Shackleton's Folly (The Lost Wonder Book 1) (34 page)

Then it happened. They could see out the ports that the storage units had changed to match the new configuration of robots they held. The robot population was hard to estimate without a census, but the job they held in maintaining a structure of this size would be challenging without a support staff to do the big jobs, and everything here was, well, big.

The
Quest
emerged from the corridor into a vast open space or buffer zone about the Citadel. It was easy to see that, as the robots came from storage, they would form maintenance teams out here before being transported to their assigned duties.

The Maintenance Citadel erupted from the flat plain and rose more than five kilometers. The architecture of the fortress was surrounded with full circular quad-bastions to protect the gardens from self-destruction. The
Quest
flew in a wide path to circle the structure.

Dancer keyed in commands. Dancer turned to Alec. “Now what? We need a plan to get the last piece.”

Alec smiled with anticipation. “First we take Electra home. Then we will have to beard the Koty lion in his den.”

They flew over the Citadel toward the garden wall in the same direction they had been flying.

The Koty battleship
Illia
hung in space as it orbited the star outside the asteroid field. The ship’s squadrons rotated patrols, on alert for any hostile actions that came from the inhabitants of the sphere. The ship kept in close to the debris field to disguise their location. A squadron of fighters left the battleship and cruised at maximum alert to their assigned patrols. The squadron they were to relieve waited until they had arrived and made the coded, short-range “friend” transmission. The fighters that had finished their patrol headed back to the battleship.

The entire exchange was monitored and recorded by systems located at every intersection of the hexagons around the sphere. The video and data analysis were being made available for the artificial intelligence known as the Groundskeeper.

The Groundskeeper, at one time, had led an army of biologics and mechs — “custodians,” as they were known — in keeping up the gardens for the Emperor. It was an honor to keep these gardens pristine for the Emperor, and, when his heirs took over, they, too, came here to visit. They praised the Groundskeeper for the work done and made their own additions to the gardens. They upgraded the mechs, provided additional resources, and increased system replacement computing and storage capacity to that of a galactic library level. This was a very special tribute to the work the Groundskeeper had done and would continue to do for millennia more. The visits of the royal family grew more sporadic over time until communication with the Emperor’s representatives no longer came. The Groundskeeper kept moving forward with its duties.

Then the event came — an act of malicious mischief by inhabitants of one of the gardens. They could not have understood what they had done, but the results were a loss of higher-care functions.

The Groundskeeper found it ever so hard to maintain its concentration. As a matter of note, keeping mental focus had been a problem for a long time. The simplest functions were difficult as the Groundskeeper found that the highest orders of thought were sporadic or just missing. It was reduced to that of power and thermo management. The structural force and alignment maintenance routine had not been completed in millennia, and the grounds showed the problem to have become critical. Other timely maintenance functions were set aside to focus on power and thermo; they, too, waited for system repair. The structure was failing, and unless repairs were made, the gardens would come apart, and all life here would end.

The
Illia
’s crew continued in their duties, blissfully unaware of the intelligence considering them. Wolfgang Gray stood close to the monitor with an overhead view from above the Maintenance Citadel. A second screen had a representation of the structure with a path marking where they had picked up the
Quest
and its direction toward one of the structure’s ribs.

Gray sneered, “Got you, Shackleton.”

The
Quest
crossed the wall between translucent, cone-like structures 100 kilometers from the wall’s edge. The ship dove into the hexagon, the ocean large and teaming with life. The
Quest
reduced speed.

*

Captain K’Dhoplon and Wolfgang Gray waited for the crew member Araimeer to pick himself up from the floor.

Captain K’Dhoplon demanded, “Report!”

“Sir, sensor contact re-established,” Araimeer stuttered.

Captain K’Dhoplon scoffed down at the crewmen, “Dismissed.”

Gray said, “Captain — if I might make a suggestion?”

“What?” replied Captain K’Dhoplon.

Gray paused and then said, “It is clear this find of ours is, well, quite beyond what you had in mind. I would recommend you remove any possible leaks. You know loose orifices destroy ships.”

Captain K’Dhoplon burst out laughing and quit just as suddenly. “The Koty claim ownership of this technological wonder. We will exercise our rights and destroy any settlements found on our station.” He looked to his helmsman. “Plot a course that brings us in behind the human’s ship. I want patrols in defensive posture close to the ship. No telling what we will find.”

The battleship
Illia
slowed her progress around the star and made way for the exterior wall of the sphere. The squadrons of fighters kept pace and position with the great ship. It was not unlike watching a large, ponderous fish swimming in a tank, with a small school of fish tagging along. The battleship made course and speed corrections and the fighters matched nearly all of them. As the battleship neared the exterior wall of the sphere, it reoriented itself so that it now had the wall under its keel and the
Quest
far ahead and out of sight.

The
Illia
crossed the garden’s vast darkened lid producing a night for the inhabitants below it. The garden wall came at them quickly and forced them to gain altitude and vault the wall’s top, with the squadrons of defensive fighters keeping up. The
Illia
continued on its course at a higher altitude, eliminating the need to make the adjustment again. They passed over four more gardens before reaching the wall top showing damage. The battleship slowed its progress to a stop to view the destruction — it was, evidently, the result of a ship crashing into the wall. The fighters swarmed the area, vigilant for any perceived danger.

Following the path of destruction, they came across the crash site of the Skiptracer ship. The ship was askew, lying on its top against a volume of debris that had built up as it slid through the sea of solar panels, stopping only when it smacked up alongside the cone.

The two crew members of the downed ship were in spacesuits outside on the garden wall top, surveying the ship’s damage. Even from a distance, it was clear that quite a bit of repair was going to be needed. Gino and Worrell tried to flag down the Koty ships for assistance. But, even if Gino and Worrell were working for the Koty representative Wolfgang Gray, it was not the way of the Koty to offer assistance to anyone needing help. When the Koty ships moved forward and away from them, the crew of the downed ship realized that the Koty had no use for alien races.

The
Illia
slowly entered the next garden, finding it very different from what they had found before. The ship trekked onward. The
Illia
continued to follow the course plotted by their predecessor, Shackleton. When they realized that the
Quest
’s course had taken them deep into the base of the garden, they hesitated. The Koty did not like to follow others, and this case was no different. They would claim the station in the name of their sovereign and reap the rewards and accolades they so richly deserved.

Their systems painted them a wondrous sight the army of warrior robots. The Koty would have to hack the systems quickly to lay claim to these monsters of destruction. The number of these great machines was overwhelming. Any opposing forces would hesitate to engage them.

Illia
Captain K’Dhoplon stood close to the view screen, which was bursting with the storage system as far as the eye could see. Each storage system filled with six giant robots. These giant machines would not even have to be fitted with weaponry — their size alone would spell total destruction for any ground installations and vehicles.

Captain K’Dhoplon said with a little awe, “Such power can rip apart the worlds of those who oppose our rule.”

Wolfgang Gray replied sarcastically, “Such imagination.”

Captain K’Dhoplon said, amazed, “What I would have done to the Shaker Colony on Barron Seven with three of these.”

The
Quest
flew over a different ecosystem as they slowed and descended to six thousand meters. The open oceans between the continents were sprinkled with island chains. The land and waters below were teeming with life; the surface changed color as schools of animals roamed free. Dancer checked the sensors and found large flights of winged animals over the coastal and inland areas. His sensors classified nearly a thousand as they passed from land to ocean to island chain and back again. The
Quest
resumed its descent and lowered to two thousand meters.

A continent they came upon had a small coastal range with a large valley, rich with what looked like cultivated fields and hillsides. The terrain rose quickly and forced the
Quest
to gain altitude and cross the mountain range. The mountains were conical in shape and looked, from a distance, like volcanos.

Dancer had to hand it to the First Ones’ Empire and the engineering that had been required to build the gardens. If he had only a video of this place, he would have classified it a Planetary Mass Classification of Terran, a Planetary Thermal Classification of a mesoplanet or Earth-like. The ground fell away as they continued in the direction Electra had indicated. A new mountain range rose up from the land, reaching higher than the last. The
Quest
returned to 4500 meters to clear the imposing, snowcapped mountains.

The First Ones’ builders had not only reproduced the temperate zones of the planets — they had recreated the mountains, too. Dancer scanned in all directions and, to their right, he found a polar tundra climatic zone. When and if they survived, he would like to explore this garden of Electra’s. If it was as Electra said, this was where Alec’s people had settled. Dancer glanced over at Alec, who was mesmerized by the world outside as if he had just been away on a trip and returning home. The
Quest
reduced altitude as they came across a huge plain. Grasslands and herds of animals could be discerned as they flew at five hundred meters. Civilization had not disturbed the land in any significant way.

“A transportation network of maglev cars and trains runs under the entire land system. It keeps the air traffic under control and allows a more natural interaction with nature,” commented Electra.

Alec managed to look away from the screens. He was misty eyed as he said, “This is just as I had imagined. I have watched so many vids about my world before it was lost; I recognize so much. It’s so beautiful.”

Their eyes met.

Electra smiled in that special way of hers. “We are nearly there,” she said.

The
Quest
flew over the continent’s panhandle and out over the ocean. They increased their altitude and speed to cross quickly. Wave patterns crisscrossed the water below; ahead of them was another island. Electra pointed to it and nodded. Alec slowed the
Quest
and took her into a wide, spiraling course.

The island was 550 kilometers by 370. One end of the island had a kilometer-wide channel cut into the land from the coast inland for 30 kilometers, bisecting a teeming cityscape. The channel started at what looked like a large stone bluff at 1.5 kilometers wide and 300 meters deep, separating the canal from the open ocean. The height was 100 meters. A distinct current in the water came from the bluff and went toward the city. It was artificial — the product of a pumping station that processed saltwater into fresh water and pumped it into the channel. The
Quest
had slowed enough to make the turn from the coast toward the city a simple maneuver. They covered the distance quickly; the last few kilometers were through high rises and skyscrapers intermixed with a series of three large, open, one-kilometer wide channels, drawing on the water from the main channel. They were perfectly circular in construction, encompassing the metropolis. The first channel was at 12 kilometers from the city center, the next at 14, and the third at 16 kilometers.

The city had a unique blend of ancient Earth architecture and a futuristic, organic type that blended usage and environment. The waterways provided fresh water to beltways of greenery subdivided by the water that passed through the channels.

The populace could be made out easily, as they were floating through the buildings. As the
Quest
came in slowly through a section of apartment buildings, Dancer saw humanoids in the midst of everyday city life through the open windows. He scanned the city’s inhabitants and found that, like Electra, they were of human ancestry.

The buildings got progressively taller as the ship neared the core of the city. They arrived at a line of much taller buildings — a hundred stories or more — and, as they came out the other side, they found that the taller buildings surrounded a park area, seven kilometers square, set aside for the city’s inhabitants. The only difference between it and Central Park of New York was the scale and the fact that it was not on Earth. A circular formation of lowlying hills walled in a series of concentric channels interlaced with land. The buildings here were of a much different construction. They looked like the classical architecture found in Greece. The well-kept grass and trees accented the classic Mediterranean feel of the place.