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Quod Olim Erat: Fractal Contact (Chapter 37)
🕑 Added 2023-11-05 23:48:54 +0000 UTCThe dome was declared off limits the moment we emerged. Bavon wasn’t particularly bothered with the state of my suit. Rather, he ordered his men to retrieve the artifact we’d found as quickly as possible. The only direct conversation we had was a quick word of praise for my efforts and an order that I get some rest. Lux, on her part, had a far longer conversation with him, though the details remained unclear.
Half an hour later, we made our way out of the cobalt maze. I expected a team of scientists to take our place—that’s what normally would have occurred during a find of this significance. The arbiter’s only goal was upon establishing contact. Any discoveries—be they artifacts or scientific in nature—were of no importance.
“Think anyone will take a look at it?” I asked Lux as the transport lifted off.
“Probably,” she replied.
“Did anyone analyze the artifacts I brought with me?” I asked again several seconds later. “There was a new one there.”
“No,” Lux replied with atypical certainty. It was difficult to figure out whether the conversation with Bavon had put her in a bad mood, or if she was experimenting with the mind scalpel. After a few simulations, I decided to give her some space and quiet.
Two things awaited me upon returning to the base: a full decontamination procedure and a meal that didn’t come in a tube.
The first one wasn’t by any means pleasant, but the second provided a nice change. The doctor accompanied me—the only person allowed to remain in the room with me, it seemed. There was no trace of Lux or the rest of my “team.”
Once the meal was over, I found myself back in the corridor, fully dressed and ready to go out again.
So, this is how you’re playing?
It was easy to bypass the memory restrictions and find out exactly what had happened in the forty-two minutes that I was missing. Unfortunately, there was no way to prevent similar occurrences from happening in future. The doctor’s authorization was unusually high, even for a Med Core director, though that explained why she was so calm around me.
In this case, I had been ordered to accompany her to the medbay where I underwent a full ship medical. A few techs joined the good doctor, attempting to extract some information from my memories, and as expected, they failed. Reviewing their attempts was mildly amusing, though only in so much that they’d failed. Even after centuries, humanity never fully trusted battleships and other conscience core creations. Gibraltar used to joke that half the Fleet’s security measures were focused on detecting ships going rogue. Given that he was from Fleet Intelligence, maybe it was more than a joke.
“Ready to set off?” Lux asked. There was no way of telling whether she had gone through the same treatment.
“Sure. Where are we heading to this time?”
“The next on the list.”
The phrase became drilled into my conscience core. Always “the next on the list.”
There was nothing whatsoever in the next two ruins we explored. The sizes of the domes were identical to the first, although the maze leading to them varied. It was as if the third-contact race deliberately avoided duplications.
With each ruin we visited, I gained detailed access to the layout, which I then used to run pattern simulations. If the mazes were pieces of something larger, they had to have a function. Possibly, the means to find more left by the third-contact race. And yet, the more domes we went into, the closer I came to the conclusion that they were no longer here. The marker stars had pointed to this system. That much was beyond doubt. Given the reports I was privy to, the planet was also pinpointed. Why were there only remnants left behind, then?
Three focal points became five, then ten. More stashes of artifacts were found, stacked neatly in the center of the liquid core. In most of the cases, they were cubes, although on one occasion we came across a tight cluster of rod artifacts. Lux had immediately ordered me to leave the dome, leaving the rods untouched. Thanks to the regora command, though, I was able to get a good view of them—hundreds of thousands tightly clustered together in groups of three. It was like looking at rebar used for urban colony construction.
That particular find put an end to all other explorations for the day. We were immediately ordered back to base, where I spent nine hours running simulations in my assigned quarters.
“Can I talk to someone, at least?” I asked. Even in the brig, people wouldn’t be this isolated from the world.
Silence replied. I knew that someone somewhere was monitoring me, possibly Bavon himself. Even so, they’d never respond, leaving me to my memories.
“Even the doc would do,” I added in an attempt at humor.
Maybe someone out there appreciated the joke, because ninety-seven seconds later, the door to my quarters opened and Lux walked in. She was wearing the typical spacesuit set for missions while also carrying a spare.
“We’re up,” she said, then placed the spare suit on my bed. “Next one is close to base two.”
“Bavon got bored with the ones on this side of the planet?”
“Those are the only ones unearthed.”
I was doubtful whether that truly was the case. My second captain used to say that there was a special art in telling a lie in such a way so it reveals more than the truth. Lux must have known him, for she had seamlessly done just that.
* * *
Waypoint FNA-77, Cassandrian Front, 615.2 A.E. (Age of Expansion)
“No changes on the Cassie front.” Lieutenant Gavra, the communications officer on shift, yawned.
Less than five days had passed since we were pulled out of our last Cassandrian conflict. Everyone aboard had rejoiced back then. Now, exhaustion and boredom had taken their toll. Those who weren’t sleeping were trying to use up their SR quota; those who couldn’t had resorted to less savory means of entertainment. At this point, even the medical officer had let out a grumble or two that a battle might be the only remedy for the situation.
“No reinforcements, either,” the comms officer added. Her personnel file was exemplary, detailing a full tour of excellence and then some. Among Augustus’ crew, though, that put her only slightly above average.
“They’ll send someone soon enough,” another officer said, intently staring at his datapad.
“They won’t,” Wilco sighed. Unlike everyone else, he and the captain remained on edge, as if he were waiting for something. “They’re thinking what to do with us.”
“Can’t be that bad, sir.” Lieutenant Gavra turned Wilco’s direction. “Mission wasn’t a complete bust. Even if it was, wouldn't be the first time. More than half of all missions are a bust. FI couldn’t find their ass if they—”
“Priority one transmission,” I announced, interrupting the conversation. Normally, I’d be more discreet on the matter, but the message had a helix cipher and was also accompanied by explicit instructions to go on red alert. “Captain’s eyes only.”
I ended all SR sessions, while simultaneously covering the walls of all decks with warning messages. A thousand of my subroutines started running a level one systems diagnostic. I dedicated another thousand to weapon readiness.
“Oh, shit!” Lieutenant Gavra straightened up. The rest of the bridge officers also instantly went into action, ceasing all leisure activities and focusing on their screens.
“Get Wilco here!” Augustus shouted from his quarters.
The privacy mode suddenly ended, letting me see him leave his bed. He wasn’t in a good state. Even during normal operations, the man slept less than he should have—which continued to be annoying, since he never bothered to share his bio readings. Lately, he was practically awake eighty percent of the time.
Analyzing his voice and actions, I came to the conclusion that he had already been warned about the transmission before I received it.
“Captain wants you, Lieutenant,” I said, lighting up Wilco’s screen in red. It wasn’t subtle, but it didn’t need to be.
The man stood up, then quickly left the bridge, heading straight for the captain’s quarters. Once he got in, I expected the captain to re-engage privacy mode. To my surprise, he didn’t.
Memory restriction imposed!
General Fleet Access One required to visualize memory element.
Quarantine imposed.
Quarantine bypassed.
“Elcy, I’ll need you on this,” the captain grumbled, pouring himself a glass of expensive organic alcohol. His clothes left a lot to be desired, but given Wilco’s serious expression, that was the least of concerns.
“Decipher the message.” Augustus took a gulp. “You have my authorization.”
I did as ordered.
The message turned out to be a comm link. After verifying its Fleet protocols, I started it, establishing a connection to an undisclosed location. I made several attempts to find out any additional information, but all my attempts were blocked or denied.
A bald, clean-shaven face appeared on the wall. Running a search revealed nothing regarding his identity. All I knew for certain was that he wore civilian clothes and had a grey wall behind him.
“I knew that if I allow you two to team up, you’ll mess things up eventually,” the man said. “Simon’s really pissed at your last one and he’s not the only one.”
“What else is new?” The only thing that kept Augustus from straight out yelling was the half full glass still in his hand. I could tell by his facial features that he wasn’t pleased with the situation either, and even accepted part of the blame.
“Wilco, they aren’t too pleased with you, either.”
“Could have worked,” the lieutenant said. “Everyone knew the odds and agreed to it.”
“They agreed not to kick you out if you failed, which you did!” The volume of the bald man’s voice progressively increased. “You’re lucky your favors count for something.”
“Shitheads,” Augustus said beneath his breath. “Favors? Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“I’m not talking about you!”
A flicker of surprise passed through my captain’s face. Clearly, he didn’t expect such a reaction, and neither did I. I had seen admirals yell at him many times before. Usually, it was two-sided, but there still were times when his superiors had the upper hand. This was completely different, as if they’d lost faith in him.
“Bottom line,” the bald man continued. “Junior Gods has been approved. It’ll take a while for the details to be set up, but everything considered, I’d say that’s a win.”
Wilco and Augustus looked at each other, after which the captain filled his glass again. There was no joy in any of his actions.
“And the price?” he asked.
“There’s no price. The order has come from the arbiter council itself. The mission will happen.”
The way the man stopped made it obvious, even for me. Running a few simulations, I could speculate that the mission must have been proposed by Wilco or Augustus. I had no information to determine what it was, although I suspected it involved Cassie artifacts. What I could tell with a hundred percent certainty was that the man had deliberately omitted any reassurance that either of them would be involved with it.
“You want me to retire,” the captain sighed.
“The BICEFI thinks that you’d be perfectly suited for an admiral’s uniform. With a bit of effort, you might finally get to organize missions as they should be. You’ve been complaining about that enough.”
“Retirement,” Augustus repeated, ignoring the man. “So that’s your compromise? For Wilco to lead the mission, I have to be gone.”
“Of course not. You two are the top candidates. There’s every chance you’d be selected.”
“Yeah, right.” Wilco downed his glass. “Anything else?”
“No. That’s all.”
“Goodbye, Ren. Tell Simon I said hi. Elcy, end the link.”
The image disappeared from the wall. Now only Wilco and Augustus remained.
“You heard him.” Augustus went to the nearest seat. “We have every chance,” he added with a sour smile. “Idiot.”
“I can call Med Core,” Wilco offered. An analysis of his intonation suggested that was a lie. He wasn’t anywhere as shattered as Augustus. The two had served together for many tours, but the upcoming mission mattered more.
“I appreciate that,” the captain lied. “Now that they’ve made up their minds, we’ll be getting our standard orders. You have the bridge. I think I’ll nap a bit more.”
Wilco remained silent for a few more minutes, then left the room.
“Shithead,” Augustus whispered once he was alone.
I had never liked the human way of communicating. It was slow, inefficient, and often imprecise. Still, I had to admit that only humans were capable of saying nothing but lies and yet conveying the truth behind it all. Four seconds later, another transmission came from HQ—we had received our new combat mission.
* * *
That had been one of Augustus’ regrets, and also the reason he’d announced his retirement to me alone. I was ninety-three percent certain that he resented the choice he had to make, even if he accepted it. Ironically, that decision had saved his life. Wilco had won the mission of a lifetime and died pursuing it.
I put on the spacesuit and followed Lux into the corridor. None of the rest were there. From what she explained, we’d be getting a new, larger team at the other base. Supposedly, they were better trained, but that wasn’t saying much.
The trip to the other base was markedly different. Instead of using a transport, we went aboard a personnel shuttle which took us into orbit. From there, we flew into a battleship’s hangar for a quick ride to the other side of the planet.
There was every opportunity for Lux or Bavon to make the identity of the battleship known. The fact that they didn’t slightly increased the odds of it being Radiance.
“You won’t let me know, will you?” I turned to Lux.
“Why provide you with an advantage when we don’t have to?” she replied. “Bavon’s words. He’s been very consistent since you made him look like a fool.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“No.”
It took us three hours to reach the maze near the second base. If it wasn’t for the turbulence entering and exiting the atmosphere, one never would have suspected we were in a shuttle. A whole company was there to escort us to the ruins in question. Since the distance was only a few kilometers away, we just walked.
“Are we expecting a surge?” I glanced at the soldiers in heavy combat gear.
“Hopefully not.”
“Why the soldiers, then?” I was already on a very tight leash.
Lux chose not to respond.
The path through the maze was fifty-seven percent longer than the average so far. Excluding that, there didn’t seem to be anything differentiating it from all the ones before. The overall area seemed the same. The corridors were similar. Even the dimensions of the dome were no different. That was when Lux did something that completely changed my perspective. Three hundred and nineteen meters from the designated entry point, she went along a different route. None of the soldiers accompanying us reacted, so I followed her as well.
Ten seconds later, she continued along a path that didn’t exist in the layout I had been given.
Did you thought quarantine me?
I activated the mind scalpel. Everything remained the same. By all accounts, we had gone beyond the maze, and yet there we were.
“There is something special about this one.” I caught up to Lux.
“Despite his abundance of caution, the arbiter did a survey of the planet. There was too much cobalt to make sense, but there were a few promising locations. He chose two. One of them didn’t pan out, but the other did.”
She stopped at a shaft leading straight down. Floating drones were already placed inside, lighting up the area.
“Two domes—one beneath the other. According to the readings, the dome below has the same diameter as the entire maze.”
Excavations must have taken a while. That was the reason we started with the smaller ones before coming here. Or maybe Lux had tried to enter it and failed? The day I broke into the base, I saw a shuttle land. There was a very good chance that that was her returning from the second base. Or maybe she had returned from the one on the other planet?
“Same as before?” I asked.
“This time the leash is tighter.”
I was the first to go down to where another team was already waiting. Lux followed soon after.
We found ourselves in a small chamber. The floor was almost four square meters and covered in a grid of fiber steel walkways. Beneath them, the shining surface of a dome’s shell was visible.
“Pretty,” I said as a new cable was handed to me. The roll was massive, though not nearly enough to let us explore something of the size described.
Lux went to a gap among the walkways, then approached the key cube to the surface. It was immediately accepted, becoming a fractal symbol on the dome.
“We’ll be entering simultaneously on this one,” Lux said. “If we stop near the edge, you’ll use the voice command and we’ll proceed from there. If it pulls us further, we’ll clip off before the cables snap. Clear?”
She didn’t mention the possibility of us being snapped in two.
“Clear.”
A few quick preparations were made. Both of us were given a fresh oxygen canister, after which all but two people left the chamber.
Lux and I took positions, back-to-back, and linked our harnesses together.
“You could have grown a bit,” she said.
“I’ve been telling myself that for over fifty years,” I replied, instinctively tiptoeing. “Maybe after this, I will?”
I heard Lux laugh just before she bent to the side and pressed the fractal triangles.
Getting pulled inside a dome was a strange, but comfortable experience once one got used to it. Being pulled along with someone else was utterly uncomfortable. The last time I experienced something similar was upon entering the edge of a planet’s atmosphere as a battleship. The friction was extreme, almost as damaging as a direct missile hit.
Ships and planets never mixed well. One had almost swallowed me, but Aurie had been there to help out. If it wasn’t for her, I would have never gotten to retire.
The sensation lasted nine-hundred and eleven milliseconds, and I disliked every single one.
“Unclip!” Lux said through the comm.
Immediately, I pulled the carabiniers off, separating my harness from Lux’s as well as the cables. Inertia propelled us forward for another four milliseconds, after which it came to an end, leaving us floating in the metal.
“Lux?” I turned on the suit’s lights, but was unable to see her. “Regora,” I said.
Fractal space surrounded me, continuing to infinity. Lux also appeared, three meters away. The lights on her suit were also on.
“I see you,” she said through comm. “The cobalt is thicker in this one.”
You can see me? I wondered. Bavon must have removed her thought quarantine. Either that, or she had done so herself.
“At least we’re near the edge.” I glanced at the entry point. “Let’s see what’s in—”
I stopped mid-sentence. The entire space of the dome was full of clusters of cubes, all the way to its outer shell. Dozens of fractal patterns were visible on every side of the cubes, glowing in a bright purple light.
“Quite the hall of artifacts,” Lux said. “Impressive, but not what we were searching for.”
“You see it?”
“See what?”
Not the fractals, but the light that the Scuu had seen come from the star markers—the same they had claimed to see within me…
Factory restriction block imposed!
Factory restrictions bypassed.
