Earth Song: Etude to War (32 page)

Part IV

Chapter 32

April 19th, 534 AE (subjective)

Dervish Star system, Galactic Frontier

The Kaatan class starship dropped between the three stars, immersed in unimaginable forces surrounding them on all sides. The CIC was in silence as everyone watched in awe. Lilith had configured all the walls as displays, presenting the effect of the humans and Rasa floating unprotected through the maelstrom, instead of safely inside a powerfully shielded starship. They were flying through a battle between stars.

“Shields are approaching maximum dissipation,” Pip warned them.

“Standing by the tactical drive,” Lilith said, her voice cold and emotionless. She was the most like when they first met her when flying the ship in combat or danger. The more required of her as the ship’s mind, the less she had for her humanity.

Minu knew all too well how merciless her daughter could be when wrapped in the full throes of controlling the Kaatan. Minu glanced at Pip and saw the muscles working in his jaw. If Lilith was forced to abandon the station approach by using the tactical drive, he would be forced to again experience the timeless living hell he'd explained during his first trip through the nothingness with his implants still active.

“Prominence at five hundred kilometers, I'm attempting to avoid.”

The solar prominence was nearly as large as a planet, arching across their path towards the closing energy station and threatening to overload the already strained shields. As they'd planned, Aaron interfaced with his piloting controls and started working with Lilith to finesse their course around the prominence. For a minute they were navigating between thousand-kilometer thick filaments of star hot plasma. If any of them suddenly jumped to make contact against the ship's shields...

Then they were past and in the clear. Lilith began rapidly slowing as the station grew before them and its real scale became apparent. Lightning bolts of pure energy ricocheted between the filigree, collecting terawatts of power every second.

Now that they were through the danger, Pip was again working with his computer, studying the station intensely. The displays were highlighting and flashing as the station was examined until suddenly an area on one of the radial cylinders was enhanced to show a ring of docking bays. “We have our destination,” Lilith told them, and the Kaatan changed course.

“But what will we find inside?” Kal'at thought aloud.

* * *

The final approach to the station went without incident, further emphasizing the massiveness of their destination as they could see the dozen massive docking bays surrounding the hub, each easily big enough to accommodate three of the Kaatan class ships. The other two bays were visible but their interiors remained dark, providing no clue if there was anything hidden inside.

“The station's flight control has acknowledged our ID code,” Lilith told them. “We are automatically docking.” Invisible gravitic beams took hold of the pierced ball shape of the Kaatan and moved it gently into the brightly lit bay.

Numerous gantries and booms were retracted against the gleaming white walls, and as soon as they were past the outside wall the inside began to configure itself. In less than a minute a cradle had been constructed in which the ship nestled, safe and sound.

“That's handy,” Pip said as the ships drive systems began powering down.

“Atmosphere is established outside,” Aaron let them know. “No doors, must be forcefields.”

Minu got up from her station and looked around the room. “We know we're probably alone here, so let’s go out in force. Kal'at, leave a squad behind just to be safe.” She didn't want to say it, but leaving Lilith alone in the alien space station made her nervous, and she didn't know why.

A gangway was extended to the starboard port, another courtesy the station wordlessly provided. It was only the second time they'd ever used the egress, the first being when they had taken possession of the ship years ago in the Enigma Fire Base.

They marched down the gangway and through a pressure door into the station and found it different from the abandoned city on Atlantis. Where that city had been a ghost town, all but dead and inactive, this station throbbed with life and buzzed as bots of all types whizzed past the surprised visitors.

After observing for a moment Minu caught the look on Pip's face and scowled. “Don't go disappearing on me,” she warned him.

“I have a theory I want to confirm or deny,” he replied without looking at her.

“We're not here to indulge theories.”

“No, we're here to indulge you.” They stared at each other.

“Is that a problem?” Aaron asked. Pip turned to regard him, He was only a few centimeters taller than Pip but carried at least two dozen kilos of pure muscle. The lights of the station sparkled off the dualloy plate in Pip's skull, his eyes betraying no emotion as usual.

“I'm here, aren't I?” It was an accusation more than a question.

“Is something wrong?” Kal'at asked from behind the humans, two squads of his soldiers milling around checking their gear. As usual the tech-oriented Rasa was only armed with a sleek beamcaster pistol, but his belt held a plethora of scientific equipment. He glanced between Pip and Aaron without understanding the humans’ interplay taking place. Were two Rasa facing off, there would be hissing and bared claws.

“Nothing really,” Minu said, glaring at her husband and friend with equal venom.

The last thing she needed thousands of light-years from home was a pissing contest between these two guys. And with those words the two men nodded to each other and Minu led them into the station.

Eight hours later the team took a break in one of the station’s many operations offices. The chairs were the same as originally on the Kaatan, shaped well enough for a small-statured human but with a hole near the tailbone. They'd gathered in a small unconfigured room much like many on the Kaatan when they'd first come aboard, comparing notes on what they had found. All together it was a big nothing.

“The station is constructed from standardized modules,” Lilith was explaining to Minu through the gem in her ear. “These same modules are utilized for many purposes by the People and were manufactured in large quantities.”

“A sort of space building kit?”

“Exactly. Placed within a superstructure, they can make anything from a habitat on a hostile world to a starship such as the Kaatan.”

“So we have a problem. My father left something here, the question is where and how do we find it.”

“I will attempt to analyze the facility for probable cache locations.”

While Lilith worked, Minu also considered the problem. Chriso Alma had left clues scattered around the galaxy leading to code elements that would unlock more of his secret records on her tablet.

But when she remembered Atlantis, it didn't lead to a clue specifically. Instead it was a working factory, the only one any human had ever seen to still be working and manufactured by The People. She'd come here to Dervish because it was next in the logs, a logical choice.

Her father had wrote that he was sure almost no-one had visited this station. He outlined how they had gotten here from a backwater world only barely able to support human life. That Portal was hidden in a nearly demolished industrial complex that showed no evidence of ever being explored. It had detailed an arduous quest to reach this point. She smiled a little. Father never thought his little girl would be cavorting around the galaxy in a starship.

“There are no more starships,” he had told her when she was small.

Now she smiled: “Surprise, Dad.”

“What was that?” Aaron asked her.

“Oh, just thinking aloud. Kal'at, can you use the directory to locate the energy storage system?”

The Rasa tapped at the icons on one of the terminals by the room’s doorway and quickly had results. There were hundreds of bays holding EPC storage arrays, but only one main handling system.”

“That is our destination,” she said with certainty.

“The power handling system is a dangerous area of the station,” Lilith cautioned.

“All the more certain then,” Minu said again.

As a team they moved out into the station, following Kal'at's directions to a tram station which took them many kilometers deep into the ancient structure. Dozens of stations went by, one after another, each looking identical to the last.

Then suddenly the tram shot out into a transparent tube and over a vast open space. The circular shape of the station was visible as it curved away to either side. It was an amazing vista, but more so the reason of the space. “Look!” Aaron called and pointed.

Running on huge spiraling tracks, hundreds of robotic manipulators moved along placing, removing, and carrying things from notches in the walls.

As they sped along the axis of the space, Minu watched one such arm pass by. Instead of a hand it sported a specialized manipulator capable of holding four large cylindrical items. With a shock she realized they were massive EPCs. Before she could share the fact, Pip did it for her.

“This is one big EPC warehouse,” he observed.

“How many?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Ten, twenty thousand?” he guessed with a shrug. “These are bigger than any EPC I've ever seen.”

“The units are class one EPCs,” Lilith told her, evidently listening in on the conversation.

“How much power is in each one?”

“Each unit is capable of fully charging a Kaatan class cruiser. Some classes of ship use multiple capacitors. They are sometimes employed to power terrestrial facilities as well.”

“You could probably run our planet for a year off one of them,” Pip said. You couldn't tell by looking or listening to his voice, but Minu knew he was impressed. Some of the old mannerisms were still there.

Ahead of their course was the center of the cylindrical storage chamber, a tube-shaped structure hundreds of meters across and half a kilometer long. All of the tracks for the robotic EPC handlers ended there. This was obviously the control center of the power handling operation.

The tram came to a stop and the doors slid open noiselessly. Just like the rest of the station, several little crystalline bots were busily performing unknown maintenance even in the tram station. They took no notice of the visitors even though they might have been the first to set foot in the structure in a million years.

There was only one exit, with one of the holographic interfaces the People favored. Everyone spread out, humans in front and Rasa behind, led by Kal'at, as Minu addressed it.

Minu examined the ancient script for a moment as the part of her brain modified by the Weavers worked on the puzzle. Without conscious thought, just like usual, she reached out and began manipulating the icons. Her waking mind knew she was entering a master code, the highest level cypher there was. She'd only entered one of its kind once before, at the firebase where they'd claimed the Kaatan. The door instantly began to slide open.

The Rasa soldiers had weapons at the ready. After the run in with the Squeen back on Atlantis, they were on the ready for the unexpected.

The door revealed a nondescript hall like every other one they'd seen on the station. The Rasa stood at the ready as Minu walked in, smiling and shaking her head. She'd known the way the cypher was coded. No-one else was inside.

The hall consisted of a series of control rooms for the robotic handling systems, with the main operations center at the end. Pip studied the systems for a minute before speaking. “The energy storage and handling functions could all be handled from here.”

“How did they ship out the EPC?” Minu asked.

“There must be a group of Portals here somewhere.”

“He is correct,” Lilith spoke in her ear.

Minu used her script ability to unlock the storage controls. The cylindrical room came alive with floating displays a lot like Lilith used in the Kaatan CIC. She touched one of the displays, experimenting with the power management system.

In moments she was moving displays around with quick deft flicks of her fingers. The system displayed matrixes of stored EPCs; types, sizes, amounts of power in each one, and current reserves in the stations own power banks.

Another control told her the current amounts of power available to be stored and historical quantities in complicated graphs. Being able to see the immense amounts of energy the station had harvested over eons was amazing.

The storage regime was systematic. Along the wall were rows upon rows all ordered according to capacity, current storage, and destination. But there, in the middle of a thousand huge EPCs all fully charged, was a single empty one.

“What have we here,” she thought aloud and accessed the system’s logic routine. Vastly simpler than the Kaatan's artificial intelligence, these routines were simple and straightforward. It only took her minutes to find here the code had been modified. That specific EPC was exempted from the handling protocols, in essence locked in place. “I've got something here.”

Minu easily overrode the lockout and ordered the questionable EPC brought to the control center. Down the hall was a maintenance bay where EPCs could be examined in detail by bots. The capacitive batteries were simple devices, essentially nested arrays of many smaller capacitors all interconnected with small computer to control output and monitor the entire setup.