She waited, defenceless, for the laser to find her, but all was deathly still. Finally the rapidly increasing warmth transmitted through the metal of the gun became uncomfortable, and she dropped it to the floor where it impacted with a dull thud. She looked down and noticed that the shortened barrel was glowing with a dull red heat. Kirrina stood up shakily and looked around as the smoke dissipated. There, behind her, was the dark, crumpled, soft form that she had inadvertently tripped over, probably saving her life. She walked back and bent over it, to find that it was Richard’s body.
He was lying on his side, but part of him seemed to be in some kind of a shadow a few inches wide. Kirrina leaned closer and found that the darkness was not shadow at all, but blackened fabric and skin. The burn went from his shoulder down to his right knee; the smell of roasted flesh wafted up to her nostrils as she sobbed in shock. Hesitantly she reached out and touched his face. Deep inside, she found a hint of him, floating in the recesses of his unconscious mind. I must get him to the emergency equipment! Kirrina leaned closer, intending to try to lift him, but as she moved his arm out of the way, the jumpsuit slipped back from the undamaged skin of his chest, revealing the meaning of the red and white striped effect which ran down his torso. It was formed by the muscles and ribs exposed and partly vaporised by the laser.
Kirrina looked away, clenching her jaws in an attempt to control her emotions and hold down her last meal, and she saw the series of holes in the far wall. It seemed that one of her bullets had found something vital to the defensive mechanism, and in so doing had saved her life. She ran back and powered up Seagull, moving it deftly through the narrow corridor until it was hovering beside the body of her fiancé. Then she landed and heaved him as gently as she could into the interior. His laser rifle lay unused and unnoticed on the floor towards the wall where he had dropped it when he had been hit. Kirrina did notice, however, with an almost morbid fascination, that despite her struggles with Richard’s body, no blood was released from his cauterised wounds in the process.
She closed the door and backed her Aircar slowly out of the restrictive passageway, then turned it and accelerated rapidly towards the daylight. She reached a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour as she crossed the boundary from the gloomy interior into sunshine, but she continued at maximum acceleration as the Aircar banked and rose towards the distant hangar and her only hope. If there had been any other living beings on the planet, apart from the comatose alien, they would have heard the distinctive double boom as she broke the sound barrier on the four-minute trip across the Outpost.
Once Seagull reached its destination, Kirrina hovered beside another of the coffin-like units and jumped out to open it. She managed to lower Richard’s dead weight into the padded white interior without any violent collisions with the framework, and lowered the lid after one last longing look at his expressionless face. She knew she was now the only human left on the whole planet to accomplish the enormous task of refitting Citadel, and she had to face the possibility that Richard would die, or was already dead.
Once the lid was down, Kirrina let the flood-gates open, and her loneliness and despair gushed out over her, leaving her weak and drained, her body draped over the cover for Richard’s life-support unit.
Finally she looked up and reluctantly studied the instruments on the adjoining panel. None of the lights were on, and the displays that indicated how well the various organs were functioning were giving variable and even contradictory readings. Kirrina opened the lid, wondering if the unit was damaged, but when she did so she saw that a thick blue liquid already partially covered Richard’s body, and that the level was increasing as she watched. She hesitated, then closed it once more and waited impatiently and anxiously. Finally a short message appeared on the central screen of the console: ‘Patient stability indeterminate, function not detected. Continue life support measures?’ Kirrina searched for and hit the confirm key.
The message dissolved and changed to a different but equally vague pronouncement: ‘Continuing. Life support initiated.’ She waited for a long time, but the bordering lights did not start to flicker with the faint green glow that indicated that the patient was responding. Finally Kirrina sat down on a bench over by the wall. She started to shake as the effects of the adrenaline wore off. Several parts of her body ached, and she decided she should make sure that there was nothing serious associated with these pains. As she looked for the mirror she thought must be present somewhere in the room, she tried to block any speculation on Richard’s recovery from her mind.
Later, after Kirrina had treated the worst of her bruises and burns with the rather basic equipment available and had cleaned up in the pool in their penthouse, she spent a long time staring at her singed eyebrows and crinkled hair. Finally, almost reluctantly, she returned to the emergency room and checked on her fiancé once again. The message on the console had not changed, and she felt her hopes fading with the passage of time.
She walked back to their living area in a daze and sat down, watching the sun as it moved slowly across the sky. Several hours later, when darkness finally came, she dozed off into a fitful and troubled sleep where she had slumped over, her hand still resting on the now-empty holster at her side in an unconscious and futile attempt to guarantee her security.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Belief in a ‘fool-proof’ plan is only proof that fools also plan – Shoonan
The early morning sunshine, skimming over the horizon, created pockets of warmer air and rippling currents, bending the light haphazardly. This wavering sunrise found Kirrina’s face and played on her eyelids, causing an irritating optical effect that she had never-before experienced, which brought her rapidly out of the cocooning silk of sleep. She sat up and stared around at the strangely empty room until her memory of the previous day returned like a relapse into a malarial haze. This caused a shudder to shake her from head to foot, and she found it difficult to breathe. In an effort to clear her mind, she staggered into the Pool Room and floated, staring at the clear, blue-grey sky overhead and trying to avoid any consideration of the constant fear that she would find Richard dead when she went down to the Medic room.
Five minutes later, after dressing in neutral grey to avoid any outward expression of her feelings, Kirrina took a deep breath and entered the Life Support Facility in the Spaceways building. There, just to one side, was the coffin-like container that now held Richard’s body. She hurried over to the console and found three tiny green lights glowing feebly on the edging. The message on the front panel indicated that minimal life-support functions had been established. Kirrina sank slowly to the floor and stared at the display, her feelings building up inside her, too intense initially for expression. Finally, the tears flowed, and she sobbed her relief into the hard, unyielding surface.
Eventually, the emotions subsided and Kirrina got wearily back on her feet. Remembering the alien, she walked over and checked his equipment panel. Indications were that the major organ wounds had already stopped bleeding.
“Just about indestructible,” she muttered out loud, vaguely irritated with the information. She turned away, wandered into the vacant hangar and climbed into her Seagull, still sitting near the entrance, where she had haphazardly parked the Aircar, the previous night. Minutes later, Kirrina arrived at the hangar where the Patrol Ship was stored; she slowed Seagull’s flight until it hung motionless in the air by the terminal where Richard had received his near-deadly wounds, and opened the door cautiously. Climbing out, she ducked over to the computer, activated the screen and asked for access. The display lit up with a warning concerning two non-Arshonnan weapons in the area, and she realised with a sinking feeling that the alien laser rifle that Richard had been carrying was probably the reason for the otherwise inexplicable attack.
It was my fault… I told him to take the rifle. Kirrina’s hand came down on the edge of the console with a crash of frustration, anger and guilt. She shook her head in an unconscious effort to clear away the e
motional outburst, then repeated her request.
Access was denied.
Suddenly sure of herself, Kirrina walked the few paces to Ed Baynes’ gun and reached down for it. It would not move, and closer inspection revealed that the automatic defensive laser had melted the metal and, when she had dropped the super-heated gun, it had been effectively welded to the floor. Kirrina flexed her hand, noticing for the first time that her fingers were breaking out into multiple mini-blisters. She smiled wryly, then returned to the weapon which had begun the incident and picked it up instead.
I’ll show you what this can do! Kirrina turned and swung the rifle up in front of her, but found she could not hold it there, gripping the hand-grip at the end as the weapon required. Instead, she brought her hand back and pressed it against her chest, and supporting the middle of the cylindrical part with her other hand, aimed and fired. After several attempts to optimise the power setting, she found she could cut her way through the access door without great difficulty. Once she had completed a rough rectangle in the panel she gave a judicious kick to it. The severed piece dropped inside with a satisfying clatter. She let the alien rifle slip out of her grip onto the ground once more, a feeling of distaste at having to use the tools of destruction of her enemies. Let’s see what’s so important in here…
Kirrina bent down and stepped through the tiny hole she had cut, carefully avoiding the still warm, slightly jagged edges. As she straightened up inside, she found herself dwarfed by the sheer bulk of the vessel which lay just feet before her. It towered more than sixty feet above her, shining dully in the bright lights of the hastily-sealed hangar, and as she walked from her entry point down along one side, she found it was shaped like an extremely elongated sphere. The surface was a light grey colour, entirely different from the intense black of their ruined Scout Craft.
Kirrina stopped at the slightly pointed end, looking up at the blunt conical tip some thirty feet above her head. This is huge! She walked under the overhanging part, reached out cautiously and touched the surface. It was smooth and cool, but somehow it felt different from the material that Citadel was built of. “Another improvement,” she whispered in awe. “Perhaps it will be the key feature that will make this ship superior to the alien ones.”
Stepping backwards for a moment so that she was positioned to the side of the impressive length of the ship once more, Kirrina looked around the room for the inevitable terminal. Nothing was visible except the jagged remains of her unofficial entrance door-panel, lying on the super-smooth floor. She walked around the end and looked down the far side. Sure enough, there was a desk and a chair. The terminal on the desk was still in action, showing a slowly rotating view of the ship from above, and indicating the hull-surface conditions.
Just waiting… for who knows how many years! Kirrina found the controls easy to understand, and the sealed room had remained essentially free from dust, unlike so many less secure locations on the deserted outpost. She depressed one key and the image became transparent, showing the status of the components and compartments inside.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered in frustration. “The only major component actually installed is the Star Drive, and even that has yet to be activated!” Kirrina rapidly scanned through the information available. She learned that apparently this had been a prototype of a new design, tentatively named Patrol Craft One, and it had been developed by Arshonnan engineers at various Outposts because of growing concerns that the Scout Craft design did not make full use of the capabilities of the new hull material and the matrix technology associated with it. According to the record, the full implications of those two inventions, which allowed for the inclusion of all necessary interior features within the body of the vessel without reducing the inherent strength of the solid casting, had not been explored.
She chuckled, though her face showed no smile. “It sounds like they were on the right track.” Further investigation showed that some of the equipment was in storage in an area below the hangar, but key flight navigation equipment had not yet been manufactured. Some of the more sophisticated components had been ordered from Arshonna, but had not arrived when the Outpost personnel recall had been announced.
“So much for that idea,” Kirrina announced loudly, then looked around, startled by the echo in the bare hangar that fit so snugly around the Patrol Craft. She walked sadly back to her Aircar and returned in it to the crash site. Citadel still sat, partly submerged in the barren ground. It was the only home she had ever known, and, like everything she had ever loved, it was lost to her now.
The cairn alongside it gave her the shivers. Kirrina activated the Shell Hoist and attempted to raise the ship once more. No dice. She tried to drag the wrecked craft, and was surprised and heartened when the higher, Control Room Sphere moved slightly.
“Ah-ha!” she said in triumph, as the solution burst full-fledged into her mind. She shut down the Hoist, ignoring the red and black sphere as it faded away to nothingness, and headed back to the hangar discovered the previous day, the one which included a Scout Craft maintenance facility, the means for implementation of her solution developing rapidly in her mind as she flew the Seagull with unconscious grace. The tools and parts stored along one wall provided her with the necessary implements and components, and soon she had built two dollies of extraordinary size. Each was equipped with four rows of rollers almost two feet in diameter and fifteen feet long, beneath a solid frame of the super-light, super-strong Hybralloy[2], and a simple, ring-shaped socket of the same material some ten feet in diameter mounted above. The Shell Hoist lifted them easily, and Kirrina transported them across a swathe of hangars, other buildings and the dried-out lake, and lowered them gently to the ground next to the Scout Craft with supreme confidence.
The next few minutes, however, were some of the most frustrating she had ever experienced. No matter how she tried, it was impossible to lift either end of the wrecked Scout Craft, so putting the dollies underneath diminished from the simple solution to wishful thinking. Finally Kirrina landed next to her great inventions and got out, walking around the wreck in an attempt to clear her mind of the cobwebs that seemed to have enveloped it. The cairn beside the crash site seemed to demand her attention, and so she stopped and stared at it obligingly. She smiled with relief a moment later and climbed back inside her Seagull.
She placed one dolly beneath the elevated Control Room sphere, and the other behind the partly buried Drive sphere. Then, locking the Shell Hoist onto the wreck and opening her door so she could listen to her efforts, Kirrina used the navigation sphere and pushed down gradually on the end of Citadel that seemed to be floating above the lifeless, rocky soil, until it started to sink. Warning lights started to flash on her instrument panel, indicating she was overloading Seagull’s systems once more, but she kept up the pressure until the sound of tiny rocks sliding beneath the ship faded away to nothing. Citadel rocked slightly as she powered-down the hoist, then there was silence again.
Kirrina moved her Aircar off to the side. Sure enough, the Scout Craft had sunk until it was in an almost horizontal position; the dolly by the rear sphere had slipped under it as it rose up like a child’s see-saw on the rubble thrown up at the moment of impact. However, the forward sphere was still poised a couple of feet above the other dolly. Kirrina reached behind the seat and pulled out another of the alien laser rifles. She leaned out of the still-open door and started to vaporise the rubble beneath the ship, using both hands to hold the rifle, as before. Minutes later, after the previously suspended end of her life-long home had settled into the ring-shaped socket, she excavated portions of the crash site to give it a more even quality and moved into position above the damaged Control Room Sphere. Sure enough, Scout Craft Seven was mobile again, though in a very limited, tortoise-slow mode. The Shell Hoist had no difficulty pulling the makeshift wagon out of the depression left by her efforts, and when she started across the hard ground, barely a tenth of the Aircar’s capacity was used in the process,
once the initial unevenness was past.
Kirrina took it slowly, to make sure there were no more problems, and the colours of sunset had faded away completely by the time her strange collection of vehicles had navigated a winding path around the lake, through the industrial areas and onto the landing pad outside the hangar she and Richard had discovered the previous day.
It seems a lifetime ago.
A very tired Kirrina left the ruined Citadel in the centre of the Scout Craft maintenance facility after pondering for a while on the first steps in repairing the ship. She returned to the medical emergency centre (Life Support, Port Facilities) in the Spaceways hangar where her own efforts, combined with those of her fiancé to find something useful left behind by the cautious Arshonnans in their hasty departure, had found them what had now proved to be a crucially important facility.
Richard’s state had not altered; the technology of the medical equipment there was many years behind what she had grown up with in Citadel, even before Tutor had released its full features for their use. This, older device functioned principally by putting the patient into a drug-induced coma and allowing the natural healing process to proceed, aided by sterile conditions and a plentiful supply of synthesised bio-chemicals developed to induce, encourage and accelerate cell growth and repair. As for the other patient, the system could provide only the sterile environment, as his biological needs were not programmed into its memory banks and the necessary bio-chemicals could not be supplied by its miniature manufacturing laboratory. Despite this, the alien’s wounds had sealed completely, indicating that all his organs were capable of limited self-regeneration.
Passage Page 25
