The aeternum chronicles.., p.79
The Aeternum Chronicles- The Complete Trilogy, page 79
part #1 of The Aeternum Chronicles Series
“Recently installed,” he said, reading her confusion without even looking at her.
He pushed the door open, revealing a large room, extending far back. The floors were plain and gray, with drains located throughout. The lab was lit from above by blue and white strips of light along the ceiling. Against the side walls were long steel counters with tall rows of shelving above, filled with an assortment of mechanical parts and scientific equipment. Along the left wall were microscopes, centrifugation spinners, geo-magnetic amplifiers, and other tools for which Clem didn’t know the names. She caught a glimpse of industrial machining tools toward the back, and her eyes widened.
Jin stepped into the lab and closed the door. He walked toward the center of the room, to a large, waist-high cube-shaped island with a three by three foot glass top. “The schematics?” he said, turning to Clem and holding out his hand.
She approached and handed him the metal cylinder.
Jin unscrewed the cap and removed the curled up sheet of transparent plastic film. He unrolled it, taking a moment to examine the complex lines and symbols. He then gripped the corners, and fed it into a slot half-way up the front wall of the cube. There was a whirring noise as a motor came to life inside.
Jin then straightened, and slid a finger along the glass surface. As he did, a blue light within the cube grew in luminosity. There, displayed on the top surface, were the schematics magnified large enough to fill the entire thing.
Clem watched, enraptured by the sight of it. How many nights had she spent squinting at the crisscrossing lines, shapes, numbers, and arrows of those boiling schematics, by firelight? Now here they were, writ large in glorious detail on a pane of glass.
“Impressed?” Jin asked.
Clem realized her mouth had been hanging open, and she abruptly closed it.
“Don’t be. This tech is older than I am.” He tapped a hand on the glass, and the small motor inside whirred as the schematics zoomed in further. As he slid his fingers around, the schematics slid this way and that. He adjusted another knob, and Clem’s eyes widened as the flat schematics expanded into three separate layers.
He examined them in silence for several minutes, zooming in on areas of interest, following power conduits and ley lines with his fingers. “Fascinating,” he muttered under his breath. “An amplified energy transfer rate inversion, coupled with prolonged dispersal rates…”
Clem listened as he pieced together many of the clues it had taken her days to figure out. “What did you say you did before you came here?”
“Classified weapons research,” he answered without missing a beat, his fingers still moving along the cross-section of New Arcadia.
“What kind of weapons?”
“Curious little tot, aren’t you?” he asked.
Clem was on the brink of telling him to stuff it. His attitude was detestable, though she got the impression he treated everyone this way. Somehow, that made it a little less unbearable.
“I worked on artifacts,” he said. “Relics of the past.”
“Geo-tech?” she asked.
Jin scoffed. “I said the past, not the stone age.”
Clem frowned.
“Kai weapons,” he said, crossing his arms. “Like this one.” He nodded to the glass.
“You helped build this weapon?” Clem asked in accusation.
Jin looked up from the glass. “Yes, and no.” He sighed with exasperation. “New Arcadia is centuries older than I am. Its architects are all either long dead, or gone from this world. These schematics are inconsistent,” he said.
“Inconsistent? How?” Clem asked.
“There are elements of newer tech present here, here, and here,” he pointed to three small circles with several lines extending out from them. Each of the circles were divided by a curving line. “These are not part of the original design.”
“Those are…ancillary power amplification chambers?”
Jin looked at her appraisingly. “Not completely hopeless then, are you?”
Clem stamped out the pride his back-handed compliment had nearly elicited.
“How do you know that they’re not part of the original design?” Clem asked.
“Because they’re based on a technology that I developed.” He leaned over the glass, using his fingers to zoom in on the circular shapes, turning them this way and that. “Though it appears they were implemented by a bumbling idiot...S.O. Kino by the look of it. It’s a wonder the amplifiers work at all.”
“But those would—”
“Speed the weapon charge? Yes, by two-hundred and thirty-four percent, rounded down.”
Clem ran the numbers in her head. “Readying the weapon three-hundred years sooner than it would have otherwise.”
Instead of making another rude comment, Jin only looked at her a moment, then nodded. “It would have happened either way, eventually.” He shrugged.
Clem pursed her lips. Blaming Jin wouldn’t get them any closer to stopping it. There was at least some justice in that he would be helping to stop what he had a part in creating.
She leaned over the glass and mimicked his hand movements, manipulating the schematics until they were centered on the core. It was a massive, hollow shaft driving straight down through the entire cross-section. It was lined with small squares, each with a ley line climbing upward.
“Kai energy is drawn up through this well,” she said, “and channeled into the ley lines before passing into the amplification chambers, and into the energy storage cell.” She pointed to a massive, nearly flat disc the size of the inner city core. But how? I haven’t been able to tell what force draws the energy upward.”
“In all the decades I spent studying, refining, and producing kai-tech, I have never once encountered a way to artificially draw upon kai energy. It simply cannot be done. It can be stored, but one needs subjects in order to extract it.”
“Subjects?” Clem asked, not liking the sound of it.
“Yes. You need individuals with the ability to gather to collect it, in order to store it.”
“You mean people…” Clem said as the realization hit her. “But there are thousands of extraction chambers here,” she said tracing a finger up the shaft of the well. “Where could they find so many to fill them?”
Jin raised an eyebrow. “Yes, where would they find a massive population of people to draw from for such a purpose?” he asked sarcastically. “You already know. You just don’t want to see it.”
Clem’s mind wandered back to the halls of West Arcadia High, when the world was smaller. Simpler…
On this the third day of the Month of Recompense, we recognize those model citizens who have ascended, marking the culmination of a life celebrated in service to the Ministry. Let us remember their contributions and their sacrifice, for no greater honor exists than Ascension to pre-eminence. May the Maker watch over us all, in the name of our grand overseer and righteous protector, Ecumenical Patriarch, Gabrial Penumbra.
A shiver ran down her spine. “The Ascension Ceremony,” Clem said. “They’re taking them as slaves…”
“Those with the ability to gather, yes. Those without?” Jin shook his head. “I’m one-hundred fifty-two years old, and so far…nothing. Not a spark. As I said, the Ministry wanted me dead, and I didn’t want to die.”
Clem took a deep breath. Jin was right, she had been ignoring the truth, or at least the possibility of it. How many people had been enslaved for decades? Maybe even centuries? All, right beneath the feet of those going about their day on the surface. She wondered if maybe the dead weren’t the lucky ones.
“So how do we destroy it, without killing everyone inside?” asked Clem.
Jin studied her for a brief moment, then turned his attention back to the designs. “First, we have to ensure it doesn’t activate while we are present. These drawings suggest heat expulsion will occur at the surface.”
“But with that much energy—”
“Everyone and everything outside the core will be cooked alive.”
Clem swallowed. “What about here?” she asked, pointing to a small row of cylinders just below the energy storage cell. “These look a lot like geo-magnetic actuators. I used a scaled down version on my hover-bike. If we can disable them, perhaps this would prevent the activation signal…”
Jin shook his head. “There are redundant auxiliary bypass actuators throughout. We’d have to disable them all, and we won’t have time for that.”
Clem thought for a moment. “What if we found some way to bleed energy from the storage cell disc? Maybe that would delay activation…buy us some time.”
“Unless you know a way to disperse a hundred-thousand units a second, it won’t be enough to stop it.”
Clem considered it. There was no plausible way to do it without incinerating the entire thing. “There must be limit breakers. If we overload them—”
“The energy is already in the cell disc. Stopping the flow at this point will achieve nothing,” Jin interrupted.
With a deep sigh Clem placed a hand on her chin, looking down at the long shaft, and the energy storage disc at the top. She zoomed in on the circles with a squiggling line through them—the power amplification chambers. The three chambers were at the very top of the well, just below the energy storage disc.
“These chambers amplify kai energy?” she asked.
Jin nodded.
“These curving lines going through the circles…what do they represent?”
“They are resonance indicators. In this case, the amplifiers are attuned to a positive polarity.”
“And what would happen if we were to reverse the polarization?” Clem asked.
“If it were possible to do so, it would destabilize the entire storage cell…catastrophic failure. But the only way to do that would be to access them directly from within the well,” he said, shaking his head.
“Isn’t that what we want?” Clem asked, growing frustrated.
“Sure, as long as you don’t mind blowing up everyone and everything in a ten-mile radius.”
Boil it, Clem cursed to herself, lifting her hands off the glass.
Jin took over. “This machine was built to be tamper-proof,” he said. There was more than a hint of admiration in his voice. “If you want to understand it, you will need to get inside the heads of those who constructed it.”
“And whose heads would that be?”
“All we have are rumors…legends. New Arcadia was built over seven centuries ago, and much of its construction is shrouded in secret. Back then, Gabrial Penumbra and his Voss army had neither the technology, nor the wherewithal to build something as magnificent as this. No. They had help. The real question is not who, but why?”
“To destroy us,” Clem said.
“Too simplistic,” said Jin. “With this kind of technology? They’d have done it already.”
“Why then? You tell me.”
“To harvest this world’s energy? A small part of a greater plan? How should I know.”
Clem again bit her tongue. Jin had an infuriating way of phrasing his questions as if he had all the answers.
“You like to build things,” he said. “If you were constructing a machine as complex as this one, and you wanted to make it immune to sabotage, what would you do?”
Clem furrowed her brow. “I’d make its outer perimeter a fortress.”
“Any fortress can be infiltrated with the right tools. What else?”
“I’d ensure the weapon could be fired from multiple triggers, in case one was blocked or destroyed.”
“Better. What else?”
“I’d isolate any vulnerabilities—single breach failure points—and ensure they were either inaccessible, fortified…or hidden.” She pursed her lips, then looked back down to the schematics. “We’re missing something.”
Leaning over the glass, she examined the symbols. “There are redundant actuators, but what sends the signal to them? There has to be a single point of origination…” She followed the overlapping lines, focusing intently so as not to go cross-eyed. Despite the conduit lines going every which way, she was able to trace them all to a single, tiny, innocuous rectangle.
“Here,” she said thoughtfully. The weapon actuators were redundant, but the signal to reach them had to originate from one central location.
A signal redistribution circuit, Clem realized. There was something familiar about it. She recalled considering it a while ago and dismissing it as an option.
“Well done,” Jin said sarcastically. “And it only took you two? Three weeks?”
Clem leveled a flat glare in his direction. “If you’re so brilliant, then why don’t you explain how we’re supposed to bore through a thousand tons of rock to get at it?”
“We don’t,” he answered with the hint of a smug smile.
“There’s no way an EMP could penetrate that much rock, and besides, it will be shielded,” Clem argued.
“Had you been listening, perhaps you’d have solved it for yourself,” he said sharply. “Did you assume they’d simply print the emergency shutdown coordinates right onto the schematics?” He paused, clearly relishing the moment.
Oh get on with it! Clem could have shouted.
“A single breach failure point. The Achilles heel of the most powerful machine this world has ever seen. Do you really believe its designer would reveal the true location of its vulnerabilities?”
“You mean…the signal circuit’s not where it’s depicted?” Clem asked, zooming out her view of the schematics.
“You’re getting warmer…”
“If not here, then where?”
“Where would you put it?” he asked.
“From a technical efficiency standpoint?” Clem asked, considering. “Here.” She pointed her finger to a narrow maintenance shaft running parallel to the core.
Jin spread his hands—‘ta-da.’
“If you knew this entire time, why didn’t you just say so?” Clem crossed her arms.
“This way was much more fun, don’t you think?”
She glared at the insufferable man.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he shrugged. “You were never in the Ministry, whereas I once walked the halls of the Pillars. I know how they think…how they work. Deception is at their core. The truth isn’t what you think it is. It’s what they want you to think it is.”
“You must have fit right in,” Clem said coolly.
“I did,” he answered, oblivious to the barb. He lifted a watch from his coat pocket. “Well would you look at that?” he said, holding it up. “Looks like we’re done here, and with time to spare.”
He promptly walked past her toward the door.
“Wait!” Clem called.
He stopped, turning with his eyebrows raised.
“We haven’t found a way to destroy it!”
Jin quirked an eyebrow. “I suspect General Graves will have orders for you. Read them, and follow the instructions. I’m sure you can manage that.” He turned and walked through the door.
Once it shut again, Clem clenched her teeth and cursed in frustration. I can’t believe I squandered my time with this pompous windbag!
After several deep breaths, she decided to return to her quarters for supplies, and go after Oren.
12
Without Mercy
Anzien shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She hated being on display, though she had begun to accept that this was part of the job. Chatter echoed throughout the cavernous, high-ceilinged stadium as more and more began to wander in. She stood at attention, waiting on the stage for the seats to fill, and for the general to arrive. Eleven battalion commanders waited behind her, also standing at attention, motionless.
The stadium was enormous. They’d discovered it early on, but had been unable to determine its true scale until after Thomes figured out how to power the hold with kai energy. Now, a band of blue light ran along the entirety of the outer walls. The standing room before the stage, now packed with bodies, was lit from the floor. More bands of light stretched up along the floor, illuminating the stone stairs that sectioned off the stadium seating. The half-circle stage on which Anzien stood was lit around the curve of the front edge, and the wall behind.
Those who had designed this hold truly were master builders. The hall itself seemed to respond to those filling it, growing brighter wherever the soldiers congregated.
It wasn’t long before the place began to fill up. These were the fighting force of the Ko’jin army; they were husbands, wives, and parents of those who would remain behind after the fighting started.
Despite the stadium’s enormous size, Anzien was skeptical that it would fit the eleven-thousand soldiers. But when the flow of those filtering in slowed to a trickle, she realized they would indeed fit, without even filling the entire space. She was beginning to understand that Skysever was more than just a military fortification; it was a city unto itself. This place was akin to Praeconis Amphitheater in New Arcadia, where propaganda messaging would be delivered to thousands.
The last of the soldiers found their seats, and Field General Graves stepped onto the stage from a side-entrance at the back.
“Stand ready!” Anzien called out, her voice echoing loudly off the walls. Thousands of boots thumped to the ground in immense unison as the soldiers stood at attention, facing forward with backs straight and eyes ahead. The lights on the floor, and those leading up the stairs between the stone bench seating, dimmed. The stage grew brighter.
Anzien looked out over a shadowy sea of people—every last one of them, under her command.
“General in command!” she called out, and thousands of fists thumped thousands of chests as General Graves stepped forward to a black lectern at the front of the stage. She stood for a long moment, gazing out over the thousands of dim figures.
