Star Force: Zen'zat (SF14) Read online

  The rest of the discussion leading up to the Mantis quartet crossing over land covered other, less prevalent forms of bad bonding, and as a group the 0s, 1s, and 2s were able to hash out a lot of answers with the final conclusion being that while they could help others advance by forming bonds with them, and do so in miraculous terms given their skill level, such bonds would have an equally diminishing effect on the Archons, slowing them down as they helped to speed others along.

  Because of that, they determined, they had to stand apart at the tip of the spear and push as far as they could go. If others followed them, great…but they couldn’t hold their hands. The trailblazers needed to be free to go and do whatever was required, improvising along the way…and non-individualistic bonding did not support improvisation. It was regimental and habit-based, which was why, in terms of growth, it often resulted in stagnation…and stagnation was the enemy of all training.

  The way of the Jedi, Paul thought to himself, summing it all up as the Mantis came into visual range of their destination. On his datapad he could see the wide, rocky expanse covered in a nearly flat blanket of snow with a few small peaks off in the distance that broke up the otherwise totally white landscape. In the center of it, however, was a wide building built in typical Star Force grey aesthetic that most of their engineering projects resulted in. It appeared as a wide, thin horizontal line that gradually grew into a flat, 20-story high building stretching out to cover more than a square mile of acreage.

  Once the Mantis flew over the roof Paul spotted a cluster of landing pads near the center of the foodstuff production facility. There were already two cargo-laden Mantises on the ground, with a third just taking off. The massive building below them was one of the initial pieces of Project Harvest, growing crops indoors on the otherwise infertile continent. With several floors that multiplied the available acreage, and a year-round growing season, the facility was producing grain nonstop, having staggered the harvest dates to allow for continual shipments that saw Mantis traffic coming in and out on a daily basis.

  Running out the opposite side of the building was a long rail line that connected to a distant ocean port, giving Star Force the ability to ship grain out by sea if necessary. Right now that wasn’t an issue, but as more and more of these Harvest facilities came online the available Mantis fleet was going to quickly become insufficient, so plans for a more robust distribution network were already in the initial construction stages.

  Paul stowed his datapad in a receptacle under his seat as the Mantis set down on the landing pad, then got up and walked out the back ramp as a blast of cold air hit him. He and the others weren’t wearing anything more than their standard uniforms, but fortunately they didn’t have far to walk.

  As he followed Jason outside he stepped down into an inch of fresh snow and looked around, marveling at the rooftop landscape and the small peaks off on the horizon. He’d spent so many of his recent years on Venus that the snowy landscape seemed stark in contrast. On one hand it was unbearably cold, but clean and vibrant at the same time. Venus was inhospitable, but the air here was fresh and the sky was pure blue with a bright sun overhead that did little to fight back the cold. In some ways Paul felt like he was on another planet entirely, for this wasn’t the Earth that he remembered.

  Then again, all his recent memories of the planet were from the tropical zone that Atlantis inhabited.

  The other three Mantises landed beside theirs on identical pads and the rest of the trailblazers rushed out and over to the rooftop entrance to the facility. It was a box-like building that held two pairs of stairways along with a large cargo elevator for grain shipments up and cargo shipments coming back down. The visitors hit the stairs and flowed down them like a lithe and agile waterfall, forming into a large pool at the very bottom in some sort of welcome center.

  “Excuse me,” Davis said, pushing his way through the group and up to the front desk that served the administrative area on the opposite side of the side wall. He had a brief chat with the receptionist then led the group out into the factory, showing them the large interior fields that were sectioned off into rectangular pods that held a carbon dioxide-rich and over-pressurized atmosphere, which caused the plants to grow to inordinate sizes. As they walked a circuitous route, Paul saw not only grain crops, but forests of fruit trees behind the glass walls bearing enormous apples and oranges the size of his head.

  Further down he also spotted a harvesting cycle on a patch of carrots, with machine arms prying up individual plants out of the artificial soil. His eyes went wide when one of the tubers was removed and ended up being more than a meter long.

  A few steps down and he passed the control booth, where an army of remote operators manipulated the arms so they could harvest the carrot crop without having to depressurize the growing pods. Paul nodded his appreciation to a pair of the workers when they glanced his way, then followed the hoard of Archons on to a less populated section of the facility.

  In what looked like a maintenance area, Davis brought them to a pair of large doors, obviously designed for the transportation of cargo crates given their width. The Director input an access code into a wall mount and the overly thick doors retracted into the walls as a wave of hot air washed out onto Paul and the others.

  Davis smiled widely and led them inside.

  Paul was in the back third of the line so he couldn’t see much ahead of them, but the group was apparently headed down another level via a catwalk. When those in front of him stepped down the first of the stairs he got his first look at the green/black stone that comprised the southwest corner of the top of the V’kit’no’sat pyramid.

  2

  As he walked down the stairs Paul and several other trailblazers reached out their hands to touch the alien stone, finding it really was warm to their fingertips, as the research notes they’d studied at length had suggested. He let his hand slide all the way down the stone wall as they descended until the catwalk suddenly disappeared and they all found themselves standing on the second tier surface of the pyramid underneath an artificial ceiling that was the foundation of the building above them.

  Not too far in the distance Paul could see a wall of dirt, meaning that this piece of the pyramid was all that had been dug out, but according to the schematics the footprint extended for many miles, with the top tier being the width of several football fields and perfectly square. The second tier was likewise flat and square, ringing the top tier on a lower level, with subsequent tiers extending down into the bedrock, making the pyramid larger the deeper you traveled.

  Davis led the group across the flat-topped second tier to a catwalk stairway built over the edge that let them walk down to the third. It was here that they came to the uppermost entrance where they’d initially cut into the pyramid. Now the doors stood wide open, but Paul could see the damage marks as they approached.

  This tier had also been cleared of dirt and debris for a wide perimeter, with additional tunnels having been dug as access corridors to other surface features. In addition, Star Force had built small rail lines that ran across the surface of the pyramid to where they connected to lift shafts that went straight up the side of the 2nd tier. Paul knew they were for cargo transport, but he didn’t see any crates or cars lying around, which made him wonder where else the tracks led to further down the side of the pyramid.

  “Jason, Paul, and Greg please wait here,” Davis said when they got to the entrance. “The rest of you, go explore,” he said, pointing them inside.

  With unabashed smiles the trailblazers filed inside as if they were in line to an amusement park, more than eager to look around the alien pyramid that had been toying with their imagination for some 70 years.

  Paul stepped out of line and joined Jason next to Davis and Greg as the others disappeared from view.

  “There’s something I want you to see first before you go exploring,” Davis said, his merriment dissipating a bit. “I want a fresh set of eyes.”

  “What is it?�
� Greg asked as the older man led them inside and through the egg-shaped hallways.

  “I’d rather not say just yet, and it’ll take us a while to get there. We’ve yet to find anything similar to an elevator or cargo lift, so we’ll have to walk several miles.”

  “Supplies?” Jason asked.

  “By hand, as near as we can guess,” Davis said, turning them right at the first curvy T-junction. “I admit, that doesn’t make much sense, but the tier we walked in from functions as a type of landing pad for the Human section of the pyramid, and that door is the only way in up here.”

  “What about the dead zones?” Paul asked, referring to the limited maps that had been passed on to them with large gaps missing.

  “We drilled into one last year, but it turned out to be a double door and we haven’t gotten around to the second one yet. I don’t like punching holes that we can’t fix, and I’m hoping that we’ll eventually be able to get computer access to unlock them remotely.”

  “Why can’t you hack the door locks?” Greg asked. “I know we haven’t got a grasp on their crystal tech, but shouldn’t you be able to physically interrupt the command path and send your own?”

  “Tried and failed,” Davis admitted. “I know I didn’t put this in the reports, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the stone is more than stone and has processing power of its own, so there’s no way to isolate the physical aspects from the computerized ones, because they’re one and the same…or so my theory goes, anyway. We haven’t been able to confirm or deny that yet,” he said, stopping as they passed through an atrium that held a wide set of stone-like doors. “Case in point.”

  Paul knew from the pyramid schematics, which they’d all memorized, that this door let to one of the missing sections on the map.

  “Coloration is different,” Greg said, frowning. “I don’t remember seeing that on the photos.”

  “Neither do I,” Jason added, noting the almost phosphorescent ring around the doors.

  “What do you mean?” Davis asked.

  “The bright ring and symbols,” Greg explained. “Those weren’t included in the research data you sent us.”

  Davis squinted. “I don’t see any…wait, yes I do now. Strange, I hadn’t noticed that before,” he said, walking over and rubbing a finger along the glowing ring. “It’s faint, but we shouldn’t have missed that. Sloppy,” he pronounced, but intrigued at the same time.

  Paul and Jason exchanged glances.

  “Faint?” Jason asked. “They’re glowing.”

  Davis frowned. “I can barely make them out.”

  “Can you see the symbols?” Greg asked.

  “Where?”

  “On the doors,” he said, walking forward and pointing. “I’ve seen this before. It’s the Human marker, but this is new,” he noted, swinging his finger over to the second symbol and brushing it up against the weird red color that almost made his eyes hurt for its intensity.

  Suddenly the white ring around the door changed color to match the symbols and the doors pulled open, with Greg flinching backwards in surprise.

  “I thought these were locked?” he said, looking inside as another hallway was made available to them.

  “Hold on a second,” Davis said, his brow furrowed in concentration. “I could barely see the ring, and I didn’t see any symbols. I take it that’s not the case for you three?”

  “Bright as can be,” Greg attested.

  “Son of a bitch,” Davis muttered. “I should have seen this sooner.”

  “The ambrosia,” Jason commented, catching on. “You copied it exactly?”

  Davis nodded. “I always thought it was too complex to be just a nutritional supplement. What are your current dosage levels?”

  “7.5,” Jason said, starring at the now red ring around the open doors.

  “6.7,” Greg added.

  “5.9,” Paul said, a little miffed at being the lightest of the three.

  “I’m at .3,” Davis noted, nodding emphatically. “Last time I was here was before I started taking the ambrosia, and I believe that the most any of the research staff take is 1 deci every other day. If the concentration has to be high enough to enable us to see hidden markings and open sealed doors…”

  “Then it’s a good thing you finally decided to bring us all down here,” Greg pointed out.

  “Is that an ‘I told you so?’”

  “It is,” Greg said without animosity.

  “I stand corrected then…but you know my reasons.”

  “Why allow computer access to those without ambrosia?” Paul wondered aloud, thinking ahead a bit.

  “Internal caste structure?” Greg asked, looking to Davis.

  “A good question…and a better one is will we get additional computer access if you’re the ones using the equipment?”

  Greg glanced at the newly opened hallway. “Let’s organize this, then we can go on an Easter Egg hunt.”

  “Agreed,” Davis said, throwing a quick glance at the now open door that had been sealed to them for the better part of a century. “I’ll take you to the command deck.”

  The ‘command deck’ was the largest room in the pyramid, or rather chasm might have been a more appropriate term. Davis and his original exploration team had stumbled upon it early on, finding many dinosaur skeletons laying around, but they hadn’t glimpsed the true magnitude until months later when they’d finally found the ‘switch’ for the interior lights.

  The room was oddly square, much like the exterior of the pyramid but foreign to the interior motif of curves which filled the nearly mile wide chamber. Circular pedestals made of resistant cushioning popped up across the landscape in irregular patterns, some were even elongated into wide arcs that the dinosaurs would rest upon, with the intervening spaces being that of the warm stone floor separating the upraised islands in a truly awe inspiring sight from the ground.

  More than half of the pedestals had Human access stairs that led to control consoles on top of the pads, each of which could hold many dinosaurs. On top of these pads had been the skeletal remains of the former owners, but had since been cleared away and replaced by prefabricated structures of Star Force make, giving the research teams direct access to the sites rather than requiring them to make the long walks to and from the entrances scattered around the perimeter.

  “Wow,” Jason commented as they climbed through the enormous doorway and up onto the command deck. The ceiling was high above, but not so high that it appeared distant, for compared to the side reaching expanses it was relatively low, though several hundred meters overhead.

  “You said it,” Paul echoed as Davis led them along one of several color-coded lines that had been painted on the floor to help with navigation. Everything was so oversized that it was hard to get one’s bearings, so the research team had created their own ‘highways’ through the liberal use of paint on the otherwise pristine green/black stone floor.

  “As the reports said, we believe this was the command center for the pyramid, and perhaps even the planet,” Davis offered as he glanced around for the off chance of finding an unused transport, then began the long walk out to the nearest of the pedestal pads. “We’re fairly sure that each of these islands held significance within the V’kit’no’sat’s political structure, though the dynamics of that we haven’t been able to define. There are what look like Human-only areas in the four corners of the deck, denoting the lowest ranking members, with two large banks in the center that you can almost make out from here that we guess mark the location of the more dominant races.”

  “Below this level the various chambers appear to be split up according to race, but this area seems to have been communal. I would guess these are workstations more than seats, but we have no video records of activities in these areas to study. There is technology on the islands that does not appear to be designed for Human usage, but we haven’t been able to get it even remotely functional. Everything we have is from the Human perspective…which now appears to be the
lower ranking Human perspective.”

  “Have you been able to find out any more about the Human societal structure?” Greg asked as they followed a white line on the floor.

  “Hints only, references to orders and such. This new ambrosia link suggests a much greater division, however.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think they were all on ambrosia?”

  “We have access to the computer systems because of our genetics…I’m sure about that. I’m guessing that the ambrosia offers a second tier security function for more higher ranking Humans. I could barely see the ring around the doors but I couldn’t make out the symbols. It is possible that the level of access is determined by the concentration of the ambrosia…or perhaps something it leaves behind in the body, or an alteration that it makes.”

  “If we can leave each other messages that only we can see…” Jason pointed out.

  “Oh, I like that,” Greg said, thinking of all the applications they could use it for within Star Force.

  “So,” Paul said, rubbing his hands together in exaggerated anticipation. “Where’s the secret paint?”

  “It’s probably beyond our ability to produce, if it’s part of the construction of the stone,” Davis said, cracking a smile, “but I’ll have the research team look into it.”

  “The other versions of ambrosia?” Jason inquired.

  Davis turned back to look at the Archon and nodded. “Good point.”

  “That won’t help if the doors are also genetically locked,” Greg added, referring to the dinosaur-only versions, which were constructed from different formulas than that of the Human-based ambrosia.

  “True, but if we’re ever able to hack our way around the genetic locks it could be useful…if the theory is correct.”

  “Director!” one of the research staff yelled down to him as they approached the bottom of the staircase that led up to the top of the nearest pedestal. “We have new computer access! I don’t know how, but the Archon was able to get further into the system!”