The Eagle Reborn - Chapter 4 (Archie/Rifts SI)

N.E.M.A. North Star Subterranean Complex

Eagle Peak, Anchorage, Chugach Mountain Range, Alaska

17th, August, 2103

I watched as my robots slowly pulled out the piles of junk from the side of the mountain. The first few days since the portals in the sky dumped the horde of monsters and groups of aliens into my world had initially been quiet, as I shut down work and took a break until the blizzard ended, and then got back to work. I quickly discovered that my communication systems were being actively nullified. All but the most powerful signals were more or less cancelled out.

I also discovered that it wasn’t just radio, but most forms of radiation were actively weakened somehow! Laser weapons that normally would melt blocks of steel like they were made of wax suddenly were no more powerful than a standard NATO round fired from a combat rifle. Plasma weapons were similarly affected. It was only when I started getting into the higher ranges of energy that suddenly they did the damage I expected, but at a tenth of the norm across the board.

I had no idea what the cause was, but given what occurred a few days before the discovery, it had to be some reality warping shenanigans.

I was fortunate in one regard despite this phenomenon, and that was the fact that electricity stored and produced wasn’t affected, so I had all the power I needed, and systems that were directly connected to me were not affected. So, there wasn’t any danger of the Stasis Pods suddenly turning off on me simply because of a loss of a connection. Not that I had to worry since that system had a half dozen redundancies in case something did happen to me.

Due to my inability to control my drones remotely, I had to improvise and connect to some with a long-ass wired connection. To my surprise, the source of the strange event was under the snow where the garbage portal had dumped stuff to the ground. Having little choice, I designed and built machines that were for this specific situation.

They were quadruped robots with little in the way of armor or covering aside from what was neccesary to function, with only the barest resemblance to felines. They could stalk and climb across a variety of surfaces, and with a long spool of strong wire where their tail would be, giving me a direct connection over a distance of a mile. The only thing on them that could be considered a weapon was the modified Plasma Cannon that was now operating as a Hot-Air Gun…well…Cannon.

Alongside them were dozens of Combat Soldier Drones that helped pull out and sort the junk and objects that the snow was melted off of. Most of it was trash, or recognizable objects that were completely unsalvageable, but not all of it. I found usable electronics, vehicles and building material, as well as some form of advanced cyber combat armor from something called the N.U.S.A., which had a stars and stripes flag with fifteen stars on it.

It seemed familiar, but otherwise, I had no idea what to think of that. Given the portals went to other worlds…why not parallel universes as well?

While I had been digging out the junk, and looking for the source of the troubles I’m dealing with, I had also dug out the remains of the frog people and their equipment, as well as more of the other heavy armored aliens from that night too.

Studying their technology, I could rate them about equal, if slightly less than NEMA standard in some areas, but more advanced in others.

It was clear that the Frogs were from some kind of star faring civilization given the data I could access from their personal effects. One was some kind of e-book about flora, fauna, planets, and other such things. I couldn’t read what they had initially because it was in an alien script, but one thing that apparently was universal was math. Numbers were numbers, no matter what numerical base it came from, and once I was able to access their systems, I found that numbers were the first thing I could translate. From there it was a matter of finding how many letters were in their language, and then sort of hitting random buttons a few thousand times until I found a way to change the language.

It was then to my immense shock that Earth English was one of the languages, and I dove into the system and ate all the data it had. The frogs, I came to learn were called the Mantella, a race of amphibian aliens that worked for the much more powerful Atorian Empire, and were basically a “Warrior Race” that participated in “Might Makes Right” on a galactic scale. Not very nice people, especially given the near Xenocide of the Xenopuss they committed.

Most of that didn’t matter to me as much as finding out what they knew about Earth, and Humanity. It was to my…I don’t know…relief? Concern? I felt concern that they knew of the Earth and the Human species…just not my Earth and Humanity. The world they describe was one much like the one I lived within my life-simulation, except that there were superheroes running about. So…DC slash Marvel slash something else? It wasn’t my world, so I wasn’t too concerned anymore. Didn’t sit right that anyEarth was possibly in danger, but I can’t do anything for them…so I’ll have to put this aside for now.

Thanks to the alien guide book, I had a basic idea of what that universe was like and what to expect from it. The Atorians were more advanced than NEMA was overall, but given time I will bridge the gap.

The weapons and armor of the Mantella were less ground breaking as the data. The armor was made with techniques I cannot yet guess at, aside that it wasn’t too dissimilar to Molecular Density Condensing, but weaker. I think it is due to the obvious signs of mass production as opposed to the quality production NEMA took. If NEMA focused on quantity instead of quality, the alien armor would be better.

The weapons were clearly better however, at least a generation ahead of what NEMA had. Better energy storage, better focusing chambers, and more. A standard shot from the alien laser pistols was equal to a pulse blast from a NEMA laser pistol. One shot equal to a rapid-fire triple shot from the other. Same for the laser rifles. One standard shot was about only slightly stronger than a heavy blast from a NEMA laser rifle, but could hold four times the amount standard shots that the NEMA weapon did in heavy blasts.

The other alien race was more of a mystery given the lack of translation bingo. I was fortunate with the Mantella, not so with these dinosaur people. They made the Yautja from the “Predator” movies look pretty. I couldn’t translate any of their language, but numbers were numbers, and I was able to figure out what did what, mostly, with their weapons and equipment.

The Dino-People were also more advanced than NEMA standard, but again, not by much. Weapons were on par for the most part, except for better heat regulation, energy storage, and more. The more interesting part is their armor is basically a powered combat exoskeleton, so everyone of these alien soldiers wears body armor that functions like power armor. The implications of that are both awesome, and worrying.

Their close combat weapons were basically modern versions of medieval weapons, and all of them were far too large and heavy for the average human to use, but my robots can use them no problem. Swords, axes, a hammer, and knives, but all are some kinds of advanced version with technology making them do some wild things. Vibro-weapons were normal, but the Hammer was some kind of electrical arc weapon that shocked a target with lethal levels of voltage, and could shoot an ion beam.

The club was my favorite, as it was more of a multi-tool than bludgeon. It had a pair of prongs to taze a target on contact, could cut through armor with precision with the blades, could energize the club head with lethal voltage, and shoots an ion beam…and bludgeon a person to death.

The designs of the weapons were also vicious. Barbs and spikes where it wasn’t necessary, making these as much for show as it was useful. It spoke of a martial culture. It was a given since they were obviously warriors or soldiers, but it could have been all of their people given the uniformity of these melee weapons. Something to watch out for.

Ideas of how to go about reverse engineering the alien technology came to a halt when the robots finally located the source of the jamming signal. It was so strong that I was only able to use the wire-connected robots to dig the alien thing out of the collection of junk and snow.

As my machines dug, it was revealed to be some sort of obelisk made of green crystal. Lines of light flowed about it in shapes reminiscent of circuitry that my own cerebellum construction possessed. Watching it for a few minutes, scanning it visually across all spectrum, and watching how the flow of power interacted with the different portions of the crystal, I had a thought on what this thing was. Connecting a CDS with a wired connection, I took direct control and touched the pillar.

It reacted to my touch immediately, sending up information I was not able to understand. Coming across as lines of light at various wavelengths. Suddenly it dawned on me, and I delved into the data the Mantella had, and found several similar languages to what I was looking at. It was techno-can, as it was called, a machine language.

It took a lot of perusing back and forth, but I was able to find enough similarity in words to begin a sort of translation packet. It had a lot of words missing, but it didn’t matter as I was able to finally read what I was looking at. It was the user interface of the pillar, and it was waiting for a command.

I looked for the means to install a new language/font, and found it easily enough. The machine however wasn’t able to just install English since it had no translation packet. I had to make it myself. It was difficult. I started with basic tranlation Techno-Can gave me, and then installed it. With a few words translated, I began to then figure out individual letters by checking pictures of various words with its stored data. More words were translated as I got more and more, taking me two and a half hours, and creating new iterations of the individual packet to expand more and more into the system. In the end, had stuck a road block, and couldn’t do anything more. Now with the current set up in the winter wonderland. Still, I was able to translate nearly half of the alien language, so it wasn’t bad at all. Years of work reduced because of my insane processing speeds.

As I translated the words, I did other queries, and confirmed that it was indeed like my own construction, though far more advanced comparatively.

I was astonished, and marveled at it. A solid-state computer. It possessed everything a computer would require, interface, processing, valving, etc., and all of it stood here as a single piece of crystal. It even had some form of power source I could not even begin to identify. Perhaps the whole thing acted as a battery, and as the machine simultaneously.

In the end, I learned it was a control node, called a “Vaneer Field Generator”, which is a fancy way of saying it cancelled out all forms of radiation, save a few that were “compliant” to the authority of the node’s makers. Essentially, it was to provide “public safety” by making energy weapons, energy powered weapons, and “ethereal” energies.

After a time, I was able to put together a picture of why it was here.

It basically can cancel out the portals, or “Rifts” as the makers called them, as well as made it difficult for advanced technology to work if incursions oof extra-dimensional nature did take place. However, the designers never really considered a Rift opening on one, which caused it to fall through.

When it was disconnected from the network, and had detected ethereal energies right beside it, it activated its contained power source, and powered its jammer to full. Then it sat. For forty-one years on a junk planet. Then it fell through with the rest of the garbage as the Rifts open in this world.

A query as to why I was even able to access it at all was a failsafe. If a pillar was ever disconnected from the network, it would open itself to receive a signal from anything its makers use to self-destruct. It failed to get one because it fell through to another world and disconnected as the Rifts closed entirely after I nuked that hell dimension. So, it was just sitting and waiting.

As far as I was concerned, I was now the Node’s new owner, so I had it power down the Jammer entirely.

It did so, and suddenly the wireless signals were strong again. A quick test of weapon systems showed me the weapons were back to normal too, and the heat-cannons were now plasma cannons again.

Satisfied, I began the process to transfer my new toys to my R&D labs.

While the more advanced items would take time to reverse engineer, the easier ones would be done within a week or two. More importantly, I was able to get back to what I was doing before the storm came along.

Gathering materials from the city, hopefully not having to unbury it all…which I likely will. Also, more digging. Well…back to the grind then.