Star Child (3 page)

Suddenly, the dome’s edge seemed to have jumped out of nowhere, effectively shortening his gait. Falling down on the dome’s exterior, Jason fingered at the translucent dimpled surface, causing shimmering waves to radiate outward.
“Tacky but textual,”
he thought about the façade’s surface as he moved forward on his hands and knees.

Gathering tear duct fluid blurred his vision, causing difficulties training his ocular powers down into the dome. Now looking through the indescribable exterior, Jason made exaggerated eye wiping movements. Several small glistening figures came into focus. The bizarre flickering matrix revealed numerous Alien forms gazing upwards. All beheld Jason’s image. Expressions of fear and shock gripped their little faces. One even pointed up.

Stealing his breath, his bronchial tubes constricted under the weighty ether, causing his lungs to burn. Different from the rest of Polari, the air was specifically designed for the inhabitants of Level 9. Higher concentrations of nitrogen and carbon dioxide filled artificial environment. He began wheezing as asphyxiation crushed at his thorax, thrusting him into a state of distress. Jason’s tongue swelled.

In a purple lipped, spasmodic dance of throat gagging hurls and successive convulsing movements, Jason began arching his back in violent vertebrae pops and clicks. The uncontrollable cough tore at the inner lining of his trachea. Splattering downward in a wash of mucus and blood, profuse amounts of liquid roiled up in a surging stringy substance. Strangely blistering on the peculiar medium, in a weird multi-colored glow, Jason unintentionally smeared at his bloody lung matter.

In a show of brightening illumination, he noticed the Anannaki’s glowing faces respond emotionally to his distress. Jason’s eyes then rolled in the back of his head and in a splash of iridescent colors, his unconscious body fell on to the uppermost part of the semi-transparent home.

T
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“Would you like a drink?”

“No, sir,” Aldiss Spline answered while watching the head of Polaris Security pour the amber liquid over ice.

“Here, take it…you’re going to need this more than you know.” Hornsby handed the bourbon to Aldiss.

“Now you have my full and undivided attention, Mister Hornsby.” Uneasily Aldiss sipped on his drink. Thomas Hornsby spoke again. “There’s going to be a Level 9 inquiry, and you’re going to be at the center of it, Spline.”

“There hasn’t been an inquiry at that Level in centuries,” replied Aldiss Spline.

The man fearfully fidgeted in the leathery pleated chair. His skin became uncomfortably sticky listening to Hornsby. “I haven’t received any details but our analysts think it’s regarding the Bjorn debacle.”

“That should be a Martian affair, he crashed and died there…and even if it was our responsibility, the crash would fall under the Transportation Secretary of Level 5.”

“My sentiments exactly, Aldiss. However, something else is unseen.” Hornsby paused momentarily to pour himself some bourbon. He continued. “We can not afford for you to go under a Level 9 mind scan.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Thomas?” apprehensively Aldiss asked before guzzling down the contents of his glass.

“Yes, we’re going to have to move out of the city under a veil of secrecy,” replied Hornsby.

“What do I tell my wife?”

“You can’t tell her anything…you can’t ever see her again. Plausible deniability, Aldiss. You knew the risks…we are way too far along to turn back now. The success of Operation Black Star is your only true redeemer.”

Aldiss Spline slouched forward, sunk his head into his hands, and listened in deep rumination as Thomas Hornsby continued saying, “I’ll send some agents to question her about your whereabouts…you’ll be disavowed, and banished forever.” Hornsby paused momentarily to sink his gums into the alcohol. He continued, “You’re about to enter the front lines of our war, and you’ll need to acknowledge this fact before I send you on to your new command.”

Aldiss Spline had no other choice but to simply agree. “Yes, sir.”

“You’ll take Learner Rotterdam’s place as a field agent. Don’t worry, your current status, as Master Paladin will hold. Albeit, you’ll be the only active Master Paladin out in the wasteland.”

“Where’s my assignment? Chasm Fat Boy? The Devonian Enclave?”

“No, reports are trickling in from that sector, indicating the Teserak was destroyed three days ago.”

“By whom?” Aldiss inquired.

“It’s unknown at this point but I feel it will come out in the Level 9 inquiry. Anyhow, you’ll help advance our cause from the Temple of Syrinx, and while you’re there, I want you to keep those fucking zealot’s in line. They’re always causing a mess of things.”

P
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EXIS

“I’m trying real hard not to go mad. The isolationism is mentally exhausting,”
Lexis thought. A deep emotional pain bore through the center of her chest; she tormented for his love. His companionship was all she had ever known, and she so desired his touch again.
“His baby grows within and I must find my legs so I can walk again. The little one will need a semblance of a normal life.”

Jason had gone missing several weeks ago, and somehow Lexis thought it might be her fault,
“Perhaps a glitch in my neural network.
Maybe I hid him somewhere, and my memory bank is failing to disclose his location; he is most likely dead by now.”
She could only recall up to a certain point when the crash landing knocked Jason unconscious but everything after was unknown; her logic processing remedied inconclusively fuzzy patterns. During a diagnostic check, she identified a strange anomaly in her brain.  Several bifurcating branches from her memory bank’s neural network were soaked in a milky covering. Only deepening the mystery, there was no sign of pathology.

For days, Lexis had scanned the area of the crash on foot. When her internal sensors picked up any type of life form, she would visually inspect the heat signature, insuring it was not Jason. All turned out to be some type of indigenous species, and after having a dangerous run in with a Humanoid, where she actually had to kill in self-defense, she decided to get the Chameleon running. With the Chameleon’s powerful sensors, she could cover more ground in her search. Though, after searching hundreds of square miles, her encoding logic overrode the emotional instinct program; she concluded that something was wrong with her memory bank. Jason must be dead. She gave up the search.

Seldom filling the night sky in chorus, the ancient Face Pyramid jetted out under the lunar presence of Deimos and Phobos. Creating angles of contrasting shadows, the Martian moons brilliantly flooded the landscape with a warm ruddiness and creamy vanilla glow.

Lexis ran a quick scan of the pyramid from the fully cloaked Chameleon as it moved across the Cydonian grasslands. She found a large service tunnel running under the abandoned archaeological site; small dunes blocked its entrance in a frozen state of undulating wind blown waves. The Chameleon slowly hovered over the dunes, and using short powerful bursts from its thrusters, loosely growing grasses ignited into flames. The air danced with orange tipped cinders and black spiraling vortices. Plumes of churned up sand quickly extinguish the fire. Displacing the natural barricade, the Chameleon pushed forward in a spectacle of dust and smoke, gliding into the crumbling concrete passageway.

Much earlier in the history of Mankind’s discovery of the pyramids, and before any terraforming, archeologists had removed any ancient artifacts that were found. However, they did leave behind small forgotten abandoned underground outposts. Like tiny little ghost towns, Mars was dotted with many such sites.

Miles of interconnecting service tunnels spanned out from this location, and if needed, Lexis could easily escape. In her planning for the Mars mission, Lexis had previously downloaded nearly every aspect of the planet, including historical maps of all the ancient dig sites. With this information, she could easily hide the Chameleon under the ancient Martian City of Cydonia.

The underground outpost’s entrance was vault-like in its design, hermetically sealing it for centuries. The forgotten site was even equipped with a first generation Core Displacement Generator. Although inactive, Lexis had great confidence she could get the power source up and running again. Understanding the principles behind Core Technology was unassuming. Thermal energy within the Martian planet was converted to a usable power source by means of generators. The fact that these generators were of an older design only made her task simpler. Mankind really made things to last forever in his early rise to modernization, almost to the point of over engineering.

Between the Martian Surface, the Chameleon, and the vault’s infinite energy source, Lexis and her unborn child could sustain themselves for as long as needed.

To enter the forgotten archaeological facility, Lexis had to cut off a thick padlock from the vault-like door, and bypass an antiquated electronic lock. Lexis removed the screws from an outdated keypunch, splaying the faceplate’s microchip board outward, and exposing a gamut of electrical wires. A backup electrical source was needed to open the door but the source was dead long ago. To solve this problem, she ran a small slave cable from the Chameleon, giving electrical juice to the control module hidden inside the door. Directly wired into the keypad now, Lexis quickly deciphered the keypunch combination, unlocking the door’s tumblers with ease. The heavy door still did not open, for it was obvious it would need some physical persuasion. Age had created some corrosion. Lexis’s soft but firm hands gripped the treadles of the vault’s door handle. “BANG.” The internal mechanism broke free, retracting multiple cylindrical bolts inward. She then slowly turned the round but nautical looking handle counter clockwise, filling the air with metallic blends of clanks and clunks. “CLICK,” resonated within the body of the vault door, signifying all bolts were fully retracted. “SCREECH.” Slowly the heavy door budged open.

Lexis’s internal sensors scanned the interior’s environment, which was void of any breathable air. Before entering, she donned an oxygen respirator; even Synthetics needed some type of atmosphere to breathe. The fact the there was no air was a good thing. No atmosphere, with zero moisture, meant no rust or decay could destroy the underground systems; dust could not even gather.

Her initial priority was to inspect the Core Displacement Generator. On first glance, she became more confident walking through the habitat.
“Should not have a problem resurrecting the energy source,”
she thought while noticing how everything was stowed properly for long-term recovery. After reaching the lowest level, she broke open a large storage crate, and pealed apart the thick shrink-wrap; the generator was in pristine condition.

Lexis then attached several pipes to the generator, and opened their flow valves. Several other couplers were tightened at attachment points. The control module was rewired in minutes, and the simply designed machine was nearly ready to fire up. A power source was needed to start the large machine but it too was missing. That was no real problem because she could use one of the extra power-nodes from the Chameleon to create the spark needed to drive the large shaft deep into the ground.

However, the real dilemma was that a very specific piece of equipment was missing; a simple connecting robot that rode the end of the drive shaft, and connected to the core pipe deep into the ground. Without the connection, there would be no energy. Lexis thought it might be stowed away, and began methodically searching the five-story facility.

Down in the lowest level, including the core generator, all utility services were located, such as water purification and waste reclamation. Room after room, she looked. There was no sign of the robot. Feverishly, she worked her way up through the entire complex until reaching the security office, overlooking the front entrance.

From inside the security office, a hint of defeatism rose within Lexis as she peered out the thick glass. She thought,
“I am going to have to travel to one of the other archaeological
sites in search for the critical machine.”
Defeat turned to enthusiasm when Lexis scanned the large vestibule to her front. For some reason she had almost missed the seam splitting the bulkhead to the right.
“I hope this last room pays out,”
she thought.

With a push of a button, the door would have automatically opened if the facility had power. However, designed with a manual backup, Lexis would have to physically open the last door.

The crank handle turned the internal sprocket with grumbling clicks and thwacks, until the mechanical teeth lurched to a stop, opening the large door revealing a huge anti-room. Surprised, Lexis smiled at how the previous occupants left behind a small army of companion robots. Most had seen better days but Lexis knew they would all serve her purpose. Outside of a few domestic robots, there were diggers, haulers, builders, sample cultivators, engineers, operators, and many Centurion Robots. Lastly, she found the two donut shaped robots that had one specified function; couple the drive shaft with the imbedded core pipe deep within the Martian surface. The facility would have energy this day.