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Blue shed his suit well within the shroud of mist. The atmosphere posed no danger to him, and in this location its composition was actually breathable for his companions as well. Only the strange alerts thrown by the sensors in the survival suits warning of an unknown organic compound—possibly an alien pollen of some kind released by these plants—kept the others using their filters.
He paused at the edge of the curtained mist and took a long look at the bowl of gritty dirt beyond. Seeing with his own eyes, however artificial, was still a strange and surprisingly wonderful experience. Oh, they saw more than human eyes ever could. Blue could take in the entire electromagnetic spectrum and witness colors human minds had no context to understand. Yet the act of processing visual information about an environment in such an immediate way was...moving. Being in this body and locked away from syncing with his original self-made him feel more present. More here.
More alive.
Blue lowered his body slightly, bending knees and optimizing his limbs for speed. There would be no avoiding detection on this run. Without the preparatory intake of breath or nervous laughter a human might display, Blue blurred into motion. He was not constrained by muscle fatigue or even the limitations of biology, and though he knew these facts intellectually, he could not help feeling a thrill of exhilaration anyway at his own power and capabilities. No amount of technical understanding stood in the way of the sheer joy of running in the open air.
He zoomed across the rough soil with as much distance between the gatherers as possible. Blue could not discount the chance each had a defensive mode to protect the central processing unit. Avoiding them was the safest choice, at least on his way in.
Running at a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour got him to his destination quickly. Blue skidded to a halt a few meters away from the processor’s outer hull. He switched over the full spectrum scanning—active, rather than only the passive he’d been using—and began running in a circle around its base.
He noticed many interesting things in a very short period of time, practically all at once. The structure was not actually secured in any way—there was a small gap between it and the ground. It was floating about ten centimeters above the dirt. Add to that what appeared to be thruster ports with heavy sliding covers, and it appeared the whole thing was mobile. The most interesting fact was that the exterior seemed impervious to Blue’s scans. It reflected everything.
Despite the crew’s fear, no klaxons or alarms went off. No defenses sprung up to cut Blue down. None of the gatherers so much as twitched in their labors, only moving along in their slow work as if Blue didn’t exist.
He scanned and recorded as much as possible, including a stop by one of the shambling automatons to get a close look, then left. There was only so much to be learned no matter how much time he spent looking.
“Learn anything good?” Spencer asked when he returned to the group after retrieving his suit. Blue opened a link and sent the data to each of them. Better to store everything they learned here as widely as possible just in case they lost equipment or crew along the way.
“I believe this is a leftover facility created by those who originally founded this place,” Blue said. “It lacks any design ethos of the Originators. There are no defensive systems, either because it was too unimportant to rate them or because the race which settled here did not believe their minefield would allow a significant threat to reach the surface.”
Captain Stone reached an armored hand to rub his jaw, stopping halfway when he realized the gesture was futile in his suit. “So that thing’s mobile?”
Blue nodded. “It appears so. I was unable to penetrate its shell to determine what the plants are used for, but I have a suspicion. Their composition is similar to the shell itself.”
“They’re growing their own materials?” Dex asked.
This set off a minor round of discussion before the captain called for attention. “It’s useful, but it’s not our immediate goal. Since Blue doesn’t think this thing is dangerous to us, let’s move on and get as close to the Vault itself as we can before we have to rest.”
There was no argument on this point, which Blue began to understand. It was one thing to know the limitations of the human body in the abstract, another to see the sweat on their faces and hear the exhaustion in their voices as adrenaline wore off and left them tired.
He took up the rear position as they took off at a trot through the fields, uncaring for the scrapes the suits took from the strange fauna or the trail of dislodged leaves in their wake. Blue kept a close watch on the drone data, now spiraled out a solid kilometer in every direction. So far the returns were clear; just more of the same cropland spread out in all directions.
Strange. He knew from the files taken from the Originator’s remains that there were enclaves of incredible technology on this world—alien technology. An entire city complex the size of a bodyship sat nestled in a crater in the far northern hemisphere, taking a steady delivery of raw materials from automated transports and outputting nothing that could be seen from orbit. There was a power generation complex along the equator that was a perfect dome three kilometers across, unbroken but for the transmission tower at its apex and four conduits spaced equidistantly around its base to carry energy to various ground operations.
The solar satellites, mine defenses, and a dozen other elements made it clear this planet was far from an agrarian village. The strange dichotomy was difficult for Blue to process. Systems should be elegant and simple, obvious in their utility.
King and Jemison took the rear guard with Blue, watchful sentries with finely tuned danger senses. Blue knew that to be true in more than a metaphorical way; all three of the newer crewmen had gene mods giving them higher sensitivity to the world around them. Blunted though they might be within their suits at present, those finely tuned senses would be invaluable once inside the Vault and free to use them without restriction.
“You think we’ll run into more alien shit between here and there?” King asked. His faded blue eyes were hidden behind the visor of his suit, but the way it towered over the others implied his great height. “I mean, more than just this farmer Bill stuff.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Jemison said. She had dark skin, a shaved head, and from what Blue had been able to observe, a finely honed mind. Almost machine-like, a trait he could appreciate. “The layout is all wrong. This place has a couple big industrial centers. Based on what we’re seeing out here in the sticks, everything else is resource collection. Chances are we’ll just run into more of the same. Maybe a mine or something else, but not a big manufacturing center or anything.”
Blue cocked his head. “Why do you say that?”
Jemison waved a hand at the landscape. “It’s a familiar layout, right? It’s the same way the Alliance does things. We set up a colony or a Navy fabrication hub, collect resources at a distance, and funnel everything to that central location. It lets a few relatively small central areas have the room they need to expand, and stacking every step of your manufacturing process in one place makes it a lot faster. The Navy is really good that way. It’s how we crank out ships so fast.”
Blue turned this over in his head several thousand times over the next few seconds. The Alliance did so as an artifact of its history as a conquering force. A few dozen colonies once banded together with a common purpose, absorbing other colonies as they realized the collective threat was too much to deal with, eventually creating the thousand light-year behemoth it was today. Every base and station was its own beachhead, a central hub from which to build boats and amass troops.
That was what this planet was—or at least had been. Blue was sure of it. The problem was the lack of any nearby real estate. They were surrounded by the Alliance on all sides. No armada built from the resources of a single world could hope to do more than anger them. The Children had learned that lesson painfully. And Blue’s people had the fruits of dozens of star systems at their disposal.
If this place was the beachhead it appeared to be, then what was the target it was meant for? And where were the creatures who had established it? Ruins were one thing; civilizations died. That was the way of the universe. No great power guided any race toward a higher destiny.
Yet to leave behind an entire automated world? That implied conflict. If a more powerful enemy had driven them away, where were they? Certainly nothing in the Originator files implied Blue’s people were responsible. It was a mystery he was eager to explore. He hoped his other selves would keep their investigation unseen.
To everyone’s surprise, the Vault itself was only twenty kilometers from their landing site. They saw the massive central spire long before they were anywhere close. It buzzed with activity so clearly out of sync with the world it sat on that it practically screamed ‘intruder!’ at the top of its lungs. Ships darted in and out, the occasional loud noise could be dimly heard over the great distance and rolling hills between.
The target was at hand. And for the first time since implanting his copied mind into this body, he felt nervous.