Atlantis Rising (3 page)

None of them had paid much
attention to the light blue jump suits they were wearing. A small hologram
popped up on the right sleeve of the jump suits, and changed to correspond to
their assignments. On Andie’s sleeve were three dots with four horizontal bars
underneath. In the background was the universal sign for the human body. Mike’s
sleeve had two dots and four horizontal bars followed by two dots, in the
background was what looked like computer circuits, which flashed once in a while.
Brad’s sleeve was the same as Mike’s except it had a pulsing reactor core as
the background. Bill’s sleeve had four horizontal bars with a thin fifth bar
intersecting them from the top to the bottom, but his had no background.
Jonathan’s sleeve had four horizontal bars, with two thin bars intersecting
them from the top to the bottom. Again, there was no background. Terri’s sleeve
had two horizontal bars. The edges of the bars pulsed with a cyan light.

‘Base commander confirm new
appointments,’ a bland computer voice said.

“Confirmed. Command code
one-alpha-tango-two-zero-zero. Authorize,” Jonathan said.

‘Code accepted, downloading new
command codes to ranking officers,’ the computer said.

“Why is mine pulsing and no one
else’s insignia is doing anything?” Terri asked.

“The Cyan pulse, or outline if
it’s a metal insignia, denotes you as a Cypher. We cannot overlook your
language skills. Your rank will always carry this glow and because it does,
you’re protected. If you go freely into combat, though, remember one thing …
you give up your immunity,” Atlanta said.

“Oh,” Terry mouthed.

Unknown to them, they were being
watched, and Oojoung wasn’t happy about what he saw. Well, Oojoung didn’t
really care, but he knew his master would blow a blood vessel when he found out
the base had a command staff. Oojoung silently sighed to himself, as he watched
the display.

On top of that, when Prasuh found
out there was a Cypher here, and he couldn’t touch the base ... Well, there
would go another blood vessel. Oojoung chuckled at the thought that maybe his
master would have a heart attack.

“So, the question I have to ask
is; are we all in agreement to stay here and get this base back in working
order?” Jonathan asked.

“There is one thing I have to say
before you all decide,” Atlanta said.

Everyone looked at Atlanta
waiting for her to continue. Even
Andie stood
up and joined the small group of friends. Most of them had
already decided to stay, even if just to learn about the technology.

“The information and secrets
contained in this base, must never be given to the Human race. They are not
ready for it, and it would destabilize your world. When they’re ready, we will
slowly allow the tech to leak out. If anyone tries to break this rule, the
computer has instructions to wipe all memory of this base and all events that
have taken place from your minds. The nanites will then deactivate themselves
and pass harmlessly from your system,” Atlanta said gravely.

Everyone spoke at once, as to how
they could understand that, and that they could see the wisdom of it.

“Now, if you bring people here to
help they will be given the same nanites you have and have the same
restrictions. There is nothing stopping you from helping the people of Earth
grow, to help police the planet, and to try to make countries work together.
There’s nothing stopping you from bringing people here to the base to help
rebuild. This base can hold six hundred and thirty people and I would like to
see it back to its former strength,” Atlanta said.

“My brother and I have already
been talking about it. We’re going to stay and help rebuild. We want to learn
as much as we can about the technologies here,” Brad said.

Andie nodded, but Bill answered.
“Same for Andie and I; we'd like to stay.”

Jonathan looked over at Terri and
she gave a slight nod, “We’re in too,” he said.

“Right! Now that’s done, let’s
get to work,” Brad said, grinning.

Brad reached out and turned the
hologram to face him. He expanded the sections below the flooding in the main
reactor room. He touched several spots on the hologram. When he finished, all
the doors in the corridor read ‘Secured’. He turned the hologram slightly and
started touching multiple places on it. Each door's status changed from
‘closed’ to ‘open.’ Brad stopped for a second as he studied something and
zoomed into a room.

“I’m going to Main Medical now,
holler if you need me,” Andie said. She turned and walked to one of the doors.

“Okay, we’ll let you know once
we’re done here,” Jonathan said.

“Atlanta, please access control
circuit 23-A-03 and run diagnostics,” Brad asked.

“One second,” Atlanta said. She
closed her eyes as she did what Brad
asked.

Brad continued to work on the
lower level doors so the water would be routed into one of the empty storage
bays. Mike turned and took a seat at engineering and brought up some code and
began scanning it as it scrolled by.

“Well, this actually looks better
than I thought,” Brad said.

“What does?” Jonathan asked.

“We can route the water back down
this corridor here and into this empty bay. If we pop the external docking ring
and flush the water out completely, we can get to work doing repairs,” Brad
said. As he spoke, he pointed out the areas he was talking about. “The only
problem I've run into is this door.” He pointed to a door that was still closed.
“It’s not responding to commands to open. I have Atlanta checking the circuit
out now. Mike is looking at the code to make sure we can pressurize the core
and actually flush it clean.”

“The circuit isn’t responding to
my commands,” Atlanta said. She looked at the hologram as she spoke. “It is
probably burned out.”

“Well, that solves that mystery.
Do you have replacement parts in case of something like this?” Jonathan asked.

Atlanta shook her head, “No, the
maintenance bots replicated things they needed on site.”

“Replicated? You mean you can
produce stuff like metals and food and such,” Jonathan asked.

Terri’s stomach rumbled,
“Speaking of food. I’m going to go find the galley and see what I can get
together for us.”

“Okay, Sis,” Jonathan said.

“No they can’t, I ran across it
while I was surfing all the engineering specs in my head. They can do on site
repairs and they use each other to build the parts they need. They have to have
something to replicate from a base compound. I would guess if you had organic
compounds we could make a replicator that would produce foodstuffs. Not sure
how good they would taste, but it would be possible, and we could do it so it
was a vitamin rich supplement,” Brad said. He pulled up another hologram of one
of the spidery looking bots. “There are several types of these spider bots.”

“Spider bots?” Jonathan asked.

“Well, that’s what they look like
to me … a huge spider,” Brad said as he shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, they
come in various sizes and the base will produce all types: small medium and
large. There are always some that are active and some on standby. Small ones
are the cleaners, although they can do simple repairs. The mediums are used to
maintain the base’s functions, and the larger units can reprocess them both to
create whatever they need for a situation. Larger units are never reprocessed
unless it is a dire need, there are only about five at any given time. Think of
them this way, small bots are the drones while the medium bots are the
warriors. The large ones are the queens of the hive and control the functions
of the smaller units even when they’re not active.”

“Oh, I see,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, it’s not that complex. I
looked up the spiders when we were trying to decide what to do,” Brad said.

“I’ll go over the technical specs
of everything later. Right now, I’m still trying to learn about the rules and
regulations,” Jonathan said.

Brad grinned at him, “So I guess
I will be taking a trip down and see if the manual release still works.”

“Yeah, I’ll come along. I’ll
glance over the code later. It will take a while to check it all out,” Mike
said. He stood up and joined his brother at the door.

“Display crew on hologram,”
Jonathan said.

Six blue stars sprung up on the
hologram.

“Isolate the CEF and CSF, and
zoom in,” Jonathan said.

Atlanta grinned, “I see you’re
learning.”

Jonathan smiled back, “Yup. The
training for this table that you sent me helps a lot.”

“Just remember it applies to
everything, here. While some things are hands on, many are not. This table is an
example of that dichotomy. It has to be fast and easy to use, in case of an
emergency,” Atlanta said. “I’m going to see if I can help Terri. I think she
has found the galley but has no idea how the storage units work. It’s hard on
her, right now. Her brain is a mess as it tries to assimilate the languages I
sent her. Food and rest will do you all good once we solve this problem, and
get the base back to full power. Then I can take over, and direct repairs.”

“One question,” Jonathan said.

“Sure,” Atlanta said.

“We lost a
backup
reactor. How are we going to replace that?” Jonathan
asked.

“We will need some supplies from
the mainland. Then the spiders will build it,” Atlanta said.

“How long will that take?”
Jonathan asked.

“It will take a day to build it,
and a day to connect it to the power grid. I estimate the repairs to that
section will take four days, and then we can power it up, and put it into sleep
mode. The spiders will also check the other secondary reactor, before it
sleeps,” Atlanta said.

Jonathan watched as the stars
representing Mike and Brad descended in a lift, “Okay. Well, go help Terri I
guess. I’ll be here.”

Atlanta nodded and then faded out
of sight.

Jonathan’s jaw dropped as he
realized Atlanta was a hologram. He was sure he had seen her manipulate items,
though.

Mike and
Brad
managed
to get the door opened without difficulty.
Later, almost
everyone gathered
around the
table in the Command Center. Andie stayed in Medical working but Terri had
taken her some food supplements. It was the only thing left that was edible in
the galley and they tasted like dust. But it filled them up and stopped their
stomachs from rumbling.

“Remind me to put food on the
list when we go for supplies,” Terri said as she made a face.

Everyone laughed.

“Okay, here we go,” Brad said. He
touched a door on the hologram and then selected open on the small screen that
popped up.

For a second nothing happened
then the hologram showed the door slowly raise as it opened.

‘Warning! Pressure door 10-B-00
cycling, emergency routines engaged,’ the bland computer voice said.

“Disengage emergency routines,
authorization one-alpha-tango-two-zero-zero,” Jonathan said.

‘Flooding will occur in
passageway 10-. Do you wish to proceed?’

“Confirmed,” Jonathan said.

‘Authorization accepted,
Commander. Emergency routines disabled.’

“Double the atmospheric pressure
in the Primary Core,” Mike said.

They watched as the pressure in
the core rose, and forced the water out of the room. So far, everything was
going as planned.

“Bring Main Core to 75% power and
hold,” Brad said.

‘Main power online and rising.
Caution contaminate in main core room. Unable to bring core to 75% power, power
output stopped at 50%.’

“That’s not enough to open the
outer ring. We have to have 75% power or more,” Brad said.

Mike nodded, “Increase
atmospheric pressure times two and hold.”

After a long second of silence,
the computer responded.

‘Bringing power output to 80% and
holding.’

Lights that were unlit blinked
on. Dormant Spider Bots woke up, and started accessing the computer. The base
was fully operational, even at 80% power output.

“Emergency release of docking
ring four, authorization one-alpha-tango-two-zero-zero,” Jonathan said.

‘Docking ring four released.’

The explosive release of the
docking ring blew sand from the bottom of the sea floor for a half a mile. On
the surface of the ocean large bubbles erupted as a Coast Guard cutter passed
over the base. The ship capsized as the water frothed around them. Anyone
looking into the phenomenon would have just said it was volcanic activity.

Brad sealed the docking ring and
brought the main reactor to full power as Mike reduced the pressure in the area
to normal. A high-pitched whine filled the air as the hologram shifted to a
surface view. What it showed made everyone gasp.

“How many?” Jonathan asked.