The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3) Page 33

  “And maybe once home of another hominid species like ourselves,” Minu agreed. “The important thing to remember is that my father provided no details on the world, only that he highlighted it as of interest.” Once again she felt sick in not telling them the full details. This was one of those clue worlds he'd left to her, where there was likely some additional piece of information that would allow her to eventually unlock the last of the encrypted files on his logs. Files so massively encrypted that not even Pip could get in. “The Squeen told me this is where our human matching cybernetics come from,” she said and held up her four fingered right hand.

  “What is the biggest risk?” Var'at asked.

  “This is uncontrolled territory, deeper into the frontier than humans have ever gone. As you Rasa know, many of these are prime choice picking worlds claimed by higher order species, and they defend them with maximum prejudice. We could be walking into a seemingly worthless junk pile...”

  “Or a hornet’s nest teaming with T'Chillen,” Aaron finished for her. She just nodded her head; they all understood the risk now. It was important for her.

  “So, what's the route we need to take to get there?” Bjorn asked, pulling out his own tablet computer and calling up a glowing map of the galaxy as they knew it.

  Chapter 2

  January 10th, 522 AE

  Undesignated World, Galactic Frontier

  The plan was a simple one, a controlled mad dash for Enigma avoiding all contact with alien species, passing through far flung worlds so quickly that they didn't draw attention to themselves. Four days and a dozen jumps into the plan, Minu was forced to admit it was not working.

  “It was a good plan on the face of it,” Bjorn consoled her. The two stood outside underneath one of the fighter’s gull-wing side doors, using it as a shield from the world’s unceasing rain. Lightning flashes illuminated the endless rain forest that surrounded them. Adding to the misery of unceasing rain, the world’s temperature hovered just above freezing.

  “History is littered with good plans,” Minu said, wiping water from her bright red hair, “and the dead left afterwards.” Bjorn just shrugged so she bent over and glanced under the fighter. There, lying in the mud and muck was Ted and one of Var'at's soldiers, a technician, struggling to remove a fickle gravitic impeller. “How's it coming?”

  “Faster if you'd leave us alone,” Ted growled as rain dripped from the underside of the fuselage onto his face in a steady stream.

  “I'm thrilled you talked me into this!” Bjorn crowed, stretching under the dry shade of the door. “It’s great to get clean unspoiled air into your lungs!” Ted just sputtered and spit out dripping water as he wrenched on the stubborn impeller. Nearby a temporary shelter had been set up by the Rasa soldiers and they were roasting some local wildlife they'd caught. It looked to Minu far too much like a primitive monkey for her liking. She admired their ability to make the best out of any environment, and particularly to always find something to eat. Their resourcefulness was only exceeded by their culinary constitution.

  Minu sighed and moved back inside. The interior of the fighter had a musty feel to it now and even here, water was everywhere. It was a little warmer, but they didn't dare turn up the heaters all the way. Hot and humid was worse in her opinion than cold and wet. Aaron sat in the pilot’s seat, snoring loudly while Var'at sat carrying on an animated conversation with one of his soldiers. Minu took another seat and pulled out her personal tablet.

  The galaxy holographic map sprang to life and she projected it in space above her, better to make three-dimensional connections. She'd been marking worlds with Portals and highlighting those with site specific destinations. She'd spent months before this mission entering data from her father’s personal logs and the map was crisscrossed with hundreds of color coded lines. To the casual observer it looked like you could go anywhere you wanted quite easily. The truth was many areas of the galaxy were difficult, if not impossible to get to. Chriso never discovered how to unlock a Portal that was limited in destinations, but the fact that they could be locked was obvious. Someone, a very long time ago, had purposely isolated vast swaths of space. She accessed her father’s logs and read.

  “The more I see, the more I learn. I find myself running in circles. Someone obviously did this on purpose, and they must have been very old and very powerful.” Minu could sense her father’s frustration in his writing as she continued. “Even more tantalizing than the thought that someone knows how to manually program Portals, is what they might be protecting.”

  She put the log down and looked up at the map again, zooming in on their location and spinning the view. Enigma was there, glowing gold, and tantalizingly close. “Only fifteen damn light years away,” she grumbled, “why did the damn Concordia give up ships? Doesn't make any sense.”

  “I agree,” hissed Var'at. He'd finished his conversation and moved to sit next to her. He watched her with one turreted eye while the other studied the rotating map.

  “It's a mystery my father never figured out either,” she told him. “On one hand some old species made it difficult to reach certain areas of the galaxy, then around the same time they abandoned space ships.”

  “Maybe they did one to enable the other.”

  “What?”

  “I said, what if they isolated those places, and then got rid of the starships so that no one could sneak around their blocks?” Minu was dumbfounded and sat staring at Var'at. “I am sorry, it is a silly idea.”

  “No, it's brilliant really.” Var'at smiled at her in his species way by hanging his mouth open and flicking his tongue. “This theory of yours suggests that both events must have been implemented by one species.” Var'at shrugged in a non-committal fashion. “One species with that much power?”

  “Who knows how much power the Lost wielded?”

  Var'at moved outside, maybe to get some roasted monkey, leaving Minu with her thoughts. Months ago, after the Tanam incident, the Squeen named Strong Arm said she should wonder who the original Concordia were. She could find absolutely no evidence of who that might be on the networks. Moreover, there was research by other species that suggested there never was an 'original Concordia' species. To her it was nothing short of phenomenal that a loosely formed empire spanning most of a galaxy would have no real memory of who started it. The other species, by and large, didn't seem to care or were offended by the idea. But then you needed to add in a fact Pip discovered years ago. That all Concordia portable media chips were designed to self-destruct after 100,000 years. She leaned back and rubbed her eyes, feeling wholly inadequate to get her head around the sprawling mystery. In a seat nearby Cherise gently snored.

  “And I can't get any closer than fifteen light years,” she said to the gloomy, dripping interior of the fighter. Every turn they'd made they ran into obstacle after obstacle. Obstinate Portals that wouldn't accept commands from the control rod Ted brought along, Portals that appeared dead and inactive, hostile aliens more than willing to engage the fleeing humans, and worlds so inhospitable even the fighters would be challenged, were just a few of the problems they'd run into. And now only two paths were left to enter the region of Enigma. “At least the aliens we've encountered don't know who we are,” she was relatively certain. The transports her fighters were based on were ubiquitous in the empire. Thousands of them could be had for rock bottom prices. Of course thanks to Bjorn and Ted's magic, these were no longer ordinary transports.

  As if he'd tuned in on her mental musings, Bjorn appeared in the doorway, looking around with a thoughtful expression. He seemed unhappy about something. She turned farther in her chair and regarded him before speaking. “Something wrong?”

  He noticed her there and smiled. Minu had always found him a friendly man who never got angry. Even when he'd been usurped from his old job as head of the Science branch, he never raised his voice. “I was just realizing we forgot to add something to the fighter.”

  “Really? Looks perfect to me, what did you forge
t?”

  “A damn bathroom,” he grumbled, and then laughed at the bemused look on her face. She gestured to the ubiquitous 'field portable relief station' and he laughed all the harder.

  “Maybe we can stop by somewhere and use a pay toilet?”

  “We couldn't even pay them for a candy bar.” Minu looked askance so he continued. “We aren't part of the wider Concordia economy. We're nothing more than itinerant farmers, trading what extra food we can.”

  “So what is the Concordia economy based on? They have credits that they use and trade to us for our products and salvage.”

  “Right! But what are the credits based on? There must be a material base for every economy, right?”

  “Unless you’re the 20th century United States.” Minu just stared at him. “Some powerful nations on earth based their currency on trust that they would be around and powerful in the future. It was called Fiat Currency.”

  “Rather foolish to take a simple promise for your worth.”

  “Isn't it? Anyway, it was your father's belief that the Concordia economy has energy at its base. And we agreed with him.”

  “Energy? But, but, that's just a...”

  “A commodity like any other,” he assured her. “In old world governments on our planet they valued things like food, and even salt. Just because it’s a consumable, doesn't mean it isn't valuable. A third of all our off world trade goes to purchase power in the form of loaded EPC.”

  “I remember now, we talked about this a few years ago.” Bjorn nodded and grinned. “Pip said they got the power from something called Solar Taps, sucking it up from suns and such.”

  “Yep, crazy technology. The same kind of stuff that probably let them move our world, more than once, despite its aging star.”

  “Okay, like you said before, you think this is lost technology, magic from the past, and such?” Again Bjorn nodded. “So how are they keeping up with the power needed for a galaxy spanning empire?” With a twinkle in his eye, Bjorn told her to explain as she saw it. “Well, even though a star is really big and all, it has a finite amount of plasma you can harvest. Won't you eventually destabilize the star?”

  “Possibly, but not if your careful. The plasma is a byproduct of the fusion process in the right type sequence star.”

  “But what about aging?”

  “Aha!”

  “These ideal stars, they're young, right?”

  “Very young.”

  “So you only have a limited time you can harvest from them? What, a few million years?”

  “About.”

  “So if that technology is lost...”

  “Go on!”

  “Then it’s a ticking time bomb, a disaster waiting to happen!” Again the smile and a nod. “But is that enough to cause the decline you say is under way?”

  “Not by itself,” he said with a shake of his head.

  “A lot more is going on we don't see,” Ted said as he entered. He was dripping wet and covered with mud as he carried in the offending impeller. They could have just ignored the malfunctioning device, but it was decided to repair this one lest they end up in a combat situation and then be down to only backups. The stock impellers were slightly modified to work in the fighters, and thus the problem. It was doing double duty and was prone to failure. An upgraded model was on order, but not yet available.

  Ted set the impeller; a round flattened housing with two dangling cable harnesses, on a chair and fell into the chair next to it. The Rasa tech was right behind him with a diagnostic tool kit. “This little trouble maker is part of the problem.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it's thousands of years old,” he said and absently slapped the troublesome machine. “We can't get new ones, and couldn't afford them if we wanted to. The Concordia is like one long endless flea market, but where are the factories?” Minu shrugged. “Exactly! Your father found what he thought were dead factories, he called them Ghost Factories; dozens of them, all over the place. He also found what looked like abandoned farm worlds, given over to fallow conditions due to lack of manufacturing base. It’s like the whole galaxy is in the grips of some massive malaise!”

  “Or decadence?” Bjorn asked.

  “Even a decaying decadent society recognizes the need for production,” Ted countered.

  “There must be a way to head off our own addiction at the pass,” Minu said with more conviction than she felt.

  “We used to be independent,” Bjorn reminded her, “up to a few decades ago we only imported a tiny amount of power. Now, with all those factories, aerocars, other industry?” He shook his head and Minu made a frustrated face.

  “If you're done entertaining flights of fantasy,” Ted barked, “could you give me a hand with this fickle instrument?” Bjorn gave her a wink and left her with her thoughts to help his friend.

  “Don't you think we'd make some enemies if we became energy independent?”

  Minu looked up at Aaron leaning against the fighter’s door. During her conversation with Bjorn he'd awakened from his nap and went to stretch his legs. He seemed indifferent to the rain pouring off the roof and down his back. As a scout he'd been through much worse. “Maybe, but who cares?”

  “She dances where angels fear to tread.”

  “Don't be melodramatic.'

  “Perish the thought.” He moved over and sat behind her. He looked at the map she'd left hovering with a critical eye. “Someone went out of their way to make it less than obvious that something was hidden there.'

  “Not subtle enough. Only two ways in, and both are contended worlds. One controlled by the T'Chillen, and the other by the Mok-tok. The latter was so hot we nearly lost a team of scouts twenty years ago.”

  “Sas-quad pods can be real unsocial,” Aaron agreed. Humanity rarely interacted with the enigmatic species known as the Mok-tok, and thus very little was known about them. They were a symbiotic species, the visible one being a two meter tall quadrupedal furry monster lacking any obvious head or visual organs. Scouts quickly dubbed them Sas-quads because of their resemblance to a disembodied four legged Sasquatch of old earth legend. Whatever the other half of their species was like, they hated humans with even more passion than the reptilian T'Chillen.

  “Well, sounds to me like the only real option is the T'Chillen route. At least we have a known threat, and previous intel.”

  “True,” Minu agreed as she eyed the map with him.

  “Trust these fighters,” he advised, “the guys know what they are doing. We can be in and out pretty quickly. The stupid snakes won't know what hit them!”

  Behind them, the gravitic impeller went SNAP and started to smoke. “Bitch!” Ted screamed and smacked it with a wrench.

  Chapter 3

  January 11th, 522 AE

  Undesignated World, Near Enigma, Galactic Frontier

  The fighter slid through the Portal, and into darkness. As they had since leaving Bellatrix, Minu led in her fighter, Aaron piloting next to her in the front, Ted and Bjorn behind them, and farther back a squad of Rasa soldiers and finally Cherise overseeing the delicate cargo of Pip in his suspension pod. The other fighter would follow in seconds, commanded by Var'at and the remainder of his troops. No sooner had they cleared the Portal than a proximity alarm went off and they came to a quick stop.

  “What is it?” Minu asked as she looked out through the moliplas viewport.

  “Can't see a thing,” Aaron said, “but the radar says there is solid wall right in front of us.

  “Side slip before Var'at rear-ends us.” Aaron nodded and the fighter rode its impellers sideways. A second later the computer told them the other fighter was arriving, and just like them coming to a sudden stop. Another alarm went off, arresting their sideways momentum this time. “What the hell? Damn it, we better have a look. Exterior illumination, half power.”

  Aaron brought up the lights mounted along the fighter’s flanks and they got a look at their surroundings. Nearly featureless walls ran along in a
sweeping arc in front of them and away in both directions. Minu craned her neck to the right and could just make out a huge pile of debris. They hovered over a metallic floor, and above was a similar ceiling.

  “Where the hell are we?” Aaron wondered aloud. He was delicately maneuvering the fighter to make more room for Var'at in his own fighter. The space was only five meters ceiling to floor, and twenty meters wide. Not a lot of space for a three meter tall, ten meter long refitted transport.

  “Some sort of Portal facility,” Minu guessed, “maybe an underground bunker, or antechamber of a Portal Spire.” She manipulated the fighter’s systems and verified there was an atmosphere sufficient to support human and Rasa life. “Land here and let’s have a look around.”

  The air was biting cold and smelled of decaying metal, but it was breathable. Minu pulled a field issue support mask from her kit and slid it on over her head. The device came alive and instantly the air she breathed was warmer and scrubbed clean. The chamber the fighters rested in did look a bit like some freight handling rooms she'd seen in Portal Spires in the past, and also not. The group spread out to investigate.

  “Some automated handling equipment,” Cherise announced from the huge pile of debris.

  “What happened to it?”

  “A little age, and a lot of weapons fire.” She held up a charred piece of debris for Minu to see. At the same time, Ted was using their control rod to examine the Portal.

  “Been inactive for a while, probably months at least. Won't accept programming; just like your father said. We can only go back where we came from.”

  “The next Portal onward must be in another chamber,” Minu said. She looked at the only door, currently closed, and whistled through her teeth. The fighters might fit through, but only just.

  “My people are getting all kinds of crazy energy signatures,” Var'at told her and he gestured around them. “This is a most unusual place you have brought us to.”

  “Thanks dad,” she mumbled under her breath, then directed her attention to Aaron. “See if we can get that door open.”