Apex (20 page)

“Right . . . we'll go with Lilly. Lilly, do you have space on your landing pad for our ship. I want it planetside as soon as possible, but I don't want it burning fuel the entire time.”

“That can be arranged, but I would suggest using the camouflaged hangar instead.”

Riax considered that. “No, I want her close. In fact . . .” he pointed at Orrona, “take a cloaking shield over to the
Resolute
. It will make it look like the landing pad is empty, just make sure you take the camouflage snapshot
before
the ship lands. It will automatically adjust for varying light conditions.”

“Can you arrange for transport back to your base?” he asked Lilly.

“I can.”

“Do so. Orrona, contact Jalia and get her up to speed.” He turned to the nearest drone. “You, come with me.”

 

Chapter 22

F
OR
THE
NEXT
several hours Riax was a blur of motion. He got Orrona's cloaking shield out of storage, followed by a quick refurbishment and test of its functionality, then sent it up to the surface with her and the Vespa to wait on their transport. Then he got the refitted drones, portable shield, and the digging coordinates up to the surface and put them to work. Once satisfied that all was functioning properly he left them in Marren's care and headed back down to get the antigrav sleds out of storage.

After a very cursory inspection and recharge he deemed them functional and showed Ella the way to the main bay. Inside were several odd-­sized Human transports, all too big to take up through the canopy, along with several smaller craft. Riax told Ella to ignore them and park the cargo in a clearing next to the wall, which was where she started to manually input the point of origin into each sled.

Meanwhile, Riax boarded three of the transports and moved them around the bay, clearing the area under which the new shaft would be opening. There were heavy bay doors covering the center third of the ceiling of the enormous chamber, as well as containment shields that would activate over their outer surface. When the shaft was dug, the doors would open partway to keep the rest of the dirt and forest covering the bay intact while still giving them their egress point for all the cargo, large and small, that he was going to pick up.

After moving the ships around, Riax took Wes and headed back down into the storage areas. A Human outpost such as this was designed to exist in systems not part of the Empire, and as such contained supplies for many contingencies, ranging from foodstuffs to computer crystals to the kelzats.

The outpost was the only Human facility in the system, and perhaps the local region, whose purpose was to provide sanctuary, resupply, or support to any Human or allied ships nearby. It also acted as a forward base of operations from which to mount exploratory, cargo, or combat expeditions from. Human territory accounted for less than .001% of all star systems within the galaxy, but their presence was felt in more than 50%, with the dangerous and largely unexplored galactic core skewing those numbers. The Human Empire had dominated the non-­core galaxy, with outposts like this providing links to and in between widespread Human systems.

Riax was fortunate to have stumbled across one at all, let alone one in such good condition. Some equipment was missing, thanks to the Concordat, but otherwise the installation had apparently gone undetected since the fall of the Empire. He wondered how many others were out there and how intact they were. Discerning that, along with locating any remaining allies, were at the top of his priority list. However, for now basic survival was all that mattered, and the equipment recovered here would go a long way to that end.

Which was why he was going to pack the
Resolute
's holds with as much as he reasonably could without overstaying their welcome. It was fortunate the Cres had acquired a cargo ship for transport, giving him ample room to take what he needed.

When he got to the first storage room he walked inside, glanced around, then started pulling out seemingly random items and laying them on the floor. When he finished, he left the room and moved on to the next while Wes loaded up the first sled Ella brought down to him in a long train of the hovering slabs, programmed to followed each other without any physical interlinks.

Room by room Riax picked out what he needed and left it to be gathered and hauled out, moving at a pace that his colleagues could match. He made sure to work his way through the cargo areas systematically so they would have a trail to follow and telepathically advised Ella of any change of location whenever he headed off to a new area. Given the size of the outpost, he had the Cres and Kayna running all over trying to keep up with him and a trail of technological breadcrumbs to follow.

After six hours he'd finally gathered most of what he wanted to take, save for a few larger items that he'd have to move himself. He left Ella and Wes to finish picking up after him while he went down to the lower regions of the outpost and began hunting around for some specialized elements he hoped were still in storage.

The facility had been powered by a Redonvan reactor and had completely exhausted its fuel supply while he was in stasis. Fortunately the subsurface outpost had been equipped with geothermal generators as a backup, and that secondary system had kept the reserve cells charged while the facility had been in power conservation mode. The geothermal taps didn't generate even 1% of the power required to run the base, but the charged cells did, and would allow the facility to operate at reduced capacity for several months.

Primary power generation for nearly all Human infrastructure used a type of fuel known as L-­type elements, which were a combination of lerons and corovon. The corovon acted as a bonding agent within the atom to hold the lerons together, creating extremely large, energy-­packed atoms that could be used in fission reactors.

Originally discovered in the debris cloud of an ultranova, lerons were high energy subatomic particles created within black holes. Essentially a superparticle created from a mass of photons jammed together around a kelsa, they formed a tier 1 subatomic particle slightly larger than a proton and neutron, and twice as large as a corovon. Lerons were negatively charged in the presence of a magnetic field, but otherwise neutral and required corovon particles to bond them together to form larger elements.

Many different L-­type elements were used by Humans as fuels, but Redonvan, otherwise known as Element L2C1, was the most basic and widely used in small scale fission reactors, though most reactors could accommodate a range of low mass L-­type elements as fuels. The outpost's reactor was classified in the small range by Human standards, and could have used up to Illicum to power it, otherwise known as L6C2.

Lerons found in black holes and black hole remnants existed in singular atoms, and with exposure to several tier 3 particles would disintegrate, essentially releasing the light energy that the black holes had compressed and stored in particle form. By using corovon to bond the highly repellant particles together, the potency of the fuel increased per atom, leaving the metallic corovon behind as recyclable residue.

The outpost's reactor, metaphorically speaking, was fueled by the power of black holes and was capable of producing insane levels of output compared to any previous power generation technology.

And since the outpost doubled as a fuel depot, it also contained L-­type fuel storage separate from the reactor, which is what Riax found when he inspected the lower levels.

There wasn't much left, but he found four containers of Redonvan, each approximately the size of his chest, with sufficient fuel to power a frigate for more than a year of standard operation. Riax imagined the rest of the outpost's surplus had been expended during the war and was glad to get his hands on even one fuel pod. The
Resolute
's power generation levels were exceedingly primitive, and if he was going to make any major upgrades he was going to need a reactor with more kick.

The reactor itself he could build with the components he'd gathered. It'd take a while, but it wasn't beyond his skill set now that he'd obtained a copy of the schematics. The hard part was acquiring the L-­type elements, most of which the Humans had to synthesize or mine from black holes, neither of which he had the capability to do at the moment.

Riax stacked the extremely valuable pods on top of one another then carried them like a high stack of books on top of his hand, leaning them back on his chest for support, all the way up to the main bay where he stashed them inside one of the parked ships for safekeeping. L-­type elements were fairly stable, but he didn't want to take any chances of them being misplaced.

After securing that precious cargo he moved on to the larger puzzle pieces, starting with the small vehicle bay.

Originally the outpost's surface had been level with the desert ground with multiple entrances. One of those led to the small vehicle bay, which fortunately sat as an adjunct to the main bay, given the amount of soil now covering it. He didn't care to have to excavate multiple entrances and the large corridors within the outpost would have been difficult, if not impossible, to maneuver the vehicles through to get to the main bay.

There were large blast doors that doubled as part of the main bay's walls, and he doubted the Vespa and her mercs had even noticed that they were there. Coming in from a different direction, Riax entered through a small personnel access door and saw that the bay's complement was only at one-­third capacity. Most of the rows of craft had been removed prior to the evacuation of the base and large chunks of the formation were missing, but what remained was still an impressive sight.

Riax walked over to the nearest of the armored speeders and inspected its condition. Its yellow/green coloration was emblematic of the Gammas, whom this outpost had belonged to, and clashed with the white hues of the facility. One would have thought that more color coordination would have been taken into consideration in the design of the outpost, but all Human infrastructure was predicated on a colorless design given the fact that such facilities would change hands depending on the outcome of the Trials.

Kadash identification was utilized by the illumination panels, which could easily be reset to any color schematic. Interestingly enough, this outpost's illumination had been reset to neutral white when it had been evacuated. A symbolic gesture of the Gammas abandoning it.

According to the last log entries they'd been ordered to retreat in the face of an approaching enemy force that was too large to counter directly. How the outpost had been overlooked Riax didn't know. Once the Gammas left no further records had been kept, but the systematic destruction of the system's nexuses had been recorded by the sole surviving unit, so at least he had a date of the enemy's arrival and activities. Given the fact that all other infrastructure had been purged from the system, he was forced to conclude that they'd simply missed the outpost.

Sloppy of them, but it did suggest that they didn't have foreknowledge of its presence and they'd most likely just been making a sweep of the system . . . meaning that the outpost's camouflage capabilities were at least somewhat effective against the enemy's sensors. A useful data point there.

Riax knelt down and examined the underside of the bike. It was resting on the floor, but several hatches were reachable. He rubbed his index finger across one . . . but there was no response. He tried a telepathic link, but that was also a no-­go. He guessed the bike's power cells were completely dead and looked around for a mobile recharger.

He found one armature sealed up inside the leftmost wall and telepathically summoned it. Unfolding along several joints, it moved along an invisible track on the wall until it was close enough to ser­vice the bike, reaching out and attaching a flat hexagon to the aft section of the speeder.

As soon as connection was made Riax felt its systems activate. He opened the side panel and got a look at its internal components. Again, the Human tech had held up well, but some minor degradation had occurred, though not enough to prevent flight.

The Human stood up and looked around, mentally tagging twelve of the bikes for the recharger to ser­vice, and moving on to the assortment of other small craft present. There were four armored transports, antigrav powered, as everything in the bay was, 20+ two-­seat speeders, and two gunships.

Riax smiled as he walked over to the nearest of the gunships. They'd been a favorite of the Gammas. Part aircraft, part vehicle, they were used as fire support for infantry, site to site transport including orbit, mobile field bases, medical stations, and whatever else the modular design could accommodate. The Betas had never seen fit to use them, nor did they have a counterpart. Ground ops weren't their specialty, naval combat was, and whenever they operated on the surface it was with commandos, kelzats, and aircraft.

That didn't stop Riax from liking the craft though. He found the design intriguing and useful, even if it proved somewhat unreliable in combat. When stacked against either kelzats or aircraft the gunships fared poorly, yet there was far more to warfare than combat alone, and logistically speaking the gunships' utilitarian design was immensely useful.

These two were definitely coming with him . . . even if he had to disassemble them piece by piece to haul up to the
Resolute
.

A
FT
ER
SORTING
THROUGH
the vehicles Riax went down and began stripping out large pieces of equipment from the outpost's medical bay, weapons batteries, shield generators, and virtually every other major system, including several auxiliary and redundant components from the central computer core, which he fashioned into a crude mobile database into which he uploaded all pertinent files from the outpost and information grid. It didn't have a lot of processing power, but its memory capacity was large enough to take all the data with him for further analysis.

By the time he'd assembled that monstrosity on the main bay floor, the drones had succeeded in digging a narrow shaft down to the bay doors, which they were now in the process of widening as far as the native trees would allow. Riax didn't want the outpost's location to be visible from orbit and subsequently looted, even though technically that was what the Vespa had been doing. She at least had taken some care in the effort, which he knew others wouldn't.

He also didn't want Human tech ending up in others' hands, even if they didn't understand it. Even small insights could provide technological leaps which would diminish the advantage the Cres currently held over the other regional powers. And like it or not he would be relying on their strength and numbers while he began rebuilding the Empire.