Edge of the Vortex Page 16

  “Shall we?” Daz asked, and led the trio down the ship's steps onto the hardened landing platform.

  Rhea followed Daz down and looked around the landing zone. There were a few other ships in sight, but not as many as her last trip to Mechcharga. Someone, she forgot who, had told her that many of the leaders of the Alliance had departed for their home-worlds to shore up support for the Alliance in the event of the Princess’s inevitable death.

  Walking to the hovering craft, Rhea couldn’t help but notice how flimsy it looked, but didn’t give it more than a passing thought, and stepped onto the craft just before the middle of the three seats, and gingerly lowered herself until she was sat down. The seat was only a few centimetres off the bottom of the craft, which resulted in her knees almost coming up to her chin.

  Once Daz and Wey were onboard, Rhea watched Daz, who was sitting to her front, tap a few keys on a tiny pad on the railing of the ship, and away they went. When she had stepped into the craft it was only half a meter off the ground, and once it started moving it came up to a full meter, and followed a series of walkways that were first in the landing area, then through more of the palace grounds, before exiting a manned gate, and turning down a dirt path that ran into the woods, and towards the large city in the distance, which Rhea had only seen while taking dinner atop the palace some time ago.

  The path that the skift moved down was perfectly manicured. It seemed to Rhea that every branch, flower, and blade of grass along the side of the two-metre wind path they moved down had been cut to the exact same length, creating a perfect thoroughfare for the little craft to race along. Rhea wasn’t sure how fast they were going, but it didn’t feel uncomfortable, and for some unknown reason, she couldn’t feel the wind rush by on her skin, or through her hair. She guessed that some kind of invisible force field was in place, but she couldn’t be certain.

  Just as the tops of the approaching skyscrapers started to come into view, the path began to widen, and then it eventually joined a two-lane road and popped up next to a large lake which had a few boats moving about it along with a smattering of swimmers closer to shore. A few pod-like transports were moving along the road and even some more exotic looking single passenger transports and other hovercraft.

  But the real attraction, once the skift got past the lake, was the giant city that was looming to their front. The city was comprised of dozens of very tall buildings, all glimmering in the morning light. It was a marked contrast from the skyline that Rhea had seen on Floxis that looked like it was in a state of decay, but even that looked lively compared to the almost ruin like conditions on Darjk. Here there was a real sense of life. Activity in various forms buzzed around the buildings, even from several kilometres away the place looked alive.

  The road that they were travelling along never got wider, even once they breached the first block of tall buildings, but that was due to the several layers of flying vehicles moving about above the ground level. Looking up, Rhea was amazed at how the buzz of activity crisscrossed the city skyline without a hiccup.

  After a few turns, and a few more kilometres covered, the skift finally came to a halt outside a large building that was light green in colour with copper coloured features. Daz was the first to exit the craft once it had lowered itself back down to its start position and offered Rhea assistance getting out of the transport.

  Stepping down, Rhea looked up and down the street. The sidewalks were wide and clean, but there was hardly any pedestrian traffic in sight. Looking back up, she could see that some of the surrounding buildings had access and landing points up the sides of their structures. Perhaps that was how most of the inhabitants got around.

  Walking up to the single, massive door, the trio were greeted with a hyper-frequency message informing them that they were entering a restricted building and that any attempts to intrude would be repulsed. Rhea shook her head to get the noise out and was greeted with a cool wave of air once inside the four-story-high lobby.

  The interior had what Rhea thought of as an art deco vibe with several large columns reaching up to the ceiling and running the length of the building to the far entrance. In the centre of the vast space which took up the entire ground floor of the building was a small desk manned by hologram.

  Rhea followed Daz and Wey as they moved up to the desk where they were greeted politely and then asked to state their business.

  “Access to Dyno-Kel laboratory, the records department.” Daz said.

  “Identification.” The holographic image of a service droid replied. Rhea thought it was odd that someone would design a hologram of a machine, but before anyone in the group could reply, the hologram quickly granted them access to the entire building and directed them to the lift.

  Rhea didn’t say anything and trailed after Wey and Daz, and only spoke when they reached the lift.

  “How’d you pull that one?” She asked, looking at Wey.

  “I transmitted my access code. We’ve all now been given full access to every section of this building, although we only need one.”

  The lift arrived, and they boarded. The ride to the 75th floor took seconds, and when the trio stepped off, they were greeted by a pair of security droids, weapons holstered.

  “May we direct you?” One of them said in a very mechanical tone. The machine was sand coloured, and was very thin and looked quite basic in design to even Rhea’s standards.

  “Records department.” Daz said in a casual tone.

  “Follow.” The droid replied, and started moving down the wide, overly lit corridor.

  Trailing to the rear, Rhea couldn’t help but notice how all the rooms they passed which had glass walls and seemed void of life. In each room there were droids and robots of various descriptions going about their business, but no organic lifeforms. All the rooms looked spotless while the machines went about whatever task they were assigned in a near perfect silence.

  After making a few turns off the main corridor, the group reached an unmarked door, and the security droid stopped and motioned for the trio to proceed in. The door opened on motion sensors, and Daz led the way, followed by Rhea with Wey trailing.

  Once inside, the door closed behind them, and a dim blue light illuminated the room that was no larger than five metres squared with a single terminal against the far wall.

  “How very charming.” Daz said, moving up to the terminal. “It’s unlocked and awaiting search parameters.” He said, looking at the screen.

  Wey moved up next to Daz and looked at the single entry point on the large monitor that was putting off more light in the room than the overhead blue lights.

  “Well.” Wey waved his hand over the terminal and watched as a series of numbers and letters and symbols appeared on the screen. “This is the product code for the nano-device I captured last night.” He said, pointing at what had been entered via a neural uplink from his helmet to the terminal.

  Rhea bent forward and looked at what had been entered. It was gibberish to her, she still couldn’t read Universal, even if she could speak it. “Now what?” She asked, righting herself.

  “Tap the screen anywhere, and we shall have an answer to what we seek.” Wey said.

  Rhea looked over at the reflective mask of the Royal Inspector, then back to the screen. Not sure if it mattered where she tapped, she paced her finger just to the right of the characters Wey had entered and quickly retracted her hand as the screen suddenly changed to show another image.

  “Ha,” Daz said out loud. “Someone has tried to keep this information restricted.”

  Wey didn’t say anything but waved his hand over the monitor again. The screen quickly turned to an almost pinkish colour with several lines of information on it.

  “What does it say?” Rhea asked, staring at the screen.

  “This column on the left,” Daz pointed at the screen. “Gives us information on the device we’ve requested such as manufacture time, date, location, and then this column on the right gives us information on where
the device was sent after completion, which it turns out was nowhere, it was kept at this facility.” He paused and scrolled down a few inches. “And then this final entry states who withdrew the item in question and when.”

  Rhea crossed her arms and looked at Daz. “Well don’t keep me in suspense, Estiva Controller.” There was a small smile on her face.

  “Admiral Lex. Commander of the 5th Fleet.” Daz replied.

  Rhea looked at the screen, then back to Daz. “So where does that send us next?”

  Wey shook his head, then turned to face Rhea. “We must proceed, as always, with caution. Lex is a powerful man. He will have powerful allies. We need to get to him without him knowing that we’re on his trail.” Wey turned away from the screen. “Now we being to arrive.”

  33

  Etelainen Territory

  5 February

  The task of subtly finding Admiral Lex was proving more challenging than Rhea, Wey or Roper Daz had envisioned. His command headquarters for the 5th Fleet on Killious was not sure of his location. The worrying piece was that the admiral had left with the Five. The super command ship that was the flagship of the 5th Fleet and carried with it a massive amount of firepower, drone and other attack aircraft, and a large ground force. It constituted a massive threat to whomever it decided to engage.

  Etsiva Controller Wey had proclaimed that the trio would use Lex’s office for a few days as a location to draw their supporters. The list that Rhea had had from her first visit to the Etelainen had gotten much shorter. Many of those on the list were missing and could not be found. It was a clear sign that whomever they were on the trail of was spooked.

  Rhea was starting to realise that this was going to be a long, slow investigation. And it didn’t help that she was separated from Joe.

  At the same time, Joe was sitting in a large planning suite inside the Fleet’s headquarters on Mella II. He had spent his time since he had left Traxis going over all the information that the Alliance had on the Sol System and what forces were known to have jumped in when the Alliance forces had decided to bug-out. Unfortunately, that information was limited. Joe didn’t have much to go on. The liaison that Admiral Taark had assigned to Joe gave him a full rundown on the ships that were spotted in the system, and then his estimation on how they’d control the planet and the system.

  What Joe, nor his liaison knew at that moment was that there was a Barrier Generator, a scarce commodity in the galaxy, in operation on the surface, and no matter how powerful an armada Joe returned with, they wouldn’t be able to breach the shield without assistance from the ground, and there was no way of knowing what was happening on the planet’s surface without communications with someone on the ground, and Ranix hadn’t been able to tell him if anyone got off Lasqueti alive, or what the Coalition was doing to the planet. He hoped for the best, but sometimes he feared the worst. Now it was just a question of making a plan and presenting it to Fleet Command for approval. Not an easy task.

  Information. The most valuable commodity he knew of, and he was in short supply of it. Standing up from the holo-table he was working over, Joe looked at the three droids that were standing around the table with him, providing him with technical information when needed, and shook his head.

  “Why don’t we take a break, guys.” Joe said. The droids had gotten fairly good at understanding Joe and his mannerisms, and without responding, they walked over to one of the walls of the room and shut themselves down.

  Looking up at the ceiling, Joe rolled his neck, then looked down at the three-dimensional image of the Sol System that was floating above the table. Manipulating the image, he zoomed in on Earth and started to wonder what was going on on the surface at that moment. It’d still be cold in Canada. He wondered if Keegan were still alive and what he was doing. He wondered if the PCS had slipped away or suffered a grim end. The thoughts of Earth under Coalition occupation did not warm his heart with joy.

  No matter. He had one job: plan the rescue of his home, his planet. Looking at the door, he started to think who the first person in the chain of command he needed to talk to about getting some eyes on Earth. Commodore Smid. The commander of the 7th Fleet’s reconnaissance unit, the 3rd Recon Squadron.

  34

  Bering Sea

  7 February

  The Planetary Command Ship had continued to slip north, into deeper and colder waters in the days since the Alliance lost the system. The ship was able to handle the environmental conditions put on it by the ocean from the outside, but the tension on the inside was reaching a breaking point. Sector Prefect Dinalis had been completely sidelined by the enraged Lord Soturi who had spent almost all his waking hours in deep meditation, trying to focus his energies on building up his powers, ready to engage the Coalition threat when the PCS decided to finally rise to the surface.

  Dinalis knew that they were in a bad situation. The planet was compromised, and with the energy shield activated, they had no way of getting a transmission to Alliance forces in the Etelainen, or contact with any Alliance forces that may have remained on the surface. Dinalis hoped that some of those stranded on Lasqueti had been able to get off, but he wasn’t certain of anything at this point. He also had reason to doubt that the Alliance would risk sending a fleet to recapture the system. Which begged the question, what was it that made the planet so valuable to the Coalition. There was obviously something on the planet that they had discovered that was worth such a dramatic use of force. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Walking through the quiet halls of the ship, Dinalis waited. The ship was in a state of almost tranquil stasis. Many of the crew had been sent to their quarters and given tablets to slow their metabolic rate, a state close to but not quite hibernating. Droids moved about with regularity conducting the daily inspections of the ships components, always tending to their duties even without the supervision of the organic masters.

  Dinalis made it a point to walk through the entire ship after his midday meal, and on that day, deep beneath the waves of the Bering Sea, he happened to be walking past the armoury when he heard a commotion inside.

  Passing through the open hatch, he saw a faint blue glow of light coming from one of the sub-compartments. Walking up to the hatch, he stuck his head in to see Lord Soturi seated on a chair in the middle of the room, and the blue glow emanating just beyond him. Curious, the Sector Prefect walked forward, without saying a word until he was standing directly behind the sitting Jin-Mona, and looked over his shoulder.

  Not one metre to his front, floating half a metre off the ground was an exposed fusion reactor core for a Sentinel. Only this core was completely removed from its protective casing, with those components floating in the air surrounding the core, which was floating free in the air.

  Dinalis’s eyes grew wide, but he couldn’t speak. His fear was overwhelming. He knew that the core had enough power and radiation to kill everyone on the ship if not handled properly, and here it was, floating in the air, without its protective casing. The radiation alone should have killed him the moment he walked into the room, but he felt no heat, and no ill effects. After standing silently for a few minutes, he watched as the reactor pieces started to form up, as the device was reconstructed in perfect sequence. Once the casing had been re-established, the cube, which was only the size of an outstretched hand, floated towards Soturi, who reached forward and picked it out of the air.

  Tilting his head towards Dinalis, Soturi smiled. “Do not fear, Sector Prefect.” He stood up from his chair and walked over to a storage unit and returned the reactor to its rightful place. “You and the ship are safe.”

  Dinalis took a deep breath and took the Jin-Mona’s seat. “How long have you been testing your powers?”

  Soturi smiled. “Ever since the Coalition returned. I started with smaller objects, then moved on to more complex tasks. I can now easily disassemble and reassemble even the more sophisticated droids on the ship. The reactor was the final test. I had to make sure I could control the en
ergy within.”

  “And you thought testing that theory with a reactor was the best way to do that?” Dinalis asked, shaking his head slightly.

  “Don’t be a fool. It started with basic explosives and moved to more challenging tasks. I started with ballistic rounds, then moved on to energy based weapons, then conventional explosives and so on. The armourer has been assisting me with these tests.” He said confidently.

  “And where does that leave things now? How will your sharpened powers help without current predicament?

  “It has not improved our situation in the slightest. With the energy shield active, we are in the same spot we have always been. We need the energy shield brought down before any counter-offensive can begin.”

  Dinalis nodded in agreement. “I do hope that some plan of extracting us from this situation is underway.”

  Soturi shook his head. “I am not confident that the Fleet will authorise anything. Too many other priorities, and we still have the conspiracy to drag out the war to contend with. The main parties to that must be pulling strings at the highest levels, and if that is the case, they will do whatever is in their powers to keep us, and the humans side-lined.” Soturi walked over to a weapons cage that was nearby and opened it. Pulling out a small laser pistol he looked down at the weapon then put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.

  Before Dinalis could even react, a tiny green bolt of energy shot out of the weapon and travelled one centimetre before stopping next to Soturi’s temple. Putting the pistol back in its place, he faced the bolt of charged energy, and delicately picked it out of the air with his fingers, and then moved towards Dinalis.

  “When we get out of this situation, there will be vengeance.” He placed the energy bolt on his left palm, then closed his hand around it and waited a moment, then released his grasp. The energy bolt was gone. “I’m going to get back to Mechcharga and vaporise everyone responsible for this war, and then,” he put his finger up to make a point. “We,” he pointed down to Dinalis, “are going to stop this war.”