Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 153 of 365. Sol standard year]
Days after of Crash landing/ 1
Uninhabited Island / Ruins / Room looking at Indoor forest
Galactic Standard Time / 1420
As Zane moved, he turned his head and saw Bryce looking down the corridor. He felt his blood go cold as he remembered the shared friend he and Bryce had, and the results of his checkup. Without a thought, he grabbed Rodolphe and pushed him through the doorway. Turning around, he aimed his rifle down the corridor. All he could do was swallow as he covered Bryce as he moved closer to the scanner. “What do you hear man?”
“Something coming towards us, get ready to close the door with that hand. Wait until I’m through,” Bryce said softly as he raised his rifle.
As Bryce walked through the doors he suddenly opened fire. As the bolt flew down the corridor the sounds of movement were heard. Bryce fired again and looked at Zane with a hard look. “CLOSE IT NOW!”
Zane moved the hand under the scanner. As the door started to close a roar from down the corridor came. Zane turned and saw Bryce firing, a look of terror on his face. As the door slammed shut a roar was heard from the windows.
Bryce kept standing for a few moments more before he sank to his knees. He still held his rifle and kept it pointing up, but he panted as he did. “Oh, Nova! That thing, I don’t know what it was!”
“What’d you see?” Rodophle asked in horror as he looked at the door that had slammed shut
“It was a feline-like hunched-over biped. It was running on all fours like a lesser humanoid, and it was fast. And I think I saw something on its body…..” Bryce said as he looked around at the others. There was a hint of wonder and fear in his eyes, a kind of youngness to it. “I think it was chitin armor. It might have been made.”
Zane felt his blood freeze. The idea that this madhouse had sentient beings on it besides the other survivors, was so bad. Anything that could survive on a planet like this, that was bad. If there was a native race here, then they that to be very dangerous, and very strong. And they probably had a way to kill anything different from them.
“Sentient species,” Rodolphe whispered in sheer awe. “This world might have native life forms? Sentient ones? On a world with a Ruin?”
“Is that rare?” Bryce asked and Rodolphe only looked at him.
“Very. But I wonder…. Was it just a race that devolved here? But why is it in this complex?” Roddophle wondered as he leaned against the window.
Zane meanwhile covered his face as he tried to think. No matter what, that meant that the doorway was out for them. That meant they had to find another way out of there. And so he turned and looked around the room. No matter what he did, he couldn’t think of another way forward. But it was when he found the other door, then and only then did he notice something. It wasn’t that easy to see, but there looked like another scanner by the door to the corridor.
“Hello,” Zane said as he walked towards the scanner. The others looked up and followed after him, both of them silent.
Once they reached the scanner Zane looked at it, then the window. Feeling a bit of shock he saw that the barricade they had made blocked the scanner from view. With a growing feeling of hope and anger, he walked around the barricade to the following side. Without a single word, he looked towards the wall opposite the door. And as he thought, there was a small antechamber that had been hidden without looking right at it.
“How’s I miss that?” Bryce asked in shock as he walked next to Zane.
“It’s the same color as the wall, and set in. Without seeing it exactly anyone would have missed it,” Rodolphe said with a shrug.
Zane nodded, looking around the room with new eyes. “I think this place was meant to look at that forest over there. Maybe this was where they made food for the station, or plant-type gene works. Makes sense if you think about it.”
Zane kept quiet that the doors and the way that the creature had gotten painted a darker picture to him. This forest might not have been for experiments of that nature alone. It might have been a place to hunt things they made or watch them fight. The more he looked around, the more this place looked vile the longer he thought about it.
The way other Ruins were found, the idea was that there had been a war so long ago, so deadly. Deadly enough that all species that had Faster than Light had all died in it. Most people had thought that this was a result of how long ago it was, but this was putting that theory to the test. If this place was for more than just making bioweapons, then what had it been truly used for?
Zane kept those thoughts to himself as he led the way towards the antechamber. The best thing to do now was to keep those thoughts to himself. They were in enough danger now, adding his thoughts to the trouble was just looking for trouble. They just had to keep their eyes on what was happening now. If they had to find a place to set up a camp here, then he would tell them what he just thought up.
As they made it into the antechamber, Zanne looked around. There was a small bench and the remains of a counter three feet to the left, and a bench along the left side. Ahead of them was another doorway, and a scanner to the right of it. Zane bit down a curse, his idea was getting a lot more believable with everything they found.
“So there was another door, and I missed it. Sorry guys,” Bryce said with shame in his voice.
“But what was that other door used for?” Rodolphe asked as he looked around.
Zane kept quiet, he didn’t want to say anything. If he was right, then it would be best not to say anything, to let the ghosts rest a bit more until he had to.
“So, do we use the scanner or go out into the corridors and brave the bots?” Bryce asked and as one they all looked at each other.
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“Might not be a choice in the end, if I’m right,” Zane muttered under his breath.
“We gotta go, we can’t not,” Bryce said with a sigh.
Zane nodded and put the hand under the scanner, turning it around until the door opened.
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As the hunter looked at the closed door before it, it felt the anger surge. Slashing down with its claws, it howled. As it looked at the doorway into the den of the creators. Its tribe had been stuck down here for years, the large flyers preying on its tribe. The shell walkers that the tribe hunted for food and armor were in the middle. Sometimes the tribe hunted them or were hunted by them. And then there were the plants that ate them while they harvested them. The guard stand was to see if the Creators were still alive, but for generations, nothing happened. But now the door had opened, and that was something the elders needed to know.
Without another howl, it turned away. Dashing towards the way in, it thundered down the pathway. Once it reached the strange hill, it ran down the block sides of it. It reached others of its kind, three of them. One had a large claw blade of a shell walker, and the other two had beaked gauntlets from the flyers. Without a word, the three fell in behind the hunter as they all ran out of the broken shinning wall. As the shining part of it reflected the crystal light from above, they ran into the swaying trees.
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Rodolphe looked around the chamber the group found themselves in. There were large monitors on the wall in front of them behind a computer system with a black chair. To the left was another door, and he saw what looked like a rack by it. But Rodolphe had eyes on the computer as Bryce sat down and looked at it. He pulled out a small handheld unit and looked around, trying to find any kind of input to use.
“Oh,” Zane breathed out suddenly.
Rodolphe turned and saw Zane looking at the strange rack, a bitter look in his eyes. “You okay man?”
‘Yeah, I just….. it makes sense. It makes too much sense,” Zane said with a bitter edge to his voice.
Rodolphe felt a spark of fear that he quickly pushed down. Now wasn’t the time to let his emotions get the better of him.
“What did you figure out?” Bryce asked.
Rodolphe turned and saw Bryce hard at work, still looking for a port and then he went still.
A moment later Bryce turned his head, a grin on his face. “Got it! Looks like something similar to what we use, let’s see if it takes the cable.”
“If this place is what I think it is, then it will,” Zane said softly.
“What do you mean?” Rodolphe asked, a sick feeling going through him.
Zane looked at the rack for a few seconds before sighing. “I think that whatever this place was used for? It became an interrogation center before too long. Or they sent Bio Weapons against each other.”
“Nice idea, but what was this place for then?” Bryce asked
Rodolphe looked at him, feeling his blood go cold as fear gripped him. He wanted to say that Zane was wrong, but it fit. The more he thought about it, the more it fit. The doorway they had opened first, had to be to introduce things to the forest. That explained how the creature had been in it, they must have broken the door or whatever at ‘ground’ level. But there was something else, the robots. They had tried to capture them, he was sure of it. That meant that they had probably identified them as escaped subjects. “Oh by the black hole. It fits! And the bots too!”
“Okay, terrible….. oh. Oh, this is so bad. This is so….. not bad,” Bryce said as his voice had a spark of hope in it.
Zane and Rodolphe both turned to look at him and saw the way he was looking down at the handled device in his hands.
“This is….. well. That’s interesting,” Bryce muttered as he looked at the screen. He looked up and winced as he saw others looking at him. “Well, I got in for a second. Whatever happened here, it was very bad. I don’t think operating systems could get this messed up. I don’t even have local access, just one file that’s as buggy as the stars are hot! Even with my work on this unit? This is gonna take a while to be debugged. This room’s okay I think. And the door is open but there’s another scanner there. And the door itself? I don’t think it leads to the forest below.”
“Okay, then we stay for now. We can turtle up here, just rest and recover. Then make a plan on what to do,” Rodolphe said with a sigh.
“Good! It’ll give my tech some time to work. We have enough food for a few days if it’s just us anyway,” Bryce said from the computer.
Rodolphe looked at Zane and saw the same sheer pity he felt in his friend's eyes. They slowly turned towards their friend and tried to keep calm. If they could get any kind of advantage here, it might keep them alive. He had raided complexes belonging to his enemy before, and they had lived by luck sometimes. Other times stolen data mid raid had saved his team’s lives. The advantage that even a small scrap could give them was enormous.
But the problem was the sheer insanity of the idea that Bryce could get them that data. To take some part of the Ruins tech back was one thing, but to understand it? It took the greatest computers the Federation had years to even read half of the code. And even then they had to guess at what it was used for. The very thought that Bryce’s handheld could do in hours was sheer stupidity!
“Yeah, give me an hour. I’m not the best with this programming code, but I did pass the class,” Bryce said nonchalantly.
Rodolphe felt his blood freeze as he blinked. He looked at Zane and saw the same look in his friend's eyes.
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“Bryce, look at me,” Zane said softly.
Zane tried to keep calm, but he did. But the way that Bryce was talking, it was like he had a way to do what he said. It was like someone saying that they could make an FTL out of wood, bark, and glass. It just wasn’t possible as far as the general public and criminal underworlds knew. The sheer number of people who spent all their lives trying to crack the code never made much progress. And Bryce could do it in an hour?
As soon as Bryce looked up he blinked and saw the looks on Zane and Rodolphe’s faces.
“You can read the code of the Builders on that thing? You have a…… a translation?” Rodolphe asked shakily. “That School of yours taught you to break the code?”
“Yeah…. One of the easy classes back at school on the Programming Track. Why?” Bryce asked them as he blinked.
Zane felt a headache and slapped his face. He tried to think about just what that meant, just who the school might be. How well-connected was this School? What had they found that no one else had?
Rodolphe just looked at his friend before sighing. “It takes the best current computers and AI years to even find a way to read half of it. Some programs have been running for a hundred years and they still haven’t cracked it completely. And people still consider it the greatest programming method around!”
“Really? Oh. That…… explains so much. I wondered why the network of the ship was so easy to hack,” Bryce said as he looked down.
“What do you think you’ll be able to find in the data?” Zane asked and Bryce looked up and smiled.
“I think I saw a map of this level of the complex. If I’m right we’ll be able to see another office like this where maybe I can determine more! If we can do that, we should be able to find a way out of here!” Bryce said.
Zane felt his friend's hope. The longer they were down here, the harder it would be to get away alive. And then there was the traitor to consider. The longer they stayed here, the longer he might do it again and everyone could die. They had to get back to the group and soon!
But he looked at Bryce as he worked, and felt a spark of fear. The very fact that Bryce was able to do that cast a terrible fact to life. He had learned at the ‘School’, the home of those who created ‘Students’. That threw everything he thought he knew about the ‘School’ into question. The family had the idea that they were just a child soldier program that lived past its shutdown order. But the fact that they knew to read the ‘Ruin Code’, made them a lot more dangerous than he had ever possible. The kind of Ruins that the underworld kept quiet, that groups kept secret. The sheer wealth and danger that they couldn’t let the Federation or Cults get their hands on… this was so bad.
“So we stay, I’m taking a nap. Wake me if the door bucks,” Rodolphe said as he pulled off his backpack. Using it as a pillow, he looked at Zane who swallowed.
Zane saw the terminal in his friend's eyes. The thoughts he had been agonizing over? Rodolphe must have felt the same things.
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As the creature coiled its serpentine body through the metal cave, it looked ahead to find any way out. It had been lucky so far, its escape was going well, the creations of the Creator’s weren’t tracking it. So far it was going farther away from the scent of the all-food, and that was bad. But it couldn’t turn around, the cave was too tight. Already it was starting to get harder and harder to move, but it had no choice. It had to keep moving, there had to be an opening. It could scent it just ahead of it, air and green things.
As it moved farther, it started to think that maybe it had been wrong. After it had found the strength in the many caved rooms, it might have been a better idea to go back. With the Strength it had taken, it would have been able to challenge anything. But it could feel something growing within it, a strange burning that hadn’t gone away. All it had to do was keep moving, and sooner or later it would come out somewhere.
As the creature moved along, it suddenly blinked as it came into a three-way split in the path. As it looked at each one, its tongue shot out. Its eyes shot open as its tongue caught all the scents the air was sending it. From the right was a small scent of the all-food, and it had a tingle of the metal. To the left was nothing but the scent of water, and water from the great expanse. That promised that it would be able to swim to the sea and find a way back to its den. But ahead, oh. Ahead was a treasure. It was the scent of the open near its den, and the all-food was even stronger that way.
There was a choice here, and one that would set its course. It could go after the water and escape. It could go for the small all-food. Or it could go for the greater all-food. In the end, there was only one choice.