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  Jeneen was very quiet when she looked in a mirror for the first time, and the others tried to make supportive comments. After a while she seemed to grow used to her new appearance.

  Then there was the day she felt strong enough to tell the rest of the team what had happened to her out beyond Neptune. Celia invited Finch to join them, and hear the story at the same time.

  “Very little of it made any sense to me,” said Jeneen, sitting propped up in a lounge chair. She had just made her first tentative walk down the corridor and back.

  “I don’t know how your friends got on and off our ship,” she said to Finch, “but one day there was a lot of extra equipment that wasn’t there before. I remember some sort of head to toe scan, but I didn’t see anybody, alien or otherwise.”

  Finch looked disappointed.

  “The next time I woke up there was a helmet around my head, which darkened down as the lights came up. Whatever they were doing it seemed to need a lot of bright light. I couldn’t see much through the visor, just some moving shapes, and they might have been machines.

  “There was one time,” she said, fidgeting uncomfortably, “that I didn’t like. I seemed to be outside my body, and my memories and impressions of life were being siphoned off while they worked on me, and then I was put back together again.”

  This had obviously distressed her, and the people in the room waited while she rested once again. Then she was able to carry on.

  “They say I will retain what I know about the Rothii systems, but much of my accelerated mental speed will have gone. It was the only way they could give me back my life.”

  She turned to Celia. “I’m sorry I won’t be as good with the artefacts as I was.”

  Celia laughed. “You were a first rate researcher before this happened, and you’ll still be a first rate researcher when you recover enough to get back to work. Now you look so much older I’ll be expecting a more mature approach in your work!”

  “You didn’t hear anyone speaking?” asked Finch, still interested in the elusive Druanii.

  “No,” replied Jeneen, “and when there was speech I could understand, it was always a machine-generated voice.”

  The little group left a little while later, when she began to look tired. Finch asked Celia to come to his office as the others dispersed.

  “It’s even more important now that we see what we can find at the Rothii home planet,” he said, once they were comfortably seated.

  “Knowledge will be key in this war,” he continued, “and any small advantage we can glean from Ba’H’Roth might be the turning point that leads to our victory. The other thing we have to consider is that time is against us. I think we should go now.”

  Celia nodded. Now that Jeneen was back, and apparently would recover, she felt free to consider the idea of a trip to the Rothii home planet. If Finch thought it was important, then it was up to her to trust his view of the situation.

  Yes, they would go to Ba’H’Roth.

  CHAPTER 4

  ________________

  It was a very determined crew that set off for Ba’H’Roth a week later, though each for their own reasons. Finch was, for his part, determined to find something on the planet that would give Humanity a better chance against the Invardii.

  Jeneen was determined to prove she was well enough to help, and demonstrate her worth to the research team with or without her enhanced powers.

  Celia was determined no harm was going to come to Jeneen, who had been cleared to go on the expedition by the med team against Celia’s wishes, and Geelong was determined to be right there the next time something extraordinary happened around Finch, like Subthree putting in an appearance.

  As for the rest of the team, Andre didn’t want to be separated from Jeneen after her recent health scare, and Roberto thought he might find out more about the strange, long-legged Rothii physiology he had uncovered studying the data banks on the ill-fated Ragnaroth space station.

  Finch had arranged a cargo ship for the expedition, to haul whatever artefacts they found back to Prometheus, and a minimal crew. Cordez pulled rank over Finch, who wanted a low-key approach, and sent a squadron of the latest Javelin star fighters with them.

  “You’re number two in this outfit now, boy,” he had growled, in a mock dressing down. “You’re irreplaceable, start acting like it.”

  Actually Finch was number three after Asura in Cordez’ scheme of things, but the world didn’t know that yet. The romance between the two most powerful Regents in the world, heading the Asian and South Am trading blocks, was still a secret. They had come together over the need to do something about the rapidly advancing Invardii, but it had turned into a whole lot more.

  There would be a discreet romantic assignation somewhere soon, to get the rumour mill going, and then an official announcement some time after that. Cordez had sighed unhappily at the thought of it all. Apparently there was a proper way to do these things, a necessary ‘courtship’ so the public would take the two Regents to their hearts. Once they were ‘King and Queen of Earth’, at least in the public view, it would be easier to develop a united effort to stop the invaders.

  A day later it was time for the expedition to get underway. Once the research team had run a last check of their equipment in the cargo bay, and stowed their personal gear in their quarters, they met Finch on the flight deck. He was already on board when they were shuttled up from Prometheus, and was now checking their operational status with the captain.

  It was an odd feeling to be travelling with the squadron of Javelins assigned to them. Celia looked out the diamond film observation window as Neptune began to grow smaller behind them. The new Javelins were imposing shapes that blotted out the stars. The ships were completely dark, ominous even, with no running lights, and no light escaped the few windows. They were a destroyer class, and she guessed that was how they were supposed to look.

  Once they’d moved into stardrive there was nothing to see. The steady pulse of the Orscantium decay sequence could be heard in the containment chamber in the aft of the cargo ship. It bent space around them in ways she would not pretend to understand.

  Still, it was a wondrous technology. Stardrive generated a grainy, grey nothingness around the ship, though she caught glimpses of their escorts from time to time, like a sudden lifting of heavy fog.

  The research team retired to the cargo hold to check their inventory once again, and calibrate the instruments they thought they might need first on the planet.

  Two days later a Javelin, scouting ahead, confirmed that the Ba’H’Roth system was free of all ships, friendly or otherwise. The Sumerians had abandoned the system, pulling their forces back to the colonised planets that were closest to their home world. There was no reason for the Invardii ships to be there, now commonly called Reaper Ships after the death and destruction that followed in their wake. Still, Finch had sent the Javelin ahead of them to be sure.

  They approached Ba’H’Roth slowly, already recording at long range the gravitational and electromagnetic data that might pinpoint a Rothii site, anything the Invardii groundships had missed. Once the cargo ship was in position over the planet, the Javelins disbursed throughout the system, taking up an outer perimeter.

  The cargo ship was now in an orbit just above the atmosphere, and the real detective work began. What had the Rothii left behind, if anything? Where exactly would these remains be, and was any of it still intact?

  By the end of the first week, they had little to show for their efforts. Andre surveyed the motley collection of twisted shapes in the hold with a look of exasperation. Anything the Sumerians had missed over the millennia the Invardii groundships had certainly mangled.

  How could they figure out what made a piece of Rothii technology do what it did, when the working parts were in pieces and the pathways between them had been scrambled?

  Celia could see they needed a new approach, and she said so. She sent them off for a walk around the ship to clear their heads. Andre s
tomped off to see Finch, rubbing tiredness from his eyes. Jeneen went for a lie down. She was still recovering, and wasn’t yet really contributing, but that was okay.

  Roberto seemed to be handling the frustrating situation best, and he ambled off to get himself something to drink. After a while Celia called them back to the cargo ship’s bridge, and handed the meeting to Finch.

  He asked Celia to summarise what they had achieved so far.

  “We’ve scanned the upper layers of the surface with every archaeological tool we have,” she said, “and set off geological pulses at depth to map the interior of the planet.”

  She spread her hands expressively. “But we’ve got nothing. A few geologic inclines and some natural cave systems, but they all check out. There’s nothing down there, on the surface or under it, that hasn’t already been found and excavated.”

  “Pretend that’s not the case,” said Finch stubbornly. “Pretend for a moment the Rothii were exceptionally good at hiding things, and this was something they really, really wanted to hide!”

  The others looked blank. Wasn’t that what they were doing?

  “If it’s not showing up on the instruments,” said Andre, “then what’s left for us to do? I can’t see us wandering around the surface looking for a sign saying ‘dig here’.”

  Jeneen clipped him neatly on the back of the head with her hand. Since she’d undergone the Druanii treatment, and been alone for days in the depths of space, she’d become a lot more immediate in her reactions.

  It was almost, Celia thought, as if she was trying out her new age for size. Older women didn’t have the need to perform, to be ‘liked’. That was one of the things about maturity that Celia had really appreciated as she got older.

  “Good idea, Andre,” continued Jeneen, “we’ll drop you off at dawn, with a shovel.” There were a few smiles around the room, Andre’s among them.

  “As for the rest of you,” she said, “we’re missing something, and I can almost put my finger on it, but not quite!”

  The frustration in her voice was very evident. Jeneen was still the closest thing to a Rothii specialist they had, and if anyone could see things the way the Rothii had, it was her.

  “Something’s missing,” she added, “but what is it?”

  “You mean, like the gaps between the notes?” ventured Roberto, who had some skill with musical instruments.

  “Almost,” said Jeneen. “What did you say before, Roberto? That something’s not showing up on the instruments?”

  “If it’s not showing up on our instruments . . .” began Roberto, “then let’s find some instruments to show us things that do not show up,” concluded Jeneen.

  “It’s how the Rothii worked, they were big on the gaps between the notes, the structure that contained the information.”

  The rest of the team still looked blank.

  “Come on, people,” said Finch, excitement beginning to rise in his voice, “just run with it. How can we use this?”

  “Well,” began Andre hesitantly, “if you’re looking for what’s not there, a gravity wave spectrometer works by defining the hole in space where the gravity well is, rather than by detecting the planet itself.”

  “A wave dampener,” said Jeneen. “That’s it! The Rothii would have cloaked their most secret sites so nothing was coming out of them, and nothing reflected off them. The easiest way to do that would be to cloak the site with a short-range dampener across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”

  “But that would show up on a gravity wave spectrometer as a hole in the wave map of the planet,” said Andre. “If you could get a gravity wave source behind the planet for the spectrometer to run off.”

  “Such as the Ba’H’Roth sun,” finished Jeneen. “Except there’s always the problems the spectrometers have with interference from other sources.”

  “The Javelins can cut out interference,” said Finch, who was a bit rusty on this sort of science, but well briefed about the projects under his care. “The shields they carry would do what you want – they would keep out everything, the EM spectrum, cosmic radiation, the lot.”

  “But they would still let gravity waves through,” finished Andre. The two men looked at each other.

  “It just might work,” said Finch. After a moment’s thought they all nodded their agreement.

  “Set up your spectrometer equipment,” said Finch, “and I’ll explain to the Squadron Leader what we’re trying to do.”

  It was a highly motivated research team that set about its work.

  “The Javelins are in place,” said Finch half an hour later, though they were all uncomfortably aware of that already. The two much bigger ships sandwiched them from above and below, and Finch had turned over control of the cargo ship to the Squadron Leader of the Javelins, so all three ships could move as one unit.

  A moment later they all heard a deep hum as the hull of the cargo ship started to vibrate. “Shields on,” confirmed Finch.

  With the Rothii home world between the ships and the Ba’H’Roth sun, the research team began to log the gravity wave patterns over the surface of the planet. It was slow, painstaking work.

  The first anomaly appeared three hours later. The recording device chimed quietly to bring their attention to a pattern that was not in its standard repertoire. Celia and Finch looked at each other hopefully, while the spectrometer went back to its work.

  Two more chimes followed shortly after. By the time the machine had finished, there were a dozen or more sites it had identified as strangely free of the gravitational loops that should have flowed through all parts of the planet below them.

  Then they had to wait while the information was graded into an isobaric form connecting similar gravitational values, and imposed on a map of the planet.

  The final result came up on the main screen.

  Andre whistled softly. Concentric circles revealed every site where something strange was going on. It was as Jeneen had said – the Rothii sites were defined by their absence.

  CHAPTER 5

  ________________

  There were a few minor anomalies on the other side of the planet, fuzzy outlines that showed up poorly on the analysis, and a couple of good hits to the south of their position. But there was no doubt about the mother lode. A little north of them was a large Rothii site, something the size of an underground cathedral.

  “That’s a long way underground,” said Andre, looking at a topographic map of the planet.

  “It’s going to be – about the middle of the Midian plateau,” he added. The extensive elevation covered much of one side of the small planet. It was likely, as with most planets, that it was the result of a large meteor slamming into the other side.

  “That’s right in the middle of the Midian aquifers,” said Celia, who was looking at a hydrological survey of the planet.

  “This planet’s got water?” queried Roberto, as he called to mind images of the hot, dry surface below them.

  “It did, in the beginning,” said Celia, “but it wasn’t large enough to hold water vapour in its atmosphere. In time the seas – little more than large lakes really – boiled away into space. But there are still deep aquifers, like this one, around the planet.”

  “Anyone know how we’re going to get access to an underground site?” said Finch, his mind jumping ahead to the next problem.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. There wasn’t any obvious way they could get through so much solid rock to enter the Rothii sanctuary.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Finch enigmatically, “I don’t think we’re going to need to find an answer ourselves. In the meantime I’ll get the Javelins to stand a little further off. It could give the AI at the Rothii site the wrong impression if we come carrying weapons.”

  Celia followed his train of thought. It made sense there would have been some sort of supercomputer at the Rothii site, and it was probably still working, even after the millenia since the Rothii left.

  “I think
we should stir up the AI down there,” he said, “and let them know we’re here. Generate some of our own gravitational waves if you need to, but get a message through to the site.”

  He got up from his chair. “In the end,” he said reflectively, “I think the Rothii will come to us”, and left the bridge.

  “There’s no chance they’re still down there?” said Roberto uncertainly, once Finch had gone.

  “What’s the matter, Roberto,” said Jeneen with a smile, flicking a strand of newly white hair behind her ear. “They’re your area of study, I thought you’d be itching to meet one.”

  “The Rothii computer system should still be live,” said Celia. “Let’s hope it knows how to distinguish between friend and enemy.”

  There were a few worried looks at that comment. If the site had its own defences, things could get tricky. Turning back to their equipment, the research team began to bombard the hidden Rothii site with messages on every wavelength, and a few others inside gravitational waves.

  It didn’t take long to get a reaction.

  “Finch, you’d better come up here,” said Celia through her commlink. “Some of our systems are doing strange things, and we figure it’s coming from the Rothii site.”

  “On my way,” replied Finch.

  When he got to the bridge, most of the ship’s systems were offline. There were blank screens everywhere, looking as if they were waiting for something to happen, and a green dot that wandered aimlessly in the centre of each. Finch noticed similarities to the Druanii technology he had encountered when he was running the opencast mine on Proteus. Then the systems started to run through their start up protocols.

  After that there was a moment of inactivity, and then hundreds of pages of script flashed past in seconds, followed by a stream of override commands that speared down the page. Something was rifling through the ship’s systems, and after that the research team’s data base.