37. Sweeping through the Datasphere

 
 
 
 
The crystal room was theirs. Besides the odd fall of loose rock and earth from the cavern, the room was silent. Even the ticking of the giant automatons had ceased. The group headed to T2 and the Crystal storage before taking an hour to rest, debrief and contemplate the next week. As promised, Nox’s pendant opened the shield giving everyone access to the safe space beyond.
 
“So it’s just plug and play, do you think?” Nox asked, looking at the crystal and its framework as Fureva-Yung guided it to the elevator.
“More like plug and pray,” Marius replied, unsure how the crystal was meant to draw the malignant shard from the Spire’s systems.
 
With Fureva-Yung and the crystal and framework in the capsule, there was just enough room for Jaden, Marius and Nox to squeeze in around the edges. Fortunately, the trip was short, and they were soon back looking at the connection.
 
“Well, shove it in and let's talk to Nexion about what happens next,” Marius said, ready for action.
“Just a moment,” Nox looked to Jaden, “If you’d had control of this space for years and years, wouldn’t you have tampered with it?”
Jaden nodded in agreement, “That’s exactly what I would do if I couldn’t get rid of it altogether.” With Nox’s innate ability with machinery, Jaden could identify a subtle change in the connection and rectify it before plugging the crystal in. With a soft glow, the crystal started working. A straining sound and irregular pulsing of the light worried the watching companions.
“The pump’s struggling, I think,” Jaden said.
“A kink in the pipelines?” Nox asked, keeping to the plumbing analogy.
“More like the water fighting to stay where it is.”
“Nexion might know more about what to do,” Marius replied, guiding them back to the lift, “Come on, let’s get behind the force field.”
 
They translated into the temple space the Shard had made to intimidate the Deep Craven. The eye was now entirely blue, and behind it, a reinforced door. A whistling breeze swept through the space.
 
I DETECT A CONNECTED CRYSTAL, Nexion said by way of greeting.
“Yeah, the crystal’s working hard, hardly working,” Marius replied.
THE SHARD WILL TRY TO CLING ONTO ITS PLACE IN THE SPIRE. IT NEEDS TO BE MOVED ON.
“Here in the datasphere?” Nox asked, excited at the thought of a fight here where thought alone was everything.
YES.
“The other side of the door?” Marius asked.
IT LEADS TO A NODE, A SECTION OF THE SPIRE’S DATASPHERE
“And this door. Is this the Shard’s idea or yours?”
IT IS STANDARD SECURITY PROTOCOL. IF ONE NODE IS COMPROMISED, THE REST SHOULD BE SAFE.
“A lot of good that did you.”
INDEED, There seemed a real frustration in Nexion’s voice. It seemed they didn’t like this any more than the companions did.
“So, how do we get through it?”
THERE ARE TWO WAYS. THE CAREFUL WAY WILL LEAVE THE INTEGRITY OF THE SECURITY SYSTEM INTACT WHILE ALLOWING YOU PASSAGE. IT WILL TAKE CODE-BREAKING SKILLS AND DEGREE OF KNOWLEDGE IN NUMENERA.
“That’s me!” Nox spun in the air and blinked to the door to start the process.
“What’s the other way?” Marius asked, sure that right at the moment, he had no idea about code-breaking.
THE SECOND WAY IS THE MORE RECKLESS AND WILL LEAVE THE NODES OPEN TO FUTURE THREATS. IT IS CALLED KICKING…
“That sounds more like it,” Fureva-Yung nodded, noting a stray piece of blue conduit on the wall of the virtual space. She grabbed it and started trying to wrap it into a link for her chain. As much as she put her mind to the task, the conduit wouldn’t bend or shape the way she wanted, and in the end, she gave up, the conduit dissolving into nothing in her hand.
 
Marius watched Fureva-Yung’s actions and started salvaging what he could from Nexion’s reception space. If it translated out into the real world, maybe Fureva-Yung could make a link for her chain with it.
 
Nox was oblivious to everything but the code. The first three levels were easy. Her mind seemed to run through the code as if it were her native language. On the fourth level, however, her arrogance came up against a brick wall of code that defied the simple cyphers she’d been trying so far. With a yawn and a stretch, she looked up from her work to find she had been deciphering for twelve hours. After a short rest, she tried again, and this time the code gave way under her hacking. A blue bracelet appeared on her wrist.
“Magic bracelet?” Fueva-Yung said, comparing Nox’s new bracelet to her tattoo. Nox giggled at the thought.
“Great! I’ll just…” Marius said, preparing to step through the door as Fureva-Yung, Nox floating along behind, disappeared through the door, “...have a look ahead, shall I?”
 
 
From the bright empty space of Nexion’s reception they floated into a darkness filled with pinpricks of lights, gridded by green lines. Fureva-Yung, with Nox in tow, glided across the spherical space taking in the dots of light, their relationship to each other and the centre of the room. Marius and Jaden glided in behind. Jaden found the map responded to her hand gestures as she waved them in front of her. Star grew large, shrank and changed position in relation to her two hands until all that was left was a bright galaxy spinning before them.
 
Three doors stood at the circumference of the room. Two were barred against them, the third where they had come in. Nox blinked away from Fureva-Yung and appeared near the first door. It seemed pretty straightforward, one level easier than she’d just cracked. She blinked to the second and found that door barred with six code levels, two more than the door she’d struggled with in Nexion’s space. Thinking she’d rather deal with the problematic lock now than after a hard-fought battle with the Shard, she decided to tackle the difficult lock now.
 
Fureva-Yung was becoming accustomed to the hand gestures required to control what they realised was a star map. She’d made the map spin, giving Marius and Jaden vertigo and then pulled it out until the stars swirled around them again. Fureva-Yung was looking for something…anything she recognised. She felt she should know if something…felt familiar. Yet as she scrolled through the stars, all she saw were dots of light.
 
Then, her eye spotted a red dot amongst the white, and she drew the star toward her, expanding the map to enlarge the image. Pulling back and back, she made a small red star appear, a space station circling it. The space station bristled with antennae, sensor dishes and other monitoring gear. Many focused on the red dwarf sun—the Gate Star. Keeping pace along the outside flank of the space station, a spaceship caught Fureva-Yung’s attention. A strong feeling of deja vu swept over her. She knew that ship like only a captain could know their vessel.
 
Meanwhile, Marius made a gesture, and a box with Ferrian script appeared. Working through the options methodically, he brought up a few preset locations. None of it meant anything to him without the Ferrian translation, and so he put it back the way he’d found it. Maybe after a rest, he could spend some time knowing Ferrian, but now right there seemed more important things to do. When Fureva-Yung had found the Gate Star, Marius made note of the communication dishes on board the space station. One was pointed away from the red light of the sun and back into space. Gesturing, he followed the line of the dish back into the darkness until it lined up with a star circled by several planets, one with blue oceans and the white swirl of a water-rich atmosphere.
“I reckon this one is us,” He said, pointing out the small blue marble.
Fureva-Yung stared at the planet, looking for any signs of the familiar. The distance was too great to get a good view of the landmasses, and she noted there was no ship circling the planet as expected from Nox’s trip a few weeks previous.
“I don’t know.”
 
Once they’d gone as far as they could with the star chart, Marius and Jaden set to work on the second door, the one Nox had felt was the easier of the two in the room. They had little trouble between the two, and a green bracelet appeared on Marius’ wrist.
 
Nox had been working on her door for twelve hours. While focused on the task, she had no concept of time and was only aware of her own exhaustion as another level clicked over under her command. She took a break while Marius and Jaden fussed with the other door and returned to work on level four before the others stirred. The difficulty grew exponentially at each level, and like the lock-in Nexion space, the code defied her cypher. This time, however, something became aware of her hack attempt and responded. As Jaden watched bleary-eyed from sleep, two blue-grey flickering humanoid shapes seeped out either side of the door beside Nox.
 
“Oh no, you don’t,” Jaden responded quickly, flying across the space to grab Nox and pull her out as the creature's claws raked the air where she’d drifted. Nox sent out a psychic burst at each, hitting one and missing the second before yelling mentally for the other two to wake up. Jaden’s ray attack followed as they drifted back to their stirring companions. A claw lashed out at Nox, one moment there, the next invisible as it flickered through the space. Nox dodged the slashing blow, crashing back into the sleepy Fureva-Yung. Instinctually, Fureva-Yung lashed out with her heavy fist, striking the seemingly incorporeal creature and hitting tough flesh. Nox dodged the slashing blow, crashing back into the sleepy Fureva-Yung.
“Ah, give me a moment,” Marius was more awake but less prepared to fight than Fureva-Young. He turned on his armoured hands.
“Sorry to tell you, I think these things will murder you, ready or not,” Jaden replied, sending out another io blast.
 
Jumbled up with Furva-Yung, Nox lashed out wildly with her psychic blast, sending one creature reeling towards Fureva-Yung and missing the second. She looked again and realised she had hit a glancing blow, knocking a chunk off the beast. The chunk resolved into two small triangles of the same flickering substance and joined the battle.
“Ah…oops!” She said, pointing out the new danger to the group.
“Look, it takes me a while to get up in the morning!” Marius complained as the smaller triangles attacked him and Fureva-Yung, “You can’t touch this!”
 
Fureva-Yung took her chance and swung out with the decorative end of her chain. Made of the precious memories she’d made over the trip from Cerelon, in the datasphere, it was as tough as a diamond and shattered the large creature completely. The other large creature sent out a tendril of flicking energy at Jaden and Nox, missing both but making them wonder what would have happened if it had connected. Jaden hit a shard and smashed it to pieces as the second went after Marius again. This time a tendril did connect with his datasphere form. Injecting corrupted data like poison under the skin, Marius fought, resisting its destructive influence before Fureva-Yung yanked the proboscis out and crushed the triangle between her bare hands.
 
The remaining creature, now alone, collapsed its form on itself and disappeared up a conduit. Nox wondered momentarily if she could follow but decided it would be better to block the passage and collapsed the conduit from their side.
“Sorry, “ She said to the others, now the danger had passed, “I better get back to the lock.”
Jaden offered Nox a datasphere ration, “Give yourself a break before heading back.” She took the snack gratefully. Keenly aware of how long it took to break through doors, she didn’t stay long and was soon back breaking the fourth level of code.
 
With another failure at the fifth level, the sixth broke on the first attempt. After eleven hours of work, Nox gained a yellow bracelet, and they travelled through the door to the next chamber.
 
This node was a chamber of solid metal walls filled with ten to twelve floating cubes of the same blue-grey as the flicking creatures. On two walls of the space, red writhing tentacles knotted and twisted around each other like piles of flatworms. A breeze flowed through the room towards another locked door.
 
“That must be the crystal’s pull,” Nox said as she unconcernedly reached out a hand to a large cube floating past to steady herself against the flow. The cube's mass was far greater than hers, and she was dragged across half the room before she knew it. Sensing its enemy near, the tentacles of the shard lashed out at Nox and Marius. Nox hid behind her cube dodging the attack, but Marius was wrapped by the conduit-like tentacle and dragged towards the mass on the wall. Fureva-Yung’s chain lashed out at the conduit holding Marius, and as it loosened its grip, Marius slipped free.
 
From Jaden sprang a soliloquy of technical babble and nonsense jargon aimed directly for the malignant shard. The conduit tentacles writhe in her direction, seemingly trying to make sense of the bombardment of information. Distracted, the others were now free to attack at will.
 
Marius spent a moment watching the enemy. It was weak, just a writing mess of tentacles, but it was firmly wedged in place against the two walls. If they could pry its hold off the wall, then they had a chance to send it out the door, closer to the imprisoning crystal. In response, Nox reshaped the cube she’d been hiding behind, forming one end into a wedge. She pushed it into place under the nearest tentacles and called for Fureva-Yung.
 
“Hit here,” She said, pointing to the back of the cube and backing away to give Fureva-Yung room to work.
Fureva-Yung and Marius dodged tentacles to get themselves in place to strike the cube. Marius missed the effort of escaping another capture, putting him off his strike, but Fureva-yung hit, and as planned, the tentacles peeled away from the wall. Between the distracting jargon and the more direct wedge, a large writhing mess of conduit peeled off the wall and fell through the closed doorway, following the flow of the breeze.
 
The remaining tentacles were now not strong enough to hold the wall and fight simultaneously. All the conduits clung onto the wall as a frustrated scream of anger echoed through the metal-walled room. Marius and Fureva-Yung bashed away at the cube until the conduits finally gave way, and the last of the shard gurgled through the door like worms down a sinkhole.
 
“Now to follow it!” Nox said, scanning the cube and discovering it was a communication node. Sheepishly, she moulded it back into shape before heading towards the locked door.
 
“Wait a moment,” Marius said, tapping his head, “For the next ten minutes, I can read Ferrian. Now we could go back to the Star chart and see what those menus held, or we can check out another room where I could read something useful.”
“Why didn’t you do that before when you were waiting for me?” Nox asked, confused that now Marius had decided to flex his not-insignificant brain muscle.
“I needed to rest before trying. Now I have, so let's try this other door before throwing ourselves into another battle, right?”
“Right…” Nox sighed, and following the others, they travelled back and used the yellow bracelet door.