Chapter Seven
Confederation Civilian Star ship Dreadnaught. Zolvin Sector. 9215-263-ZSR Delta Three research base 09:56 Terran Standard Time. Friday. It took time to sort everything out. The various bits of me recovered after a few minutes and I had full control again seconds later. Most of the passengers were up and about within ten minutes though a few had to be carried to the med bay to be prodded and poked by the medic drone. The naval types recovered fairly quickly, the marines, well they were up and about as soon as the NCO’s started shouting at them, I suspect they may have been using implants and bioware boosters but they were up and moving and helping everyone else so I didn’t care. The scientists took longer and many of them needed to be turned over the care of the medical drone. The Orc soldiers seemed very subdued, I would almost have said they were sad or disappointed but they are Orcs so what do I know. The handful of Orcs with the Admirals one were all medical cases, curled up in balls on the floor and almost comatose. Bloody damn strange but I had more important things to deal with. Like the fact that life support was reporting the level of airborne and ground based contaminant from all that throwing up was flagging alerts. I sent every available maintenance drone to deal with the problem and had engineering dump a ton of air freshener into the air supply. It helped a bit. Anyway we had arrived on the far side of the high energy nebulae, looking towards the Confederation it filled the entire region of space with a haze of yellow and white. Our destination turned out to be an asteroid, 600km long by about 200km wide and roughly egg shaped. There was a modular base clamped onto one side. Basically a huge multi deck pod that could be carried as a single load by a pallet tug or fast transport. The pod was sitting 30m above the surface of the asteroid on six thick alloy legs and gleamed with lights and active sensors. Oddly for such a secret and important base I couldn’t detect any fire control signals or the energy signatures of powered weapons. The place may have had a mass of missile and torpedo racks but no beams that were powered up. They were hailing us so I routed the comm request through to the main lounge, the screen lit up with the faces of a handful of civilians standing behind and either side of a naval commander. I listened in but otherwise left the talking to the Admirals man and the base commander while I dealt with other problems. Damage control could find nothing wrong. Every mechanical system reported that the jump had been absolutely normal, within parameters in every way. But every biological on board, me, my Links, the passengers, every one of us had somehow experienced over three minutes of, what, I didn’t know. Agincourt disengaged from the clamps and powered away to take up a position 500km from the base, two pairs of interceptors launched as well and swung out towards the deep. Looks like the military had things under control which was good because I didn’t. I started a full set of diagnostics, something had gone wrong and not knowing what bothered me, the fact that we had somehow spent three minutes inside a jump, aware of it and having things happen around us was a first for me. For anyone to be honest, I had never heard of such a thing and I spent years making Procyon jumps back when we last had them. Was it this new, dark, drive. Something seriously wrong was going on and it wasn’t just unknown aliens appearing in my ship or some monster contact moving around in sub space. Maybe after so long without using one of the crazy drives, coming in cold to another one was affecting me, but along with everything else I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. # My comm chimed, a call flag came up, Agincourt was calling. I answered to be greeted by the deep gravel chugging voice of Captain Corbee. “I’ve been talking to the base commander, things seem secure here but the missing ships never arrived. He wants us to go looking for them. Now given that they could be anywhere along a 40 light year line between here and the closest Hypercom relay that would take me 50 hours going out and another 50 getting back and I don’t have the room to pick up too many survivors.” I had a feeling I knew where this was going. “You on the other can micro jump up and down and cover the whole area in a few hours, you have room to spare if you find any survivors and you can carry half the fighters with you for defence in case you run into any problems,” Yep, saw that coming. That was a long jump coming in, 51 hours to radiate the heat from the drive and I’m a navigator remember. I can jump up and down to cover the entire line but unless I can spot them on passives I would need to make hundreds of micro jumps to cover the full area. Radiator time would be seconds but I would still be gone for about 20 hours. “Better you gone for 20 hours than Agincourt gone for a hundred.” I was looking at his image on the comm and I saw him rub the backs of his arms absentmindedly, I knew that sign from the war, the hair on his arms was standing up. “I would rather you did this while I stay close, no solid reason, just a feeling. Something is wrong here and I don’t know what.” The last time I saw him doing that and having that feeling had been just before we bumped into a pair of Orc battleships, he had had the same feelings about a few other surprises over the years so I trusted his instinct here. Besides, I was feeling something was wrong. Or maybe I was still a bit spooked by the crazy jump. Fine I’ll do it. I’ll take two of the assault boats and one marine platoon, oh and the strike commandos as well. If I find the ships or any problems I want to be able to handle them since your big shiny cruiser is going to be too far away to come rescue me. “Fine. I’ll let them know they are attached to you for the time being. Just in case you need rescuing.” I grinned as I spoke and a genuine smile lit up his face. Damn I missed this from the old days, we were a damn fine team back then. In a way it was good to be working together again. In the meantime let’s get the passengers off and the cargo transferred. Then, I don’t know about you but I want to find out what her fiery pits is going on here to create all this trouble. “Dammed straight I do, I’ll meet you over there when you are done and we can do the tour.” He smiled again and cut the comm. Now we were working together again I realised how much I had missed him, missed all of them really. Running solo and talking to myself or all of my selves just wasn’t the same. # Unloading went quickly, I took up station 200km off the base, the large cargo pods were just floated out of my cargo door and flown across by the grav equipped cargo drones. The passengers went over in the assault shuttles and the marines and commandos shifted all of the small stuff into and out of the shuttles without needing any orders from me. It’s always nice to have competent people helping out. Some of the Scientists needed to be given stims to get them moving after the jump had left them on the deck, Shras and her orcs took a quarter hour to recover but were then back to whatever was normal for an Orc. But between my medic drone and the marines corpseman we had every passenger more or less able to walk to the shuttles. The base had no fighter cradles or any sort of facilities for combat craft but it had a fairly large docking bay. So half the fighters stayed with me while the rest flew themselves across to the base. They would have to keep some out on patrol since they couldn’t dock all of them at once but I very much doubted that they would not be running security patrols. Anyway that was a problem for the group commander and the base commander not me. The base Hypercom was sent over, the spare relay was left in my cargo hold since if we needed it I was the only one that could carry the bulky unit. It took a number of trips to get everything moved over so it was ten hours before I could catch a lift over to the base and see for myself what was going on. As it turned out everyone was asking to be briefed and to see what the base was doing, the base commander had been trying to deal with over a hundred new arrivals, a mass of cargo, a mixed fighter wind and a load of annoying egg heads and his local net was flooded with requests for the guided tour. So he put out a flag saying, “anyone who wanted a tour would have one tomorrow now please go away I’m busy.” I had the feeling that he was going to regret that promise. # With everything unloaded apart from the fighters that were to stay with me I caught a lift over to the base on one of the shuttles to have a look round and see what all the fuss was about. Outside it was a huge slab of alloy, an oblong block set with hatches. Not much to look at, it was held onto the surface by six paired legs, one of which was noticeably thicker than the others. Probably a transport shaft. The shuttle didn’t enter the docking bay, instead it came done beside the base and clamped itself on at a personnel access lock. I glanced at the marine crew chief who was sitting across from me with a question on my face. “Hangers are full, the fighters and the other two shuttles filled it. We are going to be docking in your shuttle bay until something changes.” Not a problem, I’ll get one of me to sort you some rooms in the forward hull. The marine had obviously dealt with Links before because most people would start looking at me strangely if I said something like that in public. Anyway we had arrived so I disembarked and found myself on level two of four. Inside it was much like being in any ship of space platform, grey, more grey and even more grey. This area I was in was also dusty and looked unused, or at least unused until recently given that half my passengers must have arrived here. Where to go, oh hey, the signs and pop ups aren’t classified or if they were I had enough clearance to see them. Right let’s have a map then. Four decks, the upper two were quarters and a lot of recreation areas. Enough cabins for over 500 people if they were doubling up , several lounges, a gym, a grav ball court, a bar, a library. This place was a very nice duty station even given you would be stuck here for years. Deck three was a load of labs and research areas, a medical centre, actually a very large medical centre given the size of the base. A command room, some civilian long duration fusion plants. Deck four was storage, lots and lots of storage. Enough supplies to keep the whole base for a year or two but glancing at the stock listing this place had never been close to full crew capacity. There were emergency food packs down there that dated from before the war. I was on deck two port side amidships. The main lounges and open areas were forward so I walked that way. Yes I know it’s a base not a ship but it’s fleet, unless it’s on a planet its forward and aft and port and starboard. Mind you I’ve met more than a few who talk like that on the planets as well. I walked into the large open area and found an argument going on, a very loud argument. “This is not good. You will move the dgrpshgm to other rooms. We will not share space with them.” This was the Orc Vraan and whatever that word had been it didn’t translate but since he was pointing at the other Orc Shras and he was spitting as he talked I guess it wasn’t polite.” She was hissing right back. “Nor will I live in a wsjfegk deslrmdgysp lair like a prsfomkl.” The translator was having a hard time both with the words and the fact that both Orcs were grinding their teeth as they spoke. If this were a down port tavern I would be picking up my drink and looking for a quiet corner for when the fighting started. Between them was one hapless and fairly nervous science type who was looking as if he deeply regretting trying to talk to them in the first place. “We don’t have any spare rooms on deck one, we live there. The rooms on two have been allocated to the new arrivals, it’s the only spare quarters we have.” Shras let out a loud hissing kind of roar, the air was actually whistling between her fangs and tusks. The other one, Vraan, went for a weapon only to end up grabbing his empty hip then he raised his fists and I noticed the gleam of some sort of metal appearing from under his thick blunt fingernails. “ENOUGH.” The base commander had arrived. “What is the problem here?” Both Orcs started snarling at the same time and he shouted them down again then pointed at Vraan. “What is the problem here?” The Orc turned to face the officer. “My warriors will not sleep in the same hall as these.” He gnashed his tusks and fangs together. “Worthless dgrpshgm.” The man looked puzzled, the translator was having real problems with some of the words the Orcs were snarling at each other. “I don’t understand, that word you said, what was it?” “Dgrpshgm. Human filth, it means, means worthless dogs who have no blood of. . . No blood of any worth.” Not being an expert on Orcs I’m not sure but I thought he was going to say something else there and suddenly stopped himself. Shras jumped in on that one. “My oath kin and I will not stay with these fanatical animals, they have enough blood on their hands, I would not add mine to it when they murder us in the night like the cowards they are.” Wow. That was like an invite to step outside during a drunken argument. Both groups of Orcs surged forward fists raised. “STOP”. That shout was deafeningly loud and came from every speaker and comm unit in the room. The Staff captain had arrived as well and clearly had some sort of systems override because he had just used it. Both groups of Orcs hesitated then noticed a squad of marines still wearing their armour and both squads of security troopers forming ranks behind the staff captain. “That will be enough of that, Shras, you and yours will return to the freighter and sleep there. You can return to the base when you are needed. Vraan you and your chosen will remain on the base where it will benefit from your protection.” Shras was spitting but Vraan looked like he was grinning or maybe still snarling, who can tell. Anyway Shras and her small group stomped off while the larger Orc group formed around their leader looking happy. If they were human I would have said someone had just won a fight and was about to get his back slapped a lot. Yet more seriously weird stuff going on here. Hey wait a damn minute. Sleep on the freighter. As in Dreadnaught! I didn’t give them permission to stay on my ship. Who the fiery pits was this staff jerk allowing Orcs to stay on my ship. Just as I started towards him he rapidly left again and the Orcs were spreading out to claim the lounge. Judging by the way they started dragging the chairs round into a big circle and moving the tables to block off the area this was about to become Orcs only. This was going to be a long job. Just then a note popped up on the base net. Apparently enough people had been asking about the promised tour that the base commander had told the chief egg head to arrange it and he had just put up a note, all interested parties meet at the main assembly area between the docking bay and the offices at 09:30 standard tomorrow. I made a note for one of me to remind me about that one, I wanted to find out what was going on around her. Then I noticed several of the officers from Agincourt walk in and stop dead when they saw thirty odd Orcs fortifying the lounge. I waved and they came over to me. “Captain, whats going on here, the Orcs taking over the place?” I pinged the local net to find out where everyone was. Looks like it, the marines seem to have claimed the bar, the scientists are all clustered in the canteen probably talking shop and the fighter crews are all down in the docking bay. I think we are out of luck for anywhere on base. A thought struck me. Hey why not come to Dreadnaught, plenty of room and I’ll grab some drink from here. My guests. “Sounds good, we’ll check with captain Corbee and if he’s happy we’ll be over a bit later if that’s OK.” Fine by me, see you later. I wandered across the open area and found myself on the other side where a noise screen separated the bar from the lounge proper. Wandering in I found a few marines out of armour and one bar tender drone. I nodded at the marines and walked over to the drone to see what he had. OK, this place was well stocked and some of it, bloody hell. Some of this stuff had been here in climate controlled storage for 30 years. Some dammed fine vintages and no one had touched them. 12,000 credits poorer but with a drone bringing a truly awesome stack of crates down to the passenger airlock as I wandered that way to catch a lift back to Dreadnaught. The store here was incredible, all that drink and a bunch of tee total egg heads and even better it was charging military mess prices that hadn’t been updated since the place was built. I made a note to make a serious dent in the stocks here before I left. At the docking port the shuttle was gone, I checked the net and it was on Dreadnaught, what was it doing. Crap, those bloody Orcs! I linked to Dreadnaught and found them on internal sensors and cameras. They were setting up in the same extended bunk room they had been given before, on the lower deck. That was fine; it would keep them out of the way. The upper deck and lounge were clear so I told a few drones to tidy up and move the comfortable chairs round into a sociable circle. # As it turned out Corbee was happy to have any of his crew listed for shore leave come over and visit Dreadnaught rather than end up in the middle of a pack of stroppy Orcs. I didn’t mention I had 10 of them downstairs and since they kept quiet and out of my way no one noticed. I had plenty to drink though I may have had a drone take the really good stuff aft and store it in my personal dining room, still no one was complaining about quality or quantity. Some of the officers I had known from the war and it was good to meet them again at a social event, the non link crew seemed like a fun bunch of humans and there may have been a few drinking games and other stupid stuff going on. We all had a fair amount to drink and were well on the way to being drunk when they had to leave. They staggered to the shuttle for the lift back to Agincourt, I spotted a few of them activating bio ware implants designed to remove toxins from the blood as they went. They were drunk now but would be sober enough to pass muster by the time they got back to their ship. Bastards. Me, I was a civilian, I didn’t have the fancy bioware, I was drunk and I wandered back to my room to sleep. Maybe it was the drink, maybe whoever was watching had wandered off but there were no giant eyes in my dreams for a change. # The following morning I was dreaming about a huge insect that was flying next to me and shaking the bed. It kept buzzing and buzzing and shaking the bed. I waved my arms around to swat it way but it was getting louder and the bed rocking was getting strong enough to make me feel like throwing up. Then one of my voices started talking to me. Captain, it is 08:23. You wanted to attend the tour of the base at 09:30. What, crap. Why didn’t someone wake me? Then I noticed the display by the bed, they had been trying to wake me since 07:45. I had a reasonable memory of last night so I couldn’t have been that drunk. All right, all right I’m up. I swung out of the bed and nearly fell over. OK maybe I was that drunk. Shower, energy bar, coffee and a blood detox pack asap. I’m not sure which of me was running the shower but they deserved a slow painful death. The nice warm water dropped thirty degrees just as I got comfortable. Still I was awake, sober and dressed as I walked along the connecting corridor to the upper hanger bay to catch a lift with the shuttle and I still had 12 minutes to go. I was sipping coffee on the flight and felt almost human by the time I got to the assembly area. Which was full. Every single one of the newly arrived scientists, Captain Corbee and a few of his people, the Orc Shras and two of her, well by the way they stood behind her and covered every angle or approach I would say bodyguards. I wasn’t the last to arrive which was nice. The egg head giving the tour didn’t arrive until 09:38. He was your standard egg head, sandy hair, weak eyes, average height, strong enough to lift a data pad in each arm. Maybe they cloned them somewhere, did they do special offers for big projects, buy a dozen scientist clones and get one free. His name was Jhaks and he was a Professor of, several something’s that all started with the word Xeno, I could guess what Xenobioarchaeology was but the others, xenopaleontology, xenopathology or xenobioinformatics. Well they sounded important, he had a lot of them and I was still drinking my first coffee of the day waiting for him to get going. I could look up what they were later if I could be bothered. He led us to a single directional transit tube, going down. It wasn’t big enough for everyone so half went down while the rest of us waited. Then the pod came back up and the rest of us piled it. The pod dropped and suddenly it seemed very warm, the air close, almost suffocating. I could feel someone watching me again and a thought sprang up in my mind. Welcome to the fiery pits. Chapter Eight Confederation Civilian Star ship Dreadnaught. Asteroid DX-3947664-71 Delta Three research base Alien tunnels 28km below the surface 09:42 Terran Standard Time. Saturday. The transport pod came out in a stone cave of some sort, the tube punched down through the ceiling in the middle of a chamber that was about 30 metres across. The walls of the chamber were piled high with all sizes and colours of containers, shipping pods and boxes. I could see two tunnels leading out, both about five metres wide and high. The stone looked, melted somehow, as if it had run like water and then reset. Some sort of plasma cutting maybe. The professor was standing waiting for us so I wandered over to join the crowd. He was already talking. “Once we knew there were artificial chambers inside the asteroid we used deep penetration probes to map some of the highest chambers, the base was positioned here directly above the high point of this group. Is everyone here now? Right lets be moving on then.” He turned and started walking down one of the tunnels still talking as he went. “Once we had access to the tunnels and could get some drones flying around in here to map everything we found a long line of caves. The first was some 400m across and 200m high, it connected to outside space by a collapsed tunnel that seems to have been smashed or torn open. The tunnel was about 100m wide. Each cave connects to the next which is about 50m larger in width and 20m higher and the connecting tunnel has slowly grown bigger as well. We dated the very first cave at a little over one hundred thousand years old; each larger cave is between three and five thousand years younger. The most recent cave is the one at the far end on the line and was seven thousand years old give or take a few hundred. It also connects to the outside but that tunnel seems to have been cut by the same plasma type high energy technology that formed the caves. Every cave is circular with a domed roof, the sides are always rounded and every cave has a wide grove carved into the floor all around the edge. They are somewhat doughnut shaped, a number of them even have higher ground in the centre. The line of caves curved deeper into the asteroid then the last few angled back toward the surface. Very strange. There are literally hundreds of miles of much smaller corridors such as the one we are walking alone, and thousands of rooms that connect to these corridors. We have identified four distinct groups and each group connects to one or two of the much larger caves. The groups don’t connect to each other, only the larger line of caves. The first group of corridors and rooms is the oldest, seventy thousand years old and inhabited for no more than a few hundred years. The second and largest group dates from Sixty to fifty eight thousand years ago and contains 90% of the rooms and corridors. The third group date from some forty thousand years ago and is small, no more than two hundred rooms and fully explored, it was here we found all the Cyclops artifacts. It is the most recent set of rooms and corridors that is of most interest. Oh we keep exploring the rest, we have a once a week exploration when a team of us visits a mapped but not yet explored few rooms or corridor. We investigate every room very carefully which is why we only do two or three new rooms a week. Ten years of exploring and we are still now where near finished.” He waved at the rock walls around him as we walked. Each of the four groups of rooms was cut with a different technology and the corridors and rooms are of different sizes and proportions. Group one for example has extremely low ceilings in both the corridors and rooms. Our taller people have to bend slightly everywhere in that area, not a popular place to explore.” Every person in the group had questions and several had begun to ask them when the man pointed ahead of him, the corridor opened out into a much larger chamber or cave. He walked out of the corridor into the darkened room and gestured for the others to follow him then he activated the lights in the cave. “This is why we are here.” He lifted his hand to direct our attention toward the centre of the room but there was no need. Every face was already lifted to stare in shock and wonder. The centre of the chamber was filled with a great structure. Age seemed to radiate from it in waves, great support beams ran from the waist of the structure to the surrounding ground. Like a vast upright cylinder but not solid, no, it was more like a lattice, a filigree. Layer inside layer inside layer. Cables as thick as a man’s chest ran from seemingly random points around the outer cylinder to snake across the ground to other structures half hidden in darkness around the walls of the kilometre wide cave. The metal it was made of gleamed like bronze but was pitted with age, the highest parts of the lattice looked as if they had been blackened by fire or terrible energies. More than a few started toward the device to get a closer look before they were stopped by a shout. “STOP. The device still has a residual charge from our last series of tests; it will be at least 30 hours before it is safe to get close to it. That stopped everyone and we reformed in a group around the professor again. “This cave is twenty eight thousand years old give or take a few hundred years, and is the seventeenth cave in the line,. The device is about eight thousand years old. It still has power, we activated it several times.” “Unbelievable. Eight thousand years.” Who the hell made it? “Actually the Orcs did.” “What! You’re joking. Impossible.” The chorus of voices overlapped each other. Fuck me. Orcs. Better and better Shras interrupted. “Professor that is not possible. Eight thousand years ago was the time of the Dark Lords and the wars of freedom. My people did not possess the technology to leave our world nor travel hundreds of light years to build this. You must be mistaken.” The translator made her sound puzzled thought I couldn’t read her expression. “We thought so as well which is why we checked very carefully a number of times. Our results were accurate. This cave was carved out of the asteroid using a form of high energy plasma twenty eight thousand years ago. This device is eight thousand years old. The materials it was made from are alloys containing trace elements that exactly match the materials used to make your armoured uniforms. It is possible that another world has the exact same proportions of exactly those trace elements using exactly the same manufacturing processes. It’s a big verse after all. But while the technology is far beyond anything you or for that matter we have, the metals are of Orc manufacture. Besides that we have more than two hundred mummified Orc bodies we found here.” Shras was not going to give up this argument easily. “This cannot be possible, we developed space flight only a thousand years ago. Yes we have been able to manufacture those metal alloys for ten thousand years but my people could not have come here. Certainly we had no technology twenty eight thousand years ago to have created this place. My people are more advanced now than we have never been and yet humans are better at technology. Can you build this, whatever it is, that it still works after so many years?” She was as stubborn as an Orc after all. “I doubt anything we Terrans’ could build would still be powered and working after so many thousands of years. But this is made of an alloy we have matched to Orc manufacture and this place was staffed by Orcs who all died here when the life support failed, the entire place went to vacuum, your people all died of suffocation and exposure to micro pressure. Though we found no evidence of any damage to the structure to explain why they all died. However this is not the only such cave or the only machine. There are nineteen of these caves all carved between twenty eight and a hundred thousand years ago. Six caves have the remains of some unknown device but they were all destroyed by some tremendous energy release, or explosions of some type. We had to dig our way into several of the caves.” Professor Jhaks paused to draw a breath. “In addition to the Orcs we also have the remains of four other species, three of which we have never come across before and one of which we are identifying only by some badly decayed technological items or faint DNA trace. Three of those five were not humanoid, we have never encountered anything like them sentient or otherwise. But they were here at some point over the last hundred thousand years. And we have no idea why.” Everyone interrupted with questions. “Five alien races. Why is this secret? Show us. Can we see them? Tell me more. I should have been told. Thirty years this has been secret, a disgrace.” Again the scientists from the rescue mission all talked at once, several raising their voices to make themselves heard above the others. The professor waved his hands at us like he was trying to calm the mob. “Please, gentle beings, please. You will be able to see everything now you are here. We have been looking at this puzzle for ten years. Fresh eyes are most welcome. If you like I can take you to our main research area and you can see the bodies and artifacts we have collected.” Oddly enough we liked and after a promise that we could all come back and play with the huge device to our hearts content when it was safe to do so we followed along behind him through the stone corridors and back to the transit cars which sped up to the lift up to the base. # Back on the base we all followed the egg head to deck three and to the area that my map said was the huge medical facility. It was but not in the way I was thinking. We entered the area to find a small medical area with a pair of medic drones on one side and a huge laboratory on the other side. The lab was filled with work areas, several odd looking medical drones and loads of stasis booths with transparent lids. The professor waved us all in and walked to the long line of upright stasis pods before turning to talk to us from beside the first pod. “The first and oldest race were insectoid. In fact they most closely resemble a beetle between one and two meters in length and between fifty and seventy five centis tall. Eight legs, the back six were just for walking, the front pair had a series of fingers that allowed the manipulation of tools. This lot were all killed by some intense radiation burst. The half life was very short so it’s safe in that area now but it wiped them out completely. We have many examples of the surviving carapace and legs, they were exoskeletal. Nothing but trace remains of the internal organs though. The machine linked to their area is nothing but tiny pieces of melted alloy.” He pointed to the first few pods and we leaned forward for a better look, each contained the remains of one of the huge beetle like aliens, some complete, others separate parts. What they all had on common was the incredibly glossy sheen of the carapaces; they were like mother of pearl or something similar. After a few minutes of us staring he led us along the line of pods to another set that contained what looked like balls of slime. “The second race were even more strange. They were morphic to a degree, five to twelve meters across, giant blobs really, that could exude tentacles. They also seemed to float though we don’t know if they did that naturally or had some way to neutralise the asteroids gravity without using the generators that we use. They could change from blobs to long thin forms, we think they slept by doing that. We found several hundred shafts driven into walls, floors and ceilings that were about a meter and a half wide and thirty to fifty meters deep. Nothing in them, just empty shafts. They suffered significant casualties at one point, about the time the first machine in their area was destroyed by an energy surge of unknown type. We think about a thousand of them died then. The survivors grew quickly in numbers and built another machine. This one was destroyed about three hundred years after the first machine along with between seven and eight thousand of this type. Only a few hundred survived that attack and they tried to build a third machine but didn’t get further than building bits of the casing before they all died. We think the last lot basically starved or lost life support as they grew fewer in number over about two hundred years. They kept trying to build the machine though, the last few seem to have died still working on it.” Something he had just said caught my ear and Corbee noticed it as well as we both interrupted at the same time, I let him ask the question. “You mentioned an attack Professor?” Yes yes, all in good time, let me finish please.” He walked to the back of the room where a third group of stasis pods were set along the whole back wall. “The third race were the Cyclops, the same ones that built the ruins on Aklemaar three and the moon of Sigma Polaris eight. We have identified the remains and numerous artefacts and have positively linked the ones we found here to the ones we found in confederation space. Interestingly the ones here date from just after the destruction of the Sigma Polaris moon, they may have been survivors of that attack since we found some writing and art that may represent the destruction. Anyway there were about fifteen hundred of them along with a vast store of artefacts, very little in the way of supplies though which supports the theory that they had fled the destruction of the moon base.” I remembered the reports everywhere when the scouts found the Sigma Polaris system, I was young at the time but once they found the remains of the shattered moon in orbit around the third gas giant and the remains of a space going race. For about a year the nets had been full of the news. I had seen Tri D vids of the damage on the moon, craters hundreds of kilometres across, great cracks in the mantle that went down a thousand km or more. We found a few small outposts or bases that were left after the destruction. Ruins and fragments of what could have been a whole civilisation. The egg heads at the time even said the moon had an atmosphere before whatever happened but what was left afterwards was wisps of gas, less than Mars. I remember seeing a report from some military analysts that made headlines for a while. They analysed the damage and said that the whole thing had come from some sort of immensely powerful ships that had fired down from orbit. Gigaton yield anti matter warheads, some sort of pre fusion state plasma weapons far in advance of anything we had. For a while there had been something close to panic as the kind of power that had all but shattered an entire moon was reported again and again and everyone was thinking just what we could do to defend Earth. Basically nothing which is why we had an almost panic. But it had happened forty thousand years ago, no one had ever seen any trace of the world killers and other news made the headlines, some interplanetary scandal or other, some hype celeb doing something, the normal sort of crap. So the Cyclops became a historic foot note, a market for artifacts sprang up among collectors and life went back to normal. Something to cover in history classes, the strange mummified remains of four foot high humanoids, as wide as they were tall and each with a single huge eye covering the front of their faces, nostrils were below the ears either side and they had a sucking prehensile tongue under the chin. But basically they were short stocky figures with a face that was mostly one huge eyeball. Darwin laughing his arse off. The professor was still talking. “Anyway they were cannibalising their own technology to build yet another machine, they even seem to have stripped parts from their life support. They and their machine were also destroyed in an attack. We have bodies and many artifacts and since we already knew about them we have an idea about their technology and writing. If they hadn’t all been killed by an attack they would have died off slowly anyway.” He gave us a few minutes to stare at the mummified Cyclops bodies before leading us to the last line of stasis pods on the next wall. “Now the most recent beings here were the Orcs. As I have already explained they built the machine I showed you downstairs, they seem to have got it to work as well though we have only a limited idea what it does. We think it is a transportation device since it reaches into subspace and beyond into what we are calling C Space. It is the results of the original team’s research here and the data we have studied from our own tests that led to the new Procyon drive that bought you here. There is some evidence of fighting but the vast majority of the Orcs were suffocated, as I said we have no idea why their life support failed. It was in working order when we tested it. For some reason some of them started fighting the others and the life support shut down.” Shras had a strange look on her face, well either that or she needed to find a rest room. “How long ago professor, how long ago did they die?” “Well about Seventy eight hundred years ago, plus or minus fifty. Why, is it important?” “Seven thousand eight hundred and thirty two years ago?” The professor was puzzled but started to get the idea this Orc knew something. “Around that date, yes. Why exactly is that significant?” “It is not something we talk about.” For a human that would have sounded abrupt and the end of a conversation, oddly the translator usually worked very well with tonal differences. Or perhaps Shras was as unwilling to discuss the matter as she sounded. “If this is significant to our research here I would like to know what you are talking about. What exactly happened in that year?” “We do not talk about it professor, seldom amongst ourselves and never with strangers!” “Hrumph. Very well, for the present I’ll leave it be. Now where was I, ah yes. That covers the four races that were building the machines. The fifth and last race is very strange. We have no idea what they looked like; all we have are traces of their technology.” He led us back toward the front of the room where a set of smaller stasis pods were sitting on the floor or on desks. I glanced into the transparent tops of a few pods as I walked past them, bits of corroded metal of some sort, a few patches of what looked like giant scales. One held what looked like a metal belt with metal boxes or pouches. It almost looked like an alloy web belt but it was big enough to go round two of me, at the shoulders. The professor had stopped and was talking again. “They seemed to use a mix of organic and non organic technology as we have the decayed remains of some sort of armour, belts and harnesses and a number of weapons like rifles. We also have a lot of organic trace; we think they used biological environmental suits of some sort since the trace we found is always like big sacks. What they were we have no idea since we have very little trace of them whatsoever, their DNA seems to have decayed extremely fast. Either some natural condition we have not encountered before or some sort of created effect, possibly a self destruct after death to prevent their organic technology being captured and it also worked on the beings wearing the tech. Still they apparently attacked this place twice, killing every being they could find and smashing the machines that were being built.” Corbee interrupted a second before I could. “You said this fifth race attacked twice but you also said the blobs, the Cyclops and the Orcs had been attacked?” “Ah no. The morphics and the Cyclops were attacked by the fifth race, from what we can see the fighting was between the Orcs and then only a small group showed any sort of combat injury. We think that for some reason about a sixth of the Orcs died at the hands of the rest, as to why, well that’s another question entirely. We have nothing but wild theories as to why, four different species came here to use the tunnels and caves here to build unknown machines. What little we have been able to identify of the destroy machines indicates they had a somewhat similar function, always to do with subspace. But several were communicators much like our Hypercom while several seemed to be transportation and one may have been a weapon. It’s very strange but we love a good challenge here.” Someone towards the back of the group asked a question. “Does the admiral and fleet Intel know all of this?” “What, well yes, we send detailed reports with every ship that brings us supplies. The admiral takes a keen interest in our work here and we keep him fully informed.” The same voice then quietly made another comment. “Maybe that’s why the Orcs are with us.” Didn’t see who said it or who he was talking to but I really agreed with them. Everything that was happening here and we get sent with a whole load of Orc soldiers and some sort of Orc scientist. Coincidence, not bloody likely. Black ops at their finest. Bend over boys and girls and drop your shorts. The group began to break up, smaller knots of egg heads from the new arrivals mixing with the old crew and talking shop. I had a lot to think about but there was another question in my mind so I walked between the groups looking to catch the professor alone. Chapter Nine Professor Jhaks can I ask you a question? “Hum, what, yes of course captain, ask away.” You mentioned that you had been exploring the caves for ten years, I thought this base had been here for thirty years. “Ah yes. Well the base itself has been here since just before the end of the war but we have been here for ten years now, its going to take at least another decade to explore all of the rooms and corridors here and we are still finding new artefacts. It’s very exciting.” You said you, do you mean yourself? “Oh no, all of us. The whole research team arrived here together ten years ago. The original base had a big team, thirty or so people but when the budget was cut it was reduced to just a handful. They were doing the research here for some fifteen years then when the base was re budgeted they all left. By the time we got here all five of them were gone.” Wait, five. All five of them. There were five people working here, just five scientists? “Yes, just five researchers and the standby staff, we came in with a complete research team and a new base staff and the old staff left on our ship. But the original researchers were gone when we got here. No idea who they were though, we had a lot of data about the place and their findings but every data file about them was wiped. Something to do with security or some such. All the archaeological research was left but anything to do with the alien technology was gone so we had to start from scratch there. Thing is they were far in advance of where we are even after ten years, I would love to meet them and have a chat, I know they were here for a long time but the volume of data and the level of understanding they seemed to have is incredible, even going from the scraps we have left after the data was erased.” Five scientists, anyone want to bet good money it was the same five from the first Procyon project or the people responsible for starting the second one. Whoever they were they must have been brilliant, and very reclusive. Maybe they were ugly. Or maybe they were up to their chins in the darkness that seemed to be everywhere now that I was looking for it. Oh one more thing professor. This base was set up at the end of the war, how did we know it was here. A thousand lights from home, no one has scouted out this far, even now we are barely scouting systems four hundred lights from earth. How did we find this place. “You know I have no idea, funny that. Perhaps someone detected a signal from the place propagating at sub light speeds. Radio waves for example from many thousands of years ago.” Yea, that might be it. Thanks professor. Radio waves, right. # I looked around, just a gaggle of talking egg heads and me. I thought I saw Corbee walk out a few minutes ago talking on his comm. Well that was it for the guided tour, I could wander round the rest of the base but to be honest when you’ve seen one fleet base you’ve seen them all. So I wandered along to the command centre to see if I could be nosey. As I reached the hatch it was open and I could hear voices inside, the staff captain, the commander and captain Corbee. Corbee was talking. “My ship’s sensor office tells me Agincourt is detecting several anomalous signals in this area, given that we have two missing ships and enough alien battle zones here to fill a museum I intend to act as if there is a threat of imminent attack and deploy accordingly.” The commander answered, the staff captain was leaning against a console listening to the exchange. “My sensors haven’t detected anything out of the ordinary and this place is a museum. The last hostile action here was thousands of years ago. I do not want my base turned upside down because your fancy ship is seeing ghosts and shadows.” My Ship! My ship, commander has the very latest fleet spec sensors, the only thing with better sensors is a recon scout. This base is what, over 30 years old. When were your sensors last upgraded?” The commander hesitated as he thought about that one. “Well we still have the original.” “Exactly, 30 years out of date. Agincourt is seeing these signals and I intend to investigate them.” The staff captain decided to join it at that point, he stood up and walked toward the other two. There was something about the way he was walking, like his legs. No that was silly, he was probably packed full of intel bioware. “Captain. I see no reason for concern, this facility is unknown, it’s location is secret. No one is going to attack us and a few vague signals are hardly a threat. I don’t see any point in racing around with weapons out looking for imaginary enemies. In fact let me be clear. I order you to stand down; there will be no hunting ghosts and nothing more than the current patrols.” The staff captain looked smug but I knew Corbee and what was coming was going to sting. “Can you see this rank insignia, Captain? This one, the one that says fleet captain, not junior captain, not senior captain. Fleet captain. I answer to commodores and admirals not a mere staff captain whose idea of hazardous duty is polishing his admirals shoes with the wrong polish.” Ouch, that one will leave a bruise. “I am in charge here, I am the Admirals representative here!” Wonder boys voice went up a few steps when he got angry or flustered, a few more steps and he would be soprano. “Exactly, his representative. Your rank is senior captain and as a staff officer you get a one step increase in authority for operations within your responsibility. So inside this base and dealing with base matters we are of equal rank. You can give me suggestions but not orders. Outside these walls though you are a rank lower and I am in charge. Agincourt, the fleet fighter group, the marines, Dreadnaught. Every last one of them falls under my unquestioned command. As far as the space assets of this operation go I answer to a direct order via Hypercom from the admiral, my standing orders and my own understanding of the situation. If you have a problem with that, staff captain, I suggest you call the admiral and ask him to hold your hand. Oh you can’t, the base engineers reported that the Hypercom would take the better part of a week to balance and tune the hyperspace generators and transmission / reception array so unless you have a ship to get to the closest relay and send a message you are buggered. You could submit a request to the fleet elements of the force to have a message carried to the relay for onward transmission. As I am in command of those elements I will give your request due consideration and see if I can fit it into the operations schedule.” I think the commander and a few of the staff in the room were trying hard not to laugh, at least one was sniggering into her hands while ducked below a console out of sight of the staff remf. Who was turning the same shade as his boss did when angry. Maybe they were related or some such. I decided it was time for me to find out what was going on. Morning everyone, am I missing something? Every face in the room turned toward me. The staff remf squeaked “This is none of your concern.” Corbee on the other had was enjoying himself. “Ah captain Welut, I have task for you and your fighter group.” I had a fighter group now, or was he talking about the craft docked in Dreadnaught because there was no room on the base. Always happy to help fleet. I smiled, well grinned really, just to rub it in. Corbee waved me toward a console and pointed at it as I got close enough to see it. “Agincourt is detecting three different anomalies, I ordered a full duration passive sensor sweep this morning and we got three odd results. This one is deep within the asteroid, about 10km below the deepest level of caves and tunnels. It’s a weak but stable signal, unknown energy type, something well up in the gamma range but nothing we have seen before. The second is coming from here on the surface, 90km from the base. We are getting backscatter, its mono directional and pointing out into the outer ring. It’s weak, intermittent and digital at the top of the radio range. The third may be an active sensor sweep coming from the middle gas giant, its round our side of the system and only 3 AU away. I’m sending marines to check the surface signal; I’ll take Agincourt to check the gas giant signal. I want you take your onboard fighters to the distant ring signal. You can warp out there in a few minutes, the interceptors are fast sub light but would take several hours and I don’t want them that far away.” I looked at the display, the gas giant we were in orbit around was huge and its rings were light hours wide. With the Procyon drive still cooling I didn’t want to risk a hot jump but I still had my old warp drive. I wasn’t a warship but with half the fighter group on board and Battleship shields I was fairly confident I could safely run away and if push came to shove I would risk a short jump hot or not. I nodded. Not a problem, when do you want me gone. “Within the hour if it’s convenient.” Consider me gone, oh can you alert the marines so I can pinch that platoon early. I’ll take them along as well. “Done.” I smiled at the commander, gave the staff officer a condescending grin and walked out of the room. Good to see everyone was working well together. Still what Corbee had said was true. He was my chain of command, if it came to it and without a direct order from the admiral I could ignore the staff captain if I wanted to, Funny thing, I had the suspicion if he started giving me orders I would be ignoring them on general principle. # Twenty minutes later and I was ready to go. Hanger bay nine had ten interceptors all buttoned up and ready for action. Hanger bay ten held four heavy fighters. Two marine assault shuttles in the titan shuttle bay and one marine platoon suited up and ready to kill stuff. Two squads in one shuttle and one in the other. Just as I was about to move out I got a hail from another shuttle which was inbound with one squad of commandos under the command of Squad leader Estell Hasren. I opened a comm line to ask what was up. “Captain Corbee said my squad was to be attached to Dreadnaught for a recon mission. I thought it wasn’t till tomorrow.” Oh, wrong recon mission. But since you’re out here anyway come aboard, the more the merrier. The shuttle docked just long enough for the commando’s to transfer over and then headed back to the base. I spun up my old fashioned warp drive and pushed up past light speed heading for the unknown signal. # I dropped us out of warp half a million km from the signal source and called down to the hanger bays for a pair of interceptors to be sent to scout the area first. They were ready and waiting as two of the sleek craft launched within seconds of me asking. Both came out of the launch tubes and made tight turns to bring them parallel to my heading. Then they flashed past me and away into the dark. With their speed it took only a minute to get close enough to scan the target and they both reported the area was clear or hostile contacts. So with them on watch I started moving closer while both assault shuttles launched and took up stations above me. I slowed and stopped at 50,000km then used ever passive sensor I had to look at the point the signal was coming from. It was a rock, 10km long and about 3km wide, a battered looking oval floating at the very edge of the dust ring. It was too small to be a shepard moon, and it was too big to have been there long. Either the moons or the gas giant would pull it way eventually so it couldn’t have been there more than a few thousand years. Passive was showing nothing so I went active and lashed the rock with full power. I got a mass of returns from just below the surface, hard metal returns of some sort that bounced my sensors where the rock allowed some penetration. The shuttles and fighters were getting my sensor feet so they could see what I did. The lead shuttle came on the comm. “OK I’m moving in for a looksee, fighters let's have some top cover just in case.” “On it.” Came the reply and four more interceptors and four heavies launched, then as soon as the launch tubes had recycled the last four interceptors leapt out into the dark. The shuttle slowly made its way closer, interceptors either side and be some way behind. Every sensor we had was staring at the rock waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. Then the shuttle was close enough for the marines to go external and fly the last 100km on their own. They set down on the end of the rock furthest from the sensor contact and on the far side then cautiously made their way around the rock until they reached the target. “Found it.” The lead marine was configured with a scout pod and light weapons and he was checking the area ahead of the squad as they advanced. “It’s just under the surface, very shallow. I’m detecting two power sources, both very weak and the signal to the base. Not detecting any active sensors or anything that shows as a weapon.” The squad leader cut in. “first squad hold and cover, second and third circle and lets have a look.” The marines moved in response to the orders and each squad split into pairs, one pair covered while the others moved up and examined the ground. “Hey this isn’t rock.” One marine stopped and bent down, not the most graceful of moves in all that armour. He poked the ground in front of him and a puff of dust rose around his hand, then before anyone could shout at him to not touch he pushed his hand into the ground and lifted a whole section of the surface in a huge cloud of fine dust. The squad leader started to say something then his comm went quiet. I suspected the marine was getting a private lecture on when not to touch unknown alien things in deep space in a sector a thousand lights from home and with unknown aliens fighting wars in the neighbourhood. After a few minutes of the marine platoons tech specialist checking everything they gave me an all clear and I came a bit closer then sent an engineering drone outside and over for a looksee. The marines had lifted several thin covers and revealed a pit in the surface of the rock, three metres deep and about ten across. Sitting at the bottom was a disc of some dull silvery alloy, slightly convex and with some sort of array at the centre. Three thin rods set in a triangular formation, some 3 centis thick and 10 centis apart. They were tall though, they must have almost touched the covers. I watched as the marine tech went down into the hole and took some contact readings, while I was watching I noticed the drone reposition itself as it drifted slightly. Which it shouldn’t, drift that is. We were in the exact orbital path of the rock and exactly positioned in relation to it, the drone shouldn’t be drifting. Which was when I noticed a marine rotate himself slightly. Squad leader, are you detecting anything else over there, its just some of you seem to be drifting a bit. “Wait one. Anyone drifiting?” “Yep, I am. Same here. And me.” It turned out that those marines who were floating and trailing of the strange device were drifting slightly. Towards the rock. The tech popped up out of the hole and used his grav drives to move towards the three who had reported drift. “Picking up a weak grav field, localised. From inside the rock. Distributed, no focal point, about 0.02G. Ask me it’s a station keeping drive of some sort.” OK so that was the timeline out the airlock, if it was station keeping it could have been here forever. Marines, any way to get any samples of the device. “Negatory on that, it looks like its all one piece, we could maybe cut it lose and float the whole thing out if you want. Or blast it out?” Erm no that’s fine, get plenty of scans, the egg heads can come out and have a good look later. The marines spent another ten minutes scanning the device and the area then they called in the shuttle to pick them up then dock with me. That done we all turned away from the alien artifact and headed for deep space. Once we were well clear the fighters docked in the hangers and I warped back to the base. # By the time we got back to the base both other searchers had reported in. The marines on the surface had found some sort of device that looked exactly like the one we had found except that we found one and they found five of them in a circle of pits 800 metres across. Agincourt had also sent a message. They had closed on the contact then lost it as they came with a quarter million km. Then they detected it again 100,000km further away and deeper in the gas giants atmosphere. Then they lost it and found it twice more. Each time it was further away and deeper in the clouds that swirled around the gas giant. The last contact had been so deep that even with full shields Agincourt would be crushed like an empty plas drink can if they went down there. They were still there trying to follow the unknown on long range sensors but it was almost impossible due to interference from the layers of gunk in the atmosphere. They hadn’t gotten close enough to get any kind of solid scan of the unknown but it was clearly evading them which meant it had power and some form of controlling influence, either it was shy and didn’t want us seeing it, or, it was hostile and didn’t want us getting close enough to start shooting. Either way we were ordered to go on combat patrols and remain on standby alert status, combat imminent. That meant four interceptors out and on patrol, four more on 30 second launch and everything else on five minutes response. I guess the fighter crews would be sleeping in the cockpits or on the deck under the wings if this lasted for a long time. Me, I had this one easy. I could be sitting in the bath and command Dreadnaught through a battle. Not that I could shoot anyone and my best plan in a battle is leave quickly but I could do all that in the tub. So could the Link officers on Agincourt but as the image of Corbee bellowing orders from a bath popped into my head I laughed at how ridiculous that would be. We stayed on alert for two hours till Agincourt sent us word that the unknown had been detected one last time as it burst out of the far side of the gas giant and accelerated into warp directly away from her. The unknown was fairly slow, barely one light per four hours but Corbee didn’t want to follow an unknown enemy into unknown deep space and leave the base, and me, defenceless so he had aborted the pursuit and was on his way back. # With everyone back at the base we held a VR conference so everyone could stay on their ships. Each group reported what they had found. The base had already sent some scientists out to examine the alien devices on the asteroid, best guess so far was a combination of sensor dish and tight beam comm of some type. How it worked or who made it wasn’t even a guess, each unit seemed to be a solid block of some complex alloy, One of the egg heads said it had some similarities with the relics we had from the fifth race but they hadn’t had time for a detailed workup yet so it was just a feeling. That gave me a feeling too, a cold feeling in my stomach. The unknown fifth race, the ones who had attacked the asteroid at least twice before. Was it one of their ships that had been hiding in the asteroid belt? Were we about to get a visit? Apart from keeping a 4 bird combat patrol and another 4 on hot alert there wasn’t anything else we could do. The fighter pilots would be sleeping close enough to respond and launch fast if needed. The base commander said something about running evacuation drills for the scientists, they could go down into the tunnels deep below the surface which would be safer than the base. No one mentioned that twice before beings in those tunnels had been attacked by the fifth race, no point in having a bunch of panicking egg heads. I did notice the staff captain seemed a lot more nervous than the other military types, probably had never been in a situation this dangerous before, office arguments and bullying the enlisted data shufflers not really the same as facing a fairly hostile never before encountered alien species. Once the military types had finished making plans the meeting broke up. I sent a comm to Agincourt asking for the captain. He responded a few minutes later. “Dreadnaught, what’s up? Other than five alien races, strange artifacts, a device that may have been the source of the crazy drive, dead alien bodies everywhere and an unknown hostile hiding in the gas giant you mean. “Well yes, other than that lot, what’s up Kinja.” Dreadnaught is getting close to cooled down, by tomorrow I will be good to jump again. You want me to go looking for the missing ships or stay here, because if I’m going I take half the fighters with me. He thought about it for a minute. “Check when you are ready to jump but right now its more important to find the missing ships. I think we can spare you for a few hours. Don’t take too long though, no sightseeing.” Funny man. |