- OfTheBloodguard
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- Fabled Heroic Member
The tide is turning, brothers! Let us take our kingdom back!
Chapter Eleven: Dawning
For the past couple of weeks, Professor Sheldon Tunnug had grown used to the underground, alien corridors he'd been studying since the site's discovery. While discomfort and anxiety of the drastically different environment still loomed about, the feelings no longer jumped at him around every grey and blue bend. The further he and his colleagues ventured into the underground passages, mixtures of fear and anticipation pulsed in their vision, as if the space around them was alive and watching.
But this day, war had begun. Screams of the dying and exchanges of earth-shaking weaponry could only be perceived as minuscule tremors, and while its effects were muffled by the earth between them, the implications met no such resistance, assaulting those below with full force. They understood that time couldn't be wasted in wonder now, and that any advantage they could extract from what technology remained throughout the site needed to be extracted with utmost speed. While Sheldon indeed understood this, it made no imprint upon his excitement of the discovery he'd made last night.
The team of professors halted at a junction only found a few days beforehand, and while the rest of his colleagues turned right, he chose the other direction, parting company with a brief farewell. Sheldon immediately upped his pace, wishing to get back to his work as fast as he could. A new day of discovery had come, and he could think of no better way to start it than to get cracking on what he'd found. Rounding another corner, he came to the door that had filled his dreams the previous night.
With a boyish glee, he slipped off the light backpack he'd been carrying with him, and sat down to retrieve what items he proposed he'd need. He lay the backpack out with a routine method, and uncovered his datapad. An abundance of smaller accessories littered his pack, and he selected two that possessed the requirements that he judged necessary for his task. Zipping his bag up, he hopped back to his feet and took a moment to take in the door before him.
Its shape resembled a spade, as did the others, but this door appeared sturdier than its brethren, as if it had a more important purpose to fulfill. And where its grey alloy surface matched the others of its kind, it lacked the small windows that other doors like it housed in their middle and along the edge of their sides, flowing with its shape in an angled pattern that matched its surroundings without fault. Only its importance separated it from its surroundings. Hiding its secrets from outsiders, it only riled Sheldon's curiosity. And where other doors shone green in a small bulb below its middle window, the door before him featured a much larger bulb, dominating its centre.
A small terminal stood on the wall beside it, and Sheldon spent a few seconds examining it. Glyphs and readings flashed across it at random intervals, and he could only begin to guess their meaning. Jittering, he poked a finger up to the panel and lightly tapped the interface, and a small pad manifested onto it. Ten keys awaited to be tapped, and he smiled as his suspicions were confirmed. But the smile quickly left his face as the panel showed no signs of being able to link up with one of his own keypads, housing a small screen at its tip. Sighing impatiently, he pressed a few buttons, and aimed his keypad at the panel, hoping to connect the two devices, regardless of the monumental technological leaps between the two.
In the blink of an eye, the two connected, and Sheldon's keypad powered down not a second after. Just as I thought. Working quickly, he connected his pad to his bigger datapad, and laid out a sequence of events that had transpired upon its encounter with the panel in a strip of information. Although he expected the alien systems to be effective beyond his initial knowledge, the wealth of raw data before him made him gasp. He quickly realized that not even his datapad alone would be enough to analyze the data that continued to load, and he fished an external storage device out of his pack to bear the load.
In the blink of an eye, the two connected, and Sheldon's keypad powered down not a second after. Just as I thought. Working quickly, he connected his pad to his bigger datapad, and laid out a sequence of events that had transpired upon its encounter with the panel in a strip of information. Although he expected the alien systems to be effective beyond his initial knowledge, the wealth of raw data before him made him gasp. He quickly realized that not even his datapad alone would be enough to analyze the data that continued to load, and he fished an external storage device out of his pack to bear the load.
Skimming the data before him, it appeared that he'd only nicked the proverbial tip of the iceberg that was the security powerhouse of whatever he'd been working in for the past couple of weeks.His mind wandered at the thought of such incredible systems, but he soon returned to focus once more. He, nor his colleagues, recognized the symbols adorned around the site, and couldn't hope to translate them into a language they knew. Sheldon realised that he'd have to think outside the box if he were to come up with a solution. Spending a couple of minutes looking over what had been recorded within his keypad, a vague idea formed within his mind.
On a hunch, he studied the symbols on the alien panel before him. Ten of them stood alone, barring his passage through in ways that eluded his understanding. Maybe they weren't so different from us after all, Sheldon proposed to his mind, wondering if they used the same base in numbering. It's worth a shot. Opening up another program on his datapad, then going back to the data readings, he searched for symbols that matched those on the panel. After finding the ten, he fed to the next program: a housing for the decryption pads.
Once he had the process ready to transfer, Sheldon searched his coat pocket and dug up his other decryption pad, holding it before him as he questioned its capabilities. His gaze flickered back to the pad connected to his main datapad, and he decided it alone wouldn't be enough. He unconnected the now malfunctioning decryption pad, and replaced it with his second one, giving the process a better chance of success. But not by much. It's going to be like trying to cut a girder in two with a twig. The thought unsettled him greatly, so much so that he found himself with no choice but to call in his last resort.
Pulling a small, slender communicator from his pack, he held in one of its two buttons, which put him through to direct communication with the AI of the main firebase above him, Dunjey. He knew it would be busy analysing enemy battle plans and deciphering code, but he was Sheldon's only means of a feasible attempt to gain access to whatever lay in wait behind the door in front of him, adamant in its halt of progress.
"Dunjey, it's me, Sheldon," he lightly said, as if he were speaking to a sick patient in some hospital. "Do you have a minute to spare?"
"Certainly, Professor Tunnug," the AI replied, the heavy Gaelic accent at odds with its sophisticated vocabulary. "What need do you have of me?"
"I have a security system that I can't shake. I've managed to learn the required symbols to communicate with the panel here, but it'll take me years to try all the different combinations possible. I'm going to connect you via this link to my datapad, where my decryption sequence is ready to run. When I tell you I'm ready, I need you to try every combination you can before the security system in this thing takes action against you. Think you can handle it?"
"Certainly, Professor Tunnug," Dunjey replied again. "Do you know the exact number of entries that the code is composed of?"
Crap. "No, I'm afraid not. But I suggest you start at seven digits and work your way up; this system's pretty advanced, and it doesn't beat around the bush."
"Your word will suffice, then, Professor Tunnug. Please, connect me to your datapad, then inform me when you wish for me to begin."
Without replying, Sheldon extended a port connection from the communicator's tip, and wirelessly linked it to his datapad. The two devices registered with each other like friends of old, and Dunjey took in the decryption sequence, arming it within his neurons. Sheldon held his datapad up to the alien panel, fears of what could go wrong running wildly through his mind. If Dunjey fell to the might of the security residing within the ancient site, then the UNSC's main defence force would be left without its powerhouse tactician. It wasn't something he wished to risk, but no other choice was conceivable. "Now!"
The unseen battle before him lasted only a couple of seconds, but the blue hue of the door quickly turned to green, and as fast as his reaction allowed him to move, he jammed the port back into his communicator, terminating the connection and saving Dunjey from whatever meant to do away with him. As the door began to split open, Sheldon thanked the AI and let him return to his duty, pocketing his communicator once more and preparing himself for what could well be the most important discovery he'd ever make. The thought made him giddy with anticipation.
Before him, a vast room was revealed, shrouded by darkness as if it shied away from the new arrival. Taking in what little he could see in the absence of light to keep himself clamped down and whet his appetite, his hunger for discovery only made the wait for his eyes to adjust all the more unbearable. But his impatience to seek soon got the better of him, and he tentatively moved forward into the compelling dark.