Starship Engineer - 186 - The Legacy (Patreon)

Chapter 186 The Legacy

After many hardships, the Sylvan city ship Falffir had reached the deep space object they suspected was built by the Mavelolents and concealed by the quadrupeds.  As they approached the dense mass, a rough metallic sphere of 4,980 kilometers was covered in the wreckage of hundreds of massive transports.  Their gravimetric sensors could not penetrate the Sphere to give a clear interior image.   There was also interference when they tried to scan the transports on the surface.

After a few days of scanning from a distance, Gul’Rul watched as the human-led exploration team landed on the surface of the Sphere.  Their scans could only detect slight mass fluctuations from inside the object.  They guessed that perhaps it was transmitting using an unknown method.  Two teams were set to examine the faint fluctuations.

The Arcadian shuttle landed near one of the transports and sent out a Marine Recon team.  It entered the ancient derelict and walked the corridors.  The video transmission from the Marine’s Badger suits was disrupted, and they had to spool a hard-line cable to the transport as they explored.

It did not take long before they found long-deceased quadrupeds in metallic suits.  A science team was dispatched to retrieve bodies for study as the Marines continued their exploration.  The hull of the transport had massive smelters, and the prevalent theory was that the quadrupeds sent hundreds of these ships and created slag to cover the message sphere created by the Malevolents.

It took three days to complete the scans of the first transport searched, as it measured four kilometers in length.  It was completely intact and just abandoned. The schematics of the smelter showed it extruded a complex weave of a dozen heavy metal alloys into a thick cable.  It looked like they had layered the cable over and over again around the Sphere and filled in the voids with slag.  A sample of the cable found in one of the extractors was delivered to the Falffir, and Gul’Rul eagerly went to help in the lab analysis.

Only six alloys were in the weave, but four were exotic and never before seen or imagined.  The cable had an extremely high density and interlocking crystalline pattern.  It would make an incredible material for the hull of a spacecraft, but its mass would make it slow to accelerate and decelerate.  Maybe they could find use for it as a hull for a station or planetary bunker.

In the research lab, they were unable to cut the material with standard equipment and found the melting point was 8,043 degrees Celcius.  That was hotter than the surface temperature of a yellow dwarf star.  Besides the engineering marvel covering the spherical object in this unique material, the logistics involved in transporting all this material here were also remarkable.  They must have mined dozens of star systems to accomplish this feat.

Gul’Rul imagined the transports swarming over the Sphere like spiders cocooning their prey. Gul’Rul noted there was enough material to build over fifty Sylvan city ships.  They just needed to be able to salvage it.  And supposedly, another twenty-two such covered spheres were scattered around the galaxy’s core.  He let his excitement wane as he worked with the scientists and engineers on how to cut through the material.

The Marines were still exploring the ancient derelicts, trying to power the ancient computers and recover any data.  The ships used molecular crystalline hard drives.  If the humans could not salvage a reader, they might be able to build something themselves to read the archives.  It was a fairly simple system using eight-bit encryption, with each facet of the encryption being a different molecule that reflected a different light spectrum.

Gul’Rul received the reports on the recovered quadruped bodies.  Their bone structure was much lighter than that of the modern species variant that ravaged their arm of the galaxy. DNA was too degraded to compare, but the scientists were certain these were the ancestors of the quadruped species.

These quadrupeds most likely were a space-faring race, like the Sylvan, spending their entire lives among the stars.  The carbon dating placed the death of the specimens at two hundred and sixty thousand years. Another difference was the cranial cavity was larger, giving them larger brains but not necessarily indicating superior intelligence to their descendants.

Evolution had favored a hardier body on the current variant of the species. It was understood the species had been present during the last galactic extinction event orchestrated by the Malevolents. They had crashed one of their ships on a planet and destroyed all evidence of technology to avoid detection. It had worked, and the descendants of those fugitives eventually made it back to the stars.

Teams of scientists and engineers worked for weeks on projects as they tried to understand what had happened eons ago. The mystery of why the quadrupeds tried this and how they accomplished it was slowly being solved.

Translating the crystalline archives gave the first clue. The linguists had a bastardized form of the written language from the quadrupeds, and it accelerated the process. What it revealed was startling. The galactic purge 250,000 years ago by the Malevolents was not the first. The quadrupeds discovered it was the fifth over millions of years. Their attempt to stop the last instance was why they were covering the transmitters.

The Spheres were more than just transmitters; and they were also sensors that scanned the galaxy for technological disturbances. The quadrupeds thought the Purge Ships would be sent when those disturbances reached a certain intensity. So, they were attempting to mute the scanner’s ability with their efforts. It had obviously failed as the galaxy had been purged of sentients with technology.

The quadrupeds had been a fairly peaceful race before being hardened, trying to survive after the crash and going into hiding to preserve themselves from extinction. There were many references in their archives that they were seeking to preserve all life in the galaxy by their actions.

As the engineering data was deciphered, the engineers came up with a plasma cutter that could cut through the cables. Fabricators were working on making them as the shell was over one hundred meters thick.

The question was, should they cut through the shell to get to the artifact beneath? They already knew the Malevolants were in transit to the galaxy, but would their actions worsen their situation? The decision was ultimately Gul’Rul’s, and he decided they came to get the message of the artifact, and it was not contained in any of the recovered archives from the transports that crashed on the surface. He ordered them to proceed.

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One-Nine-Seven-Six had reached the star system where Seven-Nine-One-Seven had last transmitted from.  A quick scan of the system found no trace of the Seven-Nine-One-Seven’s world ship.  He focused scans on the only planet in the system supporting life.  It was coming out of a forced ice age, probably from Seven-Nine-One-Seven cleansing of the planet with an orbital bombardment.  He found some buried debris in the glaciers and sent out automated drones to recover them.

When they returned, they confirmed the debris came from a world ship with thermal damage.  Something had destroyed one of his fellows.  It would not be the first time, but it would be the first time it had happened and not been known.  He paused, backtracking his thoughts.  He went to his terminal and scrolled through the tens of millions of world ships out in the universe.   Most galaxies were too volatile to support life, but those that could would be monitored.

He found seven thousand, one hundred and six of his fellows had failed to make concurrent updates to the HUB.  Five thousand and nine of those were confirmed destroyed.  He paused and rechecked something.  They had not been replaced after their destruction was confirmed.  That seemed extremely inefficient for the HUB.  He notified the HUB of the destruction and requested a replacement so he could return to patrolling his own assigned galaxies.  This had been extremely far from his territory.

The HUB responded after a few minutes. No replacement would be fabricated and seeded. One-Nine-Seven-Six was to go on and investigate the subspace ripples and follow protocol. He confirmed the order and recalled his probes. He entered subspace and headed for the region of the disturbance, already knowing what he was going to find. He dialed back his subspace speed as his disruptive wake would intersect another, possibly catalyzing a tear into subspace.

He pinged the galaxy to get a recent map of the disruptions while in subspace and was dismayed at the disturbances’ growth rate. Why did these species not heed warnings? There was even a trail of a distance to one of the beacons.  His systems also dated the disturbance as less than seven hundred hours old.

He might as well begin with that occurrence if he had to Purge. It was on the way to the region anyway, near the center of this galaxy. He vectored his world ship toward the beacon.

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When they managed to cut through the cable layers to reach the ancient artifact, the signals gradually strengthened. The quadruped cocoon shell was covering the shell of the ancient artifact. How such a device remained powered for millions of years was a question Gul’Rul wanted to answer. He wanted to gain access to the interior of the massive Sphere and learn its secrets.

The material was extremely difficult to cut, even more so than the cables embedded in the slag. They also did not know how thick the shell was going to be. They started expanding their excavation hole into the Sphere to look for access points while experimenting on the hard surface. It was clear there was activity inside the Sphere from the gravimetric sensors. The transmissions, although stronger, made little sense to the scientists.

As they recorded them, they finally figured out it was mostly likely a cycled transmission.  Repeating itself. The start of which would give the key to translating it. So, they needed to wait for it to finish before being able to translate. The message cycle was twenty-three days. When it finally started at the beginning again, they had the key to unlock the complex message.

The exploration team huddled together as the message was finally revealed. It was a warning. A warning to avoid traveling through subspace and to avoid traveling between galaxies. It said if one evolved species in the galaxy broke the rules, all would be held accountable. Their entire galaxy evolution would be reset for the benefit of the universe.

Gul’Rul understood the concept of self-policing. Unfortunately, according to the message, they had already broken the tenets of the message. They also knew the Malevolents were already on their way to the galaxy. The rest of the message was complicated engineering plans for ‘safe’ sub-light travel. If the strict doctrine contained within the message was followed, then no race would ever be able to move among the stars again.

There were more engineering plans for gravimetric communication devices that would allow communication across thousands of light years without the need for travel to share ideas.

Ker’Lun, one of the awakened First Citizens who could communicate over any distance, relayed what they found to Bel’Fer in the Bradbury system. The complicated engineering plans were beyond their ability to send them, but there was a collective archive among the minds of the First Citizens. A way to retain and pass knowledge and wisdom. In time, the engineering plans could be recovered by others.

Gul’Rul was still seeking entrance into the Sphere artifact when a subspace disturbance in the system rocked their gravimetric sensors. Warning flared across the bridge, and over two hundred people were in the hole they had created on the Sphere. The city ship pulled away, abandoning them to face the threat.

Ker’Lun immediately knew what it was and sent a warning to the Bradbury system—connecting to Bel’Fer. The World Ship of the Malevalents did not hesitate to launch thousands of Purge ships at the Falffir. Sprite fighters launched, and War Chariots circled in a protective screen around the ship. The Purge ships only had mild difficulty getting through the shield of the War Chariots before they began to be destroyed.  Only a single automated Purge ship was destroyed with the focused effort of two hundred Sprite fighters.

During the entire fight, which lasted forty-two minutes, Ker’Lun sent images from the bridge of the Falffir to Bel’Fer before it was consumed in a fiery explosion. Bel’Fer had a front-row seat to the horrid power of the Malevolent World Ships.