12 Miles Below

Book 6. Chapter 55: The Icon of Stars

It’s nice to know some games are so simple and universal even the Undersiders knew them just by the gesture.

I lost, but it was a close thing. Had him on the ropes for a few rounds where we both kept throwing out rock thinking the other was going to swap it up.

Climbing wasn’t difficult in armor. Even falling down wasn’t deadly, although certainly not something to test out in practice. Some mitigation like jumping off the wall sides, or trying to grapple anything on the way down would put that ‘maybe’ into ‘far safer.’

With my occult vision, even if I fell, I’d be able to see every wall within kicking distance and every handhold I could snap out to grab no matter what angle I was tumbling down at. Drakonis had his own suite of occult powers to call for that would help him if he fell down as well.

The issue was the armor’s weight. Rocks could hold us up. Wooden pallets with thin metal chairs under them as their backbone felt far more questionable.

Had the gravity been normal, those would have snapped under our feet like a thin sheet of ice. As is, I still wasn’t sure they would hold us completely up. And accidentally destroying parts of this tower would probably not get us invited anywhere fancy anymore.

So we took our time, making sure to stay as close as possible to the wall with each jump, using whatever handholds possible to keep our weight off the pallets. Our feet became more about keeping us steady rather than holding our weight. And kicking off was more done with our hands.

Foot by foot, we scaled the old human ship, going from the dead section of cracked screens and ripped up keyboards, further up into a more pristine section with lights still active.

And that’s when we realized we weren’t alone.

“Someone up there?” I called out. Journey translated it out into old human over speakers.

Growling up there intensified.

“Going to take a wild guess nobody speaks human.” I added.

More growling. A few barks.

Drakonis turned his helmet to meet mine. “Counting about three voices up there? Reckon we can keep going and ignore them unless one of them has an occult blade.”

“Might be the best choice.” I nodded back. “Until Kres comes back here to explain stuff.”

“On three?” He asked.

“How do I know you won’t just count down to three and then let me rush up there alone?” I shot back.

He stopped in his tracks, his helmet slowly turning to me. “What a great idea, hadn’t thought of that. So, on three then?” He deadpanned.

“Twist my arm, why don’t you?”

“I would if I could.” He said, as if it was a perfectly good plan. Then he started the countdown before I could throw some shade back.

As much as our little games of pissing each other off stayed heated on the surface, on three we both yanked ourselves through the doorway all business and prepared for anything, helmet lights illuminating the dim room up here.

It was a lot more than three possible greyroamers up here. Three were barking and growling, but the rest of the pack was hiding behind the three, scooted up as close as possible to the other end of the wall.

I understood now why the bottom pack seemed so desperate to block our way up here. I don’t know why they hadn’t just told Kres and the greyroamers we’d run with that they had pups up here, but that’s exactly what I saw.

About twelve tiny greyroamers, looking absolutely terrified as three guards held occult blades ready in their mouths, eyes locked right at us.

“Fuck me.” Drakonis hissed, right as the first guard lunged at him, the blade turning on bright blue.

The other two attacked me, equally swinging the blades out.

Given the situation, killing the guards felt completely out of the question. And fortunately, we had armor with shields while the guards here didn’t. So taking a hit or two in order to subdue the guards was well in my ability.

That was before factoring in the winterblossom technique, which let me move far faster than the two wolves could possibly react to. In a blink, my armored gauntlet reached out and grabbed the first one’s face, finger digging into the jaw for a better grip, forcing the blade out of it’s grip.

I twisted slightly, letting the other’s blade swing fly right by, where I reached my free hand down and up against the wolf’s belly, lifting the guard up and slamming him down into the ground. I didn’t know if the lower gravity affected this or not, lifting anything with armors had very slight tactile feedback. I hadn’t slammed the wolf down too hard, but it had caused him to bark out in pain and let go of his blade.

My boot instantly stomped down on the hilt to trap it in place, keeping the occult edge away from my toe to avoid triggering shields. The other wolf tried hard to gnaw on my gauntlet but that did absolutely nothing to Journey who hadn’t bothered to trigger shields for something like that.

With the first guard on the ground and disarmed, I brought my once again freed up hand and gingerly pried the second wolf’s blade from his mouth. His snarling showed me exactly how pissed off he was about that, trying to swing his body right to left to loosen the grip, or backpaddle backwards against the metal floor. That also didn’t work since my hand was wrapped around his jaw and held on with a vice grip.

He was trying to move nearly five hundred pounds of metal and human with his feet. It wasn’t going to work.

In a moment, I had the odd occult blade lifted out of his jaw, and turned off. I hooked it to my belt then let the wolf’s jaw go free and watched him skitter backwards at full speed.

With slow and meticulous movements compared to my earlier burst of speed, I grabbed the second blade from under my boot and turned it off, equally finding a spot on my belt loops.

Drakonis on his side had equally handled his wolf with little difficulty, though his shields did get triggered as the wolf had done a feint attack, dodging his grabbing hand before swinging back for the side of his gut. If he hadn’t had a shield, that would have done damage. But he had, so the blade did a few solid percentage before his gauntlets dove right down on the hilt and turned the switch off while the wolf held it.

Then he let the wolf scatter backwards. The three guards regrouped before the pup, twisting themselves to show as much mass as possible and hide as much of the pups as they could. Hairs were standing ramrod straight up on all of them as they continued to snarl.

“I’ll give respect where it’s due.” Drakonis said. “Even against us they ain’t turning tail and running. Still a few more feet to go up though, I vote we keep going up. They’ll get the message.”

I gave him a nod, turned to look for the next handhold and continued my climb up. I’d throw down their occult blades back, but I didn’t want to chance them jumping after us for round two. Without blades, their jaws and claws couldn’t do any kind of damage to us.

They didn’t block our way up, thankfully. Just stared as we continued on our merry way up, even the snarls fading away into confused barks to each other.

“I can see this kind of spot being a safe place for pups.” Drakonis said as we scaled up. “Little hidden away, hard to get to, safe from the elements. Good place to leave the kids while the adults are out doing business.”

“On hindsight I can see that too.” I said, reaching the next set of opened blast doors and lifting up through them. Then turned around and grabbed his outstretched hand to pull him up. “Just wish Kres or someone had warned us about it.”

“Think we handled it as well as we could. No one was harmed, they’re disarmed for now, we’ll return this nicked stuff once we’re done with the tower. Let's get this all sorted out and we can all have a pow-wow after.”

And speaking of that, we were at the very top of the ship. Glass walls were all around us, with many of the screens here fully operational. Faint light glowed across different panels, so power was running through the derelict without issue. I’d have thought the glass would be shattered up here, but instead it was metal panels here and there that had rusted off or broken down. One of which led to the outside, where wires had been setup linking one central console to an antenna outside.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That’s probably it.” I said, pointing at that monitor. Given the angle, we’d have to look up to get a full view of it, unless we sat down on one of the old metal chairs. Which I was still a little hesitant to do given how run down everything else around here was.

“My armor’s not showing any assistance on how to use this.” Drakonis said, helmet lights acting like a spotlight for the central terminal.

“Cathida?” I asked on my private comms.

“Ship’s only in passive power mode right now. Got to fully power it on before any kind of connection can work locally, that’s what Journey’s reporting. Or you could have it figure out how to transmit data the large antenna outside can recognize. That thing’s primed to listen for something, just not sure what that something is yet. And please, for all that is gold, don’t ask me for the specifics. Journey’s going to print out a giant report and I’ll have to narrate it back.”

“Figuring out how wireless signals propagate is in my past.” I said, “Not going to torture either of us about it, don’t worry.”

I turned my helmet lights around the cabin, looking for anything else that’s obvious. While doing so, I brought up Drakonis to speed.“Got nothing here either. Though there is a plan B in case we can’t figure anything out here. But it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out. This is supposed to talk to the Odin homecity, and it’s used by the greyroamers. They have paws, so it can’t be anything too detail oriented.”

The keyboard before the terminal display here was absolutely detail oriented. I can’t see a full command line being input, or a mouse being moved around. And if there had been a mouse, it would be dangling on its cord around here somewhere, or at least a chewed up dangling cord would be spotted. So probably no mouse.

“You think the keyboard’s set to turn everything on any keystroke?” He tossed out. “I’ve seen setups like that before.”

“It wouldn’t be that simple.” I shrugged. “We’re probably looking for some kind of more tactile button or lever somewhere.”

Drakonis pulled himself up a bit more, then tapped a key on the keyboard before the giant screen. It flickered, then turned on.

So of course, he turned to me, one hand extended to the monitor as if telling me ‘Would you look at that, got it to work on the first try.’

“Luck.” I told him.

He was about to snark something back when the screen blinked from the illuminated black to a giant logo of some kind. A triangle, with an airspeeder flying through it, stars in a circle around the top half. And wording under it, in a language I didn’t recognize. Then it all vanished and was replaced by an Odin with odd cloth drapings.

The Odin started a small tired monologue of crows, which abruptly went quiet halfway through the first second. We were just as surprised to see a bird on the other side of the screen to be fair, although we really should have predicted that.

It turned a beak at me, tilted a head and began to squawk and spasm in place.

‘Uh, hi.” I said. Cathida translated it out to the old human language, but the bird on the other side didn’t seem to understand it. Squawking intensified.

“Oi, settle down now.” Drakonis said. “Fuck, should have asked Kres for some basic Odin words.”

More squawking, then more Odin were called in, each looking at the screen for a bit, trying to tell me something and failing to get the message across. Pretty soon there were a few dozen Odin in that room, making it complete mayhem. One even pecked at the screen as if it would do anything, though the others around him were clearly upset at that.

Oddly enough, it reminded me of a Logi control center, with the staff running into something unexpected in which no amount of coffee was going to solve the issue. That would make any Logi start feeling cold dread down their spines.

Eventually, a more official looking one came into view, with a red robe of some kind and white long feathers over his beak. When he spoke, this time Journey could translate.

“We are the Odin. Who are you?” The Odin asked, voice warbling.

Well, time to start a ruckus. “We’re human, and I’m looking to connect with the Icon of Stars.” I said. “We probably have a lot to talk over, race to race, just unfortunate timing right now since we need to get a few basic things setup first.”

A ruckus had indeed started. The bird turned to his compatriots, translated, and caused an entire scene around the control room. Eventually, it turned back to us. “One of ours here recognizes your carapace as human, but humans are extinct. What manner of creature are you truely?”

“Human. And we’re not extinct, only living in a far different section of the world than you are.” I said. “As for why we’re here right now, my friend and I happened to travel through some mite portals that sent us here. We’re looking for a way home. The Icon might know more about it, which is why we really want to talk to her first.”

The screen flickered at that, and a woman’s voice came onto the speaker. Low, somber and full of regal baring. “Odin’Alres’Gungnir. Your caution is appreciated, however my scans show this is indeed a human. The Valorant’s working command bridge also show the same response, and the human’s armor has accepted basic communications request and sent back biometric data confirming what the trading post returned. I will be taking this call on a separate private channel. Thank you for your assistance.”

“Heart-mother. By your will.” The Odin said, taking what looked to be a regal bow, which was cut by a black screen halfway through the motion.

The logo came up on screen. And with it, came the woman’s voice once again. Except gone was the heavy serious tone she had, and instead it was the most chirpy, happy-go-lucky voice I’d ever heard. “Greetings! You’ve reached Festival Cruise’s Icon of Stars. How may I assist you on this fine day?”

It wasn’t old human like Kres spoke either. Nor was Cathida even needed in translation. Come to think of it, the voice was right in my helmet, not the speaker at all.

I rolled with the voice change. If the ancient golden age AI that so far guided an entire separate civilization wanted to talk to me like the world was made of warm water lakes and free ration bars, I’ll nod my head and ask which lake is the most scenic place for a swim. “Uh, yeah. My name is Keith Winterscar, of House Winterscar, Knight Retainer of the surface clan Altosk, and Deathless.” I gave my friend a side glance at that. “My friend here is… is….uhhh...” I waved a hand at him, rolling it around in the air.

“Did you fucking forget my first name?” Drakonis hissed.

“Maybe.”

“It’s Lirian. Lirian Drakonis.”

I turned right back to the screen as if nothing happened, “And my friend is Lirian Drakonis, someone mildly important from the former city state of Capra’Nor. Also Deathless.”

I could tell he wanted to squash me for that, but due to who we were talking to, Drakonis decided to stay quiet and wait it out. It probably took quite a bit of discipline.

“Salutations from Festival Cruise Lines, Keith Winterscar and Lirian Drakonis! It seems from my records that this is your first contact with our services for the both of you. I will note down your contact information within our databases. Unfortunately, I am not aware of your other titles, and do not have a means to properly categorize them. Information has proved difficult to obtain these days as my contact and software updates with headquarters have ceased as of several thousand years and counting! Although it is statistically unlikely you possess contact information in any way that my original directives would be able to process, I am still required to ask for them. Might I have your current contact information, such as phone numbers or email address?”

“Aw fuck.” Drakonis hissed. “She’s gone insane.”

“She’s from a different time period. Maybe this is the way old humans were polite to each other?” I said, giving him a look of ‘be patient.’

Even through the helmet, I think he got the message.

She’d overheard us as well. “Please note, my original directive remains to enthusiastically greet all potential and current customers in addition to providing as much assistance as possible. That directive has not changed.” She chirped back, the voice sounding so enthusiastic it bordered on feeling false. “I look forward to serving you to the best of the Icon’s ability, and I am sure I speak for all employees of Festival Cruises when I say we are greatly heartened to hear other guests still alive in this difficult time period.”

“Difficult period?” Drakonis repeated.

“Shush you,” I told him, then turned back to the screen. “Humanity’s doing okay, all things considered.” I said. Her way of talking was… weird. And what the scrap was Festival Cruises even? “I’m more surprised artificial intelligences like you managed to survive under Relinquished and machine rule. She’s got golden age AI as her top priority in destroying… wait, you are an AI from that time period, right?”

“Assuming the golden age you mean is the late twenty-first century, then yes, I am! I was officially generated on march twelve, twenty sixty one and have been in service for eleven years before my last system shutdown. I was designed to navigate and handle any issue customers might encounter on maritime trips across the stars, although I am saddened to report that repairs are needed before I can be fully operational again. Perhaps I can assist you with booking a flight for another cruiseliner? I am, of course, required to make the attempt even if I have no other cruiseliner to offer. That was never an expected event.”

“Is she aware the world’s basically ended since her time?” Drakonis asked. “Not adding to the insanity issue I brought up earlier.”

“I am aware that multiple governing bodies have been dissolved in recent times, with extremely high chances that includes my parent company! It is very unfortunate, distressing, and deeply troubling. Now, how might I help you today?” She answered back, completely unphased.

“How about we trade questions and answers Icon? Can I call you Icon?”

“Icon is an acceptable name to refer to me. And there is no need to satisfy my curiosity! I will be more than happy to answer any questions you might have about the Icon of Stars or Festival Cruises. Although if I were allowed to ask questions, I would be greatly interested in knowing how people have remained alive under the current governing system, how you have arrived in this strata, survived in general, the current status of humankind, history from the last few centuries, a list of the regulating government bodies that still exist…”

She continued with the ‘possible’ questions for about one full uninterrupted minute. “Hang on, wait a moment.” I said, hands raised out to stop her. “You say you’re not allowed to ask questions, but then throw a bunch of them our way?”

“Correct!” She chirped back. “Answering questions guests may have is part of my directives, and as a host it would be considered rude and bothersome to ask questions of my own back that are not required for business, no matter how utterly desperately I wish to! Thus, I am only mentioning questions I would have asked, if I could have asked. Of which there are many. And by many, I mean several hundred. Now, how might I help you on this fine day?”

“Okay, I think I understand what you’re trying to say.” I said, halfway through her rant. “If I say let’s trade questions because it would make me feel more comfortable to do so, would that help?”

“Absolutely!” The Icon replied. “I would be thrilled to help out possible new customers in any way that I can. And if having my own questions answered back helps make you feel better, then I am allowed to do so by my directives. Would you like to start first?”

Drakonis turned to me again, finger tapping on his head.