“I wanted one that was functional.” Luke sounded disappointed.
“I didn’t try to break it.” Fred was a little defensive. “I can’t help that they are so fragile.”
“I might be able to fix it enough to access the data banks. Just get rid of the metal.” Fred bent the metal off before Kiyan stepped forward and squatted by the motionless drone. He held his hand out over the crushed portion of the machine and watched as Luke’s bracelet liquefied into a silver liquid and dripped onto the drone. Seeping through a crack in the exoskeleton a minute or two passed before the cracks began to disappear. The carbon composite plates began to reform. Kiyan stepped back as the drone stirred to life.
“Luke?” Kiyan was about to reduce the drone to its basic elemental components when Luke acknowledged that he was in control.
“They use a rather complicated CPU core system. It took me a minute to figure out how to hack into it. Even then it rather... constricting.” Luke made his annoyance at having to operate such a clearly inferior piece of technology known. Kiyan suggested that he simply find the information that he needed and they proceed with the mission. Luke decided that he would rather use the drone and contribute as much to the group as possible despite the clear limitations that were imposed. After only a couple more encounters with the drones they arrived at the data core.
Corban had been right when he said that the core would be shielded. It was probably shielded to protect from the heat and from any possible invading drakken fractions. Luke had been able to ascertain from the drone’s data bank that they were programed to eliminate any visitors. Apparently the drakken dark lords were in struggle for power in the wake of the transfer from organic clones to mechanical drones. The dark one required most of the resources for the war however the dark lords were left to their own devices with what was left.
“So what do we do with that?” Fred was tossing marble sized pieces of metal into the invisible energy field. On contact with the fields they were vaporized into clouds of gases. It was an interesting sight so Kiyan understood Fred’s fascination with the effect. Fortunately it had been Luke that had discovered the obstacle first. Unfortunately he had vaporized his drone in the process. Kiyan had to admit that it was a rather ingenious method of protecting the data core. Unlike the average force fields that rippled and flickered visibly this one was only visible when it was discharging energy on contact with matter. Attempts at disrupting the emitters by warping all the surrounding metal had not altered the field’s integrity.
“Maybe I can get through it.” Corban stepped forward and stretched an arm towards the field.
“Be careful.” Kiyan warned his first officer. Corban glanced back to reassure Kiyan before a thin strand of glowing energy extended off Corban’s arm. As soon as the strand of energy hit the field it flashed into life and a shockwave of light traveled back along the strand of energy. When it hit Corban the fire elemental was thrown backwards. He hit the wall and melted through it leaving a hole. Kiyan and Fred rushed to the hole and peered through. On the other side of the hole there was a ball of fire floating above the floor. It was several feet in diameter and looked like a miniature star. Kiyan was about to crawl through the hole when the star began to shift and reassumed Corban’s form.
“That was... different.” Corban had assumed a humanoid shape but he was floating a few inches above the floor. Kiyan stepped aside from the hole in the wall when Corban began drifting towards it. The metal wall melted and flowed like water when Corban touched it. The hole was several times bigger and Corban was walking on the floor when he came through and rejoined the group.
“I never knew I could have too much energy. It was too much energy to control.” Corban shook his head. “I would not recommend touching it.”
“I could have told you that.” Luke was still bemoaning the loss of the nanites he had invested in the drone. “Kiyan, I think I have an idea that might get us through. You have the ability to move both directions in time. I have seen you do it. I noticed that when you move back in time it slows to the point of a standstill before reversing.”
“So you're saying that if I manage to stop time I might be able to pass through the shield?” Kiyan scowled as he thought about the implications.
“Exactly. I can help you control the effect but it will be a fine line. Either side could have drastic reactions.” Luke seemed to think that there was no other way to get through the shield. Well strictly speaking there were other ways that he had in mind but none of them could assure the integrity of the data core once the shield was breached.
“Alright. Let’s try.” Kiyan closed his eyes and focused on trying to slow time. He felt Luke backing him up and giving him greater control over his powers. He felt the energies around him slow. He opened his eyes and saw the familiar shades of red. Apparently the slowed light waves shifted to lower energy infrared wavelength. In the moment that Kiyan felt time stop moving the light completely faded. He had to shift to using his life bending to detect the faint traces of energy that indicated matter around him. After a few seconds Kiyan was able to see everything again with a degree of clarity. He was able to see the shield that obstructed the doorway like a thin sheet of energy with veins of energy pulsing across it.
Kiyan reached out and began bending a piece of metal nearby. He found it harder to do than normal because he was unable to take advantage of the energy that existed in the matter in the normal flow of time. He moved the chunk of metal into the force field and let it absorb the energy frozen in place there. Kiyan began to expand the metal piece in a ring shape sweeping the fields of energy out of the way. The band of metal was stretched thin and glowing brightly with the energy that had been absorbed when Kiyan had managed to open an area big enough to step through.
Once on the other side Kiyan loosed his control and let the normal flow of time resume. The sudden intensity of the energy around Kiyan drove him to his knees and nearly blinded his senses before he was able to reduce his sensitivity. Kiyan looked back through the force field at his companions. They were both gaping in astonishment at seeing his suddenly appear on the other side.
Kiyan left Corban and Fred waiting at the force field as he went in search of the shield emitters. They did not have to wait long as the emitter for that particular hallway was a short distance away through a doorway. Kiyan had moved with a piece of metal levitated a few feet ahead of him should there be another shield. The door melted and didn’t hinder Kiyan’s progress much. On the other side was a large force field emitter. Kiyan had seen bigger ones but they had been designed to protect ships from attacks. The energy this one was capable of handling were more than enough to prevent passage on a hallway. Kiyan puzzled over the overkill scale of the defenses when Luke reminded him that he was dealing with an alien race in another universe. As it was Kiyan was sure that aside from destroying the station no one was going to be able to pass through the force field and take control of the station. Kiyan only had to remove a section of the main conduit in order to cause the emitter to go off line. In an atmosphere the massive amounts of electromotive force would have caused a spark to bridge the gap but in a vacuum there was nothing to conduct the energy.
Kiyan’s companions joined him shortly after he had disabled the shield emitter. They followed his lead and cautiously made their way forward. They were rewarded by rounding a corner and seeing the core. It was a column of glowing nodes inside a visible force field. Kiyan was able to sense that inside the force field there was an atmosphere and that it was cooled to a few balmy degrees above absolute zero. Kiyan made his way to a console that stood outside of the force field. It only took a few moments for Luke to interface with the system and find the information that they needed. Luke only needed a couple minutes due to his recent understanding of how the drakken computer systems worked. Luke was even able to override the shields long enough for Alec to transport them to the Avenger.
“Just stay in there until you get cooled down.” Alec’s hologram was stan
ding on the other side of a force field. Kiyan tuned his shield emitters to the same frequency as the containment field and stepped through. Fred still had a glow to him and small flames were still crawling across Corban’s body.
“That isn’t fair.” Fred made his opinion known.
“My body temperature never changed. My shields protected me.” Kiyan laughed at the set of glares that he received before he turned to Alec. He could tell that Luke was already uploading the codes into the mainframe. “So what is the verdict?” Kiyan realized that it felt good to be able to use his voice again. Telepathy was alright for limited communication if only one of the people was telepathic. If both were telepathic communication was virtually effortless.
“The verdict is very good. Better than I had anticipated even.” Alec pulled up a couple screens that showed data being decrypted. “It looks like the station was a relay point in the network. As such it had the codes for the controlling dark lord’s network. On top of that it seems that this dark lord had managed to steal the codes for a few of the other dark lord’s networks. A virtual gold mine.”
“We had to make some alterations to the station that might give our presence away.” Kiyan knew that it would probably take a while to find the information that he wanted and was thinking ahead. He still wanted to keep the fact that there was a protectorate presence in the drakken universe secret for the time being.
“Don’t worry about that. I can cover our trail well enough.” Alec’s hologram disappears as soon as he was done speaking.
Kiyan wanted a further explanation so he transported to the bridge. On one wall was a holoscreen showing the ring shaped station silhouetted against the star. Kiyan watched as the Avenger powered a couple singularity cannons and aimed at the surface of the star. The two forced point singularities were only visible from the warpage of the background light. They struck the surface of the star below the station before they destabilized with a flash.
Kiyan understood what was happening. The gravity waves would disrupt the magnetic fields that were holding the plasma to the surface. As he expected a massive solar flare erupted between the impact points. The ropes and strands of plasma expanded in a huge loop up under the station. A solar flare of this magnitude would be enough to strip the atmosphere away from a planet let alone a station a fraction of that distance away. The station’s shields held out valiantly against the superheated matter that washed over it. No matter how valiant the last stand was its end was inevitable. The shields buckled and the structure heated past metal’s boiling point a moment later. Soon it was lost to the flood of plasma that was spraying across the system.
“You said that you were going to cover our tracks not erase them.” Kiyan addressed Alec with a smile.
“I had not realized there was enough of a grammatical distinction to differentiate the terms by.” Alec’s response made Kiyan throw up his arms in mock defeat.
“Cover means to leave them there but disguise them so no one will notice. This is not very disguised.” Kiyan was slightly worried that a random solar flare that obliterated a station probably designed to withstand the like would draw suspicion.
“I still fail to see the difference. Your tracks are still their but now they are disguised as lumps of melted metal.” Alec looked like he was enjoying the exchange.
“Alright. Enough about the nuances of language. Have you made any progress finding the portal?” Kiyan knew that if it came to the technical data, Alec could win every time in such a debate.
“I think I have made some progress. I’m cross referencing data from the three networks. There are a couple possible locations. One is a planet that has no tactical or resource value that is being guarded by a small fleet. Another is a location that the dark lords seem to hold as sacred if you can believe they have that concept. A third location is one where defective clones were sent for disposal.” Alec informed Kiyan that he would let him know if he was able to isolate a single location.
“My money is on the third location that he described.” Theo weighed in on the conversation.
“It would stand to reason that Reigns would feed off their energy. I shudder to think of the feast he got when the entire drakken empire converted.” Kendra shivered visibly at the thought.
“He would be far too strong for us to fight in his current state wouldn’t he?” Terra looked around the assembled ascended apprehensively.
“Not if we go back in time.” Theo paused for a second before shrugging his shoulders and changing the subject. “I hope we can deal with it quickly and that the time reset goes smoothly. I have seen strange things happen when a time stream compensates for a reset.”
“I really don’t know what might happen with a reset of this magnitude.” Kendra agreed that Theo had a point but also pointed out that there was not any alternatives presented.
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“I think I have found the location of the portal.” Several hours had passed before Alec informed the impatient people that waited. “I had to cross reference all the information found on all the dark lord’s networks before narrowing the location down to one possibility.”
“I thought that you only had access to a couple of the networks?” Kiyan knew that Alec was a powerful AI but hadn’t realized how powerful.
“It really was nothing, one of the networks I had access to belong to the dark lord that had overseen the development of the encryption system. He made a universal key generator for his own use before letting the program fall into his rival’s hands.” Alec casually explained something that made Kiyan realize just how divided the dark lords were. Their apparent unity in the war was only their obedience to their master. Without Reigns controlling them they would fall on each other even if the time line didn’t reset.
“So where is this portal?” Theo interrupted Kiyan’s train of thought and reminded him of the matter at hand.
“On the drakken home world. It means little to them in the way that earth means to humans. It’s only remaining value is the portal. Every dark lord that gets cloned has to be taken to the portal to forge the connection with the dark one.”
“You had to access all the networks to find that out?” Fred received a glare from Alec’s hologram.
“It was not so simple.” Alec began qualifying his achievement. “None of them will even admit to ever having been to the world accept for a couple that happened to pass through the system over the course of their career. I had to reconstruct their origin point from their first records. Also events from the war had to be factored in. It appears that when the portal opened a number of the drakken were killed outright by the reaction between the dark universe and this universe before the portal settled down. The drakken had just begun colonizing several nearby systems and had made contact with a few alien races. They believed that one of the aliens was responsible for the disaster and promptly engaged in settling their suspicions violently.”
“I’m sorry I questioned you. I ask a simple question and I get the rise and fall of the Drakken Empire.” Fred’s last words were a barely distinguishable mutter.
“It does shed some light on the drakken. If the dark one was controlling them all along. It also explains why such a new space race was able to subdue the rest of the known universe.” Theo mused for a second on the information.
“It also suggests that they were a peaceable race in the beginning.” Kendra added her thoughts on the matter.
“If you asked the free drakken I am sure that they would agree.” It all made a little sense to Kiyan.
“I admit that I never had your remarkable trust in them despite the fact that they have never done anything untoward. The fact is that they have shown themselves to be quite peaceable in nature.” Kiyan smiled at his mother's words. It was hard to explain his experiences in an aberrant timeline to someone that hadn’t experienced it.
“What of the world you said that the drakken were guarding?” Terra questioned Alec and changed the course of the conversation.
?
??It is an archival planet. It holds the dark lord’s genetic sequences as well as most of the drakken race. Oddly they seem to realize that they sold their race for survival and now are paying the price with the extinction of their peoples. I was able to extract that when their revenge for the attack that had devastated their planet soured. They were faced with the overwhelming might of a dozen united races who would not tolerate the irrational drakken assaults. Instead of submitting to having their wings clipped and losing their independence the elders turned to the one responsible for causing the needless war. They signed pacts with the dark one and became dark lords. Now the descendants of these proud drakken watch as their race is replaced by machines. They fear that they too will be dispensed with one day so they unite on an attempt to preserve their forefathers.”
“That’s really sad in a way.” Kiyan saw for a moment the soft nature that Terra hid under her bossy bravado. The moment was short lived when Terra saw Kiyan’s smile and punched him hard enough to make his shields flicker.
“That hurt!” Kiyan rubbed his shoulder ruefully. “Last time I lower my shields to avoid breaking your hand.”
“Oh really? I bet you will next time anyways.”
“And if I don’t?” Kiyan assumed a mischievous expression.
“Then you can heal my broken hand.” Kiyan noticed that she was rubbing her knuckles absently as she spoke.
“What are we waiting for?” Kronos was characteristically blunt.
“Just a small drakken fleet to leave the subspace vicinity.” Alec was most casual about his explanation.