Deep Storage

The entrance to the vault was simply a circle on the floor of a nondescript room on the ground floor of a government building. Jasper accessed an encrypted key in his holo and inserted it into a holographic obelisk in the center. The circular floor descended smoothy through the stone cylinder past countless doors. When it finally came to a gentle, hydraulically assisted stop the guard gestured at the door emblazoned with a pulsating “48v” above it and watched suspiciously as Jasper walked over to it. Jasper rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in a tiny circle at his side as he spun through the digital inventory in his holo, finally settling upon an encrypted key which presented itself in holographic form as an ancient game cartridge from Earth history. A slot superimposed itself in the wall of the otherwise smooth stone and Jasper inserted the key. To his relief, the door next to it shot up into the wall revealing a large room shaped like a slice of pie approximately 100 meters in diameter and perhaps 10 meters between the floor and ceiling. Numbers and letters covered the floor and walls like sigils, many arranged in odd shapes. Jasper’s holo quickly analyzed these and they flashed before him in the dimly lit room. 

“Locate archive 48v.20k,” he muttered. He didn’t actually need to say the words, but it had become his habit on the lonely trek across deep space to treat his holo implant like a separate entity - something he noted to himself he should probably stop doing. 

The layer of his eye which was both sensor and screen brought his attention to a pulsating sigil on the far wall. He walked over, aware that he was being closely flanked by both Zyon and the guard. When he stopped at the sigil he once again tried to select the cartridge from his inventory, but it was not there. He had assumed the cartridge was they key for both the vault room and the safe itself, but it was apparently still in the lift, keeping the door open for them. 

He glanced at the guard who raised his eyebrows.

“Any chance you know how this thing works?”

“I’ve never been this far down in Deep Storage,” confessed the guard. “Seen a few vaults, but this one runs on a system I’ve never seen before. Probably proprietary Cevtech. If you don’t know how it works, I doubt anyone does these days.”

“These days?” Asked Jasper.

“Sure,” said the Guard. “Look at this,” he said flicking something aside in his holo and then bringing up a shared informational display above the sigil. 

“Meta data says this safe hasn’t been opened since 2155. That predates the dome. Hell, that predates the municipality of Kerwan Crater! Whoever stored this is long dead,” said the guard.

“Corporations never die,” said Jasper lowly. He traced the sigil with his finger and it vibrated with light. “I’ll need my associate to take a look at it.” Then turning to the side he put a finger to his temple and said, “Astrid, would you be so kind?”

“You won’t be able to make calls down here,” said the guard knocking on the stone. “It’s laced with a Molybdenum Faraday Cage. Impenetrable.”

Just then a woman appeared next to Jasper as though out of thin air.

“Whoa!” Yelled the guard and pulled his side arm. Jasper instinctively and calmly stepped between the guard and the woman.

“No need for that, she’s with me.”

The guard did not stand down. “I’m already risking my job letting you down here, Sir. Who is that?”

“This,” said Jasper evenly, “is Astrid. She is, in effect, my ship’s computer, housed in a bipedal chasis.”

“She’s,” the guard’s jaw was slackening, “She’s a robot?”

“She’s much more than that,” said Jasper. “And, theoretically, bullet resistant, though I’d prefer not to test that theory. If it helps, you can think of her as an extension of my holo instead of an extra entity.”

Zyon was watching all this with an amused expression on his face. “Now, now Officer Altec,” he said to the guard, gleaning the name off his metadata tag. “We’re all friends here. This is a Cevtech vault and that is a Cevtech emissary and a Cevtech AI unit. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here. I am sanctioning this. You can lower the weapon.”

The guard glanced at Zyon and slowly lowered his sidearm. Before it was all the way down, Jasper had roundhouse kicked it out of his hand and thrown a fist into his throat. The guard sank to his knees choking.

“Whoa!” Yelled Zyon.

Jasper put both fists up to the left side of his chest as he side kicked the guard into unconsciousness. 

“Don’t move,” said Jasper to Zyon. “I’m the one with the key out of here and we’re getting what we came for.” Then over his shoulder he said, “Astrid?”

The dark haired woman walked over to the sigil and began placing various nodes on the sigil and began pulling them into a three dimensional shape formed of multicolored lights. Within a few seconds the ground underneath Zyon started rising and he leaped off what became a large cube the same milky material and color as the room around them. 

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m starting to regret helping you,” said Zyon backing towards the lift door.

“If he takes another step,” said Jasper to Astrid, “shoot him in the leg. We may need him alive to get out of here.”

Zyon froze. Jasper slowly walked up to the chest and exhaled slowly. “I’ve been waiting a long… long time for this.” He placed a hand on the chest. The material melted back into the ground revealing a floating glassy sphere of clear liquid, and a man suspended, comatose in the middle.

“What the…” said Zyon. 

“The silent alarm has been tripped,” said Astrid. “Evidently a consequence of the guard failing to check in at a randomly sequenced interval.” 

“We’ve got to get him out of there,” Jasper said to Astrid, gesturing to the man incased in the sphere. “What to you suggest?”

“The sphere is reinforced synthetic diamond and has no structural weaknesses. It appears to have been grown around the subject.”

Jasper pushed the sphere which floated easily a few meters and stopped. “Can we just…”

“The forcefield keeping the suspension ball floating is localized to this room. It will not function once we leave.”

“Well it is a ball,” said Zyon, still frozen in the middle of backing away. “Maybe we could just roll him.”

A woosh of air from from the grav-lift tousled Astrid’s hair. Jasper looked at her and shrugged. “How much time do we have?”

“The faraday cage is interfering with my access to the local network,” said Astrid, “but based on our descent I would guesstimate approximately 25 seconds.”

“Gods,” said Zyon. 

“What do you have in the way of alternative exits,” Jasper asked Astrid.

“It’s a vault! It’s one way in one way out!” Exclaimed Zyon.

Jasper lifted a finger in his direction and continued to look at Astrid who had closed her eyes and was stretching both palms out towards the various sigils in the room.

“There does appear to be an antechamber… there,” she said pointing at a sigil to her right, eyes still shut. “It may have a way out.” The breeze in the vault had increased audibly.

“Right,” said Jasper, “I’m recalling the key. It’ll eliminate the main lift as an escape route, but I don’t think anyone besides Cevtech will have clearance for this vault.”

“Are you insane? We’ll starve down here! There’s no way out!” Zyon cried.

“It’s a calculated risk,” said Jasper. He swiped something on his holo and pinched. The door to the lift snapped shut. The low whir of the second lift platform hummed through the walls. When it came to a halt, Astrid, Zyon and Jasper looked at the door silently. Nothing happened. A minute passed.

“Ok,” said Jasper finally. “Astrid, do your thing. And Zyon, you’re on ‘big diamond ball with a naked guy in it duty. Clear?”

Zyon begrudgingly walked over to the suspension chamber. “If I knew I was going to be taking part in a Deep Storage heist today I would have worn something a little more tactical.” He put a hand on the sphere and pushed it easily towards where Astrid was accessing the new sigil.

“By the way, I better get cut in on whatever the score is,” said Zyon. “Officially, that is. That way you’ll know you can trust me.”

“This isn’t a heist,” said Jasper. “It’s clearly a rescue.” 

“O great,” said Zyon, “All glory, no credits.”

“What kind of an arch bishop are you exactly?” Asked Jasper.

“The fun kind,” said Zyon.

Just then the wall appeared to melt away as Astrid pulled the final node of the sigil into place. A long stone corridor opened up, dimly lit with bioluminescent algae which accented the spiral ridges from whatever monstrous boring drill had made it.

“After you,” said Jasper to Zyon. Zyon frowned and pushed the sphere into the corridor. Immediately after leaving the white floor the ball smashed into the ground leaving a small indent where it landed. 

“Damn,” said Zyon. “Almost got my toes.” He pushed at the ball.

Astrid said, “Jasper there is a 3% pitch to the floor…” but it was too late. The ball had begun to roll down the corridor and quickly picked up speed. Within seconds the three were jogging along with it.

“We have to get in front of it,” yelled Jasper. 

“You know how much this thing weighs?” Asked Zyon rhetorically.

“Estimates put the weight between approximately 450 and 470 kilos,” said Astrid.

After another minute the ball had accelerated to frantic sprint and the three slowed as it spun off into the darkness.

“How long does this tunnel go for?” Asked Zyon as they all stopped.

BANG. The terrible metallic crash echoed through the corridor over and over and Jasper and Zyon had to hold their ears. 

Once the tunnel had stopped reverberating enough Astrid said, “Based on the rate of increasing speed and impact time, minus the speed of sound, 76.4 meters,” causing Zyon to raise an eyebrow in her direction.