Rystani Warrior 02 - The Dare Read Free

conversation. He’d come up here to make a career decision, not to talk about love with a machine.
    “—making love is wondrous.”
    Breathing hard, Zical pulled himself into a niche where he could rest and concentrate on his surroundings. Oddly shaped, the area seemed too smooth and evenly rounded, as if manufactured. Solid rock, with red and gold striations in the layers, almost polished, but not by wind, the shallow nook could have been a portal—except there was no door.
    “Dora.”
    “Yes?”
    “What do your sensors make of this place?”
    Another computer would have asked for specifics. But Dora understood that he wouldn’t have asked the question at this particular time and place without a relevant reason.
    Dora switched topics of conversation without melting one circuit. She’d been built on Scartar, a planet run by women, and could carry on thousands of conversations at once while simultaneously monitoring everything from agricultural machinery to the weather. Tessa had enlarged Dora’s capacity many times over, giving her the resources to make speedy calculations and interpret data faster than the speed of light.
    “An unusual force field protects the rock. There’s a high probability that the field is being generated from inside the mountain.”
    “What’s unusual about the force field?”
    “The field is preventing my sensors from scanning Mount Shachauri’s interior and is composed of energy similar to shields left behind by the Perceptive Ones.”
    Hair on the back of his neck prickled. “Are you certain?”
    “The site is … ancient.”
    “How ancient?”
    “As old as the other machines left behind by the Perceptive Ones, maybe older.”
    “No one would go to the trouble of hiding a doorway all the way up here unless what’s inside is valuable.”
    “You’re leaping to conclusions. There could be numerous other possibilities. Another race could have created this field, one with a sinister purpose.”
    “Now who’s leaping to conclusions?”
    “I was pointing out alternate possibilities. You should call Tessa, have her send experts to study the force field.”
    Zical ignored Dora’s suggestion. Even sentient, emotional computers tended to follow procedure. Dora could be overly cautious, especially when she couldn’t identify something outside her data banks and memory chips. Besides, further exploration would delay his having to make a decision he still wasn’t ready to make. “Maybe the force field is guarding a treasure.”
    “Your logic would only make sense if the aliens held the same values as Rystani. This place could be a burial site. A religious artifact. A crashed spacecraft. A—”
    “Dora, don’t tell me the possibilities. Tell me how to go inside.”
    “That could be dangerous,” she warned. “We have no idea what we’ll find.”
    “Dregan hell. That’s why we need to look ,” he muttered sarcastically. “You think whoever built this is alive and waiting inside to shoot me?”
    “It’s not likely. But—”
    “Dora, if you can’t penetrate the force field, our scientists won’t be able to either.” Zical suspected that Dora knew how to open the portal but feared for his safety so was holding back. “Whoever comes up here will have to find a way in without any more information than we have right now. There’s no reason to delay.”
    “Compliance.”
    Oh, Dora was annoyed at him all right; but she’d never withhold information, yet whenever she slipped into computer-mode and dropped her personality into a black hole, it was a sure sign she didn’t agree with his decision. So as he waited for her marvelous brain to hum and whir and take millions of facts into account and come up with a solution, he examined the nook more carefully. He saw no buttons, levers, or knobs. No cracks to reveal any opening.
    Zical ran his hands over the force field that felt smooth as bendar , the hardest man-made building material in the Federation. He didn’t note so