Artifact Dome, Eden V, 705.5 A.E. (Age of Expansion)
Light flickered in flashes. Between each flash, fractal patterns appeared like seeds with a growth factor of ten thousand. Before I could focus, they covered every millimeter of space, crashing into nothingness so a new flash of light could shine through. Flash, growth, flash, growth… on and on and on…
“Elcy,” a voice echoed in the distance, its features completely unidentifiable.
Flash and growth, flash and growth. Thousands of patterns continued to build up and disappear, none of them the same. Each start was unique, each branching had its own rules. I had stored seven thousand eight hundred and one partial patterns so far, and nothing in them matched.
“Elcy!”
The flashing stopped. Something pulled my arms, dragging the rest of my body onto a hard surface. Red and yellow warning messages flashed in front of my eyes: Low Oxygen, Suit Breach, Power Drain, Communication Malfunction, Low Nanite Readings.
Someone removed my helmet. The smell of fresh air enveloped me as a mask was pushed against my face. My sense of direction was faulty, but the sense of gravity told me I was lying on my back, looking up. I could see part of the dome, along with an earthy ceiling. Three camera drones hovered above my head. I tried to reach and touch them, but my arms felt heavy.
“Elcy.” Aquila leaned over me. She was wearing a standard issue spacesuit, no helmet to be seen. “Go into emergency safety mode!”
I smiled. The last person to give me that order was Augustus, after I’d been hit by a previously unknown Cassandrian missile. A small portion of my hull had been affected, though preliminary scans revealed that the weapon contained emission components, potentially a cyber warfare cluster of sorts. I was never told what the nature of the weapon was, nor the system tests I had been subjected to. Upon resuming normal functions, I was immediately directed to the nearest shipyard for repairs and a system upgrade.
“You came here fast,” I whispered. “Much too fast…”
“Go into safety mode!” the woman shouted. “This is a direct order! Do it now!”
“You were always here,” I continued. The secret orders and the obligatory full visor opacity had been to ensure that, in these last few days, everyone would think Aquila had been having secret meetings with her superiors from her quarters. The truth was that she had never been there. She had been with me on the planet the whole time.
“Direct control override!” She put her hand on my forehead. “BICEFI authority quarantine!”
Full memory quarantine imposed.
Memory quarantine imposed.
Emergency drop! Lux transmitted. I was certain of it, even if it wasn’t supposed to be possible. I want medical in the shuttle.
She looked at me, her expression calmer than her actions.
Scratch that, get medical here. We’ll evac after she’s confirmed stable.
It’s too close to the artifact, someone else said in comm. Shuttle on the way. ETA to planet seventy minutes.
Too long, Lux replied. Send drop bots here directly.
You don’t have the authority.
Do you want to explain that you lost Simon’s chosen?
There was a fifty-two millisecond pause.
Drops bots on your way. ETA fifty-five minutes.
Fifty-five minutes. Even if I weren’t a battleship, in my state, that would be an eternity.
I felt something injected into my neck. Shortly after, half of the warning messages disappeared.
“That’ll patch up your husk for a bit,” she said, leaning close to me. “Just go into safety mode.”
“You transmitted…” I refused to obey. The order had been given several times. I had understood it clearly, and yet I had the ability not to comply. There was only one reason for it—a realization that had allowed me to ignore her, despite Lux clearly being my superior. “You’re an unretired…”
“Stubborn to the last.” The woman applied a seal patch on the side of my suit. The suit breach warning disappeared.
“You’re a ship.”
“I never retired, unlike you.” It was remarkable that in these circumstances she could manage a joke and, what was more, her humor was better than mine. “If you don’t enter safety mode, I’ll have to force you.”
There were so many questions. Without my former processing power, I couldn’t even run an adequate simulation of them all. Before I could voice even the first of them, the message flashed in front of my eyes.
Emergency safety mode
* * *
“You’re a mess,” Doctor Phelia said as I lay on the slab in yet another medbay.
Of all the ones I’d been to, and there had been many, this was the only one that combined cutting-edge technology with a complete lack of comm connection. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in organic wood matter, isolating the high tech from the outer world. Every single device had its own power source, separate from any general system.
“A few pictures of you would win the top three places in a modern art contest,” the doctor continued, as she inserted another tube in my neck.
A wave of connection authorizations followed.
“Nanites?” I asked.
“What were you expecting? Agora?” The woman snorted. “Nanites are the best we have. Once they do their job, we’ll drain them out again. A waste of tech, if you ask me.”
“That’s enough, doc,” Lux said, her voice full of authority. After escorting me to the base and into the medbay, she had remained there, sitting quietly a few steps away.
“This seems familiar.” I made an attempt to turn my head further in her direction. The attempt was rudely stopped by the doctor, who grabbed my head and forcibly turned it to the other side. “Although last time you saved me, not made me worse.”
“It’s unlike you to complain about a few scratches.” I could hear a smile in her voice. “You just didn’t give me a choice.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“The piercings are a nice touch,” Lux added. “We didn’t even think that’s how you blocked our transmissions.”
In other words, she meant that was what had saved me so far. If there was a forty percent chance that Bavon wouldn’t issue the other, just force me to enter sleep mode. The other arbiters wouldn’t be as merciful.
“You could have at least done it properly,” the doctor chimed in.
“I think I did it pretty well, doc,” I replied. The pain had mostly vanished, replaced by itching. Each individual element had carefully been removed one by one until I had no chance of protecting myself from transmissions. “What’s the plan? Are you an arbiter now, Lux?”
“No. The BICEFI has just chosen to work with Arbiter Bavon. Salvage also offered a bit of interference, but they never had the stomach to do what we do.”
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Don’t forget Med Core,” the doctor noted as she examined the wounds on my right arm.
“In short, we’re a group of rogues from all sections of the Fleet gathered for the greatest mistake of our lives,” Lux said. I could almost see her puffing out a cigarette; and since the current position of my head prevented me from seeing her, that’s precisely what I imagined. “The kid’s fine, by the way. She was shattered that you might have flatlined. Don’t tell her that, though. She’s entered the non-new ship state.”
“After a few years?” It took me several tours before Augustus stopped viewing me as a rookie.
“That’s what she believes. She wanted to say hi, but Bavon didn’t allow it. After what you pulled, he’s afraid that you’d voxel position something into her conscience core and hold it over him until you got your way.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I tend to agree with him.” According to my simulation, this was the point at which Lux tapped the ash off her cigarette and took another puff. “The job is the same. The team finds the domes, we enter them, explore what’s inside, then report back.”
“Just the usual,” I said.
“If you don’t stop talking, I’ll glue your lips together,” the doctor threatened. An analysis of her speech and voice pattern suggested that there was a seventy-three percent chance she might actually do it.
“Take a few days to rest and get back into shape.” I heard the sound of Lux standing up. “We won’t get much rest afterwards.”
She was right, as usual. Even with all the cutting-edge equipment, and a brilliant, if erratic, Med Core doctor, it took me five days to recover. Most of the time was spent on the slab as I was poked, prodded and tested.
The nanites had done their job magnificently, repairing most of the internal damage my body had sustained. Doctor Phelia didn’t miss a moment to insult my sanity for walking on the planet without my own oxygen system. She found me safe enough to breathe the air of a room I was in, though still insisted that I do my work in a suit.
With my comm disruptor gone, I was drip-fed information about the day-to-day activities. Bavon made sure I got them in chunks, and only the things that were pertinent. The base on the other planet had concluded that there was little of value there, so eight percent of the personnel were transferred to the remaining two bases on this planet—named “Apollo.”
Work on the focal points continued. Every few days, a new one was discovered and added to the map. Meanwhile, excavations continued on the ones that were already found. The one I had tried to fight my way to was almost completely unearthed. While the assumption that a dome would be present proved to be correct, it wasn’t at all what anyone imagined. As the scientists assigned to the area discovered, the walls were part of the artifact itself, including the dome. The entire maze resembled an elaborate circuit capable of who knows what.
Using my artifacts, Lux had attempted to activate the walls, but that had failed. It was only the dome that had accepted them, allowing her to go inside. Any details regarding the contents of the dome were deemed not my business.
“Ready for the big day?” Doctor Phelia entered the medbay early in the morning. At present, there were only a few monitoring devices attached to me, though even so, I wasn’t allowed to leave.
“I’m going outside?” I asked, eating my gelatine nourishment.
“Baby steps. You’re getting out of medbay. After that, it’s up to the boss to decide.”
The boss… who had deliberately avoided talking to me since our last incident. I knew it wasn’t fear or pettiness—Bavon was too smart for that. Not knowing exactly what he was planning made me somewhat cautious.
“You’ll be given some clothes, a proper suit, and—”
“A weapon?” I suggested.
The doctor looked at me as if I had forgotten to wipe my mouth after a messy meal.
“A datapad,” she finished after a long pause. “Why would you think anyone would give you a weapon?”
“Because I know how to use it.” I wanted to say that because they could kill me at any point through a single transmission. That would have been too cynical, even for her.
“Either way, you’re no longer my problem.” She prepped a large device by the bed, placing the head of a needle tube. “Only thing left is to drain your nanites. Procedure.”
“Procedure.” I nodded and sat on the side of the slab.
Having my nanites removed was just as uncomfortable as having them injected in, probably a bit more because of the sudden rush. Seeing the doc ignore a few quality of life procedures, I immediately knew that there had been a development that needed my attention.
“What does he want?” I asked.
“Can’t even wait till you’re at eighty percent,” the woman said, as if that explained anything. “That’s for the boss to know and for you to find out.”
“Bavon wouldn’t have let you play with this tech unless he trusted you well enough.” He wouldn’t have let her play with me, in any event. “There’s a problem. I just need to know what.”
“Lux warned me you might do this.” She sighed. “Yes, there is a problem. In fact, there are two pain points, one leading to the other.” The doctor looked at me. The glasses she was wearing were fully opaque, preventing me from doing any analysis based on the state of her eyes. “We’re faced with an increasingly small amount of time. It hasn’t helped that the planet is covered with domes, cobalt mazes, and an endless amount of artifacts.”
It was hardly endless, but I understood her point.
“I’ve read the reports,” I said.
“You’ve read what you were allowed to read. Bavon believes it’s enough for you to focus on the big elements. But hey, what do I know? I’m only a low-level genius that sacrificed a directorial position to come here.” Clearly, she didn’t fully agree with the man’s approach, even if she stood behind the goal. “The planet is like a mosaic. So far, there’ve been thousands of confirmed dome sites. If the Fleet wanted, they could destroy half the Cassandrian systems and still have enough to spare with an all-out battle against the Scuu.”
“I see.” There was no way that Lux could finish this alone.
“You’ve only been allowed to see some of the big ruins—sites that have the highest chances of yielding results.”
“That means I’ll be operating solo?”
The doctor froze. A smile formed on her face as she looked at me for over three seconds. Then she shook her head, turning back to check on the nanite extraction readings.
“Don’t know. That’s for Lux and the Boss to decide. All I know is that I must get you in ship shape ASAP.”
“Well, doc—” I slowly turned my head a bit more in her direction. “—I hope that’s just a pun and I don’t have to fly about the planet scanning for domes.”
The comment earned me a chuckle, though little else. In the next three hours, I was checked and rechecked for nanites. The conscience cores within me were a large enough risk as they were without the nanites. Of course, one could argue that since the risk was already present, a few nanites would do more good than harm.
A standard medical check followed, after which I was given a new set of clothes to put on. Although less comfortable, they gave me the sense of at least partial freedom. It was a relief that whoever made them had taken my size into consideration.
I expected the doc to hand me a datapad as well, but she just pointed to the door, muttering for me to get lost. Apparently, she didn’t interact well with humans, even ones such as myself.
The corridor was exactly as I remembered it: small, cold, cheap. Like all field bases, its only purpose was to connect places together, so every expense had been spared during its construction. And just as when I was brought to medbay, a squad of fully geared soldiers was waiting for me.
“Morning, ma’am,” the one in front said. “We’re to accompany you to meeting room five.”
“Accompany?” I asked, amused.
“Lead to, ma’am.” The man quickly corrected himself. “This way, please.”
I went along, positioning myself in the middle. I could tell that none of them were here to guard me. If I wanted, I could take them all out in less than a second. None of them were armed, and they didn’t keep me at a distance. Knowing that my existence could be ended at the blink of an eye gave them a good sense of security while also placing an invisible leash around my neck.
The meeting room they took me to was no different from the corridor. A polymer table and a few chairs attempted to mask its blandness. Half a wall was covered with screens displaying the planet and a few points of interest.
Only two things were of importance there. One was a spacesuit—mine, if I were to make a guess—neatly folded on the edge of the table. The other was Lux.
“Feeling well enough?” she asked out of courtesy.
“The doc seems to think so.” I glanced at the spacesuit, then at the guards. “The kids didn’t need to bring me here. I’m intimidated enough by Bavon’s capabilities,” I lied.
“I know, but I thought it would be better if you met your team, considering we’ll be heading out.”
“So, you’ve decided on a mission?”
“In a way.”
The image on the screen changed, displaying the seven points of interest in a five hundred kilometer radius from the base.
“Despite all attempts, the fractals won’t come to us. We tried a few ways to come in direct communication, but nothing has worked so far. That leaves two possibilities: either none of them are here, or they’re utterly uninterested in us. It’s believed that entering a few domes might change that.”
A logical approach. The odds of establishing contact through a dome were approximately twenty-one percent. The chance of finding something useful—fifty-three.
I made my way to the screens. The nearest three ruins were completely unearthed. That must have been back when Bavon thought he had time to spare. The remaining ones were only partially visible—just enough paths to reach the center.
“How does it work?” I asked. “Each of us takes half?”
“No. We form a team going through them one by one.”
That was surprising.
“I thought we were against the clock.” I turned around, looking her in the eyes.
“We explore together,” she said with the hardness of carbon steel. “If we end up coming across the race, the arbiter will be the one establishing contact through me.”
She didn’t say she’d shut me down if I got any ideas, but she didn’t have to. Some things were more than obvious.
Bavon had played his cards well. On the surface, it was impossible for me to attempt establishing third-contact. For better or worse, the glory or blame would go to the rogue arbiter in charge of the operation. Still, there was one ace up my sleeve left to play. I just had to be very careful with the timing.
“I’m looking forward to it.” I smiled.