Chapter 13
Portal Ship
The conclave observed with satisfaction as the sabotage programs were activated, setting the destruction of the facility into motion. While not as… effective or complete as a spacetime formulae, the overcharge being sent through several key machines in the facility would do a good enough job of covering any tracks remaining as well as covering the necessary destruction of the remaining equipment and paths that might lead investigators to their presence.
The Commander of the infiltration species has been captured.
The statement brought their focus to the Alliance frequencies they were following, and then to the live imagery being sent back from the sections where the cameras had not been eliminated some time ago.
A non-ideal solution, another chimed in, however he succeeded in his mission and knows very little… and can provide solutions to yet less. It is of no matter for the moment. Let us review his position and, should he prove to be a liability, a solution can be provided anytime before his delivery to the sector core.
The conclave considered that briefly before they agreed with unanimity.
Hold.
The group paused, turning to the single speaker.
What is it?
Where is Entropy?
That question caused them to stop, everyone turning their focus to the scans again, looking for the target where they expected her to be.
She was not there.
Panic set in shortly thereafter.
Why was Entropy not with the other targets? There wasn’t anywhere she could have gone? Did she run off to investigate the facility on her own? That seemed… odd. Of course, the entire species was more than a little odd, but it still didn’t seem quite right either.
Find her. Scan the entire facility, section by section. If she dies in the coming event, all the better, but locate her or her body! Now!
*****
Orkhana
I must be fifty meters below the facility now, Sorilla noted, eyes glowing under her helm as she examined the corridor she was walking along.
The heat trace of the previous occupants still remained, and she was following their footsteps, though really she didn’t much need to as there wasn’t any other direction she could go. It was either travel down or return to the surface.
Fuck it.
She continued plumbing the depths, one hand always resting on her holstered pistol as she moved.
There was no sign of other occupants of the tunnel, however, not even in the distance to her enhanced hearing and other senses. It was just a poorly lit and, well actually it was a very nicely cut tunnel. Smooth walls, floor, and ceiling… polished even. Far nicer than she could easily have had cut with her Mofab units back on Hayden, at least without sending in dozens more units after with specialized refining and polishing heads.
Critiquing the construction used wasn’t her reason for travelling the tunnel, however, and she was fighting down the urge to impatiently move faster. She wasn’t a sniper specialist, infinite patience was not one of her best traits, at least not when she was on her own. She could deal with students all day and all night if she had to, of course, but when she was moving around on her own, she couldn’t help but want to get to the meat of the situation as quickly as she could.
Sometimes she wondered if she wouldn’t have made a better strike team member.
Not that she would trade her slot in the Special Forces for anything, of course, but it would be really satisfying to get an order to just go wreck some deserving bastard’s day and then just get to it instead of spending the next three years training up a cadre to do the job for her.
That was perhaps why she’d ultimately applied to SOLCOM, as the Solar Colonies Command tended to have less use for forces that had been specialized to absurd levels and tended to deploy on a wider range of missions.
That had turned out…
Well, she couldn’t say it turned out well, or badly exactly… but it had certainly been… a wider range of missions.
Sorilla’s musing came to an end as she noticed a glow coming from ahead of her as the floor began to slowly level out from its previously steady defense. She slowed to a halt, moving over to hug the wall as she then began to edge forward while straining her gear to see the source of the light in the darkness.
*****
An alarm began to wail as the Lucian team made it back to the lifts, then others quickly joined in.
Sienele found the administrators that had come down with him and grabbed the closest.
“What are those alarms for?” He demanded.
The administrator was pale, with chalky moist flesh that was growing cooler by the moment as he stared in shock.
“Power containment failure… but that’s impossible, those systems are completely tamper proof and can’t fail. They’re in use everywhere in the Alliance. I’ve never heard of a containment breach!”
Sienele swore, mind racing to recall everything he could about the power systems that were commonly used by Alliance facilities.
If he recalled correctly, they were spacetime matrices, completely sealed and secured against any sort of mucking about. Nothing in them was user serviceable, nor should it be. Power was drawn from an imbalance in the spacetime warp, and should continue until the warp eventually balanced itself out.
There wasn’t anything that could go wrong with the design, it was so simple… and normally, he’d be entirely satisfied with that.
Normally we aren’t dealing with sabotage perpetrated by individuals equipped by the Ross… the acknowledged masters of spacetime manipulation. This is… not good.
“Everyone move,” He ordered, getting them all onto the lift and putting it in motion. “We are evacuating the facility…. You, Administrator…”
He waved his hand, expecting a response.
“Hirsan, Envoy.”
“Right, Hirsan,” Sienele nodded curtly. “Get everyone out of this facility. Do it as fast as possible.”
“The alarms will have set the signal for the facility evacuation already, Envoy.” Hirsan responded. “Most will be on their way out now.”
“Most?” Kriss demanded gruffly.
“We always have some who ignore the alarms during drills,” Hirsan admitted, chagrined.
Kriss snorted, “If they’re that stupid, leave them to their fate. No great loss for their species if those genes are obliterated.”
Sienele rolled his eyes, exasperated, but frankly didn’t see much of an option either way if he were honest about it.
“Send a second order for evacuation, do it in person if possible,” He ordered anyway. “However, Sentinel Kriss… while not speaking anything I would say in public, isn’t entirely wrong either. If they are foolish enough to ignore orders to evacuate, they are no longer our problem.”
“Yes, Envoy.”
“Now,” Sienele said, eyes on the lift meter as they climbed. “I need to know the potential energy release for the power systems.”
“What? Why?” An Administrator asked, baffled.
The Lucians laughed openly.
“The Envoy would like to be entirely aware of the minimum safe distance we might want to reach before they explode,” Kriss offered with a helpful smile.
Sienele didn’t think that the Administrator found it particularly helpful… or in any way comfortable, considering the close proximity to the sheer number of razor-sharp teeth in the Lucian’s mouth, but that wasn’t his problem. Currently he was more focused on getting clear of what was potentially a rather large explosive… and one where in the abyss the Colonel had managed to get to.
Sienele comforted himself with the fact that she could not get off world at least. Whether she died in the facility, or was found later, at least she was contained.
*****
Sorilla slowed again as the tunnel she had been moving through transitioned from smooth hewn rock to a more natural cavern, jagged edges and dripping water echoing off the distant walls as she listened carefully for any sounds of enemy movement.
The lights were coming from the center of the space, which she was coming to realize was far larger than she’d originally believed.
This place has to be one of the largest caves I’ve ever heard of, she thought as she moved sideways to the cover of a stalagmite formation and cycled through her available scanning modes, staying away from anything active in favor of using passive vision and sonar. Sadly, whatever the cave was when the facility above was constructed, it was not on the Ross map she’d downloaded.
Lights cast long shadows from the center of the cave, however, and she could see the smooth white cast that Ross vessels tended to share, a color that resulted from the exotic ceramic armor they used to coat the exterior of the ships.
She blinked the liquid lens that floated over her eye into action, causing her vision to tunnel in on the source of the lights, automatic filters dropping the glare down as she did, and Sorilla quickly spotted movement.
The Sirhan. They’re… going into the ship. Of course, it’s an evacuation.
She’s learned the hard way that Ross vessels were more than merely spaceships. It was more accurate to consider them a mobile travel hub in a way. The space time warping that allowed ships to jump between stellar jump points was child’s play to the Ross, and they’d obviously learned to do things that made science fiction sit up and look shocked.
In this case, she knew that the ships were interconnected with each other, or perhaps a central hub on the Ross home world. If you could access one, you could seemingly move between them all with impunity.
It was an immensely powerful tactical and strategic asset… one that, in her opinion, the Ross massively underused for reasons she honestly didn’t understand. Any conventional race, from humans to Lucians or any of the other Alliance races she’d encountered, would deploy massive invasion forces through the portal ships, dropping logistical requirements to near nothing, and rendering it almost impossible to truly resist the force they could bring to bear.
The Ross, however, did not do that.
They were holding their strength back, hiding it… not just from the human forces, but also from their own nominal allies. They’d even held back when they were at war with the Alliance races, from what she could gather…
Or maybe this is a new innovation, they didn’t have back then?
Sorilla didn’t know for certain, but it did exist now, and they were using it in a way that she… actually approved of?
Deploying and recovering an infiltration team showed a level of enlightened self interest that she honestly hadn’t seen from the Ross to date. They’d almost always been more of a… force of nature, a physical force of the universe, than actual sentient beings. Uncaring, implacable… something you weathered because you had to, rather that fought outright.
Interesting. What makes the Sirhan different?
Sorilla knew of only one way she might find out. She stealthily broke cover and, staying low, made for the Ross ship.
It wouldn’t be the first time she snuck on board one of those beasts.
*****
Portal Ship
The Conclave was in a state of near panic, or as close as they ever got at least.
While they’d been focusing on the Infiltration species’ evacuation and the activation of the fallback plans for destroying the facility and wiping evidence of their presence, somehow, they’d lost Entropy… the single most destructive individual they’d EVER encountered.
Oh, certainly, other species… The Sturm Gav for one blatant example… had caused more damage to their infrastructure in the past, but never had a single member of any species managed quite so much.
Most species achieved their destruction by sheer power rather than being too small to notice until it was far too damned late!
She is not in the facility.
Did she escape it?
Obviously. The question is not whether she did, but how and where she escaped to.
We have to access the facility’s data center before it is destroyed.
That would be of no use. The imagers in the area were disabled by the attack.
Other imagers would have captured her leaving!
Not if she didn’t leave the way she entered.
She must have. The only other way out of the area is…
The conclave fell silent.
Oh. Oh no.
Signal the alert. Search the ship and the region around it, immediately. Find Entropy!
*****
Sorilla blinked as she heard the alarms sound, figuring that the jig was up as it were.
Tactically it would be smarter to retreat, she knew. She didn’t have backup, nor any real plan, and there was nothing ahead of her but enemy territory and effectively unlimited enemy resources.
Strategically, however, everything was ahead of her… and nothing was behind.
Sorilla cast the dice and broke stealth, rushing the door as it began to seal. A confused mass of Sirhan muddled about, looking lost and concerned as they were locked out of the big ship. She increased her speed to a full sprint, ignoring the shocked yells from the group.
She had no idea if they were shocked at her appearance or even if they’d actually seen her and were more concerned with the fact that the doors were sealing them out. She put full power to her armor and leapt over the crowd, hitting the ramp, and dropping into a slide just before the doors could close enough to keep her out.
There was a shift in pressure as the seal was completed, and Sorilla quickly got back to her feet as she took stock of her location.
You’ve done some stupid Joan Wayne bullshit in the past, girl, she chided herself as she moved, but this takes the whole cake and just throws it on the ground.
There were Sirhan staring at her now, but she ignored them, shouldering past them as she raced through the familiar layout of the ship.
The Ross weren’t big believers in unique designs, thankfully, and the layout of portal ships she’d been on really didn’t deviate in the slightest from one another. That meant she had an idea of where she was going, but she would be much happier if she had more of an idea of how the Hell she was getting out afterwards.
The interior was massive, built to accommodate the Ross’ huge construction and combat engines that she and the Pathfinders back on Hayden had dubbed Golems. Big and slow, the multipurpose machines were good versatile constructs that could do almost any job assigned to them with reasonable levels of efficiency, though not nearly as well as a specialized machine could of course.
The Ross had deployed them immediately after securing their landfall on Hayden, and with the limited weapons available to the colonists, the Golems and their smaller Goblin counterparts had been a major pain to deal with.
Sorilla quickly got off into one of the alternative access paths, however, wanting to avoid tangling with the massive machines if she possibly could.
What she needed access to was the Ross computer system. Everything she wanted to know would be there.
*****
Subject Entropy is inside Vessel XBM998. All available forces are to converge on subject’s location with alacrity.
The calm voice of the announcement was a stark contrast to the reaction of the conclave, who were entirely worked up with the fact that they had the single worst individual threat to their operations running around inside one of their connected spacetime links.
Disconnect Vessel XBM998 from the network.
That would cause massive disruptions across no less than eighteen star systems at this juncture. Do not be imbecilic.
The conclave considered that briefly, checking the formulation before they all grimaced to varying degrees. The spacetime link in question was one of the central hubs within Alliance space. Routing around it was possible, of course, but would take some significant effort and would without question disrupt operational stances on multiple star systems.
The internal security is responding. As problematic as Subject Entropy has been, she is not that capable a threat. Stop panicking, oversee the response like the elders we are.
That chastisement calmed them down, several refocusing their efforts on the situation in a more direct and focused manner. With security now in motion, they watched the live tracking of the target with some interest.
What is she doing? Does she intend to destroy XBM998?
Entropy’s current course of action is not in keeping with that likelihood, Another said after a moment. Subject appears to be navigating toward one of the local computational centers. Does… does she believe she can access them?
Impossible. Not even the Infiltration species can access our computational systems, and they are the closest we have ever encountered to sentient life. Entropy, as dangerous as she is, is merely another beast of the galaxy, with only a rudimentary grasp of the universe at best.
Perhaps. Suggestion… hold security off, surround her, but allow her to move freely until we determine her goal.
The conclave took that in with horror.
Are you mad!?
He has an interesting point. Subject Entropy is worthy of study.
Study is done in controlled circumstances, not with a dangerous animal running loose and looking to destroy whatever it can!
Information is information. We require variable be known if we are to properly calculate a path for dealing with the humanity race. This is an opportunity.
Insanity.
A vote. The suggestion has been made, the cases for and against are available for your consideration. Do so now, then cast your vote.
The authoritative command caused silence to fall as the elders quickly reviewed the data and the arguments, then cast their vote.
*****
Sorilla didn’t like it.
It was like the Ross were avoiding her.
When she’d busted into the ship, she expected a running fight, but was willing to take the chance to gain access… however brief… to a connected Ross computer system. It was an Intelligence windfall that SOLCOM had been praying for ever since they had the slightest inkling of how the alien species had configured their systems.
On Child of God, she’d learned a lot about how their computers worked and how to interface with them, and SOLCOM had taken that intelligence and run with it. She and the Fifth had been issued a series of interface protocols that would allow them to interpret… or at least to record… data from a Ross computer if they got lucky enough to find themselves in that position.
Well, here she was, almost to the location she was reasonably certain held a linked computer terminal… right in the middle of the enemy ship while they knew she was there… and nothing?
That’s not good.
It was never a good thing when the enemy did something you didn’t expect. It either meant they had out thought you, which was bad, or you’d overestimated them… which could be worse by a significant degree.
Stupid people were hard to predict…
But… she didn’t think the Ross were stupid.
They’re watching me. They have to be.
With that thought in mind, Sorilla started turning her focus to what the Ross’ endgame might be while she continued to make her way to the target location.
There weren’t a lot of reasons for them to be watching her, in all honesty. Ultimately, of course, it was to gain intelligence on her and, possibly, to buy a little time before engaging her. To what end, was what bothered her. The Ross had never really shown any interest in significant intelligence gathering on human forces in the past.
Generally, they would simply annihilate them, or at least put a damn good effort of doing so and be done with it.
This, this was a level of subtlety she had not come to expect from them.
Something has changed. In them? In me? I don’t know, need more intelligence myself.
She heard a skittering of sound from ahead of her, but by the time she’d gotten to roughly where it seemed to come from the corridor was entirely empty.
Creepy.
Sorilla mentally added possible Psyops to the list of reasons they might be watching her rather than attempting an engagement, but really didn’t think that was likely. The Ross were too alien for that, or at least they were too alien for her to recognize what their psyops looked like and, she thought at least, too alien for them to properly comprehend effective psyops against human targets.
She came to a stop outside the section she had been heading for, pistols in hand as she prepared for entry.
The door wavered away as she approached it, allowing her access, and it only took a quick glance inside to tell that the room was empty of anything but the equipment she’d come for.
Creepier. Maybe they’re better at Psyops than I give them credit for.
Frankly, it was all rather unnerving, and more than a little aggravating. With them rolling out the proverbial red carpet, Sorilla actually had to consider the idea that any intelligence she gained from within was tainted from the start and simply could not be trusted.
She didn’t think they could have prepped something like that quite so quickly, but frankly she wasn’t willing to bet on it.
Damn it. Couldn’t make this easy on me and just try to kill me like you normally would, could you? She mentally bitched to the imaginary Ross she had decided were watching her. Just had to throw me a curve ball. Well screw you, I’m going to take my swing anyway.
The Ross’s computational systems were… well, to be honest, boring described them pretty well. There wasn’t much of anything that humans would recognize as being integral parts of a computer. In fact, she wasn’t even certain that there was a computer present. Most of the equipment in the room could have been for making puff pastries for all she knew, Sorilla really was only familiar with the pedestal interface she’d used on Child of God, and it was likely just some type of dumb terminal according to everyone’s best guesses.
She wasn’t a fan of the fact that this one was arranged so that her back was to the door as she stepped up to use it, but her armor had omnidirectional video feeds for a reason.
Sorilla reached out to the pedestal and quickly located the slight warps in spacetime as they came to life under, and around, her fingertips. She could feel them form through her implants, the slight tugs in multiple directions giving her incredibly precise sensations at this range as her implants fed what was, basically, triangulated data directly into her brain.
It was so detailed this close up that she could almost see the warps as she began manipulating them.
*****
Portal Ship
Impossible.
The conclave didn’t disagree, despite watching the event through their own systems. This human, a species they had studied rather thoroughly, simply did not have the capacity to do what she was quite clearly doing.
Review the biological data, the order was crisp and clear. We missed something.
Impossible, the response was equally clear. The data was gathered from many subjects across a wide spectrum of the population. We did not miss anything this important.
Clearly, we did.
The figure, the woman known only to them as Entropy, was doing something that only the People could do. She was sensing and manipulating spacetime directly. She was… a person?
That made no sense at all and was instantly rejected by the conclave with unanimity. It had to be a trick. Somehow, it had to be.
What data is she accessing?
The feeds scrolled by in real time as it was being shown to Entropy.
Clumsy. Useless data. What is she looking for?
Unknown. The system is unfamiliar to her. Clearly, it is possible that she does not know how to properly navigate it. Curious, human physiological studies indicate that she is moving through the screens too quickly for retention.
They are Environmental Manipulators another member spoke up. She is likely recording everything while she merely skims through, looking for something specific.
The Conclave mentally agreed with that as they watched.
Enough. Eliminate her, now!
The angry voice pushed again, but this time they were more inclined to listen.
We have learned enough. Signal the security forces to move in, she is trapped. If she does not surrender herself immediately upon confrontation, authorize them to use any force needed to eliminate her.
Agreed.
*****
Sorilla grimaced as she fumbled her way through the interface. The SOLCOM translation software was immensely CPU intensive, needing her implant and armor computers to run at nearly one hundred percent just to barely keep up with the mathematical formulations she was trying to read, and the heat they were giving off was starting to become a problem.
If she kept it up, the system would soon throttle back the processor in her skull in order to keep it from cooking her brain, and the ones in her chest would follow shortly thereafter. Unlike most grunts, she was a good enough coder that she could override those safety features if she wanted but, frankly, unlike many mandated safety features in equipment she used, preventing overheating in her brain was basically non-negotiable. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if she fried her cortex before she got any of this intelligence out.
So, she let the system throttle back before it got that far, instead just focusing on recording everything and translating what looked like file headers. Even that was taxing, however, and took time.
So much time that she knew she wasn’t remotely done when she heard a slight scrape of something moving behind her.
Without turning her head, Sorilla dropped her right hand from the controls to her pistol, smoothly drawing the weapon, extending it behind her inverted, and fired a short burst just as a Ross’ Goblin attempted entry to the room.
Three rounds perforated the mechanoid’s chest, where its primary core was maintained, dropping it in place instantly while she continued to manipulate the spacetime controls with her left hand.
There’s too much information here. I’ll never be able to get it all, even if I had the storage capacity for it.
And that, she didn’t. Her processor was good for five hundred terabytes, while her armor held a couple exobytes, but the sheer information density she was scanning from the Ross system was well beyond that. Every file seemed to be like the scan she’d stolen from the Sirhan earlier… not merely a three-dimensional representation of data, but actually extending… at least… into four dimensions, increasing information density exponentially.
Worse, it appeared to be analog data, which was not playing well with her digital storage systems in the slightest.
Need to find the data on Earth. It has to be here, somewhere…
Unfortunately, nothing she could think of led her in that direction and she had to shoot two more Goblins before Sorilla nearly slapped herself silly for being an idiot.
The Ross don’t know about Earth. They never got close. Hayden? Humans in general? Why did the invade? What were they after?
It was the big question, the one that had plagued humans for the entire war and following peace.
There was no evidence of what the Ross had wanted.
They hadn’t mined resources on the worlds they invaded, they hadn’t taken anything from the system… as best anyone could tell they hadn’t done anything aside from establish small bases and tear up some of the local landscape.
Fine. Forget Earth and Humans for the moment, Sorilla glared at her data rushing past and through her even as she recorded it through all of her instrumentation. What about work orders… ah, there we go.
Unsurprisingly, there was a depth of data beyond what she might normally expect, but Sorilla did manage to locate dispatch files and…
She whistled softly in her helmet as she stared.
Is this a map of the locations of Portal Ships? Wait… that’s Hayden. There, show me that.
The file she pulled up was different than many of the others, somewhat at least. It started nearly identical to everything else she’d seen, the location of a portal ship, in this case at Hayden’s primary colony site. Unlike most of the other files she’d scanned, this one ended abruptly, it’s fourth dimensional line cutting off.
Sorilla presumed that was the point when she had entered the ship and ended the occupation of Hayden’s World.
She dumped the whole file into her system, then started branching out, looking for more.
Three more rounds tore into a goblin, then a second burst clipped another before it could be withdrawn.
Sorilla could hear the sounds outside getting louder.
More backup had arrived, and she was out of time.
The world began shaking under her feet, causing Sorilla to finally drop what she was doing and twist around.
What now!?
*****
Orkhana
The alarms changed as the team, administrators, and a few stragglers rushed out of the building and ran for the perimeter fencing.
“That is a runaway containment alarm!” A worker yelled over the noise. “Don’t stop! Keep running!”
The gate was open, so they did exactly that.
The rumbling in the ground started low, but only stayed that way briefly before a massive crack seemed to rend the very air itself around them and they were thrown to the ground as the dirt beneath their feet heaved up around them.
Sienele hit the ground hard, rolling desperately as he was thrown into the air, landing a moment later in a painful sprawl. He could hear more than see the Lucians and others around him in similar states as he was pelted by dirt falling out of the sky.
Rolling to his knees, Sienele looked around in shock.
The landscape was unrecognizable from just a moment earlier. What had been solid ground was now loose earth that he was sunk halfway into. The shockwave had turned the dirt over and most of them with it.
“Head check!” Kriss ordered, his voice sounding distant to Sienele as a ringing seemed to take precedence over everything else. “Make sure no one is buried in this!”
The Lucians, Alliance bless the obstinate brutes, automatically began to follow orders, and started digging people out of the dirt that they’d been half, or more, buried in while Kriss himself grabbed Sienele was the shoulder and helped him to his feet.
“Luck or good design that the power systems were all that deep,” The Lucian grunted. “The worst of the shockwave was absorbed by the ground.”
Sienele nodded absently, trying to clean himself off more by instinct than intent as his mind wandered.
“Do we need to be concerned with other effects?” He asked. Weapons and munitions, whether conventional or improved, were not his strength.
“Unlikely,” Kriss said easily. “This much dirt? Even dangerous radiated energy wouldn’t get particularly far through it. I would not want to build a home here for a century or two, but for us the risk is minimal.”
Sienele grunted, but was comforted somewhat by that. Few people in the field would know of such dangers better than a Sentinel, so barring conflicting information from a specialist, he would accept the statement as true.
Similar to Kriss, however, he had no intention of remaining in the area any longer than absolutely necessary.
“Come,” He ordered. “Bring the prisoners we managed to keep. I believe that we are done here.”
Kriss nodded soberly, eyes back on the destroyed facility as it groaned and began to collapse inwardly.
“Let us be quick about it, in fact,” Sienele said, suddenly nervous as he wondered just how steady the ground under them was. “No one survived within.”
Kriss grimaced, but couldn’t argue that.
“Agreed,” The Lucian said after a moment. “Pity. I had looked forward to once more testing myself against the Colonel.”
*****