| |
Grant held the throttle steady, and though every instinct told him that he needed to maintain a certain velocity to stay aloft, the shuttle clearly operated by other means. It flew on some kind of field, probably artificial gravity mixed with mass negation technology. It was the best guess the more educated members of his crew could come up with—and considering Dex was one of the most intelligent human beings alive, his guesses were usually good.
“Bipedal, with at least two arms,” Dex muttered as he walked around the relatively small cabin. The space was just right for the humans in their survival suits, which even Grant understood to mean that whatever species it was built for was taller by about a foot.
Like everyone but Dex, Batta was seated. In his case, in the copilot’s chair. He waved a hand at the instrument cluster. “The layout, too. Five fingers. Whatever the hell these things are, they fit right within Facinelli’s curve.”
“That’s a relief,” Grant said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. Facinelli was the first biologist to study living alien species. He’d dabbled in anthropology as a necessary part of his research, which involved building a frame of reference for how different species viewed and interacted with the universe around them. The central part of the curve was where convergent evolution described the wide swath of species who evolved similar solutions to similar problems. It was why Fen, who was Gitk, was the same basic shape as a human being and with sensory capabilities in the same ballpark.
By sheer coincidence, none of the known alien species were so far beyond the others in terms of technology that they posed a true existential threat. Interstellar war was expensive and ultimately wasteful in a vast galaxy like the Milky Way, which made the fairly small disparities in technology between species worthless tactically.
Until now. The sheer, overwhelming insanity of the tech on this little planet made Grant wish Facinelli was still alive so he could hunt the guy down and punch him right in the dick. His work had curbed the natural fear and suspicion of generations of human beings, which Grant had always considered a positive development right up until he crashed on a rock where tech that could stomp him like a bug waited around every corner.
That thought sparked his curiosity. “Blue, do you have any idea why the Originators didn’t take control of the whole planet? You hijacked this ship without much trouble.”
The avatar barely hesitated before answering. “I have been reviewing the data. Apparently once Alpha saw the defense mechanisms from the crashed ship, it made the decision to take a conservative approach. The others tested the dormant facilities. They could infiltrate some of them, but the vast majority mutated their code to block out any sort of permanent control. My creators feared triggering a planetwide...immune response. They felt studying the ship and what technology they could take from other facilities was enough.”
Grant snorted. “Enough to wipe out humanity, right.” He followed the heading Blue had given him and considered how supremely fortunate the human race was that the Children only had access to the things they could scrape from the bottom of this installation’s proverbial barrel.
He found himself deeply and powerfully curious to know those same secrets and more. A battle raged in his head, buried below the surface need to pilot the ship. The side of him that had been at the forefront of the war resented the Vault’s very existence. He hated the needless death and destruction wrought by the Children, made possible by the stolen technology speeding by below him.
Fighting that war was the unavoidable truth that a fraction of what could be salvaged here could catapult humankind forward centuries virtually overnight.
He was still struggling with it when their destination came into sight. It was a staggeringly huge complex nestled into the top and side of a cliff overlooking a vast lake filled with a liquid far too still to be water. He didn’t dare risk a scan—if he could have even figured out how to perform one—but even a casual glance showed the sheen of an energy field over the small sea. Some kind of containment?
The complex spread out for kilometers in every direction like perfectly symmetrical spiderwebs made of ceramic and metal. It was supposed to be some kind of shipyard, but there were none in sight. The holes he’d seen in the side of the cliff as he banked closer told the tale. They would find a vessel capable of spaceflight here, but not an easily snatched ship resting on the surface. This was a military installation or something close to it; they would keep their best assets protected until called upon.
Which meant going underground.
––––––––
The lack of ships conveniently waiting on the landing strips jutting from the base like spokes was not entirely without positive notes; there were plenty of places to set down. Grant was rusty at flying atmospheric shuttles and gave everyone a harder touchdown than he’d have liked, but no one complained aside from a few startled grunts.
Even as they rolled to a stop, the shimmering field put out by the ship half a world away swept over them. It must have multiple functions. Given the way it activated everything on this planet, the thing seemed to behave both as a defense mechanism and as a key. An ignition point to make the whole place get to work. The base setting was resource gathering, the automated systems mining and growing what was needed to build ships and gods knew what else might be needed for war. The second stage obviously included the actual construction of those things.
Stage three was something he tried hard not to think about.
Survivors in the crashed ship seemed unlikely at best considering how long the thing lay dormant on the surface. Yet the fear remained: this could be the start of another invasion. What if the broken containment allowed the thing to call to its brother and sister ships? To call out to its creators, who had hared off to somewhere else after abandoning this place?
Grant had most of two years of terrible luck with those kinds of things. And after years of friendship, Batta could read him perfectly even when Grant managed not to say a word.
The burly engineer reached over and patted Grant on the shoulder with a metallic clap of steel on steel. “It’ll be fine. All we can do is go one step at a time. Get in. Get a ship. Get to orbit. Leave this fucking nightmare behind. It’s above our pay grade.”
“Yeah,” Grant said. “I know. But shit, man. Don’t you think we have a responsibility here?”
Batta turned to face him, his expression curious behind his faceplate. “To take the candy for ourselves or make sure no one else can?”
Grant raised an eyebrow. “To ask that exact question. We really need to think about our options before it’s too late.”
Batta gave a shrug, somewhat muted by the suit. “Look, I’m as prone as the next wrench spinner to want to play with the shiny new toys, but this isn’t some discarded junk we found inside old ruins or whatever. Blue made it pretty clear the whole goddamn planet is likely to fight back against any snooping we try to do. I say we take what we have and let Goff figure the rest out. We get that data back to her, she might give us a break with Iona.”
Grant nodded, though the gesture was mostly out of habit. Batta was sharp even with his long recovery from brain damage, just not about politics. He knew the way the Navy worked the same as he understood the mechanics of a ship down to the meanest bolt. Past that he was woefully ignorant about how human beings in large groups thought. As someone who made a point to be as willing to change his mind as possible when presented with new information, Batta simply couldn’t wrap his head around a populace unable to let go their preconceived notions and world views.
Rather than explain this to the surly man yet again, Grant merely gave his head a dip and feigned agreement.
That was an argument for another time. He wanted the team wholly focused on getting to safety without being disintegrated or taken apart because one of them got distracted.
“Blue goes ahead,” he said to the group. “We let him scout the way and try to slice into the local system. Give us some kind of heads up. No more detours, ladies and gents. We have no side projects from here on out. It’s a straightforward cut and run. Once we’re back on Seraphim, we can talk about next steps. Until the second our boots touch her deck, we worry only about getting away from here.”
No big deal, right? All they had to do was not move so fast the defensive field saw them as a threat while infiltrating what was surely a much more secure facility and getting away with a ship that was certain to be missed at once and pursued with great prejudice.
Piece of cake. Just another Tuesday.