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Rediscovery, Chapter Seven: Eternal Tomb
Posted By: Smackblasta<Natemeep@aol.com>
Date: 20 July 2006, 5:22 am
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"Decrease our altitude another ten thousand Dx-units, and hold altitude there while we readjust the antigrav system." Arne' stood off to one side of the bridge as Bane' called out orders, making judgement calls as needed and quickly interpreting the data being fed to him by Rediscovery's crew. The ship was shaking as she passed through the compressed spatial layers around Oblivion, slowly closing in on her target.
The ancient vessel orbited serenely half a Light-Unit below them, seemingly undisturbed by the shroud of destruction further down. Even from that distance it was obvious that the craft was huge, almost two Dx-units long, and its blocky, angular hull design made it seem even more massive. The blunt, hexagonal prow of the ship plowed through the hazy slipspace fog, shoving it aside in visible currents and eddies as the blue space rippled out of the way.
Arne' spent a tense six Tx-units as the Rediscovery's crew handled her like a sporting craft, riding the fluctuating gravity waves like they had been doing it for years. As she finally slotted into an orbital track just above the ship, the waves of gravitic turbulence intensified, making Arne' grab the railing in an effort to stay standing. Bane' barked out a quick order, and the crew brought Rediscovery into position behind the massive craft. The shaking stopped as she slipped into the 'wake' it produced.
He carefully relaxed his grip on the railing. "Very nice piloting, if I had any doubts about how well you all knew this ship, they're gone now."
Bane' spared him a quick grin, then turned back to the navigational display. They were a Dx-unit behind the behemoth, fitted neatly into the smoothed out space it left behind. Rediscovery was dwarfed by it, hardly a quarter of its length. Arne' wouldn't have been surprised if their ship could fit inside one of the two engines that took up the majority of the ship's aft.
An act of desperation leading to an eternal purgatory.
Arne' blinked, realizing that Bane', along with the rest of the bridge crew, was staring at him. He shook his head to clear it. "Yes?"
Bane' tilted his head to the side for a moment. "It's your show from here, Supervisor. What next?"
The ride into orbit was uneventful, and the shuttle settled into the Looking Glass's docking bay without any mishaps. Unloading the cargo they had gathered was accomplished in an orderly fashion, and the dig crews were dismissed for some much needed time off.
Arla' was one of the last off, only followed by Goro'tesh, who politely but adamantly waited for her to leave before disembarking himself. He stayed behind her the entire way to the bridge, and stood silently to one side as she discussed their departure with Captain Ratharel. When she left to go to her quarters, Goro'tesh fell into step a few paces behind her, escorting her all the way to her door. Thouroughly flustered at this point by his constant shadowing, she nodded to him and retreated into her room. The hatch closed behind her, and after a few units she heard his thudding footsteps as he went back the way they had come.
Arla' sighed, belly-flopping onto her hammock and staring at the holographic starfield that covered the port wall. The nightside of Fourteen-Two dominated the entire bottom of the view, and the planet's solitary moon was cresting over the curving horizon. Dukat' had wanted to use the satellite as a slingshot to assist their acceleration outsystem. The starfield started to move as the Looking Glass left orbit, closing on the moon.
Time passed without Arla' noticing, lost in daydreams that didn't need to make sense to her. After a while, she shook her head and focused on the view of space, as the Looking Glass curved into a short orbit. Movement at the moon's horizon caught her eye, and she squinted, focusing on the object.
It was another ship, moving straight for them on an intercept course. She was just pushing herself up on her elbows when warning alarms went off, and the first shots impacted the hull.
Rediscovery slid up alongside the gargantuan vessel, floating a bare dozen units off its ventral surface. Sensor scans had detected a series of what appeared to be docking hardpoints there, and the engineering crew was certain they could adapt a boarding tube to fit one of them. Within three Tx-units, they were hard-docked to the flat, angled hull, and a short boarding tube was fitted around the airlock there.
Arne' stood impatiently in the corridor along with a team of technicians and a squad of soldiers, waiting for the airlock crew to send them a signal. The soldiers were wearing armored EVA hardsuits, while the technicians had less restrictive softsuits. Everyone packed extra research gear and portable power cells.
The comm in Arne's helmet crackled to life. "We're through, the exterior airlock is open." Quso' Darankhe, the squad leader, motioned everyone into the airlock, and cycled the room. The hullside door opened, and in pairs the boarding crew travelled through the short length of tube to the alien ships airlock door, which gaped open in front of them. It was a tight fit to get everyone inside the five D-unit cube, but they managed, and Arne' had to squeeze past a dozen space-suited Sangheili to get to the inside door where the Unggoy on the boarding team waited.
The Unggoy motioned to the control panel on the wall. "If you would do the honors, Supervisor?"
Arne' nodded his thanks, and examined the mechanism. It sat on the wall, two D-units above the floor. There was a touchpad with nine buttons arranged in a three by three square formation, along with two more buttons below them. The nine buttons were labeled with single symbols, while the two at the bottom were green and red rectangular keys. The red button glowed faintly, and he hesitated. Red tended to signify danger or problems in their own devices. "Does anyone see another control in this room, something to close the exterior door?"
There was a moment of silence over the comm as everyone glanced around. One of the soldiers pointed at a wall. "There's a lever here, looks like it can be flipped up." Everyone packed themselves back away from the exterior door as Arne' gave permission to flip the lever. The airlock rumbled and a strobing red light activated on the ceiling as the outside door slowly hinged shut.
"Arne' to Bridge. Testing." He sorely hoped that the fiber optics line hadn't been cut by the door.
The reply came back swiftly. "This is Rediscovery, we read you loud and clear."
"Good. Standby." Arne' nodded to the others, and looked back to the keypad. The red key was now dark, and the green key pulsed dimly. He pushed it.
The red light strobing above was replaced by yellow as a hissing noise signified the airlock being repressurized. After a few T-units, the light was again replaced by green, and the interior door opened. Two soldiers swept through the four D-unit tall door with their pulse rifles up. A moment passed, and they sent the all-clear signal. Everyone filed through the door into the main corridor inside. Arne' was the last one through, closing the airlock behind him.
Arla' stumbled onto the bridge as another blast hit the Looking Glass. The first shot had gone clean through the ships port engine, and as the second shot connected, she felt what acceleration they had left stop. Dukat' was standing tall at the center of the bridge as everyone rushed to make some sort of headway in the situation. She caught up to him after another moment. "Captain!"
He spared her a quick nod as the damage reports came in. "We've lost power to both engines, and they're closing in fast. Navigation! Use the lateral thrusters to bring us around. We may be dead in space, but we're still armed."
Looking Glass pivoted to face her attacker as it closed in. The aggressing vessel was larger, and clearly sported several powerful weapon emplacements. Compared to their paltry armaments of two impact torpedo launchers and a light laser turret, Arla' had the feeling it wasn't going to be a long fight.
Dukat' gave the order for the laser turret to fire at will, and grunted in satisfaction as the first two bursts struck home on the other ship. "Start a barrel roll, one full rotation every ten units plus or minus two at random. We only have one laser, I don't want them to have an easy shot at it."
Arla' grabbed for a railing as the deck lurched under her feet. "What do you mean, Captain? Why would they bother with the laser when they could just destroy us?"
"They'll go for our weapons because they want us intact, Supervisor. They're pirates, not marauders." Dukat' looked away from the display as another weak burst hit home. He met her eyes for a moment, his expression grim, and she felt her blood go cold. "They want to make sure they get all of the spoils out of this."
The darkened corridor was six D-units tall and five wide, with the walls a light tan color underneath their flashlight beams. Arne' held up a scanner, tapping a few buttons, and read the readout. "The air's a nitrogen oxygen composition, roughly eighty twenty ratio. Amazing." He looked up at the walls, and focused on a ventilation duct from which a low hum could be heard. "It's breathable." He looked around and grinned. No one was removing their helmets quite yet.
Further travel down the corridor led them to a T-intersection, with large colored arrows on the floor pointing down each branch, and one pointing back the way they had come. Arne' turned to Quso', gesturing down the hallway. "We could split up, a group in each direc-"
"Motion detected."
"Intruders."
"Who are they?"
"What are they doing here?
"Interlopers."
"Temperature scans normal."
"Visual scanners offline."
"System degredation detected."
"No identification presented."
"Who are you to disturb the silence of our tomb with your footsteps?"
He was interrupted by the cacophony of voices that echoed through the corridor. Everyone started, the soldiers immediately forming a perimeter and sweeping the hallways with their weapons. Quso' looked back at Arne', who shrugged. "Not any language I've ever heard."
Quso' nodded. "I guess we stay together."
Arne' looked back to the colored arrows on the floor. Both of them were labeled in strange, blocky symbols. The orange one pointed to the aft of the ship and featured a picture of a gear, while the blue one pointed to the front of the ship and featured a five pointed star. "I say we go that way." He pointed down the right corridor, toward the front of the ship. "If for no other reason than I like the color blue."
They moved in two groups, a smaller group on point to scout ahead, with the bulk of the team staying a dozen paces behind. Arne' stayed with the front group, giving orders over the comm system. The corridor branched off in several intersections as they went, until they found themselves facing a heavy bulkhead, with a smaller side door. branching off to the left.
Arne' held up a hand, calling for a halt. Despite the working airlock, many of the systems on the ship were nonfunctional, as they all could see by the lack of lighting in the hallways. However, the keypad attached to this door was lit, and there was a red light flashing next to it. He reached out and carefully tapped the bar at the bottom, but the door remained stubbornly shut.
"Trespassing detected."
"What are they?"
"Visual scanners offline."
"Incorrect code entry."
"Motion sensors online, fourteen targets detected."
"You trespass, intruders. Identify yourselves before you regret your silence."
He twitched a mandible in consternation. The voices were overlapped horribly and spoke in tongue he had never heard before, he wasn't even sure he was capable of making some of the sounds. He turned back to the rest of the group. "Any ideas?"
"Short-range communication detected."
"Radio band identified."
"Transmission encrypted, decrypting."
"Encryption cracked."
"Warning: Loss of stored comm data. Damaged storage area removed from hierarchy."
Arne' ducked his head in thought. The first two times the voices had spoken up, one came out above all the rest, and seemed to be addressing them. This time, no one voice stood out amongst the others. He looked back at the keypad, and noticed a small grille next to it. Of course, he thought, something detected our comm channel. He ran his hand down the keypad, and pressed a few keys at random. To his utter surprise, the flashing red light switched to a solid green. "Now what are the chances of that?" He pressed the bar at the base of the pad, and the door swung open.
He nodded to the others, and the point guards went through the doorway. He followed them into a relatively large room, filled with rows of plain metal tables and benches, slightly smaller than he would be comfortable sitting in. Along one wall were several panels containing rows of buttons with indecipherable labels. Two ceiling lights out of a dozen sputtered feebly, providing a dim white light to see with. At the far end of each sidewall was a door. Squinting, he could make out the blue arrow on the floor pointing through the left one. "That one," he said as he lead the others to it. "Same symbol as before, it's where we're going."
"Communication decrypted."
"Initializing linguistic protocals."
"Motion sensors active, fourteen targets detected."
"Translation initiated."
"Temperature sensors active, anomaly detected. Target Eleven is below ambient temperature."
"Root words recognized: Language identified as Elite Battle Language with seven percent probability of error."
There was a pause in the chaotic mass of sound, and one clear voice spoke out in halting Sangheili.
"We slaved, toiled, bled, and sweated for our lives. And you took them from us."
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