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.
