by Aer-ki Jyr
Yeah. This place isn’t built for Essence use, at least not much…wait, do you see that black spot?
Paul followed the telepathic pointing towards a section of the star field that was obscured. I’m picking up faint gravity from that direction. Enough for a small moon.
Enough for the Reapers to navigate on. There’s a star system 2 lightyears away. They can get in and out without using Essence if they’re patient enough.
Or use Essence to enhance the pull and get there faster, Paul added. But the Hadarak mass more than that gravity well, so they can’t very well use it to brake against. But the mostly hollow Reapers can.
Wanna risk sensors or stay hidden?
I want sensors, but we need a ride out of here. I don’t want them shutting down the portals if they detect an intruder.
Agreed. Where do you want to start exploring?
Follow the logistics, he said as another puddle jumper emerged from below, coming up through the gap and passing them by as it rotated around and headed laterally out towards the parked craft.
They’re not using gravity drives, he realized. They have to have energy tethers. I can barely feel anything with my Yen’mer as is.
Don’t test your suit’s anti-grav, just in case, Sara urged. We can move without it. I don’t think they’ve got security set up for Essence users or infantry, but they’ve probably got conventional sensors to detect naval interlopers. Might even have a self-destruct protocol if this place is found, and I really don’t want to try and hijack one of those ships. I left my infiltrator toolkit behind.
Same here. So we stay dark and snoop, then catch a ride somewhere else and keep bouncing around until we like where we land?
Unless you can figure out how the portals are rigged, then that’s our only option. If they’re taking goodies out to those ships, then I bet they’re not mothballed. Think they’re building more?
Might be, or maybe repairing. I doubt they’re gearing up for an assault on anything. The Hadarak are not even close to making it this far out.
Would they then?
If the Temples are in jeopardy I wouldn’t put it past them. What else would they be used for? Internal security would require them in the Temples, and Alpha already doesn’t care about external attacks. They just repair the damage.
Something else is going on here. Something a lot bigger than what we’ve already discovered. You gotta wonder just how a galactic war against the Hadarak looks when someone can fight back.
Hopefully Kara will be back with some information on that, Paul said, a bit worried. She had been gone 15 years already, and while that didn’t mean mission failure, it mean she had either found a way to go deeper than expected…or she’d been killed in the attempt.
There’s no way they just have Wardens and Lurkers. So if you don’t have an army of Uriti refilling your materia, how do you successfully fight them?
Don’t get conquered in the first place. We still don’t know how they get from one galaxy to the other. If they have to grow most of their troops locally, then maybe they fought back when the Hadarak were early in their development.
I don’t buy that. They’re conquering galaxy after galaxy. Next?
An army of Caretaker-style, super smart drones.
With a huge emphasis on grooming Essence users? What else you got?
Mass produced Olopar with the Essence users fueling them in lieu of the Uriti.
That’s more reasonable, but I doubt that’s the whole of it. Why do you need so many reapers?
You think they used them against minions?
Why not? If they’re going to use them on hapless locals, why not use them on minions too? And the database was not very forthcoming with information on how they work either.
Do you think they can eat Lurkers?
I wish, Sara said without completely ruling it out. What do you think those spear-like ones are for? They’re not in the database as far as I know.
Paul looked down at the closely parked ships set into a rack that bound them near the midpoint with the narrow ends sticking out quite far in other directions, but it was clear that they were not part of the station, for they were not even of the same dark gray color, but an odd, dark green.
No clue. They don’t follow the Founder design pattern for drones.
That puddle jumper is heading for them, I think. Wanna hitch a ride on the next one?
Assuming there is a next one…yeah. How big of a bump can we risk?
We’ll try to intercept by velocity and not pull ourselves onboard. We just have to get there before it makes its turn, because we’re not catching it with Yen’mer.
The pair remained atop their perch speculating about what this and that might be for until another puddle jump rose up through the slat below them and the two Archons delicately jumped off the building at a precise angle and speed, intersecting the approaching ship a little ahead of the midsection, Paul first, with Sara arriving a second later to his left.
Both gripped the side of the ship when their armor made physical contact, feeling themselves tugged to the right with the momentum, but the puddle jumper apparently didn’t notice. If Paul had been programming these things for security purposes he would have included a subroutine to watch for erroneous momentum, much like they’d just given the ship when their bodies hit it, as a sign of interference, but if Sara was right and this was a low key facility, maybe the puddle jumpers weren’t designed for that detection and only the facilities were, or perhaps in conjunction with.
When the ship didn’t respond Paul almost wanted to decloak and see if that would get a reaction. This was getting too easy for such a security-obsessed Temple, unless they figured the lack of air would thwart any intruders.
Maybe they have a big inter-galactic portal hidden out here somewhere beyond the Temples, Sara suggested.
They could have anything out here, given the scale of what they’ve already built. Wait...I think that gravity well doubles as a storage bin. I can just make out tiny blips moving to and from it.
Sara strained her eyes as well as her helmet’s amplification, but eventually she picked up on what Paul was seeing. They look elongated.
Sara, look at your mag readings.
She mentally flicked up the stat, which wasn’t registering much at all, but then she realized it was residual fluctuations coming off a much larger source.
Are we standing on it?
I think so, he said as they were hanging on the side of the moving puddle jumper as it got closer to the spear-ships. Backups have to be non-Essence.
And our trip in was so slow because it’s probably low Essence travel.
I think so. This looks like a piece of a gigantic Caretaker network designed to support the Temples.
Zoom in on the spears now, Sara prompted.
Paul did so, seeing that they were not actually smooth, but rather studded with tiny nubs that were…
Those are stacked puddle jumpers?
Yep. Probably around a drive core. They’re big cargo trucks.
Trucks to or from where? They gotta have mining sites somewhere.
I’d bet the puddle jumps are so small because the mining sites are small or mobile. Never staying in the same place for too long. They’re probably sneaking all over the outer rim and grabbing resources where nobody is around to see them, then stock piling them here and other places until the Temples need them.
There’s so much in the Temples, what are they expecting to deplete them? This is a lot of activity for a mostly empty Temple network.
Good question. We know the Caretakers have harvested Essence from planets before, and that wasn’t exactly subtle. Maybe they’re doing a lot of other crap out here that we aren’t aware of.
To what end?
Sara’s outline shrugged. Something big.
And all run by automation, Paul said disapprovingly. They’re either way better at building it than we are, or they don’t care if it messes up.
They harvest people
for Essence, Paul. They don’t care about being sloppy so long as their mission objective is met.
But to go millions of years without someone checking in?
Maybe they do have some monitors somewhere.
I’d kick the crap out of a system like this given sufficient time to find a weakness, he scoffed. You gotta have someone to troubleshoot.
Apparently they don’t.
Maybe because their enemies are planet-sized mother fuckers who can’t get out here, but we could cause all kind of havoc if we wanted to.
I would hope on a galactic scale we’re near the tops. The security in the Temple would have stopped just about anyone else.
I wouldn’t trust a system like this.
You have a lot higher standards than most people.
For good reason, Paul said as they flew out over a gap in the buildings…only to find that there was no floor beneath them. It was an open passageway to the underside, with stars visible below as well as a little bit of a curve of white in the distance that stopped on a flat rim. It wasn’t easy to make out, but with a little help from their armor’s analysis systems they were able to highlight the curve in the structure all the way up to the far rim, with a fair guess at the whole thing curving around into an inverted bowl on the bottom side of the station.
There you go, Sara said, her mental voice slightly impressed as the discoveries continued to unfold. It’s a magnetic launch dish. This is their version of a Grid Point, and I bet these spear ships are equipped with magnetic drives.
Meaning we have to hitch a ride if we’re going to get anywhere near another temple.
Unless you think there are a lot of these auxiliary facilities across the galaxy that we can hop across? There are a damn lot of portals in there.
Ahead and below of them as they approached the spear docks one of the craft far ahead began to detach and slowly drift their way and down, beginning to twist to fit long ways through the crack in the dome beneath, ostensibly heading towards it.
Moment of truth, Paul said. Go or stay?
Sara bit her lip. They had no idea how close the shield perimeter on that thing was, or even if they could get through without being detected…or shot.
Yolo it, she said, throwing Paul off as he simultaneously jumped, then she jerked as a Bataf conduit between the two dragged her behind him towards the soon to be passing 6 mile long spear ship below them…
9
June 11, 128549
Unknown Location
It took more than two weeks before the spear-like magjump ship finally arrived at its destination, and both Paul and Sara were relieved. They’d snuck onto the back of the ship to ride on the side that was pointed away from any interstellar collisions, underneath the fairly skin-tight shields that they had to use their Jumat to get through. That hadn’t set off any alarms, so they’d clung to the ship as it jumped, snugged nicely inside its own IDF field so the momentum didn’t rip them off the back, but after several hours they’d decided to break their way into one of the puddle jumpers.
They had to cut through the exterior, but with their armor and psionics that wasn’t an issue. Apparently there weren’t any security measures in flight, because they got in without incident, finding the interior of at least this one puddle jumper to be completely empty. They guessed that all of them might be, and were perhaps returning to a resource pickup point, but regardless the trailblazers needed the few hundred square feet of vacuum to stretch out in. Being stuck in their armor unable to move was beyond frustrating for Saiyans, and just being able to walk around in the artificial gravity inside the puddle jumper was a luxury.
But after a couple weeks of that they were both busting at the seams to do something, and training with each other in the small confines was not enough, so they were both glad when they finally came out of their jump and stopped against a much larger station.
The pair climbed out and onto the exterior of the transport, staying within the shield perimeter and not using any active sensors, but they were no longer cloaked. First Sara, then Paul re-engaged their invisibility, but they knew it would fail when they had to press through the shields again.
That one is a lot bigger, Sara said as they both got a partial view of what was ahead, and it looked like a giant plant stalk with numerous receiving bowls pointed in different directions.
Transit hub, Paul guessed. We are really lost now, aren’t we?
Yeah. Do you think there’s any air in there?
I intend to have a look before we hop another ship.
Docking bay or jump off now?
I say we wait. I don’t see any other traffic out here.
Hopefully that doesn’t mean we’re stranded for a while. We don’t have infinite supplies, even when we’re being lazy.
Yeah, I want to get into their storehouses and at least absorb some raw materials, if not power.
How long do you think we’re just going to sit here? Sara asked, referencing the spear ship.
Not too long. I wonder if that’s a warehouse or processing facility?
Paul, look at the stars.
He frowned, looking at the pinpricks of light, none of which were anywhere close to their location, but there was something abnormal about them. Their spectrum was just a little bit off.
We’re near a massive gravity well, he said, looking around but unable to see anything on this side of the ship. Crawl.
Both of them began clawing their way around the circular perimeter of the ship, going up and down through the dips between docked puddle jumpers and leaping when they were able. Eventually they moved around enough that the star light became even more distorted, all the way up to a ring of folded light that surrounded a pure black orb.
I don’t get it, Sara said. I thought they didn’t want anything near gravity wells so the Hadarak couldn’t use them for navigation?
There’s got to be a lot of traffic going through this black hole, just from the locals. Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either.
You’d think they’d notice it, Sara said as the stars began to swirl as the spear ship altered position and headed for a gap in the bowl, apparently heading for the interior of the station.
Mining operation? Paul guessed.
Some compounds they have to get from black holes, but this seems too obvious. I wish we could risk sensors. Maybe this whole thing is cloaked?
The magnetic variance of the black hole would disguise the power in this place from onlookers, but only from afar. We’re nowhere near that thing, so anybody passing in between should easily be able to…no, wait, they wouldn’t. This station can’t jump anything in the direction of the black hole.
Directional arrays all point away, and unless you come on a line you won’t get enough pull to notice. They can hide in plain sight, magnetically speaking anyway, and this place won’t have enough gravity to navigate off of. You’d have to know it was here to get to it, so is it visible or not?
My eyes say yes.
We could still be inside the perimeter.
At least there’s no Essence shield here.
True dat, Sara agreed as the stars were eclipsed when they passed through the gap in the bowl and entered a corridor that made the two Humans feel very, very small. It lasted for a long time, with solid walls all around and no gaps between them, but the way ahead opened up into an interior chamber, one that appeared to run the length of the cylindrical station once they got fully inside.
The spear ship moved to an empty dock on the interior surface along with many others sticking into it like pinpricks, but still leaving a huge amount of empty space in the central corridor. Too much room. Wasted room. Unless it held another purpose.
Well, where do you want to go? Sara asked as the spear ship slid into its slot and jerked to a stop.
Wherever they go, Paul said as a wave of the puddle jumpers began to peel off the front of the ship in sequence.
Lock on, she said, doing likewise and waiting for the puddle jumper beneath them to g
et its turn. When it did it detached quickly and flew with the others into apertures in the curved wall spread around the gaps between where the spear ships were stuck in place. When they did so gravity returned, and the pair hopped off and floated to the floor, getting their invisible feet back on a truly open area with miles of free space to run through as the convoy of puddle jumpers flew by overhead like a flock of migrating birds.
Finally, Paul said as he stretched, doing a backbend then a few handstand pushups before flipping back over to his feet. Why did we volunteer for this again?
We’re lazy asses, Sara joked.
Right. Let’s start working it off.
After you.
Paul took off running, not flying, and relished the feel of it on his very stagnated legs. Sara fell into step beside his outline and the two of them followed the flow of puddle jumpers until they got to the first tunnel leading off to the side…actually a honeycomb of tunnels set into the extremely high walls. They picked the lowest one and ran into it, starting to feel claustrophobic again as it was barely wider than the puddle jumpers, but at the moment none were moving through this one.
They kept up good speed, not wanting to get squished if this dead-ended, but fortunately that wasn’t going to happen because where it did end there was a side platform where smaller Caretaker-sized tunnels would probably be delivering or offloading supplies through.
They hopped up onto the platform and took off through a random tunnel, eventually finding their way through a labyrinth of passages and cross passages to a very large room filled with racks of tubes.
Paul?
I know, he said, looking out at the thousands of the people frozen inside some sort of stasis tech. These are either prisoners, Essence food…or we found the Founders.
There’s no atmosphere here. I don’t think this place is for them to walk around in. I think it’s to hide them in.
Why not put them in the Temples? There’s plenty of room there.
Unless they need to be hidden from the Vargemma and the other Essence users. I don’t know, but I doubt this chamber is the only one with them in it.
You know, Paul said, having an odd thought. The murals said that when the denizens reached a certain level, or number, or whatever the mark is, that a leader would be sent from the Founders to guide them in resistance against the Hadarak. Maybe that’s what these are? Stashed away in stasis to preserve them until the time is right?