The Night's Dawn Trilogy (413 page)

“Within the last five days.”

“And not human,” Renato datavised.

“Why do you say that?”

“Obvious. If it was our species, they would have used the hatches the archaeologists installed. Whoever it was, they were
too big to fit through them.”

“It has to be the Kiint,” Samuel datavised. “After all, they are partly the reason we’re here. Ione and Kelly were right,
Lieria was interested in the Sleeping God. And this is the obvious place where information on it would be stored. They must
have teleported in here not long after they left Tranquillity. And simply opening the original airlock is the kind of elegance
I’d expect from them. We’ve seen what the Tyrathca do to doors that won’t budge for them.”

“Why not just teleport directly inside the control offices?” Monica asked.

“They’re extremely small on a cosmic scale. I’m guessing such an action would require impossible accuracy, especially over
three hundred light years from Jobis.”

“Could be. Do you think they’re still here?”

Oski pointed her sensor pad along the short airlock tunnel. “It’s inert as far as I can tell.”

“And our time is running out,” Monica datavised. “Let’s get in there.”

The control offices were noticeably warmer. Suit sensors detected thermal concentrations around three of the computer terminals
in the second room. “This is the astrogration centre,” Oski datavised. “One of our information targets. If we’re to get a
fix on the Sleeping God’s location, we ought to find it stored in here.”

“Get started,” Monica datavised. The sensor disks were showing her the Tyrathca moving through the second level chamber with
the biological reactor. They’d slowed their advance slightly since the diversion serjeant’s attempted entrapment, treating
each chamber with suspicion, never allowing more than three soldiers inside together. Even so, they’d be at the spiral ramp
leading to ring five in another fifteen minutes.

Oski and Renato knelt down beside one of the terminals, and spread out their equipment. Monica, Samuel, and the last serjeant
quickly searched the remaining rooms, then went back out into ring five.

“We should backtrack a bit and lay some false heat trails,” Monica datavised. “That will give us a few minutes more.”

“I don’t think it will,” Samuel replied. “By the time they get here, it will be obvious to them that we came for the control
offices. Diversions won’t work. We shall have to defend our position.”

“Shit, I hope not, because this is a tactical lost cause. They can come at us from all sides, and we don’t have a way out.”

“But we do have superior weaponry. Let’s just hope we don’t have to use it.”

“Fine. And now we’ve actually reached the mission target, why don’t we start thinking of a way out of here.”

______

The second diversion serjeant had rigged a hundred-and-fifty-metre length of corridor. A simple enough entrapment: wait until
the lead Tyrathca reached the EE charge, then trigger both of them. The length of corridor should trap all twelve of the pursuing
xenocs between the rockfalls. But when the lead Tyrathca approached the first EE charge, it slowed, and the others stopped.
Ione cursed as it moved forwards carefully, waving its scanner round. She must have left an abnormal thermal trace in the
corridor when she was placing the EE charges.

The Tyrathca consulted the scanner display a final time, and pointed its maser rifle at the corridor roof. If the beam did
wash over the EE charge’s trigger electronics, the radiation would destroy them.

Annoyed, Ione set off the EE charge, bringing down a five metre section of roof. It didn’t harm any of the Tyrathca. They
cantered back down the corridor and split up, presumably to bypass the blockage and pick up the diversion serjeant’s heat
trail again. Although without any sensor disk coverage, she couldn’t be sure where they were. She started to move again, heading
deeper into the arkship’s interior, certain they weren’t ahead of her, at least.

______

Oski was in her element. Worry about her physical predicament had vanished completely as she and Renato removed the computer
terminal panels, exposing the circuitry inside. Tyrathca electronics lagged behind current human systems by several generations—if
not centuries. She hadn’t dealt with anything this crude since her compulsory History of Electronics semester while she was
studying for her degree.

Renato followed her datavised instructions efficiently, tracing the terminal’s main power cable and splicing in one of the
energy matrices they’d brought with them. Small coloured symbols ringing the rosette keyboard lit up.

“Thank heavens they don’t have any imagination,” Oski datavised. “I’d hate to try and do this kind of thing on non-standard
systems in the timescale we’ve got. But that’s a null concept for the Tyrathca.”

“Which I still think is a paradox,” Renato datavised. “Imagination is the root cause of all fresh ideas. You can’t design
a starship without it. It’s the Siamese twin of curiosity.”

“Which they also don’t seem to have much of.”

“But probing your environment is a basic survival trait. You have to know if there’s any kind of threat out there if you want
to keep on living. Then you have to work out how to overcome it.”

“I’m not arguing. Let’s just save it for another time, okay?” Oski began attaching the processor blocks she’d brought to the
databuses inside the terminus; unspooling long ribbons of fibre optic cable with custom built interface plugs on the end.
The Laymil project had the specifications of known Tyrathca electronic systems on file in Tranquillity, of course; but she’d
referenced the archaeology expedition’s records to be sure. Tanjuntic-RI’s systems were identical to those used today, even
down to the size and configuration of the sockets. Fifteen thousand years of standardisation! Renato was right: that wasn’t
merely odd, it was downright eerie.

The interface plugs clicked smoothly into their sockets, and the block datavised that the high density photonic link had been
established. Which was ridiculous. She’d been waiting to apply a chemical spray that would have eased the plugs into place.
It had been invented by her division to clean up optical contacts that had been exposed to the vacuum, dust, and general degradation
of the Ruin Ring; they used a lot of it on the scant remnants of Laymil electronics they acquired.

She put the spray canister down and picked up a micro scanner. “I can accept that their electronics are in a much better condition
than the Laymil modules we have,” she datavised. “The environment here is so much more benign, and they haven’t been abandoned
as long. But
this
lucky is absolutely impossible.” The blocks finished assembling an iconographic display of the terminal’s architecture. “The
entire terminal is on-line, there isn’t a single element not functioning. The Kiint didn’t just access this, they repaired
the damn thing to full operational status. Some of these components are brand new, for heaven’s sake.”

“How much of it is new?”

“According to my scanner, it’s just processors and some support circuitry. The memory crystals are original. Which makes sense.
They want the data stored inside them, just like us.”

“Can you get it?”

“No problem.” They already knew the Tyrathca program language, and there was certainly no such thing as security protocols
or codes to guard against unauthorised access. Before leaving Tranquillity, the division’s software experts had written customised
questors that could examine all the information contained within Tyrathca memory crystals. Oski datavised the first batch
of pre-formatted programs into the terminus architecture. Some of them were hunting for distinct references, while the others
were classifying the information according to file type. The pair of them accessed the questor results as they returned.

“Well, it would have been too much to expect a direct reference to the Sleeping God,” Renato datavised.

“No mention of an unusual cosmological event, either,” Oski observed. She studied the file index, seeing what kind of database
they’d activated, and shaping the next batch of questors accordingly. “We have plenty of navigational fixes.”

“I’m going to see if the questors can find a list of star fixes they used to align their communication laser during the flight.
At least that’ll give us an idea of their contact protocol with the other arkships.”

“Good idea. I’ll see if any other arkship flight paths are stored in here. That should tell us what kind of spatial volume
we’re dealing with.”

The questors revealed several tens of thousands of star fixes performed to align the interstellar communication laser. Eighty-five
per cent of them were performed during the first six thousand years of the flight, after that the number of communiquÉs transmitted
and received by the arkship dropped off considerably. During the latter stages of the flight, the star fixes were performed
almost exclusively to align the laser on the five colony planets which Tanjuntic-RI had established.

With the fixes established, Oski began to search for associated files. “The messages aren’t stored in here,” she datavised
eventually. “I keep getting a link code with all the laser alignment files. But it’s to a different system altogether.”

“Do you know where it is?” Renato asked.

“Not yet.” She composed a new batch of questors, and sent them probing through the terminal’s basic management routines. “How
are you doing?”

“Unpleasantly successful. The Tyrathca built over a thousand arkships.”

“Good god.”

“Yeah, quite. If they all travelled as far as this one, that gives us a phenomenal area to search through for their Sleeping
God. We’re talking about a percentage of the entire galaxy. Small, admittedly. But everything is relative. Parker and Kempster
will love this.”

The questors started to display their answers to Oski. “Ah, here we go. The files we want are stored in some kind of principal
archive. I’ve got the identification code.”

“But it could be anywhere. We can’t access anything from here.”

“Yes. Come on. We want the office which dealt with the arkship’s general systems. We’ll see if we can activate one of the
terminals in there, and call up a general schematic.”

______

The maser beam caught the diversion serjeant on its thigh as it was crossing one of the hemispherical chambers. Ione’s response
was automatic, a fast powered dive behind a huge clump of machinery. The beam cut off as she fell behind it. Her armour’s
electronic warfare block had pinpointed the origin. The Tyrathca was shooting from just inside one of the corridors.

She loaded the coordinate into her weapons hardware. A homing grenade shot out of her belt dispenser, curving over the top
of the sheltering machinery. An EE explosion obliterated the corridor entrance. Another maser slashed across the serjeant’s
armour. Ione rolled quickly, swinging the launcher round. A second homing grenade eliminated the corridor the Tyrathca soldier
was charging out of.

They’re moving bloody fast,
she told her other selves and Samuel.
It was a good pincer manoeuvre.
She used the suit’s sensors to scan down the corridor ahead. No motion or anomalous infrared source was detectable.

You can’t go back,
the serjeant with Monica and Samuel down in ring five told her.
You know they’re behind you.

Yes.
She unclipped a magazine from her belt and slotted it into her multi-barrelled launcher as she walked over to the one remaining
corridor entrance. Three slender missiles were fired at two second intervals, streaking away down the lightless tunnel. The
serjeant flattened itself against the wall.

Each of the three missiles was tipped with a neutron pulse warhead. They detonated simultaneously, soaking a five hundred
metre length of the corridor with a lethal cascade of radiation. If there had been any Tyrathca lurking down there, the neutron
bombardment would have killed them almost instantaneously. Holding the fat missile launcher in one hand, and an X-ray laser
in the other, the diversion serjeant started to creep down the radioactive corridor.

______

“Oski, progress report, please,” Monica datavised. A sensor disk showed her the Tyrathca massing at the top of the spiral
ramp which led down to ring five. “We’re getting a little critical out here.”

“I’m in the general systems layout. Should have the archive location any second now. This is another terminal the Kiint have
refurbished. That must mean we’re on the right track.”

“Oski,” Samuel datavised. “Please store as much of the layout as possible. It might help us to get out of here.”

“To get out?” Monica queried.

“Yes. I have an idea.”

“I’d love to hear it.”

“One moment.”
Syrinx?

Yes Samuel. Are you making progress?

Not as much as I’d like, but yes. Oski will start to datavise the information we have acquired so far to you and the
Lady Macbeth
in case we do not get out.

There’s still only one Tyrathca ship at Tanjuntic-RI. They’ll be no match for
Oenone
. As long as you can get back up to what’s left of the spaceport support column, you’ll be fine.

That may prove difficult. The Tyrathca soldier-caste are very capable, as the serjeants are discovering. And they know where
we have to return to. An ambush would be easy for them.

What do you propose?

Monica and I were both present when Dr Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.

Now wait a minute—
Syrinx protested.

I could do that,
Oenone
said.
If the
Udat
can, I can.
There was considerable eagerness in the voidhawk’s mental tone.

No,
Syrinx said, instinctively protective.
Tanjuntic-RI is a hell of a lot smaller than Tranquillity. You’d never fit into one of the rings.