Flynn smiled at no one in particular. He was having the time of his life. They’d called him, looking for someone who had the skills to crack open a Star League vault. He’d done all the background checks on these people and they were mostly above board. Some shady spots here and there, but they passed muster with his crew of academics. These were some upstart archeology students from Tharkad, who were following the hunch of one of their professors.
It was a good catch on their part. They’d found a Mule class dropship that had crashed in the canyons outside of the spaceport and in the ensuing chaos, it had been lost to the centuries. After locating it, they’d spent six months securing the salvage rights and access to the property and they had finally gotten into it last week. They’d been overly excited to start cataloguing their find and recovering their Star League artifacts.
It was a Star League Defense Force transport, carrying supplies for a division level formation that operated in this region. He had friends that would go nuts for some of the clothing and uniforms, and he’d been able to work around a horse trade for some of it. The vault at the core of the ship was the critical element that he’d been hired for. They did find four large shipping containers that looked like the typical shipping crates for Battlemech scale equipment, but they were magnetically sealed and rigged for countermeasures.
After the usurpation, they stopped being so trusting of everyone… Flynn thought to himself. Cracking the containers wouldn’t have been a problem but they wanted them as an example of Star League era technology. He cracked his neck gently as he made his way down to the bay with the Vault. It was a standardized construct, build to the exacting specifications of the Star League Defense Force. He’d read the after action reports of them surviving the destruction of the ships they were attached to, ranging from accidents that left the ship in pieces to a story about one aboard a Sovetski Soyuz that survived the detonation of the ship’s magazines.
The interns and the other archeology students who’d joined up on the expedition had been pestering him for weeks about how he was going to open up the vault, if they found one. He’d just smiled and made some offhand comment about having a secret weapon for dealing with the locks and wards built into that safe.
Now was the hour of truth and the entire expedition had gathered to see if he was the genuine article when it came to safe cracking. He gave them a quick bow and started examining the vault. It was a standard model Krupp Armor Works series 3200 vault. It wasn’t the hardest vault in the Star League but it was one of the most durable. He smiled as he started to work the dials. It had a keypad entry system, but that require the ship to have power and the backup was the old manual dial system that had secured vaults like this for a thousand years.
“Can you do this?” Sydney asked him quietly as he started to work the dial.
“Crack this? Sure.”
“We’re past the point of me believing in your pretty face, Flynn, i need an answer.”
“Hold that thought.”
“Flynn, if we need to get additional equipment to open this up, we may damage the stuff inside.”
“I said, Hold that thought.” Flynn was concentrating on something while the dials spun under his fingers.”
“Damn it, Flynn”
“I said Hold your thoughts!” With a series of clicks and whistles the dial spun free and the internal locking mechanisms unwound. The door swung open and the secrets of the vault were revealed to everyone. The crowd went silent with a shocked hush, Flynn bowed and then headed back to his quarters on the ship.
Later that night
“How did you know how to open that?” Sydney asked him quietly.
“The vault?”
“Yeah.” She shook the dust out of her hair and settled into the hammock that was the defining feature of his room.
“Most Star League vaults, at least on ships like this have backdoor combinations to allow the ship’s captain to recode the locks if they need to. You just need to know when the ship was built and what series the vault is in order to know what the backdoor is. In this case, it’s an SLDF mule built in 2740, and it’s a 3200 hundred series vault. Through the process of deduction, that means it’s Richard Cameron’s birthday.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Would i kid about security?” He gave her his best scruffy look.
“Why do you do this?”
“Wander around opening things?”
“Yeah, why do you do that?”
“I like it better than my last job.”
“What did you do for your last job.”
“I was a soldier, but in my heart i was an engineer.”
“Who did you fight for?”
“That was a lifetime ago,” He smiled softly at her.
“So what did you want to build, mr engineer?”
“Castles.”
“Really?”
“Mhmm…” he nodded at her. “My ancestors were in the Star League Department of Mega Engineering. Terraformers, heavy construction engineers and a host of other things that people told them were impossible. I’ve spent my life studying the structures they built and figuring out how they work.”
“Have you seen the Castle Brian fortresses?”
“I was born in one.” He smiled at her.
“Really? I didn’t know you were Terran?”
“Terra isn’t the only place in the galaxy that has Castle Brians. They are one of the epitomes of lostech, we know they exist, but how exactly they were built is a mystery.”
“Where exactly are you from, Flynn?”
“Oh, that’s a remarkably long story that i don’t want to talk about right now.”
“You know everything about me, i don’t know anything about you.”
“Are you sure you want to know the answer to that question? It could tip your understanding of how the galaxy works upside down.”
“What, are you an alien?”
“Sort of.”
“Wait, What?”
“I was born in the deep periphery, on a planet called Roche.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Very few people have. It’s in a small cluster of worlds settled by Star League exiles.”
“Really, when did they leave?”
“After the Liberation of Terra but before the 1st Succession War.”
“Wait...the SLDF?”
“That’s them.”
“So you know what happened to the General and the rest of the SLDF?”
“They’re my ancestors.”
“Oh my god...that’s amazing.”
“That’s not the word i would use for it.”
“Why?”
“Because, we’re coming back.”
“The technology you must have preserved….oh the societal changes, your society must be fascinating.”
“Not the words i would use.”
“Why not?”
“Because, we’re not coming back peacefully. The war along the Periphery edge of the old Lyran Commonwealth, the Free Rasalhague Republic, the Draconis Combine...that’s them.”
“They are your people?”
“Distant cousins.”
“Why are they attacking?”
“Because they are Warriors….and that’s what society has built them to do.” He closed his eyes, and smiled softly.
“Can you get them to stop?”
“I don’t think anything in the galaxy can stop them. They have war in their hearts.”
“We have to do something…”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know...tell the government...get the army working on this.”
“The old man’s started that process...if they listen. We can do our parts though.”
“What do i need to do?”
“Just keep being you.” He slid his arms around her, and squeezed softly. Ivan would be calling soon, and they’d have a new mission. He knew the old man would want the Castle safe.
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