Hierax: Star Guardians, Book 4 Read online

  Hierax doubted it would be that easy, but this was a far greater discovery than he’d dreamed they would find down here. If the gate worked, maybe it would be possible to replace the old one with it, provided they could learn enough to tell the old one to step down and this one to step up and join the system. He doubted that wormhole gates designed to allow interstellar travel would be plug-and-play.

  “There are a lot of patterns,” Coric said. She was one of the few people studying the gate other than Hierax. “Is all this part of the gate’s function, or is it possible this is part of their written language? I would so love an example of that. Or an entire dictionary.”

  “I actually have some pictures to show you later,” Indi said. “Not of words, but we found a keypad that plays notes, and on the buttons, there were symbols. Presumably, they were the corresponding notes, but it’s possible they were letters or numbers too.”

  “Oh, excellent,” Coric said.

  “There are a lot of twelve-sided shapes integrated into the surface.” Indi pointed to examples on the surface of the gate. “We saw twelve a great deal as we walked through the city.”

  Hierax stepped back to consider the patterns and the shapes rather than simply trying to figure out what purpose the different elements might serve.

  “Dr. Tala and Lieutenant Coric have been working together and playing the transmissions we received on Tala’s violin,” Sagitta said. “We may not be any closer to understanding the patterns, but they sound much more appealing on our instruments.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Indi said.

  “I hunted through our databases to see which aliens had similar ways of structuring music,” Coric said. “Our people are similar, of course, but that’s not surprising, given our common origins. A couple of alien species also have a twelve-note system, but music itself is somewhat rare across the galaxy, at least to the extent that it’s integrated into the species’ cultures and plays a significant role. Not all aliens have the equivalent of our ears, of course, but most hear or sense sound or sound vibrations in some manner or another.”

  “Does any of this help you, Hierax?” Sagitta asked.

  “I’m sure if Coric, Tala, and Indi figure out the language, it will be useful, but music?” Hierax shrugged. “The tech is what I need to study more of and understand.”

  Indi stirred when he mentioned her name. He hoped it pleased her to be on the team and that she didn’t feel singled out.

  “I’d like to bring some instruments down from the ship,” Hierax said. “There’s no energy reading coming from this now, or we would have sensed it earlier—I would have headed here to start with had there been—so that’s the first thing to figure out. Was it ever completed? And can it be turned on? And if not, were some of the parts finished, and could they be swapped in to replace the broken elements on the one in space?” He pointed skyward.

  “What’s the likelihood of that after it’s been sitting here for thousands of years?” Sagitta asked, though he sounded hopeful, very much wanting it to be likely.

  Hierax couldn’t blame him. “The drones haven’t had any problem working after all this time. And other things in the city clearly work.” He waved at the structure they were in, indicating the air and heat, though he meant the AI or whatever was controlling things too. “The lack of atmosphere has been a boon for the planet, at least as far as we’re concerned, and any archaeologists that might come along later will be happy too. No erosion, no wind, nothing to wear things down. Granted, the fact that the planet is open to radiation and asteroids crashing into it isn’t great, but much of the infrastructure appears relatively unscathed.”

  “Good,” Sagitta said, his gaze on the gate. He probably didn’t care about the rest of the infrastructure.

  “I’m going to get my gear and more tools.” Hierax waved at Indi, realized what he was doing, and widened his wave to include the captain and Coric. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going to sickbay?” Treyjon called after him.

  “Why would I?” He grinned back.

  He would grab some more antiponos while he was on the ship, but the idea of sitting down for medical attention when this amazing discovery was waiting for him… That was ludicrous.

  10

  Indi stood in a corner of the hangar-like manufacturing facility with Lieutenant Coric, both of them eyeing what they had decided was a bank of computers. It was at the back of the building, the huge prone gate between it and the exit. Dr. Tala was on the channel with them, listening in from sickbay and occasionally chiming in with thoughts on music. Indi had no idea if that would be key in turning on the computers—or the gate—but she thought Hierax had been too quick to dismiss it. What if the music was a part of the Wanderer language?

  Indi listened to the transmissions as she and Coric poked around at the computer bank, looking for the equivalent of an on button. Hierax seemed to be doing the same with the gate. He stood atop it now, cables running to the various measuring instruments he’d brought down. All signs of his injuries had disappeared. Not that one could see them through his armor, but he’d definitely had a slouch and a hitch to his step earlier. Now he was bouncing around like a bunny. Occasionally, he found a way to open a panel and stick his head inside while exclaiming such erudite terms as, “Hah! Huh? Hmm.” Interesting how the translator chip in Indi’s ear didn’t have to do much to translate those noises.

  Hierax hadn’t spoken to her since they had arrived at the hangar, but she didn’t blame him for being absorbed in this new situation. Besides, she had felt so bad about distracting him—essentially being the reason he’d been out of his armor and injured by that grenade—that she’d vowed to keep her distance. He didn’t need to get distracted, not when he was the one man who might be able to get them out of the system.

  Coric laid a hand on the mainframe, the flat console about a foot too high for human comfort. It was corrugated, like the outside of the gate, rather than smooth. Like everything else here, it had an alien look and feel to it, but it also didn’t seem too strange for humans to use—if they could figure out how.

  “I know there’s no reason to believe this computer holds the secrets to deciphering the Wanderer language and learning everything about them,” Coric said, “but I can’t help but feel wishful.”

  “We just need to figure out how to turn it on, and then we can find out,” Indi said.

  “Yes. I confess, I was hoping we’d find a simple button to press and that it would turn this on as well as the gate.” Coric tilted her head toward the massive structure. “Then Hierax would feel silly because we’d figured out how to turn it on first.” Her eyes gleamed at the notion.

  Indi almost laughed. She must not be the only one who fantasized about taking Hierax—or at least his ego—down a few notches.

  “After thousands of years, it might have to be charged first,” Indi said. “Maybe those drones had to be too—they didn’t show up right away. I don’t see any cables attached to the gate, other than the ones Hierax added.” Indi crouched to peer under the big donut to confirm her statement. Unless a sneaky power cord was running up through one of the platforms the gate rested on, she didn’t think there was anything like that. Those platforms looked like the alien equivalent of sawhorses. Nothing fancy. “If it did need to be charged, the power would have to be transmitted wirelessly, which is possible, I suppose. We can do it on Earth, but it’s not common yet.”

  Indi glanced at Coric to see if she might claim it was different for her people, but she’d found a panel of her own to open and was distracted.

  “Of course, the gate could have power stored inside of it,” Indi mused. “How do the ones in space power themselves? Solar? Nuclear?”

  “A combination of solar and kyma power,” Hierax said, apparently listening to their chatter, even though he lay belly down on the top of the gate with his helmet inside a panel.

  Indi had no idea what “kyma” power was and assumed the tr
anslator hadn’t had an equivalent English word for it.

  “Our scientists took apart a broken gate after the war,” Hierax said, “and they were able to identify the energy generator, but last I heard, they’re still trying to figure out how it works. A recent hypothesis suggests that the gates power themselves by capturing and using the gases of the heliosphere. They’re always set out there, at the edge of solar systems. There are vents in the housing that could be used for drawing in gas and expelling a waste product, though we’ve been unable to measure that being done on active gates. It could be that they do it infrequently and then store the energy in a battery. I wish I had those scientists’ notes now.”

  A clunk came from the side, Coric thumping her elbow against something. She pulled her hand back from the panel and looked at the console.

  “I found something like a button to push,” she said. “And pushed it. I thought I might get lucky, and it would power up.”

  “Maybe it did once. Or maybe you have to kick the side of the console a few times.” Indi tapped it with her boot. “We call that percussive engineering.”

  “We—” Coric broke off and stumbled back as dark red light filled the air all around them. “Uh?”

  Indi spun slowly, trying to figure out what she was seeing. Light wasn’t quite the right term. It was more like mist or shadows. Here and there, she thought she saw something more concrete, but when she focused, it dissipated.

  Captain Sagitta had been watching Hierax work, but now he walked toward them. Hierax, with his head in an opening in the gate, hadn’t noticed the red mist yet. A few concerned mutters came from other men, though. The mist filled the back half of the hangar.

  “You turned something on,” Indi said.

  “So I see,” Coric said. “But what?”

  “A nice ambiance for a haunted house.” It reminded Indi vaguely of a dark room. “Can these faceplates change to show us things in different light spectrums?” she asked, though she was fairly certain they shouldn’t have seen anything if the computer had turned on some holograph displaying in the ultraviolet or infrared spectrums.

  But maybe the mist was some kind of signal, letting them know something was there, if they could figure out a way to see it?

  “Yes,” Sagitta said as Coric nodded. “The temperature just went up a couple of degrees,” he added.

  Indi glanced at her statistics display. He was right.

  “Running through the various spectrums now,” Coric said, then didn’t speak further, no doubt issuing the commands to her helmet mentally.

  Since Indi didn’t have that ability, she muttered, “Show me the infrared spectrum. Gradually. Slowly go from visible light—human visible light—to infrared.”

  She didn’t know if the helmet would get all that, but the faceplate seemed to grow tinted and started adjusting the view. The red mist disappeared completely, and she could soon see the heat patterns in the hangar, thermal imaging, essentially. The gate, after its thousands of years at negative two hundred degrees, remained a dark purple, not that much different than it appeared in the visible spectrum. Around the computer banks, the air glowed orangish yellow. People in their combat armor didn’t put out any heat, so Coric’s and Sagitta’s figures were almost as dark as the gate.

  “Well, that isn’t it.” Interesting that the air had warmed up around them, but Indi didn’t see any kind of display from the computer.

  “No, I found something,” Coric blurted. “Even lower than infrared—radio waves. Low frequency, like you’d use for communication in mines and caves. Normally, you’d use radio for communications, but they’re… can you see it, Captain? Here, Indi. Sending instructions to your suit.”

  “I see it,” Sagitta said. “Interesting.”

  Indi didn’t have to do anything—her visor obeyed whatever instructions Coric sent to it. Her view altered once again, and a holographic—or something like holographic—display of the solar system came up.

  She gasped, almost stumbling as alarm surged into her. It wasn’t the binary sun system they were exploring. It was her solar system.

  “That’s creepy,” she breathed, looking toward the ceiling of the hangar, though it was in shadow now that she was viewing the world through a filter. It wasn’t as if she could see the eyes of some alien god—or intelligence—upon her, but it certainly felt like someone, or something, was watching her. She remembered those scans. Could some alien computer entity have been reading her mind? How else could this be explained?

  “Where is that?” Coric asked.

  “The Gaian System.” Sagitta looked at Indi.

  Indi shook her head, aware of his eyes upon her, but unable to tear her gaze from the very familiar sun at the center of the system. And the third planet out from it, the familiar greens, browns, and blues of Earth.

  “The… something scanned me earlier,” she said. “A couple of times.”

  “I remember,” Sagitta said.

  “It happened again in the city. And then I also got… I don’t know. A hint as to how to open a door. I’m not sure if that was a scan or some kind of communication.”

  “Why is it picking you?” Coric said, sounding a touch envious.

  “I don’t know, but maybe picking on me would be more appropriate. I didn’t ask for this attention.”

  Indi lifted a hand toward the sun in the display. The planets were stretched out to fill the air around them, all being at different spots in their orbits, instead of lined up neatly as they often were in science books back home. She could have touched any of them, but she stood closest to the sun. When her finger touched the surface, the image zoomed in, showing her a close-up of the gases bubbling and igniting on the surface.

  Coric twitched.

  “Are you seeing the same things as I am?” Indi asked.

  “You poking a sun, yes.”

  “You can interact with the display,” Sagitta said. “With the computer.”

  It took a second for Indi to twig to what he was saying. Was this the way in? Was she simply being shown a picture to poke around at or was this a way to interact with the alien operating system? To perhaps find a way to a useful part of the computer’s software?

  Indi pulled her finger back, and the focus also pulled out, displaying the entire system again. She walked over and tapped Earth. Again, it zoomed in, going all the way down to the surface, to a city. What was that? New York? As she let her finger dangle in the air, the zoom increased even more until people and cars became visible, moving in streets.

  “Holy shit,” she said, yanking her finger back.

  The focus jerked back out to the system again, but the image remained imprinted on her brain.

  “Is this real time?” She’d seen a bunch of cars, very modern-looking cars, and a kid wearing a T-shirt from a recent movie. “How could it—could it be tied into our satellites somehow?”

  She knew from poking around with the various Google Earth tours, that Earth’s satellites could zoom in to show the detail she’d just seen, but those satellites were in Earth’s orbit, not wherever the hell she was now. Somewhere on the opposite side of the galaxy.

  “We, human beings, don’t know how to send data through wormholes currently,” Sagitta said, “but it seems reasonable that the gates are—that they would have to be—aware of what’s going on with other gates in the network. Though if they were paying close attention, you’d think they would close a gate when a gate on the other side is misbehaving.” His tone had grown dry. He must have been referring to the wormhole they’d come through to reach this system.

  “Maybe there was a warning on the gate in that alien system,” Indi said. “The Scyllan System, wasn’t it? Maybe there was a warning, and we just didn’t know how to read it.”

  “That’s possible.” Sagitta looked toward Hierax, but his head was still stuck through a panel opening.

  “Do you know where the gate would be located right now in my—the Gaian—system?” Indi asked.

  At the s
cale the display was currently showing them, something as small as one of these gates wouldn’t show up, and since her people had never even discovered the Gaian gate, she had no idea where to look. It mystified her that nobody had ever spotted it before, given that astronomers spent their days gazing through high-powered telescopes and could pick out planets around distant stars.

  “Yes,” Sagitta said, walking toward the outer edge of the system display. “Its orbit matches that of the planet farthest from your sun.” He stopped at the point and tapped at a tiny dot.

  The display zoomed in to show a gate identical to the one propped up twenty feet away.

  “It matches the orbit of Pluto?” Indi walked over to stand next to Sagitta and did a little poking herself, zooming out partway and peering in a straight line back toward Earth. From the gate, Earth wasn’t visible. The scruffy dwarf planet Pluto was in the way.

  “Yes, they like to hide them,” Sagitta said, his tone dry again. “From the inhabitants of the most advanced planet in the system. In most systems, there’s no life or only one planet where life developed, or was seeded, so they probably didn’t find it that challenging.”

  “Why would they do that? Did they not want them used?” Indi eyed the gate Hierax was working on. Would the aliens object to it being ravaged for parts? For that matter, what about the drones that had been destroyed? Was the AI even now thinking about what to do next to rid its planet and system of intruders?

  “They didn’t leave any messages that we know of,” Sagitta said, “so we can only speculate. Many believe that they wanted to make sure people were capable of reasonably advanced space travel before they discovered the gate system and headed to other star systems where they might encounter problems they weren’t equipped to deal with.”

  “Such as being stranded in a system with a broken gate?” Coric asked.

  “I was thinking more about encountering hostile aliens,” Sagitta said, “but thank you for pointing out the foolishness of my choice, Lieutenant.”

  It was impossible to see through the faceplate, but Indi suspected Coric blushed as she said a contrite, “Sorry, sir.”