The second diversion serjeant had rigged a hundred-and-fifty-metre length of corridor. A simple enough entrapment: wait until the lead Tyrathca reached the EE charge, then trigger both of them. The length of corridor should trap all twelve of the pursuing xenocs between the rockfalls. But when the lead Tyrathca approached the first EE charge, it slowed, and the others stopped. Ione cursed as it moved forwards carefully, waving its scanner round. She must have left an abnormal thermal trace in the corridor when she was placing the EE charges.
The Tyrathca consulted the scanner display a final time, and pointed its maser rifle at the corridor roof. If the beam did wash over the EE charge’s trigger electronics, the radiation would destroy them.
Annoyed, Ione set off the EE charge, bringing down a five metre section of roof. It didn’t harm any of the Tyrathca. They cantered back down the corridor and split up, presumably to bypass the blockage and pick up the diversion serjeant’s heat trail again. Although without any sensor disk coverage, she couldn’t be sure where they were. She started to move again, heading deeper into the arkship’s interior, certain they weren’t ahead of her, at least.
Oski was in her element. Worry about her physical predicament had vanished completely as she and Renato removed the computer terminal panels, exposing the circuitry inside. Tyrathca electronics lagged behind current human systems by several generations—if not centuries. She hadn’t dealt with anything this crude since her compulsory History of Electronics semester while she was studying for her degree.
Renato followed her datavised instructions efficiently, tracing the terminal’s main power cable and splicing in one of the energy matrices they’d brought with them. Small coloured symbols ringing the rosette keyboard lit up.
“Thank heavens they don’t have any imagination,” Oski datavised. “I’d hate to try and do this kind of thing on nonstandard systems in the timescale we’ve got. But that’s a null concept for the Tyrathca.”
“Which I still think is a paradox,” Renato datavised. “Imagination is the root cause of all fresh ideas. You can’t design a starship without it. It’s the Siamese twin of curiosity.”
“Which they also don’t seem to have much of.”
“But probing your environment is a basic survival trait. You have to know if there’s any kind of threat out there if you want to keep on living. Then you have to work out how to overcome it.”
“I’m not arguing. Let’s just save it for another time, okay?” Oski began attaching the processor blocks she’d brought to the databuses inside the terminus; unspooling long ribbons of fibre optic cable with custom built interface plugs on the end. The Laymil project had the specifications of known Tyrathca electronic systems on file in Tranquillity, of course; but she’d referenced the archaeology expedition’s records to be sure. Tanjuntic-RI’s systems were identical to those used today, even down to the size and configuration of the sockets. Fifteen thousand years of standardisation! Renato was right: that wasn’t merely odd, it was downright eerie.
The interface plugs clicked smoothly into their sockets, and the block datavised that the high density photonic link had been established. Which was ridiculous. She’d been waiting to apply a chemical spray that would have eased the plugs into place. It had been invented by her division to clean up optical contacts that had been exposed to the vacuum, dust, and general degradation of the Ruin Ring; they used a lot of it on the scant remnants of Laymil electronics they acquired.
She put the spray canister down and picked up a micro scanner. “I can accept that their electronics are in a much better condition than the Laymil modules we have,” she datavised. “The environment here is so much more benign, and they haven’t been abandoned as long. But this lucky is absolutely impossible.” The blocks finished assembling an iconographic display of the terminal’s architecture. “The entire terminal is on-line, there isn’t a single element not functioning. The Kiint didn’t just access this, they repaired the damn thing to full operational status. Some of these components are brand new, for heaven’s sake.”
“How much of it is new?”
“According to my scanner, it’s just processors and some support circuitry. The memory crystals are original. Which makes sense. They want the data stored inside them, just like us.”
“Can you get it?”
“No problem.” They already knew the Tyrathca program language, and there was certainly no such thing as security protocols or codes to guard against unauthorised access. Before leaving Tranquillity, the division’s software experts had written customised questors that could examine all the information contained within Tyrathca memory crystals. Oski datavised the first batch of pre-formatted programs into the terminus architecture. Some of them were hunting for distinct references, while the others were classifying the information according to file type. The pair of them accessed the questor results as they returned.
“Well, it would have been too much to expect a direct reference to the Sleeping God,” Renato datavised.
“No mention of an unusual cosmological event, either,” Oski observed. She studied the file index, seeing what kind of database they’d activated, and shaping the next batch of questors accordingly. “We have plenty of navigational fixes.”
“I’m going to see if the questors can find a list of star fixes they used to align their communication laser during the flight. At least that’ll give us an idea of their contact protocol with the other arkships.”
“Good idea. I’ll see if any other arkship flight paths are stored in here. That should tell us what kind of spatial volume we’re dealing with.”
The questors revealed several tens of thousands of star fixes performed to align the interstellar communication laser. Eighty-five per cent of them were performed during the first six thousand years of the flight, after that the number of communiquйs transmitted and received by the arkship dropped off considerably. During the latter stages of the flight, the star fixes were performed almost exclusively to align the laser on the five colony planets which Tanjuntic-RI had established.
With the fixes established, Oski began to search for associated files. “The messages aren’t stored in here,” she datavised eventually. “I keep getting a link code with all the laser alignment files. But it’s to a different system altogether.”
“Do you know where it is?” Renato asked.
“Not yet.” She composed a new batch of questors, and sent them probing through the terminal’s basic management routines. “How are you doing?”
“Unpleasantly successful. The Tyrathca built over a thousand arkships.”
“Good god.”
“Yeah, quite. If they all travelled as far as this one, that gives us a phenomenal area to search through for their Sleeping God. We’re talking about a percentage of the entire galaxy. Small, admittedly. But everything is relative. Parker and Kempster will love this.”
The questors started to display their answers to Oski. “Ah, here we go. The files we want are stored in some kind of principal archive. I’ve got the identification code.”
“But it could be anywhere. We can’t access anything from here.”
“Yes. Come on. We want the office which dealt with the arkship’s general systems. We’ll see if we can activate one of the terminals in there, and call up a general schematic.”
The maser beam caught the diversion serjeant on its thigh as it was crossing one of the hemispherical chambers. Ione’s response was automatic, a fast powered dive behind a huge clump of machinery. The beam cut off as she fell behind it. Her armour’s electronic warfare block had pinpointed the origin. The Tyrathca was shooting from just inside one of the corridors.