got about halfway then the entire transport blinked out of existence.
Paul knew that was it transitioning into the Essence Realm, and he heard a pop of atmosphere disappearing. The perimeter of the bubble was important to know, but apparently Sara was already well ahead of him, signaling to follow her as she crept her way towards one of the portals in the middle. They’d organized with the others so they didn’t double up and go through similar ones, though Paul didn’t know which was which. Sara knew, and he was just tagging along, but it was possible that all 8 would go to the same location…or they could be targetable and go anywhere within half the galaxy…or whatever the range of these things actually was. That still hadn’t been determined, for the Responders were mum on certain upper limits of Founder technology.
Sara led him to one of the puddle jumpers just coming down from an overhead hatch in the chamber through doors that were constantly opening and closing. Paul didn’t know why they were doing that with the constant traffic when you could just leave them open or use a shield barrier…then it clicked when he saw the shimmer on the portals disappear each time one of the doors opened.
He took a slight chance and opened his senses to Essence without using any of it. He hoped that didn’t give off a reflection or absorption deficit that was noticeable, but it allowed him to see the Essence pooled in the portals because some of it was actively being used. If it wasn’t he wouldn’t pick it up without a scan effect, which he didn’t dare use here. But the feed lines running to the portals disappeared when they dropped a certain depth, and Paul knew it wasn’t due to a lack of range on his part.
This entire chamber was shielded to hide Essence use. Perhaps as a way to keep the denizens above from realizing how much was actually going on down here…or maybe to keep Essence thieves away. With it being the most valuable commodity in the universe, at least as far as the Founders were concerned, it would be conceivable that the Vargemma or others might try to siphon it out of the Temple for their own uses, so making these portals invisible to their senses was probably just another layer of security.
But what Paul could see when the doors closed again, shielding view from above, was the perimeter of the Essence bubble created around another puddle jumper when it blinked out of existence. It was almost too fast to see, but apparently Sara had gotten it too, either now or before, because she signaled to head to the front of one just descending towards the middle portals.
He followed her around the line of drones that started filling up the rear end of the craft that split open to reveal an empty cargo hold inside. The duo didn’t try to get in it, but rather walked around to the front side where there were four claw-like protrusions that appeared to be adapters that could incorporate other containers. They were empty at the moment, but the almost afterimage that Paul had of the Essence bubble had it going around them and leaving gaps inside, and the same was true of the flat back, which had a curved bubble over it.
Apparently it wasn’t easy to make form-fitting Essence bubbles, and an elongated cylinder with curved ends was better than anything the Knights of Quenar could do, for they had said spherical bubbles were the only known shape possible to generate, and the entire defense barrier around the Temple was also a sphere, though giant in size.
Paul still didn’t know how to produce the Stargate Effect, but apparently the Founders had found a way to…
Wait a minute, Paul thought. Why aren’t these spheres like the travel orbs?
He wanted to ask Sara but knew he shouldn’t, so he pondered the thought as he watched her float up to the front of the puddle jumper and slide into one of the four slots. Her silhouette touched the ship, then when there was no response her form appeared to melt into it as she made her body conform to it as much as possible.
Paul did likewise, sitting in another notch with a view of the wall they had entered through as well as the 5 portals to their ‘left,’ for the puddle jumper was being loaded in a sideways position. When ready it would spin about and head into the portal, but that too didn’t make much sense because they were being back loaded, not side loaded.
Then the farthest portal visible ahead of him had two puddle jumpers descend in sequence, only to connect like a train front into rear. Two more followed, and the train now was 4 cars long and looking like a fat spear…which was when Paul spotted a 9th portal far ahead set perpendicular to the eight. It must have been to accommodate the long trains, because there wasn’t enough room the other direction to feed these portals…so what was the difference? Long trains were a rarity or was that one a longer range portal?
He wanted to ask Sara if she knew, but if she did she hadn’t chosen to go that way. They were both in super ninja mode and not budging from it, making like a pair of rocks stuck to the hull of this puddle jumper as it finished loading…but before it left, he did see the long train begin to load from the side, so these transports did have multiple options. He wondered what was going in this one and if it was filled to capacity or not, but he wasn’t going to get an answer to that from the forward view, and before too long the crater-like cavity set behind the ring portal ahead of them disappeared as a shimmering wave covered the horizon.
Sara and Paul were pushed through it, seeing an Essence bubble form over the front of the craft when they touched the horizon. It was as if the shimmer was part of an Essence bubble being laid over the craft, and as soon as it passed over them the view ahead went dark to their visual scanners, but their Essence view saw a vast void with a sheet of slightly glowing ‘plastic’ covering the prow of the puddle jumper ahead and making a tent over them.
Then something changed and the sheet disappeared, leaving them in the Essence Realm for a moment before a bright claw grabbed hold of them and pulled them through the Temple.
Paul could see many things glowing in Essence
at varying distances, and he knew those had to be Temple functions currently consuming Essence and causing a rush…or maybe they were storage visible from here? Whatever they were, they were something to break up the void, but then a giant umbrella-like glow appeared, almost as if it was a flower pulling them into the center, but with small raindrops hitting it from afar.
Those had to be puddle jumpers coming in from elsewhere, but he thought the barrier shield was what caught them? There was no barrier shield up around this Temple yet, for the Essence levels were too low, so what was this taking its place?
Paul turned his head slightly, making sure not to pass through the bubble barrier. If he did, the matter in his body would probably be sucked back into the normal realm, either with all of him or in part. Both would be disasters, but he wanted to look in the other direction so he squirmed around enough…to see a cornucopia of energy flowers in the center of the dotted sphere that was the Temple.
He could see the outline easily, meaning there was Essence activity everywhere and not just concentrated near the greening region. But in the center was the most activity, telling Paul that there had to be a lot of hidden orbital infrastructure in and around the center of the Sphere. Stuff that the denizens were not supposed to get to, or at least not until they were way more advanced than they were now, the Vargemma included.
Tiny little streaks were coming in to many of those flowers near the center, but a handful of flowers were located in the shell at various points. What was the significance of that? Paul didn’t know, but as they were drawn closer and closer to the center of the flower, he got the feeling that he was going to find out soon…and when they finally did hit the center, with him glancing ahead into oblivion then back towards the beehive of Essence activity in the Sphere, they were catapulted away at insane speed, with the Temple shrinking rapidly and totally disappearing within seconds.
Paul twisted his head around, looking with his Essence-enhanced eyes to try and pick up anything, but nada. It was completely empty, yet the background of the Essence realm seemed to hum with a subtle warmth. Visually it was complete black, for there was no mass here to reach his armor’s sensors or eyeballs.
How long this trip would take he didn’t know, but he had plenty of air and additional reserves in his pack. And if it took longer than a few hours, his armor was configured to be able to syphon off his body’s wastes through Regenerator style filaments to avoid him having to soil his clothing.
So he and Sara were set for a long trip, already vibrating their muscles to appease their Saiyan bodies, with neither one of them knowing where they were going or if it would be the same place as the other Archon pairs heading through those 8 portals. They were completely trusting in the automated nature of the Temple network, and hoping that trust didn’t end in disaster, for they had nowhere to bail out to, other than deep space with no hope of rescue or even navigation. If they jumped ship now, they’d be adrift in no man’s land, assuming they survived the transition intact.
No, they were committed, and taking a huge gamble…but that game was better than hiding out and doing nothing while more and more Star Force worlds got massacred. And given the insane risk involved, nobody aside from the trailblazers were going to go first. Unlike chess, in Star Force the pawns went last, because the most advanced and powerful units had the best chance of survival and mission success.
But both Sara and Paul knew there was a chance they’d die out here, or that some of their brothers and sisters would. They couldn’t play this safe anymore, and in truth they preferred not to. They weren’t reckless, but they knew the place where they belonged the most was in the field where there were no guarantees and death danced with them on a constant basis.
That’s where Archons belonged, not in the training Sanctums, and it had been a long time since they’d been pushed into this kind of jeopardy, so as weird as it sounded, Paul and Sara both felt comfortable flinging themselves into the unknown…and part of that was because they knew the enemy would never expect it.
8
Paul and Sara rode in silence for 19 hours, 13 minutes, and 42 seconds before a tiny spec of Essence light became visible ahead. It didn’t last long, mushrooming out into the brief image of a flower before they ran into it and stuck without any trace of momentum.
Sara looked around, not seeing any other flowers or Essence rushes at all, just the single one that was pulling them down one of the petals towards the end, but before they got there visible light flashed into existence around them as they left the Essence Realm and emerged through another circular portal into a receiving area that had no atmosphere.
She saw the Essence bubble around them disappear soon thereafter, so Sara rolled out of the niche despite her sore muscles and dropped to the ground as the puddle jumper continued to move away from the portal. Paul came down on the other side and both of them let the craft move on as they turned around to see not just one portal, but hundreds of them set into a high wall. Only theirs was turned on, but within a few seconds the shimmer over it went away, leaving the entire bank of them inactive.
Sara walked over to him and held out her hand. Paul took it as he triggered his cloaking field to coopt with hers, then when their armored hands met they established a hard comm link that they hadn’t had available during the trip due to them being stashed in separate niches.
“Looks like this is meant to accommodate a lot more traffic,” Sara noted. “Pretty dead right now.”
“No atmosphere either. This clearly isn’t meant for visitors. Wanna do a telepathy check?”
“Yeah, let’s risk it. I get the feeling we’ve gone where no man was ever meant to,” she said, letting go of Paul’s hand then reaching out with her telepathy. Anyone listening?
Paul glanced around, looking for signs of detection, but the only thing he noted was a different portal turning on with another puddle jumper coming through three rows up then heading for a tunnel in the opposite wall. In fact the other wall had multiple tunnels, leaving them in a giant box that had…
Look up, he said, with Sara’s outline tipping her head up and seeing the narrow strip of starlight visible through the gap between higher up infrastructure.
Are we on a planet?
Let’s find out, Paul said as he began floating upwards on his Yen’mer. Still no sign of their telepathy being detected, or perhaps they were and there just weren’t combat units here to intercept them?
When they got to the ceiling gap they passed through it, but were still in a cluster of blocky extrusions in what looked like a geometric forest, but when they got halfway up those the gravity went away and they began free floating. Sara immediately sent a Bataf conduit out to Paul, and both of them used it to push each other away from the center until they collided with one of the buildings on either side…where they stuck to the walls using their fingertips and knees to slow their momentum regardless of the disruptions to their cloaks.
I think we can rule out planet, Paul said as he spidermaned his way around into a wall crouch with his feet attaching him and nothing else, leaving him free to look back down at reception room while also glancing at Sara on the far side some 40 meters away.
I need more stars to get a location fix. Climb, she urged, with both trailblazers scaling the blocky protrusions, but Paul’s ended before hers did…yet when the sightline over him was clear they both stopped and looked out at what was beyond.
They were in fact in space, onboard some sort of station with numerous craft docked along pylons stretching as far as the eye could see…but they weren’t small ones like the puddle jumpers were. Most were the size of Star Force naval drones or larger, but it was the largest of them attached to a distant ring that drew Paul’s attention.
Reapers, he said with a growl, referring to what they had wrongly assumed was some form of Super Hadarak back when Ariel had first discovered the leftover carry orb. Based on the information in the Temple they knew they existed, but there were hundreds of them here, shaped like gian
t clams, and from the tidbit of memory he still carried from the Essence he had come in contact with, he knew the two halves would open up and skim a planet’s surface with horrific results.
The technical schematics were available in the Temple, but not where they were actually housed. None had been found inside Alpha or Beta, but apparently that was because the Founders had facilities beyond the Temples.
Paul signaled to Sara, and she flipped him up like a pole vaulter using another Bataf conduit to get him near the top of the building she was climbing on, then she joined him on the flat top as he stood there pirouetting around to see the intimidating view beyond.
They were standing on the second tallest building in what looked to be a small city of skyscrapers located at the center of a web of pylons jutting out like spokes on a wheel. A halo-like ring existed on the far end of those spokes, with the Reapers docked to it, but on the interior pylons there were many other craft, a lot of which had not been found in the Temple databases, but Paul knew some of them by design alone.
Warships, he said, pointing to a certain group. Probably all automated. I’m surprised they haven’t shown up at Alpha to deal with Thrawn’s attacks.
Maybe that’s not what they’re for.
Field trip escorts? Paul wondered.
You saw all those portals. I think this is a nexus point, Sara said as her armor’s computer finally got a position fix based off the stars that were now visible in nearly an entire hemisphere around and above them. They were bright stars, for there was no sun nearby, no planets, no nebula. They looked to be out in the middle of nowhere inside the galaxy, and the position trace confirmed as much.
We didn’t go that far, she said with a frown. Only 278 lightyears. That must have been a lower powered Essence push we got. Otherwise it should have taken less time than the travel orb.
I only noticed one flower.