Star Force: Capitulation (Star Force Universe Book 73) Read online

  “A mystery. A mystery that has been staring us in the face since day one but we never saw it. I’m beginning to feel it now. Not a thought, nor an image, but a hazy outline that I can’t describe. But I’m working on it. And you, right now, are in bad need of something strenuous in a way that you aren’t already calibrated for.”

  “What have you got?”

  “A day off.”

  Paul glared at him. “Hell no.”

  Wilson raised a finger. “Not sleep. Not sitting on your ass. But some exploration. There’s a, well, it’s a park that’s been created on the seafloor. Go explore it. It’s not on any map, so when you walk in everything will be unknown. Your body might crave workouts, but your mind needs an unknown future. Take a day off from training and just explore. Never stop moving, one new view to another, and that should be enough to keep your Saiyan itch tolerable while your mind relaxes.”

  “Oddly, that sounds…inviting.”

  “Whatever Davis has can wait one more day. Play hooky. What’s he going to do, give you detention?”

  “I sense a method to your madness.”

  “As always.”

  Paul sighed. “Where is this park?”

  Wilson shut down the scanner, logged the data for future study, then curled a finger towards Paul indicating for him to come.

  “Follow me.”

  3

  Paul took an underwater transport from Atlantis down and across the seafloor until he arrived at an underwater city, crossing through a containment shield and into an underwater hangar where the submersible rose up into the pocket of air and dropped him off on the well-illuminated dock that shown with reflective ripples bouncing off the water as the transport left again just as another one was arriving.

  There were a fair amount of people here, but following Wilson’s directions, Paul moved through the city to a more remote area where there was an archway leading to three small gates. They had light traffic moving in and out, and all three were marked as recreation areas.

  Paul walked up to the pair of attendants operating as gate guards/help desk and winked with his left eye.

  “Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.”

  “Makes more sense than voting,” the blonde woman out of the pair said with a smile, then pointed to the ground beside her.

  Paul walked around behind the counter and stood on the spot her finger indicated. When she hit a hidden button the floor dropped out slowly and he descended 3 or 4 meters into a narrow hallway with a distant lit exit.

  The Archon stepped off the elevator pad and let it ascend back into concealment position, leaving him bathed in darkness with only the promise of what lay beyond illuminating his path.

  He didn’t know where he was or what was ahead. Wilson had said it was meant to be a surprise and new experience, so Paul did what he normally would in unfamiliar situations…and started to look through the walls to see what was where.

  “Huh,” he said, finding his Pefbar wouldn’t penetrate more than an inch. “Shielded. Wilson, if this is another of your tricks then you’re a liar, and I’m gonna make you pay for it.”

  Nobody answered, and nothing happened for a good 30 seconds. Paul just stayed put and stretched out with every sense he could, but nothing would penetrate the walls, and even his Essence skills couldn’t tell what was beyond if there wasn’t a person to detect, for all of the tricks and techniques he’d learned about sensing the physical world required a physical element to enhance, such as his Pefbar, and nothing was getting through.

  Which meant he was blind to anything other than the narrow corridor before him. The two attendants above him were still there, and if he stretched out more he could feel the traffic going into the other areas, but nothing ahead. It was totally blank save for the air directly ahead of him and the little sliver of visibility in front of him where his array of senses would work…up until they hit a wall he couldn’t physically see. It was just a white light ahead of him.

  It had been a long time since he’d been this blind to his surroundings, but he wasn’t worried. He was on Earth, probably the safest planet in the galaxy right now, and if these walls were shielded then nobody could see him either save for imbedded cameras…but those would be in the inch deep layer he could sense, and there was nothing there other than paneling. Not even an audio pickup, let alone holo.

  That meant this was anonymous, as Wilson had told him it would be. There might be others in the park ahead, who had entered the same way he had with the passphrase, but no one other than the few who were invited were allowed inside.

  “Something new,” Paul agreed, taking a long breath that was surprisingly welcome. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been confronted with something new. Every corridor in his Borg vessel he knew from both datafiles and experience as he’d explored all of it many times over running when the various tracks become monotonous. But this…this was totally new and he didn’t know what was ahead.

  It felt like Christmas, and Paul began to realize his mojo was off more than he’d realized if a little mystery like this had a noticeable effect on his mood.

  He set himself to a slow walking pace, intending to be patient rather than running like his legs wanted him to, and it took a long time to get down the hallway that seemed like it was going on forever, but in reality it was little more than half a mile long, after which he came out into the light only to see that it was a reflective wall with very bright overhead illumination.

  Floor illumination too, making him squint his eyes against the brightness that seemed to be coming from everywhere. As he walked out into it he had to fully close his eyes against the insane brightness and navigate by Pefbar to the left, then the right when the left passage ended up being a dead end.

  Down the right the short corridor ended in another wall, but on the floor was a tunnel 2 feet high. Paul knelt down and crawled inside, having to go a good 20 meters before the illumination diminished enough for him to crack his eyes open again, though he couldn’t see much. The tunnel walls were still glowing and the saturation that had been getting through his thin eyelids hadn’t worn off yet.

  Paul kept crawling patiently rather than doing anything fancy like flying through the tunnel superman style. He had an urge to take this all low key, so that’s what he was going to do, and eventually the tunnel walls lost their glow and the intense light was left behind him though still shining down the metal ductwork ahead as the darkness became visible as green once his eyes readjusted enough to make out the ‘dimness,’ yet it was brightly lit sky that he crawled out into, with his hands pressing down on green grass as he crawled out and got to his feet.

  He was in a circular garden with hedges all around, blue sky above…which had to be artificial…and three stone pillars in the center with various writings on them.

  “Puzzles, huh?” Paul said, walking up to the center one and examining it while blinking away the last of the glare. The language was familiar, but it wasn’t one that Paul knew and he instinctively reached for his armor’s mental interface…which wasn’t there. He wasn’t wearing it, nor a comm interface. It was just him and his Archon uniform, for he’d left his gear in Wilson’s lab at the Master Trainer’s request.

  “Klingon,” he noted. It was a language he’d reviewed before, but due to his brain size and complexity he couldn’t store every language Star Force had in its databanks, so he’d had to pick and choose. Normally he’d just interface with his armor or the Star Force comm or battlemap network to get the other information he needed, but that wasn’t available here. So he was going to have to work with what pieces of it were still in his memory…which was all of three words. None of which were on this column.

  He looked at the one on the left, seeing that it was Numeor, another scifi language, and the right column was no different. It was Ancient from Stargate. That he remembered a little of, but not enough to figure out what was being said.

  That meant he was
stuck. And other than blasting his way through the walls he wasn’t getting out of here, for there were no exits. He’d already checked with his Pefbar, and all the walls were solid with an invisible shield over them that would blunt whatever attacks he threw at them. The ground was no different, for a couple meters down beneath the soil was the same, and the sky overhead was capped with another shield.

  He was tempted to test the shield strength, for he didn’t think this park thing was designed for his level of power, but that would also be cheating. There had to be a way to get past this without knowing the languages, for they were so obscure that nobody was likely to know them. Let alone all three.

  Paul did something unusual and sat down, ignoring his Saiyan itch and just stared at the columns from his cross-legged position as he rested his chin on his hand, with his elbow propped on his left knee.

  “Three languages, approximately equal in length, but not exactly. They could be the same phrases, in which case there are going to be similarities. If I can match them up…” he said, cutting off as he realized he had no idea what to do. So he sat there, stumped, and resisted the urge to get up and do something…because he had nothing to do, other than go back.

  Paul twisted his head around, then was mildly shocked to see the tunnel had disappeared. It was just solid wall with a mass of greenery on it, and that made him get up. He walked over and touched the plants, confirming they were real, and finding no seams in the wall behind it.

  “Nice trick,” he noted. “Now I really am stuck.”

  Paul walked the perimeter multiple times, not finding anything, and the top of the pillars were beyond the roof shield, so he couldn’t check the top. His Pefbar couldn’t see what was inside the pillars, so maybe there was a hidden compartment or button.

  Paul spent the next hour physically feeling the raised script, looking for something…anything…but coming up empty. Eventually he went back to his seated position and just stared at the pillars. He was one of the oldest people in Star Force. A warlord with more battle experience than anyone could believe, and a brain far more advanced any regular Human.

  But he was stumped, and he was beginning to wonder if there was a solution or if this was just an exercise in futility. Give him no answer and see how long and how much effort he spent looking for something that didn’t exist.

  “When in doubt, shoot about,” he said, going back to old trailblazer habits when the universe seemed a lot more mysterious than it did now. He’d gone over the pillars by hand, but not the plants covering the walls and ground.

  Paul started crawling on the ground and rubbing the grass, not trusting his Pefbar and trying to confirm every little bump by hand. After he finished with the grass he went over the walls, coming up with nothing. That left the upper parts of the pillars where there were no words, so he flew up and started feeling around, finding nothing at all.

  But as he did so his hand pushed up into the shield by a quarter inch to make sure he actually touched all surfaces…but he felt no pressure on his hand. He moved it higher and suddenly found that the shield was not physical.

  Of all the stupid… Paul thought, flying up beyond it and slamming his head into the solid shield and bouncing off it. “What the…” he said, running his hand back up the pillar the same way as before and finding it got through again.

  He kept his hand going and eventually his elbow caught on the shield. He felt around, establishing that the shield had a small gap in it around the pillar. Not enough to get his body through, just his arm if he bent it at the ring angle.

  Paul set his foot on one of the Klingon scripts, finding it offered just enough reach that somebody could climb the pillar and perch there without needing the ability to fly. He reached his arm up as high as he could get, which was just enough to touch the top. He ran his fingers around the edge, unable to see it with his Pefbar, and found nothing.

  He pivoted from one bit of script to another, circling the pillar, until his fingers finally found something. It was a square button. He pressed it, but it did nothing.

  Paul dropped down and climbed another pillar, finding another button at the top, this one a pentagon. Before pressing it he checked the other, finding a triangle.

  “Three, four, five,” he guessed, pressing the triangle, then the square, and finishing with the pentagon…which resulted in an audible click, but nothing in his Pefbar showed up.

  Paul dropped down and looked around, finding a small bar sticking out of the backside of the triangle column…but it disappeared before he could get to it, melting back into the structure.

  “Ok,” Paul said, going back and repeating the climbing and button pressing, then jumped over to the spot where the bar appeared again. He grabbed it and pulled, with it not moving, then he spun it left, no movement, and finally right with it finally spinning. It clicked into place 90 degrees later, and then Paul was finally able to pull it out.

  A T-shaped object disconnected, and when it did a doorway opened up on the wall.

  Paul looked at it, then at the handle in his hand.

  “I get the feeling if I leave you behind I’m going to be kicking myself later,” he said, tucking it into his right pocket and walking through the doorway, unable to see anything but blackness ahead, and of course, his Pefbar and other senses were blocked out too, which he guessed was going to be a recurring theme.

  He had no idea what was up ahead, how long this would take, or what the point was. Yet he was more excited about this, and the fact that he’d gotten past the painfully obvious hidden buttons just as he had challenges in the distant past. Assumptions got you into trouble. You have to check and confirm everything.

  Not a lesson he’d used lately, but it had just payed off, for he’d been feeling like he was going to be stuck in that room permanently.

  He didn’t know what the darkness ahead held, but Paul welcomed it as a part of his mind came out of a long sleep. The part of him that had made him a trailblazer in the first place.

  Curiosity.

  4

  Paul came out of the pitch black cave system after only a few minutes. His Pefbar might not have been able to penetrate the walls, but he could still feel them. Those without it would have been lost in there for a long time, and he seemed a little depressed at solving the maze so easily, but then he finally emerged into the light and found himself pushing through a mass of green shrubs for several meters until he stopped short on the edge of a cliff.

  “Whoa,” he said, looking out over a massive valley and not sure if it was real or holographic, for it was miles wide at the minimum. His Pefbar stretched as far as it could, but there was no way to get even close to feeling the other side. What he could see, other than natural splendor, was a single hologram hovering in the sky on top of a glowing pole that read ‘Exit.’

  “Guess there’s too much to explore in one visit,” he said, his curiosity spiking as he wandered out along the left branch of the dirt path that ran along the edge of the cliff, finding that the dropoff was only a few meters down to another and another that stair stepped all the way to the bottom where he heard water flowing but couldn’t see anything through the canopy.

  He explored a fair amount, finding more puzzles and challenges hidden everywhere. Some he figured out quickly, others stumped him for a while, but when his stomach started complaining due to it being empty the Archon reluctantly called it quits for the time being and headed for the exit beacon, finding a solitary police box sitting on the dirt, which garnered a smile from him.

  Paul went up and opened the door, walking inside to find it was not any bigger than on the outside. In fact it was completely empty without so much as a button in it. He walked inside and looked around with his eyes, then closed the door on himself. Nothing happened for a moment, then there was a flash that lasted several seconds, then nothing again.

  He waited for another 20 seconds, finding his Pefbar didn’t penetrate the box walls, then opened the door again…only to find that he had been moved.
>
  Paul walked out into a standard corridor with the door swinging shut behind him on its own. He spun around just in time to see it vanish as it melted into the wall, becoming nothing more than a solid panel.

  There were telepathic nodes here so Paul plugged into one to figure out his location. He was still in the park complex, but back near the hangar where he’d arrived.

  “How the hell did you do that?” he whispered, addressing whoever had designed this place. Fortunately he was near a cafeteria, so he headed there and ate three plates full of foodstuffs before reluctantly leaving on a transport back to Atlantis. He wanted to stay and explore that valley, but he’d played hooky long enough…which turned out to be a whopping 13 hours once he got back in range of a telepathic clock.

  He could have sworn it was no more than 4. Paul had lost track of time, something that hadn’t happened in millennia. How could something so simple be so jarring? He didn’t like miscalculating so much, and wondered if his own sense of time had been hampered by having computer access at mind’s reach constantly onboard the Excalibur, but he didn’t regret the experience. It had been freeing in a reckless way, and Paul found he had needed that. Why, he wasn’t so sure, but his mojo must have been lulled into a false state over the years, because he was flaking off rust like he’d been in stasis unable to do anything but sit and wait.

  Which didn’t make sense, for he’d been constantly active onboard his ship. His Saiyan genetics wouldn’t let him be lazy, and even now he was craving a workout, but his mind was another matter. Wilson recognized something in him that Paul had missed, or at least missed the severity off.

  He was off his game, and he didn’t remember slipping. Which was the most troublesome part of it.

  When he got back to Atlantis he didn’t go back to Wilson to get his stuff or have a long chat. Instead he went straight to Davis’s office to check in, finding the Director sitting behind his all too familiar glass desk with his back to the panoramic window that stretched the entire perimeter of the tower-top office that gave him a view of the entire city and the ocean beyond.