The double-reinforced blast doors which sealed off the ship’s alchemical bay were covered with a series of irregular geometric symbols and what could only be characterized as “dots and squiggly lines”.
The symbols, which were made of an electrum alloy, were arranged in clusters with lines connecting smaller symbols to larger ones they orbited, some of which had their own satellites. The doors being circular, they were all more or less evenly distributed around the largest shape in the center.
“Now, sure an’ the Dragon must’ve had some way o’ gettin’ past this garble, like,” Regan said.
“Right,” Galatea said. “A verbal passcode, most likely, as only another of her race would be able to reproduce it.”
“Well, that’s all kinds o’ helpful, isn’t it?” Regan said.
“I’ve been studying her language in hopes of making better sense of the subroutines she built into the computers. Their sentence structure is non-linear, to reflect their capacity for multi-channel speech,” Galatea said. “If we could decipher these symbols, we could determine the pass phrase which opens the door, record the individual components, and then alter them into the appropriate mix of audible and inaudible frequencies, and then play back the resulting sound.”
“An’ so if I undertand ya proper-like, step one o’ that would be to decipher the symbols?” Regan asked.
“Well, yes,” Galatea said.
“Right,” Regan said. “Let’s skip straight to phase two, then… Open Says-A-Me!”
She plunged the tip of her sword into the molecularly reinforced plastic panel which shielded the guts of the door’s control and cut a series of lines in a square to expose the workings.
“What precisely are you doing?” Galatea asked as Regan started yanking wires aside.
“I’m gonna give her the ol’ manual override,” Regan said. “Cross-circuit to B, increase resolution an’ then reverse the polarity o’ the positron flow.”
“None of that even means anything,” Galatea said.
Regan turned to her, squinting her eye in confusion.
“Are ya sure, now?” Regan said. “I’m fair sure I’ve heard all o’ those things dozens o’ time.”
“I’m positive.”
“Oh,” Regan said. She reached up into her right ear and pulled out a tiny bead-like device. “Guess I’ll just do this, then.”
She chucked it into the opening she’d made in the inner workings of the security door controls, then pressed a stud on the sleeve of her sleek black skinsuit.
“You just threw your communications device into the wall,” Galatea said.
“No, I didn’t,” Regan said. “I keep that in me right ear.”
“That was your right ear.”
“Really?” Regan asked. “Oh, fuckin’ shite, then!” She plucked another, slightly larger device out of her other ear and tossed it into the hole, then tackled Galatea out of the way as the rest of the control panel blew outwards in fragments propelled by a concussive blast.
“Did you honestly expect that to do anything?” Galatea demanded.
“Made a loud bang an’ a mess,” Regan said. “That’s somethin’.”
“Suffering space, I’d be better off taking my chances with the necromancer,” Galatea said. “Now, will you kindly get off me so I can see if you’ve left the door functional enough to be opened at all?”
“Hold on,” Regan said, cocking her head to the side as if she were listening to some small sound.
“Oh, very well,” Galatea said with an air of resignation, grabbing Regan’s shoulders.
“No, listen,” Regan said, and Galatea heard what Regan must have been listening to: a series of echoing metallic clicks from inside the wall. They stopped, and then there was the low whoosh of the heavy doors parting. Regan gave a laugh. “I bloody did it! Fuck me, I did it!”
“Oh, very well,” Galatea said again, pulling Regan down and grinding her hips upwards.
“Not now, the Slut,” Regan said, pushing off her to get to her feet and then helping Galatea stand. She stepped towards the now open portal to the lab. “Let’s…”
They both stopped in front of the doorway. The doors had slid open, but the web-like network of symbols remained in place. There was more than enough space to see into the dark, cluttered lab, or to reach an arm through, but enough of the doorway was covered to prevent entry.
Galatea reached out and touched one of the floating symbols, trying to push it out of place. It was lodged as firmly in the air as if it were still attached to a heavy door.
“Have I mentioned lately how much I hate magic?” she said. “I guess we’re back to deciphering the symbols. Let’s see. The one in the center is… well… the approximate translation would be ‘center’. It’s very similar to the one for ‘mother’.
In fact, wait…. it is ‘mother’. That makes no sense. Let me see what else I can recognize. You can chime in any time, you know.”
Regan didn’t appear to have heard anything that Galatea had just said, though.
“Regan?” Galatea asked.
“Wait,” Regan said. “It’s not a pass code at all… it’s a puzzle. The words are out o’ order.”
“What order?” Galatea said. “It’s non-linear! Do you understand what that means?”
“Honestly? No,” Regan said. She reached up to touch a symbol in the upper left quadrant of the circular space. “But this one here should be more like over… here,” she said, moving her finger towards the lower right. To Galatea’s surprise, the symbol clung to Regan’s finger tip, briefly pushing other symbols aside. “An’ this one should be here,” she said, moving another symbol. “An’ this and this should swap places, and this one goes up here… an’ then… a few more… changes…”
“If you can move them, why not just move them all out of the way?” Galatea asked.
“Couldn’t,” Regan said. “Don’t work that way. Anyway,” she said, moving one last symbol into place, “it’s done now.”
She stepped back and the metal symbols glowed briefly and then turned into powder, which fell straight down into the groove at the bottom of the doorway.
“How in space did you know how to do that?” Galatea demanded.
“Funny story,” Regan said. “It’s a well-known fact that time flows backwards in some parts o’ space, an’ when I was nine I happened to receive a letter from me own future self, only written hundreds an’ hundreds o’ years in the past, like.”
“Are you going to tell me that you invented this language?” Galatea asked.
“Well, no, that would just be plain ridiculous,” Regan said. “But bein’ stuck in the past for hundreds o’ years will had been givin’ me future self plenty o’ time to pick up interestin’ skills.”
“Which you somehow managed to impart to your nine-year-old self in a letter,” Galatea said.
“One o’ the skills I will had been learnin’ is to make an efficient use o’ space,” Regan said.
“I don’t know why I even bother speaking with you,” Galatea said.
“Because I’m roguishly handsome, like,” Regan said. She ushered Galatea ahead of her with a flourish. “Ladies first, then you.”
The only light in the lab came from a panel behind an empty aquarium that ran the length of one side wall. Another even larger tank of water was set against the opposing wall. The rest of the space was taken up by numerous shelves and worktables covered in delicate little instruments under protective slipcovers, bulky machines draped in cloth, glass beakers and vials, and jars of assorted herbs, compounds, and even dried insects and lizards.
“I hope one of your fictitious skills allows you to figure out how we’re going to create a trigger mechanism for an alchemical bomb,” Galatea said, repressing a very irrational urge to shiver despite the warmth of the room.
“Right, before we do that I just need to run up to me workshop,” Regan said.
“What?” Galatea said. “Lilliana expressly told you to stay by me!”
“I need to do this, and I can’t take ya with me,” Regan said. “There’s loads o’ zombies comin’ across the catwalk an’ I’m apt to run smack into ‘em.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“It’s where the catwalk leads,” Regan said. “Look, I’ll get Hand Job to defend ya.” She reached up and poked her finger in her left ear. “Ow!”
“That was where you kept the explosive,” Galatea said. “The communicator was in your right ear, and you blew it up, as well.”
“Oh, right,” Regan said. “Guess I’ll do another manual override an’ try to bounce the signal through subspace.”
She climbed up onto a table, clambering up a particularly large piece of tarp-shrouded machinery to reach a narrow vent set in the ceiling.
“Hey, Hand Job!” she yelled.
She turned and cocked her ear towards it until she heard the echoing reply.
“Yes, the Boss?”
“Come on down to the lab an’ keep an eye on the Slut!” Regan hollered.
“Right, the Boss!”
“There ya go,” Regan said to Galatea. “You couldn’t ask to be in better hands. Well, in more hands, anyway.”
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