Spirit Unbreakable

Reniko woke as an alarm sounded in her lab. Her eyes flew open at the sound just as the lights in the room went out. Suspended in darkness with only the pulsing rhythm of the alarm she tried to get her barring. All of her equipment had stalled and there seemed to be no electricity in the room at all. Not wanting to knock over any sensitive equipment she stayed seated.

“Rae, are you there?” She asked the air, hoping to garner a response from Reflaydun. Only the blaring alarm replied.

“Blast it, I can’t think over that alarm,” she shouted into the darkness, “could you please stop the racket.” She clamped her hands over her ears just as the alarm finally abated and was instead replaced by the Sentralon computer’s voice.

“Voice print recognized as the Wayann,” it replied. Suddenly a pale blue light, like that emitted from the ERB, lit up a pathway on the ground from where Reniko was seated to the lift shaft.

Reniko put her hands down and followed the light to the shaft only to realize that the lift was not present. As far as she was aware there were no emergency exit stairs leading to the lower levels. It seemed quite an oversight suddenly.

“Computer, could you please tell me what that alarm was for and why there is no power in this section of Sentralon castle?” Reniko asked staring into the dark abyss that was the lift shaft.

“The interstellar bridge on Level Five has had an unscheduled activation from outside of Vespen. As per protocol, the Archives of Sentralon have been locked down awaiting further instructions from the Defence Base.”

Reniko reviewed the levels in the Archive wing of Sentralon trying to figure out what the computer considered the Defence Base. She could think of nothing on any of the various levels that had that capacity. “Where is the Defence Base?” Reniko finally asked.

“Access only obtainable through the lift shaft,” the computer replied.

Reniko peered into the shaft once again. Looking up, she saw only darkness. Upon looking down the shaft, Reniko could make out a small spot of blue light she had not noticed previously. She knew that the shaft was large enough to accommodate her in flight and suddenly wondered if by only accessible from the lift shaft it meant only accessible by a Levanith.

“Is there any possible way that I could have access to Level Five?” Reniko asked.

“Negative. Level Five has been locked down until contamination protocols have been initiated or intruders neutralized.”

“So Level Five has been contaminated and there are intruders?” Reniko’s hand reflexively flinched toward her back as she looked for her sword. She suddenly cursed herself for her lax behaviour while in the castle. There were two possible back entrances now that they had both the Microgates and the ERB up and running. Leaving Imako at the practice yard seemed asinine now.

“Unable to verify either of those possibilities. Only the Defence Base is capable of a full analysis of Sentralon. It is on a separate grid so as not to be compromised in the event of a breech.”

“Wonderful,” Reniko replied and hopped into the shaft letting her wings out and circling gently down towards the faint light. By the time the light was outlined as a doorframe, Reniko figured that she was almost at sea level, far below Level Five. She expertly folded her wings and dropped onto the floor past the doorway. She saw a Microgate on the other side of a defensive shield that was shimmering the eerie blue that Reniko had come to associate with most of Levanith technology. She saw a hand scanner on the right side of the door and pressed her palm to it feeling the tingle as the computer read the Levanith tattoo that had been embedded onto the back of her hand when she had first been in Reflaydun and had passed Rae’s psychological test.

A few seconds later, the defensive shield had lowered and Reniko walked towards the Microgate on the other side. She glanced around the room, and seeing nothing but melted rock in every direction creating the small chamber she was in, she looked once again toward the Microgate.

As she came closer to it, she saw the defence shield blaze back to life and the Microgate suddenly activate. A little hesitant, Reniko stepped through and was suddenly blinded by the light of the full moons overhead. She shivered at the chilly air as she realized she was standing outside near a small lake that was completely surrounded by mountains.

Perplexed, Reniko took to the air. She cleared the tops of the mountains and gazed out at the site beyond which was illuminated by the moons. The topography of where she was did not match the Isle of Sentralon at all.

She was on a much bigger mass. She tried to find any landmarks that looked familiar, but none could be found. Far in the distance, to the southwest, she saw a large forest that extended beyond her vision. She saw more north of the forest, glittering snakes carved into the soil marking large rivers. To the east she could see a large body of water that looked a lot like Radalean Lake on Edonal Eclith. However the mountain ranges on Edonal Eclith were not at this angle or this far away from Radalean Lake, and there was far too much land mass to the west of her. The topography also did not match with Mo’an Delar as the mountain range she was hovering above snaked from north to south cutting the land mass in half for as far as she could see.

Shivering again, she descended back to the hidden valley tucked into the craggy mountains where it was a slightly more manageable temperature. As she lowered herself back into the valley she noticed a pagoda to the north of the lake not far from where the Microgate had deposited her. She circled down towards it, noticing that the top level of the pagoda had only pillars supporting the roof above it. She landed on the platform and suddenly the level was ablaze with light. In the centre of the floor stood an elevated platform with a ring of metallic nanites like those that Reflaydun had used to rebuild the city. She stepped up the five steps towards this elevated ring. At her presence on the step, she saw the side of the ring closest to her drip away like sand. She recalled the same feature was used in Reflaydun. It had been before she had known she was Levanith and did not have wings to fly. She had been encased in an invisible force field and the floor had melted away like sand grains forcing her to fall into a deep dark pit. Reniko had thought at the time she was dropping to her death. She was grateful that had not been the case.

She stepped through the passage that the ring had made and stood in the middle of the platform. The ring reformed and screens lit up hovering in midair all around Reniko.

“Welcome, Wayann of Vespen, please direct,” the computer, a male voice this time, said.

“There was a breech in the Sentralon Archives on Level Five. Please give me the data concerning this,” Reniko replied. The computer responded by pulling the information that Reniko had requested to the forefront of her view. She scanned the data in front of her which turned out to be a wordy document full of technical jargon that Reniko did not comprehend.

“Is there a video feed of the breech?” Reniko finally asked. The computer responded by pulling up a video record of Level Five. It started the feed just as the ERB gate was activated. Reniko watched as a probe entered the room and the alarm started blaring which deactivated the gate while only half the probe was in the room. Cut in half, it flopped onto one side and sparked before finally dying. Reniko stared long and hard at the probe, using her hands against the holographic screen to zoom in on the detail of that particular part of the video.

“Are the coordinates of the bridge’s origin recorded?” Reniko asked rapidly.

“Affirmative,” the computer replied.

“Do we have a name for the planet of origin?” Reniko asked. She held her breath for the response. She recognized that technology and could only hope that she was right about the origin.

“Affirmative, Wayann. Origin planet is called Terra, also referred by the local inhabitants as Earth.”

Reniko’s heart skipped a beat. She had a way to Riumi. They had found the ERB gate from her cave in France and had finally figured out how to use it. She frowned suddenly. She was sure they had used Riumi to access the gate which meant that there would be a lot of trouble for her on the other side of that gate. As much as she wanted to rush back to Level Five and jump back to Earth, she knew that she would have to consult Dertrik and Malik first.

Reniko instructed the computer to initiate decontamination protocols and made to leave. A screen that had been hovering at the corner of her vision suddenly caught her attention. She could see a planet suspended in a sort of hexagonal web. She tapped it, bringing it to the forefront. “Computer, what is this?”

“That is the program for the defensive shield,” it replied.

“Can I see the full aspects of this program?” Reniko asked.

“The defensive shield requires a different interface. Please place your hands on the highlighted surface in front of you,” the computer instructed.

Reniko looked down at the metallic ring and saw hand prints glowing on the surface. Matching footprints were below it. She positioned herself over the correct spots and gasped. She tried to pull away when she felt the metallic nanites creating cuffs around her wrist and ankles. She jerked away once they had disconnected from the ring and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the ring where an energy field had suddenly grabbed at the cuffs on her arms and legs. When she felt herself being lifted off the ground, she instinctively opened her wings and tried to fly away. The energy field’s interaction with the cuffs was far stronger than Reniko’s attempted flight.

When she was twenty feet above the ring and platform, she felt the metallic cuffs suddenly become warm and she felt a jolt of energy slice through her body. Her wings flared out in a halo around her head and the world around her suddenly vanished. Her eyes were glowing a glorious electric blue as the energy arched in her body, her hair floating above her in long tendrils.

It took her a few moments to fully comprehend what was going on. She realized that she was looking at a defensive array around the planet Vespen. She was flooded with information about the array. A scientist by the name of Orasell had been working on it just before the end of the war. She had completed her work, but it had been too late to save the planet. It had sat untested here in the mountains of Leoledowin on Raet Serac all this time.

Reniko knew that it was a formidable machine. Satellites covered the space around Vespen like a blanket. It had self-replicating nanites at its heart and even after a thousand years it was in perfect condition. It could generate a defensive field that could cover the entire planet making it impossible to get to the surface. It also had a weapons system the likes of which Reniko had never seen. Weapons so advanced she didn’t even understand fully how they functioned. She could see the weapon system was tuned to a specific genetic pattern. As she focused on this information, she realized that it was the genetic sequence for the modified Rük and she could see glowing red dots on the surface of the planet as the defence array weapons began targeting every single Rük on Vespen.

The computer asked her if she wanted to deploy the weapons and she screamed in her mind for it to let her go. She felt it comply and she dropped the twenty feet back to the ground, the cuffs around her hands and legs combining back with the platform.

She had tears in her eyes when she was released from the energy. She understood that the Levanith had felt that killing all the Rük on Vespen was the only way for them to regain their freedom, but she had believed that her species had not had the heart for xenocide. If they had been able to carry out their plan, they would have been just as heartless and terrible as the Rük.

It suddenly dawned on her that if she told anyone about this technology that they would no doubt force her to use it for just that purpose. It had to remain a secret. She couldn’t let anyone know about this, not until all her other options had been exhausted. She had to figure out a way to get the First Rük’s blood sample soon, before her council and the rest of the inhabitants of Vespen called for all Rük blood.

She flew back to the Microgate, conflicted and feeling pressed for time. She had two problems to solve, the Rük and the rescue of Riumi. She had to figure out which was more important to her, for she was starting to think she didn’t have time to solve both.