Project Solaris 2: Hero Rising (9 page)

"What the hell is this place?" I asked.

Chapter 15- Ra

"My god," Steve said, sinking to his knees as he gazed at the mural. "Do you have any idea how significant this is? This single image redefines our entire history."

"Slow down there, sparky," Marcus said. It was the first time he'd looked up from Summers in a while. "What are you going on about?"

"This image proves several things," Steve said, excitedly. "The Sphinx is clearly much older than modern science believes, and in fact wasn't originally carved to be a Sphinx. It was a lion, as this image demonstrates. That explains something I've often wondered. The Egyptians were famous for their precision, yet if you look at the Sphinx, you'll notice that the head is far too small for the body. It's too small, because they re-carved the lion into the image of one of their pharaohs."

"What about the pyramid?" I asked, moving the light from my phone to focus on that part of the image. "That thing is immense, and I doubt it just got up and walked away. Where the hell did it go?"

"That I can't answer," Steve said, eyes alight with wonder. "What I can say is that the Great Pyramids, the ones less than a mile from here, were probably built here to ape that thing."

"Summers?" Marcus said, sitting up straight and returning his attention to the comatose blonde. Summers gave a low moan, and Marcus reached down to stroke her hair. "I think she's waking up."

"Waking up? With all due respect, she was shot half a dozen times. She needs a hospit--" Steve trailed off when Summers' eyes fluttered open, and she rose slowly into a sitting position.

"Ugh," she said, running a hand through her hair. It was matted with blood, as was a lot of her clothing. "I feel awful."

"You were shot," Marcus said, pulling her into a surprisingly gentle hug. "We're safe, for now at least."

"What the hell is that thing?" she asked, nodding at the scarlet hologram.

"
Oobaka con tiky
," the figure said, looking at Mom's hologram. It gestured up the chamber toward the far end, which was still cloaked in shadow.

"He wants us to explore this place," Mom explained. "I can sense a lot of his thoughts. He wants this place to be rediscovered, and its knowledge to be used once again. The exact phrase, he wants to share the light of the Builders once more."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," I replied, and I sure as shit didn't. "What is the light of the Builders, and what is this place, exactly?" 

Mom was silent for a moment as she communed with Ra. She finally turned to speak to us. "I'm not sure I understand it all, but this place is a repository of knowledge. Ra built it to hold everything they learned, most of which was discovered in something he calls the Ark of the Cradle. That's the pyramid in the image on the wall there. He claims that the Builders created it, and that he used it to forge a great empire in their honor. But that's not this place's only purpose. There is a gateway, he says, that leads to the sky. It goes into the heavens, where one can commune with the Builders."

"That's it," I said, snapping my fingers. "That's got to be the Black Knight satellite. We just need to find and activate this gateway."

"Black Knight?" Steve asked.

"I think it's time for Doctor Galk to say goodbye to everyone. He isn't a part of this," Jillian said, nodding in Steve's direction.

"Like hell I'm not," Steve said hotly. He turned to me. "I'm part of this, and there's no way you're sending me away without--"

"Can you 'port him to the hotel and get back here quickly?" I asked, as if Steve hadn't spoken.

"Consider it done," she said, grinning. Jillian took two steps, then touched Steve on the shoulder. He was still sputtering when they disappeared. 

Marcus helped Summers to her feet, and she leaned heavily against him. I felt more than a little bad that we hadn't had time to deal with her wounds, especially after she'd spent so long in a coma. Summers had given a lot for the cause, and I owed her more consideration at the very least.

"Okay, let's get to exploring this place," I said, turning back to Mom. "Can Ra tell us if there are any traps, or anything we need to worry about?"

Jillian reappeared to my right, reeling drunkenly. I darted forward, catching her before she fell. Her hair was slick with sweat, and she was trembling. "Guess that took a little more out of me than I expected."

"There are no traps," Mom confirmed. "Jillian, are you all right, honey?"

"Fine," Jillian said, though she was still shaking. "I just need a minute. I'll wait here while the rest of you do whatever it is you need to do."

"I'll stay, too. I can keep an eye on you and Summers in case Dick finds a way down here," Marcus said, his face back into its usual dour mask.

"All right," I said, reluctantly releasing Jillian. I turned to Kali and Janaki. "Let's see if we can find this gateway. Mom, is there anything else we should know first?"

"Just that the gateway required a key. It was a staff of some kind, something he thinks of as a Primary Access Key," she said, pursing her lips. "I'll see what else I can find while you locate the gateway."

I nodded, raising my phone as a flashlight. The chamber was long, maybe another twenty feet. At the far end, I found a tall doorway cut into the stone. It continued into darkness, and we followed it for a ways until it emerged into a small chamber. This one looked much more familiar, more like the Nexus where I'd met Ka. It was cut from black marble, and the walls were decorated with the same strange, golden glyphs I'd seen both there and on the grey men's ship.

"What is this place?" Janaki murmured, creeping along the edge of the chamber. She stared hard at the runes, gently brushing one with her hand.

"It looks like the room where we found Object 3," Kali said, never getting more than an arm's length from Janaki.

I looked down. "Very, very similar. Look at this. We're standing on a teleporter."

We were on a raised platform that perfectly matched the one we'd arrived on in the Nexus. I probed it mentally, and found still more similarities. This one functioned much the same as the teleporter in the Nexus, but was only linked to two locations. The first was close, no more than a mile or two away. The second was high above us, high enough that it could definitely be in orbit. "I think this thing links the Ark of the Cradle to the Black Knight satellite."

"Can you activate it?" Kali asked, joining me near the center of the teleporter. 

"Yes," I said, after a moment's consideration. "But it's going to be a one-way trip. This thing is dormant, and almost out of power."

"Just like the Nexus," Kali said.

"Nexus?" Janaki asked, brushing a lock of brown hair from her face.

"A few months back, we used a grey man teleporter and it took us to a city created by the Builders," I explained. "It was almost out of power, and while there we met a hologram like Mom. It looked like a grey man, and told us that they left a network of Arks across the planet. They're solar powered, but apparently can only draw power when the sun is emitting a certain wavelength of light. When it isn't, they go dormant. This place has been dormant a long time, and doesn't have much power. I can get it to teleport once, but after that we're on our own."

"I have so much to catch up on. If we ever get a break, you need to sit me down and catch me up. So what do we do?" Janaki asked.

"That's a good question," I said, considering. "If we teleport to the nearby room, we'll probably end up in the Ark of the Cradle. I'm betting it's dormant under the desert. If I'm right, though, we might end up somewhere that doesn't have enough power to get us back. We could be trapped."

"The same thing could be true if it takes us up to the Black Knight," Kali countered. "What if there's no oxygen up there? Or if we don't have enough power to get back?"

"Damn," I said, unsure how to proceed. "Well, the Ark of the Cradle is out. There's nothing there that we need, even if we can get in. We
do
need the Black Knight, and between us, we can come up with a way to get there."

Chapter 16- Black Knight

I rushed back up the hallway into the main chamber where Jillian and the others were waiting. Everyone looked exhausted, and Summers had gone a shade paler since we'd left the room. We were a mess, and in no shape to fight. We needed to get out of there immediately.

"We've found a teleporter," I said, drawing everyone's attention. "We don't know where it leads, but it's somewhere in orbit."

"That seems to confirm the whole Black Knight theory," Jillian said, rising to her feet. "Do you have any idea what to expect when we get up there?"

"None," I said, massaging my temples. We needed the one thing we didn't have--time. "Mom, did you learn anything else useful from Ra?"

She shook her head, glancing at the red hologram. Ra's face had gone passive, and he was watching us curiously. What must it be like to be woken after millennia, with no idea how the world had changed? I scooped up her crystal and she winked out of existence. 

"All right then, we've got to take a chance. We're going to use the teleporter, before the grey men show up. I'm surprised they're not here already. Everyone, on your feet. We're getting the hell out of here," I said, moving to help Marcus with Summers. He gave me a sharp glance, but let me take Summers' right arm while he got the left. "We're going to do this as intelligently as possible. Since we're going into space, there's a chance oxygen will be an issue. Marcus, can you make a telekinetic bubble around us right before we teleport?"

"Can do," he said, nodding. We helped summers up the hallway and into the next room.

"David, what about all these books?" Kali asked, pausing in the doorway.

"We can't read them," I said, without slowing. "No doubt they're important, but we need to leave them for now. They're too heavy to carry."

"All right," she replied, sadly. 

Our little group moved up the hallway, and we'd almost reached the little room with the teleporter when the ground began to shake. No, that wasn't quite the right word. It was a subtle vibration, one I'd experienced before on a smaller scale. "The grey men are here. Move, people, move!"

Marcus and I darted forward, all but dragging Summers onto the platform in the next room. The others clustered around us, peering back the way we'd come. A bright light flared in the room where we'd discovered Ra, and none of us needed to see what had caused it to know that the grey men had come. We were out of time.

I closed my eyes and mentally reached for the teleporter, feeling the firmware the same way I'd done with Object 3. I examined the connection to the destination in orbit, then willed the device to take us there. At first nothing happened, and I realized that it needed more power to complete the connection. I offered my own, letting it draw from the inner reserve of strength that I used to fuel my powers. I began to shake, falling to my knees as the device sucked more and more of my strength away.

"David!" Jillian cried, moving to my side and stabilizing me.

"Make that bubble, Marcus," I croaked. I could feel the power reaching a crescendo. 

I caught a brief flash of too-thin grey limbs moving up the hallway, and then we were swallowed in a sea of light. The teleport went on longer than the one that had taken us to Object 3, and when it ended, I found myself toppling face-first to a platform that mirrored the one we'd come from. 

"Hang in there, David," Jillian said, her voice muffled somehow. She pulled me into a sitting position, resting my head against her shoulder. "You did it. We're in the satellite. Look."

I did, leveraging the titanic effort needed to raise my head. We were in a room cut from the same black stone I'd seen in all Builder tech, but there was a significant difference. To our right was a massive opening in the stone. That opening looked down on Earth, showing a clear view of the African continent. We were in high orbit. We'd made it.

"Is it safe to drop the bubble?" Marcus asked. He picked Summers up in his arms and stepped down from the platform. "I'm not sure how long it will take us to burn through the air I brought with us."

"Give me a minute," I said, closing my eyes. I tried to concentrate, to feel the facility around us. In theory, I should be able to tap into whatever systems it possessed, which would let me figure out whether or not we had life support.

"If you are concerned about environmental integrity, I can assure you this facility is perfectly adequate to sustain your basic biological needs," came a mechanical voice. I opened my eyes, blinking at the figure standing near the far side of he room.

It was a hologram, one a lot like Ka. It had the same deep, green skin, oblong head, and flat, black eyes. It was taller than a grey man, but similar in every other respect. The hologram watched us curiously, clearly waiting for a response.

"Who are you?" Jillian asked, helping me to my feet. I felt a little better, but I wasn't going to be much good to anyone until I slept for about two weeks.

"I am Ark Keep Ren, appointed to keep watch over Orbital Facility Theta," the hologram explained. Its voice was completely emotionless, quite unlike Ka's. 

"What is Orbital Facility Theta?" I asked. Jillian helped me from the platform, and we limped closer to Ren. Marcus and Summers hobbled over as well. Only Kali and Janaki looked anywhere close to normal.