As Dakota jogged down to the edge of the plain, she realized the dome was a lot bigger than it appeared at a distance. It had to be at least a hundred metres across, but no more than twenty in height, and it had presumably been designed to withstand whatever forces had destroyed the buildings surrounding it. Trader was well ahead of her by now and, as she started to make her way across the level ground, she saw him pass inside an entrance in one side of the dome, the sparkle of his field-bubble faintly illuminating the interior of the passageway beyond.
She soon reached it herself and stepped into its interior, noting how the relatively tiny inner space emphasized just how thick the walls were.
Dense drifts of dust gradually began to appear out of the gloom, as the filters over her eyes adjusted for the lack of light. She saw waist-high racks stretching from wall to wall in orderly ranks, with wide aisles running between. Identical flat, smooth plates were mounted in haphazard order within the racks, though, at a glance, less than a third of the racks contained them.
Is this what we're here for?
Trader guided his bubble down a side aisle, his huge eyes swivelling from left to right. ‹These are modular shaped-field generators designed for use in battle situations. One must assume the colony here was wiped out before they could be used.›
Dakota turned in time to see the spiders were now threading their way in through the entrance, sending brilliant beams of light cutting through the darkness. Nancy followed them in soon afterwards.
‹I want to ask something,› Nancy sent. ‹What did for all those ruins out there? I saw what looked like the remains of some kind of ship.›
The Meridians slaughtered each other over possession of the cache, Dakota replied. But it all happened a long, long time ago.
Nancy merely watched at first as Dakota started pulling the disc-shaped field devices out of their slots, dropping them to the ground for the spiders to collect. Then she started to help, pulling the discs loose and placing them where the spiders could get to them easily. Trader meanwhile simply hovered in his bubble; in truth there wasn't much he could do but watch them.
‹Here's something else I've been wondering,› said Nancy after they'd been working away for a few minutes. ‹You said you detected some more of those… drones here, right? Like the ones you turned on those corvettes back home?›
What about them?
‹How many of them are there?›
A couple of dozen, Dakota sent back. Why?
‹I saw the playbacks of what those other things you found did to those corvettes. Don't you think its kind of weird the Meridians would leave weapons that powerful lying around here? Doesn't it make more sense if they left them here for a reason?›
Why are you so suddenly keen on giving me your opinion?
Nancy stopped working and stared over at Dakota. ‹I'm just saying there was obviously some kind of a fight here, right?›
A long time ago, Nancy.
‹Yes but, even so, why were they just left here? Are they guarding something? Just waiting for something? What?›
Dakota directed an angry glance towards her. They were at war. Shit happens.
‹I'm just not crazy about the idea of just walking in here without carrying out a thorough reconnoitre,› the other woman replied, ‹and, besides, we're obviously dealing with seriously fucking advanced technology. I'd just like to be sure we're not going to get caught out by something nasty while we're digging through some dead alien's discarded trash.›
Dakota picked up one of the field-generators and studied it for several moments, thinking.
Trader, when I met you on that other world, were the drones you gave me… guarding anything?
‹I have no idea, Dakota. Perhaps they were once but, if so, whatever that might have been is long gone.›
You said you didn't hear back from some of the probes you sent down into the cache. Any idea why?
As Trader floated in his bubble, his manipulators remained immobile for at least half a minute. ‹Perhaps I should investigate further,› he replied.
The discs were a lot heavier than they looked, and Dakota's implants had picked up faint queries coming from them, which were interpretable thanks to the Meridian command structures Trader had given her. Once she had built up an idea of their internal structure, she transmitted this data back to Lamoureaux on the Mjollnir.
Ted, take a look at this. What do you make of it?
His reply came barely a moment later. ‹Like I'm an expert in shaped-field tech? The real question is how hard or easy it's going to be to integrate something like this into our existing defences. Is it even possible?›
According to Trader, it is. And the interface seems to be straightforward enough, so it shouldn't be a huge problem setting up an interface with the Mjollnir's defence stacks.
‹Okay, I'll talk to Ray about them. Leo would have been your man, but now he's gone the next-best expert is probably Nancy, I'm afraid. Have you asked her yet?›
Hang on, I'm going to try activating one myself first.
Dakota lugged the device over to a clear spot between two rows of racks, and triggered it by depressing a button on one side. The shaped field that surrounded her a moment later sparked and crackled with light.
The effect was so startling that Dakota almost dropped the device; the field was far brighter – and therefore more powerful – than anything she had so far encountered. It had started out as a sphere about four metres across, centred on herself, but then it began to shrink, slowly at first but with increasing speed. She quickly deactivated it before it could shrink any further and crush her to death.
‹Be careful,› Trader warned her, from where he hovered near the dome's entrance. ‹These are much more powerful than the field-generators you're used to.›
‹What happened?› Lamoureaux asked.
Two aisles over, Dakota could just make out an expression of shock on Nancy's face through her faceplate.
I think it's safe to say they work just fine, she sent back.
Chapter Thirty
They had to abandon a number of the field-generators after they proved to be broken on closer inspection, their outer shells cracked and brittle. But at least fifty appeared to be undamaged.
After a couple of hours' work, the last of these were secured on top of some of the spiders, and sent back over the hills to Trader's yacht. Dakota took one last look around the interior of the dome, wondering what it must have been like in those last hours before the colony was obliterated, and if the creatures who had built it had realized what was coming. Then she stepped back outside to join Trader and Nancy, who were waiting for her amongst the ruins.
Dakota watched as the machinery-laden spiders followed one another up the slope of the nearest hill. Maybe it's time to activate those drones I detected, see if they wake up.
Trader's manipulators wriggled underneath his belly. ‹As you wish.›
The Meridian drones had either burned or dug their way deep beneath the surface long ago. As the three of them now started moving towards the foot of the nearest hill, Dakota sent out a command-level activation signal that she hoped would override whatever instructions the drones had been left with.
Less than a minute passed before she was rewarded with a faint tremor that rippled the dust beneath her feet. Dakota stopped and turned in time to see rock and gravel fountaining upwards from all around the cache-mouth, as drone after drone punched its way back out of its hiding place. They rose quickly, spinning and glittering in the harsh sunlight, with debris sliding off of their mirrored carapaces as they accelerated away from the surface.