Off-Topic Discussion => Arts & Talents => Topic started by: WMCoolmon on February 05, 2005, 06:59:28 pm
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 05, 2005, 06:59:28 pm
The Confederation was no more. The war had been hard and long, but in the end, they had lost. Twelve battlegroups, wiped out in the initial attack, the remaining forces rallying together to form a renewed defense. It, too, failed, and seven more battlegroups were lost the day they engaged the enemy. Then they started running. The coldly numerical superiority had made it a necessity, their tactics harrying and wearing down Confederate forces before they were shortly obliterated by a fleet three times their size. No one had even bothered to attempt any sort of official diplomatic communications, the attack had been so swift, so fierce. And here they were, the last of the fleet, perhaps of humanity, standing before the great subspace portal of the Ancients. Likely the last stand any vessel bearing the Confederacy's logo would ever make against any force, whether it Terran, Vasudan, Shivan...or Natural. For that was what they were going to do here - launch a war against nature. The captain turned away from the window, and his thoughts. "Status?" "The last fighter reports ready sir. The pilot...reports his thanks, sir." The sensors/communications officer was nearly tearing up...or at least he would have been if he had been human. Vasudans rarely, if ever, lost any liquid in such an emotional fashion. Captain Adamant turned back towards the viewscreen. The irony of his name, he thought, would haunt him if he survived. But he would not. No one would, if they failed, and only one would, if they succeeded. "Are the jump drives ready?" "Ready and hot, sir!" The ops officer replied with a little too much enthusiasm. Undoubtedly a new recruit. The captain had never heard of him before, had only assigned him Ops when his previous officer had died in the last attack. But the captain knew the truth. The man's enthusiasm was not enthusiasm but fear, of a man about to die. The captain walked over to the Ops console. The young man looked up, questioning. "Sir?" They shared a look for a moment. The captain watched as recognition swelled behind the man's eyes. Not so naive after all, he realized. As the man quietly relinquished his post, the man replied,"Thank you sir." He would not be responsible for the death of millions on this day. Now the captain was back in the Ops chair, where he had started his career. A fitting place to end it as well. Memories flooded back-but no, he had no time to allow himself the luxury of letting his life flash before his eyes. He flipped the switch. The engines warmed up. If everything went as planned....but no. It couldn't...and it wouldn't. This was merely a last-ditch desperate act to survive, a means of instilling hope where there otherwise would have been none. As the Destroyers had wiped out world after world, the Confederacy had soon realized it had no choice. There could not be any victory, nor could it flee. The Shivans had superior knowledge of every aspect of jump nodes - their locations, how to use them, and how to close them. And so the human fleet had almost found itself trapped, until it had discovered the Great Portal. For six months they were safe on the other side, one ship having detonated itself inside of subspace to stop the Shivans. There had been no time to evacuate it - the entire crew and passengers died in a horrific slaughter that had bought the survivors nothing but time. In desperation, scientists had seized upon the only thread of hope left - time travel. Perhaps they could prevent it, fortify the points of invasion, destroy the jump nodes. They could help the GTVA in ways never thought possible. But then the shivans came. The scientists, testing a new prototype, had been the first targets of the Shivans. The remnants of the fleet had managed to fight off the Shivans, but it was too late. The best, brightest, and only scientists who had any advanced knowledge of the time travel theory had died in the attack, grouped together on a single Faustus cruiser. Crews had sifted through the wreckage and found the prototype miraculously unharmed. They had installed it on the captain's ship, before the two groups split up; the Endeavour had gone one way, the rest had gone another. Now the captain faced the legacy of that decision. And the engines powered up, and the uncertain technology began to work. And so the black hole began to form in the middle of the portal. This was the easy part, he understood. The hard part was surviving the entry into the Black Hole. Every fighter that had traveled with the ship was now permanently welded to the Endeavour, with full power to their shields. The Endeavour's own shields were at full strength, and spare reator casing had been used to make what was now known as the capsule. As the great endeavour slowly moved off, there was not a word from the fighter pilots, entombed as they were in their fighters. They all hoped that the Capsule would survive, and make it through, and that they wouldn't die in vain. On board the bridge it was another story. The entire bridge was shaking now, and the ship was making a thunderous rattle. The two natural forces at work interacted with another to actually shake the multi-thousand-ton ship. "Divert coolant from the reactor to the subspace field generators!" cried Adamant. "As you say, sir." the engineering officer's translator replied. Tral'koth could literally feel the intense radiation from the whole as it sucked up the Knossos device straight ahead. He only hoped that the Device would function correctly. No one understood how it worked. All they knew was that it was to interact with the gravitational particles of the black whole. This would propel the ship the ship to super-light speeds, sending the ship - and what was left of its occupants - back into time. Or so it was foretold. The Captain wondered if diverting the coolant was the right thing to do. Was the device supposed to get hot? He realized then that it was actually melting through the bulkheads. Probably not that hot, he thought grimly. The power connections wouldn't last much longer. Fortunately, they were near the black hole. Already he could feel the tips of his fingers straining outward, the artificial gravity unable to compensate. At the helm, the officer struggled with the throttle. The thing had a mind of its own, it seemed. "captain, sir," he cried. "I don't think I can hold it!" "Keep it steady, son!" Adamant furiously tried to divert more cooling, keep the field generators running for the estimated fifteen seconds until the cutoff point was reached. He pened the blast doors in the area...no change. He shut down the lights, life support...the rate of heat increase didn't even slow. In three seconds it would be over, seven seconds short of the neceesary point. He hesitated a moment before taking his last chance - and blew the airlocks, killing the crewmen in engineering. The rate of heat increase slowed. And now there was nothing left to wait, and embrace the black hole, and hope the capsule made it. There, the best pilot of the Confederacy lay, inside the most advanced fighter ever constructed by Confederacy forces. Now it was the end, the captain knew His arms had stretched to six times their normal size, and the front of the bridge seemed to be three kilometers distant. The innertial dampner was selectively failing, and according to the ops display, it seemed that so had the majority of the shields. All selectively failing, falling back towards the capsule. The captain smiled as the Endeavour became a space-time anomaly, taking solace in the fact that at least they had escaped the Shivans. The universe had mercy on him, ripping him apart before the sensation of pain could reach his brain.
Over four hundred years in the past, twenty-eight years after the end of the First Shivan War, the sole survivor of an unrecorded, disastrous, mining expedition entered the GTVA Flight Academy. Although his records checked out, neither his homeworld nor the method of his arrival on Beta Aquilae was ever determined...
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: redsniper on February 05, 2005, 11:50:59 pm
coooool :yes:
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: neo_hermes on February 06, 2005, 12:18:01 am
Agreed :yes: I wonder what will happen next
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Lightspeed on February 06, 2005, 10:38:00 am
Fan fiction forums? :nervous:
Spoiler:
Seriously, with the amount of fan fiction we have had lately, that would be a cool thing to have.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Singh on February 06, 2005, 11:47:46 am
very, very cool indeed. :yes:
Wonder what happened to that one pilot tho :/
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: pyro-manic on February 06, 2005, 12:08:55 pm
Superb. :yes: Will we be seeing any more, or is this just a concept?
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 06, 2005, 08:36:52 pm
Not exactly either...I just started with the first line and went from there.
I wrote a little bit more, but I'm not sure that I'm ready for that sort of commitment... :p
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 07, 2005, 06:21:53 pm
Eons away, space thundered. Had the event occured inside a planet's atmosphere, it truly would have been heard 'round the world. As it was, the only sign of anything was a bright flash, and the spewing of debris from a white hole. Girders and equipment, melted down from their journey through space-time, drifted forward into the Altair system. In the center of it was a large, round capsule. For a ten-count, it drifted as dead as the rest of the wreckage. Then, two flashes of light blasted forth. For a moment, nothing more happened. Then, the lights reappeared, tracing twin lines around the sphere. Another blast of light, and the two sides drifted apart, and a fighter slid out to one side, before blasting its way forward and away from the former location of the white hole. It curved away, heading towards the only planet of significance in the system.
Just minutes away from making planetfall, a freighter and two fighters calmly headed towards that same planet. None of them saw the approaching blip on radar, for there was none.
Seconds away from the small convoy, the fighter's pilot ID'd the vessels. The targetting computer didn't identify them, but the pilot did. The toys and games which had made him earn the nickname of vrok-tah had been miniature models of these spacecraft. Vrok-tah referred to an individual so focused on life in the past that their life in the future meant nothing - in ancient times, this had often resulted in their being left behind for the good of the rest of a tribe. Now that status had become an advantage to the pilot. The large vessel was a Triton, and the two fighters accompanying it were known as Perseus fighters. None posed any thread. The pilot unconsciously executed a roll, bringing his craft 'upright' to the vessels, and opened fire. The twin beams which had just minutes ago served to free the fighter from its iron womb now became instruments of death, slicing the freighter in half. They met virtually no resistance from the hull, and in seconds the atmosphere had spewed out of the freighter, along with the crew. The two Perseus fighters reacted instantly, going evasive as the Triton exploded. Miraculously, they executed a simultaneous maneuver - both banked outward, away from the freighter, curving around to fly behind the unknown fighter. Neither was able to get any sort of lock. Alarmed and rattled, one of the pilots loosed a flight of Hornet missiles anyway; the point-defense lasers on the rear of the new fighter vaporized them unneccessarily; the shields would have easily handled them. Then it reached out to touch the starboard fighter which had fired the missiles, blowing it to smithereens in a second. The other fighter was luckier; rather than firing missiles, its pilot had immediately powered up his subspace radio, loosing a distress call. He managed to juke around for a few seconds before the second laser locked on and destroyed his craft. The wreckage of both fighters drifted towards the planet as the unknown fighter turned and left the area. Meanwhile, the pilot on board that craft swore. The mining expedition he'd just wiped out had to have been stopped, but that was little solace. The instant they had touched down, they would've realized what he knew. Even so, he regretted killing the fifteen pilots and civillians on those ships to save the millions they would have unwittingly killed.
Light-years away in the Polaris system, a recently-appointed Admiral received a communique about a mysterious fighter in the Altair system. After some thought, he sent an aging Fenris to the area with fighter escort to investigate. With the GTC Trinity dispatched, the Admiral turned his mind back to the day-to-day operations.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: pyro-manic on February 07, 2005, 07:58:54 pm
Again, great stuff. :):yes:
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: neo_hermes on February 08, 2005, 02:18:44 am
Cool
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 08, 2005, 03:04:04 am
I need to finish my own fanfiction...
Two thumbs up.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on February 08, 2005, 05:14:46 am
sweet, carry it on if you can
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 13, 2005, 02:27:13 am
The next chapter: The sun had risen, the day was bright, and the sky was blue. A couple of birds flitted through the air, cheerfully chirping in the warm Aldebaran day, before coming to rest on one of the many branches of the imported pine trees. But their cheerfulness soon evaporated...they were the first ones to notice something was wrong. A sound came from the patch of air in front of them, growing louder. They scampered out of the way of the invisible flying thing just before it brushed against their branch. As it the noise grew closer to the ground, the air seemed to shiver, blur, and then resolve itself into a large, black, thing, not unlike the ones Humans used to fly around. Inside his ship, the beleagured pilot cracked the canopy, hoisted himself out of it, tossing his helmet back into the cockpit in one fluid motion. He nearly collapsed for a moment, before getting used to gravity - after spending 15 hours in a cockpit, weightless, the feeling of earth - or, in this case, Aldebaran, felt good. The planet itself had a name, but it was a Vasudan word unpronouncable to all but the most gifted Terrans. If it still had the name, this early in history, the pilot thought. The fact that he'd survived was incredible, and even more than that, he'd managed to make it back within days of when he'd meant to arrive. Odd that he'd ended up IN Altair, though...everything he'd known about the time-travel project had suggested that one could only travel in time, not space. And the Captain had made it clear to him that even that was a long shot...no one had really known how to use the special jump cores that had come out of the project. The Captain. Who was now...dead? Not born yet? It was then that everything hit him at once. The human race...the world...even the universe that he knew, was now gone. Forever. Somehow he'd managed to brush the grief aside, but now he realized that everyone on board the Endeavour had died and given up their lives, and now - without the Second Shivan War, or the devastation from it, many of them would never even exist. The husbands, the wives, even the children who'd had the misfortune of surviving had also given up their lives, to lead the Shivans away from the Endeavour. They'd given up their lives, and all he'd probably done was stall the Shivan invasion for a decade or two. As the pilot slumped back against his cooling fighter, the birds and other animals quietly started to return.
In orbit around Altair, in a room dark except for the dark blue of computer screens, the sensor officer of the GTC Trinity pointed to one of his displays. "Here, sir," he said. He pointed to the screen, while holding the set of headphones up to his right ear. A slight ping- "There it is again," he said, as a yellow point dimly flashed on the display. Captain Arthur Roemig leaned in for a closer look. "You're sure it's not human in origin?" he asked "Positive, sir. The only reason we're picking it up is because of the new sensor enhancements." The officer referred to the overhaul Fenris cruisers' sensors had undergone, in an attempt to turn them into a cheap AWACS. The budget cuts of late had forced the GTVA into turning an eye back towards refitting existing cruisers, rather than building new ones. "If I had to make a guess, sir," the sensor operator continued, "I'd say it was Ancient." Roemig's eyebrows lifted at that. They did have a landing craft, originally to have been used to rescue any survivors trapped on the planet's surface. Now, after a brief scan of the area, it was obvious there were none. And now that they were here...why not? He turned to his XO. "Get a team ready. I want our best technical specialists, and anyone with archaeological experience on it. Make sure at least one of them has demolitions training; we may need to clear out some nasty surprises." The XO looked up from his pad. "You'll be going, sir?" Roemig smiled tightly. "Of course."
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 13, 2005, 06:09:11 am
Hmm...you know, I had a campaign idea about stopping the Trinity once...
Two thumbs up. Very good work.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on February 15, 2005, 10:33:31 am
im still reading ;)
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 16, 2005, 07:29:19 pm
Aldebaran
The pilot finished entering the last of the ships into the targeting computer's recognition program. There. Hopefully, now, it'd recognize most GTVA vessels. He could've done a better job with a neural interface - but then, no one had thought to pack one along. And he didn't know if a compatible one even existed now, or if obtaining one would raise a few eyebrows. He leaned back and sighed; all he had was what he remembered from his history classes, and he'd never really paid attention to the political aspects of them anyway. Known human history was long - too long, he thought, for anyone to know all the important events. All he had as far as that went was cobbled together from a dozen children's encyclopedias and assorted articles from more mainstream ones, as file formats would allow. Most of that had to be extracted from the cache files, as most of the mainframes had been permanently wiped out with Earth. The pilot shook his head, trying to focus on the pitter-patter of rain on the half-open canopy to distract himself. It didn't work. He sighed, locked down the computer, and hoisted himself out of the cockpit once more. As his boots hit the ground, the soft scrunch of the grass being crushed caused a couple of squirrels to run away. He watched them quickly disappear into the foilage. He stared at where they had disappeared for a long time, before an echoing bird call snapped him out of his reverie. It was the silence, he decided, that was getting to him. He jumped back up onto the ship, and rustled around in the cockpit for a survival pack. He pushed aside two KEGs. Grimly, he chuckled to himself as he realized that two kegs probably would've been more useful. KEGs hadn't been invented yet. Well...he could always say they were a custom gun. They still had those, then, didn't they? He tried to tuck one into the trousers of his supposedly-GTVA-style clothing - but failed miserably. The pistol wasn't meant to be concealed, nor the pants designed to conceal. Feeling somewhat more at ease, he went through the survival backpack. At least that was one thing that hadn't really changed. He didn't know what exactly was in it, but it turned out to contain all the essentials - food, water, knives, a med kit, even an antique ballistic pistol the flight crew'd managed to scrounge up from somewhere. He put that back in the pack; he didn't have any sort of currency, which he realized with some alarm, and it probably was loud and not all that effective anyway. That done, he walked back over to the fighter and thought for a moment. What should he do with it? It was obvious it was far beyond anything the GTVA had. He could fly it to the nearest military base, and offer it to be reverse-engineered - but no, he decided. The pilot from the future didn't know who he could trust. Any individual could wreck destruction with the fighter. And, he realized as he looked at the survival pack, he'd already realized what he was going to do. He found a non-powered camo net (thankfully someone had remembered to pack it) and spread it over the craft. It took a few minutes to tie it down, but when he was done, he was confident it could remain undisturbed there for years. Next on the list was to get to the nearest settlement. A quick check of his wristcomp (He'd have to hide that somehow) revealed he'd have to head Fahljud - North, he corrected himself. As he tromped through the underbrush, he reflected on what he knew of Aldebaran. It'd originally been a backwater world, until the first war with the Shivans; then, refugees had fled to it until they were cut off by the shivan fleet. When the GTVA (Or was it just the GTA, then?) managed to destroy the Lucifer. There'd been some aborted attempts to terraform the planet to be earth-like, to attract more population, but eventually most of the refugees headed towards the big, core systems of the GTVA to find jobs. Those that were left were mostly owners of big corporations, or retired workers with enough funds to live out the rest of their years comfortably. It'd be hard to find a job here, but it wasn't guarded as well as the core systems. There was a rustling, and in one fluid motion the pilot turned, armed, and aimed his pistol. There weren't anymore sounds; the lazy chirping of birds, and now the distant rush of water. But the pilot put his gun away uneasily. He still felt like he was being watched.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on February 16, 2005, 07:38:26 pm
this is good :D
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: neo_hermes on February 16, 2005, 10:36:00 pm
i need more :)
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 18, 2005, 04:12:15 am
Things get a little confusing at this point. But they also, IMHO, start to get a lot better. :D Interlude - Altair
The landing craft Darwin's Folly touched down in the dense forests of Altair, over five hundred miles off its designated landing area. But it wasn't trying to land at its designated landing area. Halfway down, the craft had been 'pinged' by a remarkably strong radar pulse. With a little help from the Pocketseeker in orbit, and the two Perseus fighters flying escort, they'd been able to narrow down the location of the pulse to a large tower in the forest. The strangest thing was, none of the original survey maps seemed to indicate it - and they were VERY thorough, as the Parliamentary of Vasuda had directed a huge expedition to the planet after the Shivan presence in the area had been 'sanitized'. With this mystery, the crew of the newly-purchased Folly had decided to land near the tower, rather than check the original landing site for easily-mined mineral deposits. Had the team been composed solely of miners, the ship never would have diverted course. But it didn't; there was a paper-pusher type aboard, with an archaeologist, in addition to the pilot and two mining engineers. It was a tight fit, but they managed to reach the tower without much incident. There was a sense of excitement aboard - no one had ever seen an Ancient before. Well - at least one person was excited. "The Ancients never left any, uhm, images behind. They were more concerned about their legacy. Wouldn't you not worry about, uhm, taking a picture for yourself while your whole species was dying?" The archaeologist asked. "'Spose I might." One of the engineers sitting across from the archaeologist, Frank, said. He let the archaeologist get as far as opening his mouth before he cut him off. "But not really, no, I guess. But who cares about a bunch of dead bodies? I mean, they're just like any ol' body, right? And they're all dead too. Not like one of them buggers is gonna come back tah life and haunt us." "Well, that's just the thing. We don't know if they CAN." The archaeologist spread his hands. "I mean, the Ancient Egyptians mummified humans in ways that still would keep them preserved until today, without any technological intervention. Maybe the Ancients were able to do that, but without dying. But just think of what it'd tell us about them - we don't know if they're similar to Humans, shivans, or Vasudans - although of course they're probably similar to Vasudans, since many ancient scrolls make reference to them, we think." The other engineer, Matt, sighed, but the archaeologist didn't seem to notice. "Maybe they were incorporated into some religion on earth, and shaped human development. For all we know, the entire course of human history could have been an attemp to engineer a utopian society by the ancients!" The rest of the passengers were silent, even Joe, who had been sent along to help assess the profitability of the region. How, the rest weren't sure, some red-tape nonsense no doubt. He had no doubt he was necessary, though, and never seemed to cease to remind everyone of either that, or just his presence. His quiet now was even sufficient enough to subdue the Byron. "Well," Byron admitted, "maybe that is a little improbable. But we don't know. That's what's so important." There was a sudden thump. "We're here," Jezebel informed them unneccessarily over the intercom. "I hope you boys remembered to stay buckled up, like I told y'all." Frank muttered, but the comm wasn't two-way, and Jezebel had closed and locked the door a little after Joe had gotten on board. "Okay, listen up," Joe said, as everyone - including Byron - did anything but that. "We're not staying here for very long, and the company's not going to pay you for the time expended here. You'll be lucky if the fuel doesn't come out of your paychecks." Joe was the only one who'd voted against going, so undoubtedly he felt completely unresponsible. In fact, Matt and Frank had voted to come just to annoy him. "Everybody keep in mind that this is fact-finding only. We're not taking anything back with us. We still have to get those samples from the site. If you find any good data, tell me, and I'll make sure that it's stored safely. Remember that by GTVA regulations, anything found is the property of the company before it's yours." He pointedly glanced at Byron - who knew enough to know the Freedom of Archaeology Information Agreement declared anything regarding the Ancients as free information, and glared back. "So that if anything happens to anyone, I want all of you-" "Holy ****!" Matt interrupted. "I thought we landed in a forest." "We did land in a forest, Honeybuns." Jezebel walked out of the cockpit and pushed past everyone to get to the rear airlock. Matt had just opened it, and was staring at the large clearing beyond. "We just landed in the middle of the clearing of a forest, that's all." Although short at 5'9", Jezebel's fiery hair, southern accent, and air of unrestrained self-sufficiency demanded attention. Though the southern accent wasn't genuine, it was especially popular among those born on earth. Jezebel had been whisked away by her parents just before the nodes had been collapsed by the shivans. "Huh." Matt grunted, as he moved out of the landing craft. "Well, let's get going." Privately, he was beginning to regret voting to come. It'd seemed fun at the time, but pissing off Joe maybe wasn't the greatest thing to do. He did have some pull with the management, but Matt doubted he'd have the balls to actually fire one of them. Joe and Byron followed him towards the tower, Joe lugging a briefcase, Byron with a miniature archaeologists' backpack. Frank and Jezebel paused as they lit cigarettes, then brought up the rear, talking and laughing quietly.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on February 18, 2005, 06:38:38 am
lol i like the build up here
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Ghost on February 18, 2005, 10:56:28 am
Eesh... I like it alot.. But do you think you could make it a little easier to read? Because it's not exactly formatted correctly.. I really like to read stories if they have correct grammar, etc etc.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Nuclear1 on February 18, 2005, 12:21:34 pm
I remember trying that (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,13507.0.html) once before, but it never got off the ground.
And for the people who want some formatting:
ZIP File - Rich Text, DOC, and TXT Formats included. (http://nucderelict.250free.com/LostChoices.zip)
And to WM: Great job so far. :D
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on February 24, 2005, 02:12:13 am
Next part... I spaced out the paragraphs, but didn't do any grammar or spelling corrections. My litmus test for correct grammar is, "Does it sound right?" If I'm making consistent errors, it's probably because it sounds right when I write it and don't realize it's not correct.
Without further ado- Interlude - Altair
As the unwieldy group drew closer to the structure, it became obvious that the large tower was made out of many different types of minerals, giving it an overall hue of greyish-green. Of course, once the group had gotten to the structure, there was one obvious problem.
"How do we get in?" asked Jezebel. "I don't suppose one of y'all thought to bring a plasma cutter."
Without saying a word, Byron moved towards the tower and started walking along the face of the side nearest them, touching it. Frank coughed mildly, awaiting an explanation, but Byron didn't seem to notice. Finally, Joe broke the silence.
"What in God's name are you doing?"
Byron looked up, but only briefly. "All Ancient structures have followed a similar design patter; certain characteristics are common to each and every building ever built, well, discovered by the Ancients. If you would, uh, direct your attention to here-" he pointed "-you'll notice that there's a very distinctly shaped piece of the green, uhhh, composite. That represents south." By this time, though, he'd circled to the next side, clockwise. "What I'm looking for, though, is a very specific symbol. Now, presumeably-there, that one represents West-these Ancients who, uh, well, the Ancients are presumed to have had no trouble at all distinguishing these symbols. They'd be like, an exit sign in a holotheater or something. Anyway, what I want to find-" He'd circled around to the Northern side, now. "-is the one that represents one for an entryway."
"So the Ancients put up Entrance signs on their buildings? That doesn't seem very smart." Matt said.
Byron happily explained: "Presumeably, the Ancients wouldn't be able to, uh, recognize the symbols as readily as the Ancients. And the Ancients weren't a defensive race; most of their structures are built with the assumption that they won't be invaded-that's odd."
"What?" Joe asked. Frank and Jezebel glanced at each other. Two questions in a row; Joe was uncharacteristically interested.
"This structure doesn't have the usual door symbol. It's strange; more hooked, there are more protrusions. See?" Byron pointed - and unnecessarily brushed off - the symbol. Essentially, it was a block with three straight lines extending straight out from one side, each one with a slanted end. "The normal ones only have one line at the top, and it's not slanted."
"It's a security ranking," Joe stated.
Byron blinked. "Maybe. That sounds right. But I don't know. No one's ever seen any door with more than two blocky ones. That was where the Subspace Tracking Device was found."
Matt chuckled, but still impatiently asked, "So can we open it or not?"
Byron frowned, and pushed the symbol in. Nothing happened. "Guess-well, that doesn't work."
"Let me try, hon. Maybe it just takes a lady's touch." Jezebel shifted her cigarette to her left hand, leaned down, and pressed the symbol. The door, wherever it was, refused to budge. She smiled at Frank. "Worth a try." Frank shrugged with an amused guess-so expression.
Joe straightened up. "Well, looks like this vacation is over. Back to the shuttle, everyone. If you hurry," he said, "We could be out of here by the end of the day."
Matt, Frank, Jezebel, and Joe all started back towards the shuttle when Byron's voice was heard.
"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait!" He yelled, as if it were all one word. "I've figured it out! It's pure genius, but it's so simple! Look!"
Interested in spite of themselves, the group returned to the North side of the tower, finding Byron standing in front of the door.
"You just press the three lines in without touching the square. The Vasudans wouldn't be able to do it - their fingers are too long. The Shivans don't have fingers - well, not in the right places, anyway. But-it works!" The group stared at him. "So - we can go in." He grabbed a flashlight from his pocket, appropriated from the shuttle's emergency supplies and flicked it on. Obviously nervous, he walked inside the dark interior.
Frank grinned and shook his head. "Gotta love that guy. He's better than most comedians - especially the Vasudan ones. Come on, let's go." Grabbing his own flashlight from his belt with a twirl, he flipped it on and walked in; Joe, Jezebel, and Matt followed.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Ghost on February 24, 2005, 06:27:37 am
Ooh, pretty good, pretty good.... can't wait to see what you've done with the 'interior decorating,' if you'll excuse that horrid expression. Keep it up :yes:
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on February 24, 2005, 08:14:26 am
still reading, still loving ;)
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 02, 2005, 04:06:26 am
Altair
With a final blast from the landing rockets, the modified Omega transport settled down into the earth. There was a moment of relative peace, then the airlock hummed, made a large clunk, and with the hiss of pressurized air escaping, it swung downward and landed on the ground. Twelve heavily armed young men ran out, quickly forming a perimeter around the open door. All of them scanned the surrounding trees for a moment, before saying anything.
"Clear!" the Sergeant in charge reported. "Marines, fan out! Team C, investigate that building!" He jerked his head in the direction of the large grey-green tower some 250 meters away.
"Yes, sir," one of the men said over the comm system, as they and four of the twelve soldiers moved off towards the structure, their eyes alert and their fingers ready on the triggers of their guns.
Back at the Omega, Captain Roemig and five professional-looking specialists emerged from the transport. None of them looked particularly at ease; whatever had destroyed the Triton and its escort fighters had still not been found. The vessels had been identified as part of a mining operation, and they'd confirmed the identity of the landing craft, Darwin's Folly. All nine members of the expedition - seven on board the Triton, and two mercs driving the Perseuses - were found dead, killed long before the Trinity had arrived.
As the four soldiers moved across the terrain separating the tower from the transport, the Head of Security for the Trinity scoffed. "They'd better hope they're not moving into a minefield. With their proximity to one another, they'd all be killed by a single well-placed Golan M-47."
Roemig shrugged. "The Ancients never seemed to care for mines, and the Shivans have never set foot - or claw", he said, smiling at his own joke, "on the planet. Still-" he turned to the Sergeant, who was standing guard next to the ramp. "Have Team C move a little more carefully, and watch for signs of landmines. You," he said to the security officer, "get your equipment ready. There doesn't seem to be anything on this Godforsaken rock except spirits and graves. There's no reason to linger here longer than necessary." The officer nodded, once, then went back inside the transport, with two of the engineers accompanying him.
"Now," Roemig said, turning to the one female member of the group. "Does the structure look anything remotely like the other Ancients structures discovered here?"
"Nossir. Those structures were much more basic. The mineral composition of this one is unlike any sort of Ancient structure we've discovered so far. This may be one of a military purpose."
"Hmm." Roemig stroked his chin.
"Sir?" the Sergeant said. "Team C reports the area around the structure clear of any hostile activity."
"Thank you, Sergeant." Roemig said. The sensor officer and the engineer with her already had their equipment bags on; the Trinity's security head and the three ofoners had just returned with their own. "Shall we go on a walk, gentlemen?"
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: dan87uk on March 02, 2005, 09:22:32 am
im still reading, this is building up well
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: comic on March 02, 2005, 06:20:53 pm
Aghhh continue continue!!
The suspence!!!
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 15, 2005, 03:33:46 am
Fairly long chapter tonight. ;) The party had circled the tower once.
"I don't see a way in," Roemig said. "Is there any indication the Ancients used some sort of coded signal or pulse relay to gain access to restricted areas?" he asked the Lieutenant.
"Sir, to my knowledge, all of the Ancients' buildings that we've recovered have been of a civillian nature. This structure seems much more likely to be of a military nature." the comm officer replied.
"Because it just appeared here?" Roemig asked.
The Lieutenant nodded. "Yessir. That, as well as the architecture of the building. The Ancients' took great pride in their architecture; what we have has been damaged throughout the millenia following their extinction, but still bears signs of great eloquence in style and design. The only decorations on this building appear to be basic ones-north, south, east, west."
Roemig blinked and scanned the wall before him. "Where?"
She colored slightly. "Sorry, sir. The markings are built into the wall, using the darker-colored stone. It's a common trait of Ancients architecture."
He frowned. "To be honest with you, I don't care. Can you figure out how to get it open with these symbols."
She blinked. "Well - yessir, if I can find the symbol to open the door."
"Good," he nodded. "Get started. We'll camp here tonight, if necessary, but if you can't find it by daybreak tomorrow, we'll cut it open. I don't want to remain in this system any longer than necessary; we're too far out from the core for me to feel comfortable."
The Lieutenant saluted, then pulled a computer tablet out of her pocket and started scrutinizing the wall. Roemig gave instructions to the engineers to assist her in whatever way they could, then he and the Chief of Security walked back to the ship.
After giving orders to the engineers to look for any patterns and sketch them down, for her later perusal, the Lieutenant continued paging through various symbols which seemed likely to appear on the structure. She doubted the engineers would be much help; when she'd first started studying the Ancients, every marking in a structure had seemed like a meaningful pattern. The sketches the engineers brought her would probably all be geometric or mathematical, or look like some sort of object.
But the Ancients rarely used images that were a graphic illustration of what they represented. Directions were one exception - the symbol for North was a line with a curved arc above it. Archaeologists had debated whether it represented polar ice caps, or simply a change in climate, but it was agreed upon that it indicated a change in the environment. They were also the easiest to see, since they were on so many buildings. One quickly got used to finding and using the symbols to orient themself.
Then she noticed one symbol that seemed particularly likely to find on a military installation - the one that seemed to represent 'Shivan'. It wasn't a building symbol per se, but it was military-related. Had the Ancients marked kills on their military buildings? Everything known about the Ancients pointed to a strong affinity for war-odd for such an advanced race, she thought, but no one even knew what the Ancients' homeworld had been.
She started slowly circling around the tower, searching for the symbol she'd selected. She smiled at the engineer on that side, who told her he'd found nothing of interest. She responded sympathetically, asked him if he'd seen the symbol; he grunted a no and with some reluctance returned to the work. It was obvious he did not relish the prospect of spending the rest of the afternoon looking for some drawings he knew nothing about.
On the next side, she repeated the drill; that engineer had made a few sketches, three to be exact, and was already on his fourth. He'd identified the symbol for 'west' correctly - a sideways arc and a circle - but the others seemed doubtful at best.
At the last side, she was beginning to feel a little downcast. Nothing on the other sides had seemed remotely like any of the symbols she had in the database, and she did not relish the thought of evaluating millions of possible indentations and changes in the mineral content of the wall. The engineer on this side had spotted nothing, and inquired about her progress, but clearly hoping for a positive answer. She was about to reply when she noticed a familiar symbol on the wall, a couple meters distant from the arc-over-line symbol that denoted 'North'.
She walked over and squatted down to get a closer look. The engineer turned and slightly leaned over her, to see what had distracted.
"Did you touch this?" she asked, even though she knew as she said it that he hadn't.
"No, ma'am," he said. "Should I have?"
She smiled. "Maybe." The symbol looked strikingly similar to the usual door symbol on most buildings, except this one had three tapered points, instead of one block, extending from a larger block. She pressed it in, and it sunk into the wall with a soft rustle of stone against stone-
-but nothing happened.
She sighed. She might as well just call the Captain over.
"Ma'am?" the Engineer asked. "Maybe you need to press the whole thing in.
For the second time that day, she blinked. How on earth did he know-? She extended her left hand, pinky against her palm, and pressed her fingers into the grooves-they barely fit. Before her palm could contact the large block, however, the section of the wall just to the left of it slid open and out, startling her. She quickly got up and stumbled backwards before the engineer-unnecessarily, she though-caught her. He already had his pistol in his hand and pointing at the door.
One of the marines rushed up. "Ma'am, is everything alright?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied. She pressed a button on her wristcomm. "Captain Roemig?" she said.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"I think I've found a way in."
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: Ghost on March 15, 2005, 06:50:01 am
COMMERCIAL BREAK!
Good chapter... Looking forward to seeing what's inside.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: neo_hermes on March 15, 2005, 09:16:48 am
*can't wait wants to hear some marines scream...*
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 17, 2005, 03:33:24 am
Interlude - Altair
They'd come in the back way, Frank decided, because this way just wouldn't cut it for a welcome room. No lobby desk, and no lights. Despite the door being open, the room was unusually dark, even if it was getting to be late afternoon. He swung his flashlight left, right - nothing. "Byron?" he called loudly. As his eyes adjusted he saw a dim yellow glow, almost directly ahead. He brought the flashlight up towards it-
The lights came on.
"Holy ****!" he said, involuntarily jerking.
Byron stood in front of him, blinking, openmouthed, with his finger in what looked like some sort of control panel - except instead of buttons, there were widely spaced holes. A human finger was just small enough to fit in one of them. But like the doorknob of the place, a Vasudan or Shivan would be hard pressed to do anything with them.
"Byron, friend," he said, walking up to him. "You don't just go sticking your finger in strange holes. Use protection." He fished a small, plastic object out of his pocket and handed it to Byron. Jezebel burst out laughing; Matt smirked slightly; Joe frowned a little deeper.
Byron took it, looked at it. "Thanks," he deadpanned, and stuck it in his own pocket. "I'll be sure to remember that."
Frank walked over to the console. "So what's all this stuff do?" he asked.
"Well, this seems to turn on the lights." He stuck his finger in the hole, and the lights turned off with an abrupt suddenness. Then they came back on. "And it turns them off."
"What did I just say about unfamiliar holes?" Frank asked, somewhat miffed.
Byron ignored him. "These other things are harder to understand. This one says something about a raising, and I guess this one is for lowering," he said, pointing at different ones. "This one says something about opening and closing. Maybe it's for the door." He activated it. There was a slight hissing sound, that stopped for a few seconds.
"So, what'd that do?"
"Frank." Matt said from behind him. "Look up."
Frank did so. "Woah," he said. Apparently, the back wasn't all that unimpressive after all. The tower had seemed like a big box when they'd been approaching it; but looking up, he could see it was actually slanted on the North side, slightly inwards towards an opening at the top. The other side - to his right, opposite the door they'd came in - was a series of levels, that looked like they were made out of the same stone - or whatever - that the tower was made out of.
"It's a hanger," Matt said.
"What gives you that idea?" asked Joe.
"The arrangement. You fly a fighter up out that tunnel. Plus, come over here and look. On each level, there's some sort of ship."
Frank wasn't surprised to see that he was right. They really did look like fighters, and now this place was starting to make sense.
"So it's really an outpost," He said.
"I could've told you that." Byron grumped. "That sign over there-it says-if you translate it literally-Place of Reckoning 31. That's what the Ancients called their outposts in the old texts."
Frank looked, and there did seem to be some sort of combination of the green mineral on the wall.
There was another hiss, and he turned to find that Byron had apparently opened another door and had gone inside. Annoyed, Frank followed to find out what Byron would find next to start fiddling with.
"Wow!" Byron breathed. "We've only found one of these before. Too bad it's in a military base. I doubt it'll have anything good on it."
"A computer?" Frank asked. To the left, where Byron was staring, was a large table, again of the same stone as the rest of the place. It had a number of blue, smooth stones grouped together, and there was a slight indentation in a large portion of the wall in front of them.
"Yeah." Byron said. "I don't know how they got the other one to work though. They didn't say."
Probably because they didn't want archaeological geeks getting their hands on more advanced weapons technology than the GTVA military, Frank thought. He watched as Byron poked at the buttons, probably not bothering to try and figure out what they said in his excitement, Oh, the ignorance of youth. In the hangar bay, Matt and Joe had started discussing the composition of the mineral, and whether it could be removed. From the sound of it, Joe was already openly talking about hauling off and selling the place on the open market, piece by piece. Jezebel had started looking at the console, but was obviously listening in.
Then something struck Frank. The lights had been off in the hangar, but on in this room.
"Byron, did you do anything to turn the lights on in here?" He asked.
"Uhhh, no, I think they did it themselves. When I opened the door."
Frank looked around, a little less relaxed. He didn't like it when things turned themselves on. Always gave him the creeps.
"Oh! Okay, I think I've figured it out." Byron said. "But I'm gonna need Joe's computer."
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: neo_hermes on March 17, 2005, 07:15:54 pm
...creepy...
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 28, 2005, 02:33:06 am
Interlude - Altair
Joe stumbled into the room, "encouraged" by a push from Matt. "Go on, do whatever the kid wants. We'll have plenty of time to harvest whatever we find on this rock," Matt told him.
The businessman whirled around. "Don't," he snapped in a tone reminiscent of hitting a brick wall, "Ever manhandle me like that again. Now. What ingenious plan requires my laptop, when we have a computer with four times the processing power sitting right there?"
"It's passworded, or something," Byron told him. "I've pressed every button I could find, even some combinations of them, and nothing's happened. Can't you splice into them or something? The cables, I mean. There's some under the, uh, desk."
Joe looked at where Frank was sitting with an expression of irritation. "You're the leader of this little party. Can't you tell him to stop? We're not going to do anything here. We might as well call in the pros and be done with it. Who knows what could happen? We could screw something up. How would you feel then?" Joe stopped himself from saying another sentence as he realized he wanted to work on this. This was big, and, damn the professionals, it was the first time in his life he'd had a chance to touch something significant. He was just pushing this guy's buttons, so that-
Frank got up from where he'd been sitting against the wall. "Well, if you want to put it that way- No, I'm not. As leader of this expedition, I'm telling you to get to work on it. It'll take you one or two hours. You'll have plenty of time to fill out your precious paperwork and call your oh-so-precious professionals while we meager, unprofessional, folk bust our asses getting samples."
Jezebel called out cheerfully, "Hon, could you come here? I've found something you might want to see."
Frank started to walk out, turned back-"Matt, Byron, tell me if this guy does anything stupid."
He walked into the hanger to find a storm brewing in Jezebel's eyes, all pretense of any accent gone. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"The guy's an asshole. He deserves it."
"Yes, he is. And he's also your boss, if you ever bothered to read the fine print on that piece of 'paperwork' that also happens to be the contract giving you food, water, and what little decent clothing you choose to wear. I hate him just as much as you do, but you don't see me trying to get myself fired. Believe me, it's not worth it. Jerks like him always get their comeuppance."
Frank shifted somewhat uneasily. What was that he saw in her eyes - pity? Fear that she'd lose her job as well? She didn't have a safety net, from what she'd told him, both her parents had died when she was young - from stress, she guessed, and everything they'd had was on earth. Or - was it worry, for him? Damn, he didn't need this right now.
"Fine, I'll apologize." He started to turn and go-
"No," she said. "I think you've done just about enough damage for today." She raised her voice and switched back to her trademark Southern accent. "Dearies, Frank and I are going to take a look at the other room I found."
Predictably, it was Byron who answered.
"Other room? Hold on, I'm coming-" A voice cut him off, Joe's, saying something about staying. "-in a bit," He belatedly finished.
Frank chuckled. "You actually found another room, too?"
She giggled. "All it took was lady's touch."
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: WMCoolmon on May 05, 2005, 03:59:23 am
I haven't worked on this in awhile, so I figured I'd post the rest of what I wrote.
Settle in...it's a lot. :)
Altair
If there had been any sign, whatsoever, of occupation, it had been long gone, Roemig thought. Two computer probes sought for mines on the barren stone floor, subjecting the floor to a variety of stimuli. Essentially a set of legs with a compact cylinder in the middle, the probes had been successfully tested on all types of modern-day Terran and Vasudan mines. They worked by stomping the floor with the cylinder while simulating the sound of breathing, heartbeat, the electrical field, etc. They were the closest thing to a sure thing.
The comm officer sat off to one side, examining a set of drawings while the security chief and one of the engineers intently peered at the control pads for the two minesweepers.
Roemig, of course, stood supervising the whole thing. The two had nearly been at it for a half-hour now, and were almost finished, a fact which he was glad of. He'd never liked archaeological digs; the discovery of what had happened never seemed quite as important as controlling what was happening. He did, however, recognize the value of an Ancients' site, especially a military one. In fact, by order of the GTVA Security Council, upon discovery of Ancient artifacts, an officer of the GTVA was considered under standing orders to report the fact directly to the nearest member of the Admiralty.
Roemig, however, had exploited a loophole.
The intent of the directive had been for the closest member of the Admiralty via jump nodes to be notified. The idea had been that they could then quickly assume control of operations regarding the artifacts, and ensure that nothing untoward happened with them. A few of the artifacts of the Ancients had already found themselves onto the black market, from the original sites discovered just prior to the Great War. The idea that advanced subspace technology, perhaps new weapons, might slip from the GTVA's grasp terrified the Security Council.
Instead, Roemig chose to interpret the directive as meaning the closest distance in normal space-time - meaning that his notification had been directed to Admiral Aken Bosch, in Polaris. That Altair had also been recently rewarded as being under the mutual command of him and the Vasuda Prime SecFleet Admiral was also convenient; there was nothing like using a little political maneuvering, meant to promote interspecies cooperation, to muddy the waters.
The return message had been short and succint: Take the greatest of care, find out whatever you can, and maintain security at all costs.
A digitized ding sounded from each minesweeper's control pad; as near as the two could tell, it was safe. They scuttled out of the structure, and two of the engineers began the careful process of packing them up.
Roemig pulled his pistol from his holster, relased the safety. "Let's move in, people. Sergeant, take point."
The Sergeant nodded to his squad; him and one other soldier hustled inside and took up positions to either side of the door, sweeping the room with the lights side-mounted on their assault rifles. The other two members of the squad took up positions outside the doorway; as the Sergeant and the other soldier inside the room found nothing, the two inside the room moved to opposite corners, while the two soldiers who had remained outside took up positions inside the doorway. The Sergeant crept forward, his rifle facing inwards, until he reached a wall. The soldier he had entered with also stopped, having mirroed his approach. However, the wall on his side appeared to be another half a meter back - a curious oddity.
Once the other two soldiers had moved to the other two corners of the room, the Captain moved in. The room was surprisingly dark for mid-afternoon, almost as if something was filtering the outside light. Another curious oddity. As near as he could tell, however, there was no way to turn on what lights the place had - if it had any.
"Sir, the facility appears secure." The Sergeant was clearly uncomfortable with his entry before he'd given the go-ahead, but it was Roemig's perogative.
"Lieutenant," the Captain said, without turning around. "Is there any way to light this place up?"
She entered, pistol drawn, but not pointing it at anything. "I'm not sure, sir. Most of the Ancients structures we've discovered have been too far degenerated to determine if they ever had any lights. Those that have possessed them, however, have had greatly varied ways of activating them."
Roemig snorted. Conquerors of entire species, and the Ancients had never bothered to invent something as simple as a standardized light switch. "Chief, bring a couple of the lanterns in here."
The security chief started to rustle through his pack.
"Lieutenant," Roemig said, as the LED light on his pistol fell upon something across the room from the door. "Take a closer look at that raised platform. It seems to have some sort of markings on it." She nodded and hurried over to the platform, holstering her pistol and bringing out her computer tablet.
"Sergeant," he said. "Leave two of your men here and come with me. We're going to conduct some recon."
The sergeant nodded and started relaying the necessary orders. Roemig stepped outside. Something bothered him about the sudden appearance of this tower; there was no way it could have been missed in the scans of this planet. If something had triggered its appearance, they could still be around; the forest made an excellent place to hide - and watch. Interlude - Unknown date, unknown location
The fleet shivered into view approaching the Kal'roosh side of the Great Destroyer. There were no weapons of ruin there. Charged beams stenciled out, impacting on the shield, creating arcs that shimmered outward and across the length of the vessel. It responded with swarms of fighters, launching from its two bays. It moved to roll to counter the fleet; the fleet moved to counter by plunging under the vessel, removing their forward batteries from the combat.
They launched their own fighters - swift, agile, yet weak. They were on a mission that could not be won, yet determined to go down fighting, in the spirit of their ancestors.
With little time to spare, the home fleets moved off. The final plan was in effect. There was little to do now but watch, and wait as it played out. Only one Destroyer was here now; soon there would be two more.
One overeager vessel lost its footing in the game; a great beam lanced out and punctured it along the length of its spine. It, too, continued onward, as if the will of its crew drove it from beyond the grave to impact with the Great Destroyer, now threatening their eternal home.
So the battle continued, as ship after ship was extinguished by little difficulty. Some fled; many chose to stay. There was little reason, yet the spirits demanded that they did so.
In spite of this, the Destroyers finally came; the fleet was driven off into the darkness of space. The last hope was vanquished, and its champions had fled.
They fled to the reaches of the original space, to the planet that came to be known as Altair. They settled there, for a time, hoping that the Destroyers would not notice them, a hope that was in vain - but they could not know that, not ever.
They established a place there, that would serve them well. They could not hope to pass on what they had learned; instead, they were preserved for all time, until such time when they could be reawakened with great difficulty - or when some matter of urgency demanded their presence. Instead, the Destroyers came. Their fitful sleep was ended before it had truly begun, and they lived to fight once more.
They were victorious.
But their victory did not go unnoticed. Interlude - Altair
"Dearies, Frank and I are going to take a look at the other room I found."
Byron looked up from where he was squatting in front of the desk. "Other room? Hold on, I'm coming-"
Joe paused his work to cut him off. "Hold it, this was your idea, you're the expert on Ancients, no, you're not going, you're staying."
Byron's mouth was still open. "-in a bit." He muttered, "I don't see why you need me."
"I don't." Joe answered. "In fact, the best thing for you to do would be to shut up. When I get the computer running, I will, for now, you're just a distraction."
"So why do I have to stay?" Byron asked.
"Because they-well, you know." Matt shrugged. He'd caught a whiff of the conversation between Frank and Jez.
"Oh. Oh." Byron said. "In here, though-?"
"Not. Another. word." Joe reminded him. The kid really was positively comic, Joe thought. In an age where parents were worried about their children being corrupted by Vasudan fanatics or the latest holovid, somehow he'd managed to miss out on all that. Which was why he'd been hired by the company, Joe knew - a friendly, or at least nonthreatening, face, to ensure everyone that they weren't destroying precious artifacts while mining valuable ores.
"Why don't you go see if there are more markings on the outside of the tower?"
"Hey, yeah, I can go see if that control panel works." Joe heard the kid's footsteps as he scuttled out of the room. A pause - Matt was probably lifting an eyebrow, or something similar - and then he left, too. Good. Now he was alone to work on this. It wasn't all that different from the work he'd done on Caila's toys, splicing together microchips to make a walking, talking pink rabbit. Ever since he'd been a kid, he'd had a great love of systems, and how they'd worked. He'd actually studied some of the samples of the Ancients' language in his upper education, translated a fair bit, even figured out a couple words before the experts. But business was the interlocking of all types of systems - government, social, economy, and every subsystem every field of economy generated.
But he'd always regretted that so much of it didn't involve much hands-on experience. In a way, he'd envied the amateur archaeologist - he was really a fall guy. But up until he took that fall, he was blameless, and could do what he wanted. They weren't all that different, he supposed, but he had been a little more mature - even at Byron's age.
There. The last wire was hooked up - the Ancients keyboard actually used honest-to-God wire, not fiberoptics like most up-to-date GTVA technology. Fortunately, the same equipment that let him program Caila's toys would also let him try to-well, hack the Ancients computer. First he pressed a few keys; the screen showed that there was a current being sent through them. Fortunately, the round blue objects weren't doing some sort of fingerprint recognition, at least as near as the program on his minicomp could tell.
Next, he started to begin a random sequence program. But he hesitated. If the Ancients computer figured out it was being probed, it might simply lock up and stop working altogether. But then, he thought, Byron's random button-pushing would've triggered it earlier. So there really was nothing to lose, was there? He started the program.
As he watched the random sequence program run through iterations of sequences, from 2-character to 10-character ones, Joe got an idea. This place was obviously geared towards offense - not defense. A single, Great War-era Fenris-class cruiser could probably level it with a few blasts from its guns. Obviously, the Ancients didn't expect any sort of attack. So the password, as it were, was probably something easy to enter for the Ancients, but not prohibitively hard to remember, but still difficult for other races to enter...He keyed for simultaneous six-character combinations. Before he knew it, the rectangular indentation in the wall had suddenly lit up.
In shades of blue, the computer seemed to be informing him of the status of the facility. Not only that, but it seemed to recognize that a device of some sort was attached. At least, he assumed that's what "Foreign interconnected object" was, if he was translating it correctly. He set up the minicomp to record electrical impulses, and navigated to the item representing it on the screen.
Unlike human keyboards, Ancient keyboards tended to use phrases instead of letters; it took him a few moments to figure out what seemed to be the right combination of buttons to press, but it seemed to work; a new screen came up, listing options of what to do. He saw one option - some sort of data dump, he thought - and selected it. A question came up - something about allowing the untrusted one to receive the knowledge of the elders? He found and poked the 'yes' button, not realizing that it hadn't existed a moment before; keys were reconfiguring themselves to fit the screen.
Now his minicomp was recording all sorts of activity. He grinned, and actually chuckled. Then, what he read on the screen, made him stop. Apparently, this facility was equipped with 'storage chambers for the sleeping cold ones' - cryochambers. The current occupant number was listed at exactly one. He stared at the screen, his jaw unconsciously dropping a few centimeters. The other word - an unfamiliar form, but still, definitely a variation of the word the Ancients had used to refer to themselves. And the individual was listed as being in much better-than-average condition.
"Oh God..." He whispered. He tapped the keys for more information, specifying 'cold ones' as the subject of his query. And jerked as a progress bar appeared on the screen. "****, **** ****!" he swore, for the first time in years. He must've missed the key that made it a demand for information, not a demand for resucitation. He searched frantically for some combination to reverse the process, but the keys were all blank - apparently, it couldn't be reversed.
As the progress indicator became full, the characteristic hiss of an Ancient door opening. It seemed to rise up out of the solid wall, then began to raise. Anxious, nervous-probably trembling too, but his mind was racing too fast to even try and begin to assess that fact.
He stood there, watching, as a shape stumbled towards him through the mist of the steam from the chamber. Interlude - Altair
The bloodcurling scream echoed throughout the chambers of the dead.
For the second time that day, Frank jerked. He spun around, sprinting as best he could, back through the narrow hallway. Jezebel didn't bother saying anything, but he could tell that she was grimly following. He didn't bother slowing to turn at the end of the corridor, just slammed into the wall and continued on out into the hanger. Apparently, Matt and Byron had figured out how to raise the floor of the hanger - he heard their confused voices above him. He continued around the console, started to head into the computer, and stopped.
Directly in front of him was a full-grown Shivan. It swung its three eyes towards him with inhuman speed and fluidity, the rest of its body following. It seemed more thinner, more bony, gaunt, than the holovids he'd seen, but its movements belied massives strength as it crouched back to leap at him.
He reached for his knife, the only weapon he knew he or anyone else was carrying. As he drew the knife, resigned to certain death but determined to make the best of it, the extremely loud retort of a heavy pistol sounded to his right; after the first shot, he no longer heard the pistol, but felt the pressure of the sound waves as they impacted his flesh.
The Shivan's three eyes jerked back, and Frank turned to see Jezebel wielding some sort of oversized pistol. The Shivan launched itself at him.
He turned back to find the Shivan flying in midair towards him, and had no time to do anything but try and absorb the attack. The impacts from the sound of Jezebel's pistol abruptly stopped, as the Shivan came to close for her to shoot it without hitting him.
As the Shivan impacted him, he could've sworn he felt something give way in the right side of his chest, followed by a searing pain in both his arm and chest, and the knife slipped out of his suddenly-clenched fingers.
He flew through the air, landed on something, and had time to realize that the hanger floor had been coming down before he blacked out.
He awoke slowly, aware of someone, but not sure who. He coughed up something warm and sticky, managed to find the presence of mind to turn his head so he didn't choke on whatever it was. Then his ears started working, and he heard sounds - loud, and near. Then awareness flooded his brain, and he realized they were words.
"Wake up, damn you, wake up! You son of a *****, wake the **** up!" Jezebel was straddling his chest, sobbing, grabbing his shoulders and -he realized as he opened his eyes-doing everything she could to keep herself from shaking him. He was landing on his back, in a field, in the late sunset of the afternoon day.
"Yes," Jezebel whispered when she realized he was awake, and cradled his head in her arms. Frank wondered why he didn't feel any pain, then realized that was, probably a very bad thing.
"Yeah," he managed, before he coughed up more blood. His eyes shot around looking for the Shivan, unwilling to believe it dead and hyper from the painkiller his brain was pumping into his blood stream. He decided to try to get up. He started to roll towards his good hand-
"****!" he screamed. Bad choice. Jezebel went tense and released his head, managing to move two meters away in less than a second.
"No, no, sorry, my fault." He slowly leveled himself up on his left hand, careful to not put much pressure on his right hand or chest. Standing in front of him were Matt and Byron, to the right of the door, where the Shivan was lying. Apparently dead. Hopefully dead. He wasn't willing to trust any gun to kill it, unless the only thing left were ashes. Even then, small ashes.
"Is it dead?" He rasped.
"Sure as anyone can be," Jezebel said in a completely emotionless voice. Her eyes flicked over to the two by the doorway. "Matt even kicked it a couple of times."
"Get it-out-of my sight." he managed. "Land on it with the ship, or that platform thing."
Matt spoke up. "We tried. The platforms got some sort of safety, and it's too heavy for us to drag to the ship."
"Where's Joe?" Frank coughed. Byron paled, and Frank could tell - even in this state - that he must have forgotten about him. He felt a burst of rage at the kid.
But Jezebel quietly, and simply, answered: "He bought it. But I think you'll want to see."
"No." Frank said. "But I think I have to." Interlude - Altair
Frank leaned against the side of the Folly in the cool night breeze. The soft rustle of the trees was the only sound to be heard, aside from the occassional noises of Jezebel putting the medical supplies back in their compartments. She'd found some sort of self-stiffening tape inside the craft, and his arm and side were now covered with it. It'd hurt like hell when he pulled it off, but at least he could move more easily.
He'd sent Byron and Matt to...take care of Joe's remains. Jezebel had been unchracteristically silent on the way back to the Folly; after telling him he'd want to see things in the tower, she'd immediately insisted he come with her to the Folly to get fixed up, once she was satisfied he could move without hurting himself.
Leaning against their ride home, he wondered how they were going to get out of this mess. This wasn't meant to have happened; it shouldn't have happened. But he still couldn't help but think how miraculous it was that he'd survived. If he'd turned to the right instead of the left, or have been standing a bit closer, or the Shivan jumped a bit further...he'd have been dead too. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, and soak in the nighttime air of Altair.
Jezebel finally emerged from the craft and shut off the lights.
"Hi." he said to her.
"Hi." she replied.
Both of them just looked at the unfamiliar stars for a few minutes, neither one of them wanting to say anything, yet both of them wanting to say everything.
Finally, Jezebel broke the silence.
"My parents didn't just die."
"What?" He asked, mildly surprised. It was possibly the last thing he expected to hear.
"They didn't just die. They didn't ever make it off the ship we fled from earth in." She paused. "We'd just escaped the Sol system when we were attacked by Shivan fighters. I don't know how many there were, but there weren't enough that our escort didn't shoot every one of them down.
"The first evidence we had was when one of the sections went bad. The transport we were on had different sections, separated by an airlock. The captain gave us the usual stay-calm, everything-is-under-control lines." She snorted, bitterly. "It wasn't long before we realized the breaches were spreading. There were maps on the walls, so that we could escape if there was a fire or malfunction. My parents and I watched each section go bad, one by one. Then we headed into one of the corridors and towards the escape pods. But by the time we got there, they were all gone."
Another pause. "We'd just started down another hallway when we finally saw one of the Shivans. Somehow, they'd gotten inside. My dad - he was an ex-military type - grabbed a grenade that one of the guards on board had dropped. I watched him pull the pin and wave goodbye as the grenade blew, and the blast doors closed. I was in another section, so I wasn't sucked out with him or my mother. God, I can't ever forget the look on their faces as they blew themselves up to save me."
Frank remained silent, but kept on listening. Jez kept talking.
"I went into pilot school because, well, I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to avenge their death or some holovid **** like that. I just wanted to get by on my own, and piloting has always been a well-paying job. I've never felt comfortable around anyone after a couple weeks, anyway." She realized, fleetingly, that she was talking too much - but did it really matter? She shivered. "I've never let myself get close enough to anyone to care whether they lived or died."
There was a long silence.
Frank asked, "Close...as in astronomical terms?"
She managed a weak laugh. "You better believe it." Interlude - Altair Matt stared at the doorway. He didn't want to go in, but he couldn't back out of it. Frank was hurt, Jezebel wouldn't-couldn't?-go near the Shivan at all, and Byron-well, the poor kid had taken one look and lost his lunch. He was outside now, digging.
But for the first time in his life, he wasn't digging up graves of corpses. He was digging a grave for a corpse.
They'd entered the computer room - as Matt thought of it - wary of what they might find. What they found was worse than anything they'd dared imagine. The strong and sturdy stone countertop, blue buttons and all, had been broken in half. The wires were a mess, but the screen still seemed to work. The minicomp Joe had hooked up had fallen to the floor, and one corner of it was completely smashed. The screen was cracked, and the liquid inside the display had run out to mix with the blood.
Joe...the corpse...Matt hesitated to name it-was propped up against the wall. The right chest was broken in, bones and meat showing through the black business suit - now stained even darker. Apparently that hadn't been what killed him, though. The skull was flattened against the wall, not even recognizable as human now...
That was when Matt had turned away, and Byron had thrown up. Somehow, the kid had managed to make it outside before losing control of his stomach. Matt had felt his own stomach heaving - but he'd pushed down the bile.
This wasn't the first time he'd seen a corpse before. He'd worked as a rescue worker, once, for spacecraft that had suffered collisions or equipment failure in space. But "rescue worker" had been a euphemism-even with the ability to travel light-years in minutes, by the time he and a team had arrived on the scene, it was almost always too late. The only consolation had been that the corpses had usually been frozen by exposure already, a quick and relatively painless death...
Eventually, it'd become too much, and he'd decided to become a miner. He'd never really understood why. Maybe he just wanted to get away from it all, to forget. He wasn't a celebrity, but he was well-known enough that people would come up to him, tell him how bad they felt for him, that they supported him.
That had been the worst part. But now it had followed him here.
Byron peeked in. "I'm almost done. Are you...ready?"
Matt turned around and almsot leapt backwards. He'd forgotten about the Shivan; the corpse had died relatively cleanly. Extremely dark clots had formed in the head where the shots had penetrated its skin. But worse than that, about the time it had escaped, the hangar lights had gone off, leaving the corpse barely lit by the starlight outside.
"Kid, I don't think I'm ever going to be ready. Just...get the grave dug. I'll take care of the rest." If I can get myself to take care of the rest, he added silently.
Byron disappeared, and the soft hustle of his footsteps faded away. Matt forced himself to turn back to the computer room, enter it, and carefully picked up the laptop - never looking at that spot just behind him, and to his left. He turned clockwise, walked out, around the Shivan corpse-feeling his stomach knot as he did so- and lightly dropped the laptop just outside.
He glanced back at the Shivan. A shiver ran through his spine. Damn thing, he thought. His first reaction had been to try and shove the thing under the lift platform, squish it, make sure it was dead. But the Ancients-master builders that they were-had added a failsafe. The lift had hovered a little less than a meter above the corpse. Byron had sent the lift back up...no, enough, Matt thought. He schooled his brain into perfect neutrality. The old habit worked well, and mechanically he trudged inside to pick up the pieces.
Title: Lost Choices
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 05, 2005, 01:10:56 pm
A Shivan...argh! So many questions, so few answers....