by M. D. Cooper
At the next corner, Reiko turned and then immediately turned again, working her way into the labyrinthine structure. With luck, she would be able to double back later to sneak up on Erin.
When Reiko had gone into the room where Erin had been trapped, Erin had been the one with the advantage. Reiko needed to take back that advantage. She strained to listen over the pulsing of her blood and her panting breath, trying to locate her pursuer.
Erin was barefoot, and Reiko hadn’t heard the thud of her soles hitting the metal walkway for a while.
Reiko slowed down. She spotted an access hatch ahead, and the sight sparked an idea. She flicked a second glance over her shoulder. The narrow corridor was bare and silent, but she would have to be quick. Erin could catch up to her at any moment.
She was at the hatch. Reiko crouched, slid her fingertips under the raised edge, and popped off the cover. After placing the cover on the floor, she climbed inside, moving backward. As soon as she was in, she reached out and picked up the cover. Replacing it from inside the tunnel was tricky, but eventually she managed it. She almost wished she’d be there to see Erin’s face when the woman found the corridor empty and tried to puzzle out where Reiko had gone.
The new space was even narrower than the passageway she had left, and it was only a meter in height. Reiko brought up a map of that section of the ring. It was rendered in great detail, showing every part of the structure. Her position was displayed as a tiny dot.
The service access tunnel she sat in was part of a vast network that spread across the entire PETER. If she wanted, she could crawl all the way back to the section where the rest of the engineers were sleeping—though it would take her weeks. But that wasn’t where she wanted to go. She had to return to the landing bay.
When Erin eventually gave up looking for her, the bay would be the next place the woman would go. She would realize that she didn’t need to catch Reiko; all she had to do was reach Reiko’s skiff, then the game would be over. Reiko didn’t plan on letting that happen.
To go forward, Reiko had to lay on her side in the narrow tunnel. She squeezed herself painfully against the walls as she eased her body around, tasting the stale, cold atmosphere of the enclosed space in the back of her throat. She began to crawl, her head down and her shoulders hunched. She watched both the dim area ahead of her and her progress on her mental map. She had a lot of ground to cover, and she was moving slowly. She upped her pace. She had to reach the landing bay before Erin.
It had been a good decision to mangle the woman’s Link connection. Not only was Erin unable to speak to anyone, she was also invisible to Phaedra—and she would remain so until she died.
When Reiko found her, she would jump on Erin from behind, bang her skull against a wall until she was unconscious, and then strangle her to death. Killing Erin painfully would be preferable, but she had no time for that.
She considered what she would do with the body after; if she pushed it into space, there was a chance it might be seen. Perhaps she should put Erin inside an access tunnel…. Then it could be decades or even centuries before someone discovered it. Perhaps no one ever would. She liked that idea very much.
Reiko realized she would have to return to Leif and do something with his body too. Anguish wrenched at her as she recalled her lover. She would remember him forever. She again wished she had the luxury of time to make Erin pay for killing him.
If only she could enact her revenge on Erin’s stupid wife, who had come moping after her. Why the hell had she turned up, anyway? Did she really think anyone believed her nonsense about getting closure over Erin by spending time where she worked?
Reiko certainly did not. It was clear the woman suspected something, but she lacked the brains to figure anything out, so there was no need to be too concerned there.
How could someone as smart as Erin marry such an ignorant woman? There’s no accounting for taste.
Reiko checked her position. She would reach the landing bay in another twelve minutes. She had traversed many turns on her way, and now she had to go up. At the next vertical tunnel she arrived at, Reiko stood. She grasped the slim ladder on the tunnel’s walls and began to climb.
Though she continued to move quickly, she also employed a great deal of caution. It had occurred to her that Erin could also have gotten the idea to move through the service tunnels, and Reiko did not want to stumble across her enemy in that confined space.
As soon as she had the thought, Reiko heard a sound ahead. She halted abruptly, her fingers tense on the rungs. The noise was coming from above.
She tipped back her head and peered into the dimness. The sound was rapidly growing louder, it was rhythmic and mechanical.
Reiko finally recognized the echoing vibration, and she exhaled heavily. The pressure must be getting to me. Otherwise, she would have immediately known what was bearing down on her. But I’m in its way…. What will it do when it reaches me?
She searched the tunnel walls above, but no exits were visible. She thought she remembered passing one a few moments previously, but there was no time to check on the map. Reiko began to rapidly step down the tunnel ladder. She scanned below, but no openings were appearing.
Reiko descended faster, but it was a wasted effort. She knew how fast those things moved. All she could do was hope that it had been programmed with a strategy for what to do when it encountered a human in such a confined space. She didn’t fancy the prospect of a stand-off.
The whirring sound grew intense. Reiko could see it now: the underside of a maintenance bot was racing toward her. She braced herself, pressing her chest against the cold, hard rungs of the ladder, and her head against the tunnel wall. Vibrations ran through the ladder. The noise of the bot resounded from the metal walls.
Reiko heard a snap and then felt a flat, metallic surface brush her back.
When she looked down, she glimpsed the maintenance bot at the level of her feet; the machine had extended its legs to go around her. They had retracted now, and the bot continued its race downward, running along the tunnel wall. Then it was gone.
Reiko berated herself for retreating so far down the tunnel before waiting for the bot. She should have stayed her ground…. Now she had lost precious time.
I’m not thinking straight.
If she was to find and kill Erin, she had to keep her wits about her.
* * * * *
Reiko pressed an ear against the inside of an access hatch cover and closed her eyes to concentrate. No sound penetrated from beyond.
According to the map, she was about thirty meters down one of the four passageways that led to the landing bay. She waited another thirty seconds, listening intently. It would be bad luck if Erin happened to be nearby when she emerged, but Reiko wanted to do so in a passageway, not inside the bay itself. It was less risky this way.
She gently pushed at the top of the cover on the bulkhead. When it popped open, she slid her fingers into the gap and eased the rest of the cover away from the portal. She grasped it carefully before lowering it to the floor.
The passageway immediately in front of her was empty. Reiko poked out her head and saw that the rest of the passageway was empty too. She quickly climbed out of the tunnel, picked up the hatch cover, and replaced it.
Reiko ran lightly toward the landing bay. She already had the exact place in mind where she could await Erin without being seen. She only hoped that Erin hadn’t arrived before her.
As she entered the space, her heart lifted. Her skiff remained in its slot—Erin hadn’t taken it. She was probably still wandering lost somewhere within the convolutions of the PETER, following Reiko’s cold trail.
Suddenly, Reiko stopped. She could see the nose of another vessel. That made three: hers, Leif’s, and one other. The third skiff sat there, empty—yet menacing, due to what it implied.
Reiko stood still, fear and confusion sending tingles through her nerves.
Upon closer inspection, she saw that it was a domestic model, not o
ne assigned to the ring’s engineers.
When the answer came to her, additional tension grabbed at her gut. It was obvious; the other skiff had to be Isa’s. The fact that she was there meant she was searching for Erin.
Perhaps she’s not so stupid after all. She’d clearly guessed at least a little of what they had done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 05.14.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: PETER (Planetary Exo-Thermic Extraction Ring)
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
Coordinating the evacuation of Athens was becoming an increasingly urgent operation for Phaedra.
She had been liaising with Murry on Carthage, as well as the AIs on Troy and Tyre, to free up vessels that could be sent to collect Athenians and tourists. Even if the threat of increasingly strong earthquakes and tsunamis hadn’t been growing, the gases, dust, and ash ejected by the massive eruption would make the planet a less-than-ideal place to live for a considerable time to come.
Until the engineers working on the PETER solved its problems, there was little point in starting to return Athens to a habitable state. Phaedra had been reading the data from the seismometers, and she expected a second large eruption any day.
Which was why she needed to speed up the evacuation.
Phaedra checked the list of people who remained on her planet; it looked like they would all fit on the Odyssey when she docked. Any stragglers could squeeze onto cargo vessels. Those would be the nitwits who had stayed at their resorts until the last minute, reluctant to give up the last few days of their vacation. And then there had been the idiots who had wanted to go see Poros erupting.
Phaedra gave a mental sigh of exasperation. Humans could be so vexing sometimes. Why did they want to see something in real life when they had perfectly good vids and holograms to watch?
At least all the young children and people requiring medical treatment had already left. She now only had to try to ensure that families with teenage children, and people who had arrived in groups, could travel together when they returned home. That wouldn’t be difficult to arrange as a courtesy. Medical personnel would be the last to leave, and then the evacuation would be complete.
Except for the Delphinians, Phaedra reminded herself.
She’d already tried to get them to at least evacuate to Attica, but so far, they’d refused. She once again sought out the Delphinians’ de facto leader, Marvin, who owned the local bar.
Phaedra’s sensors told her that the air temperature in Delphi had risen five degrees to sixty-one centigrade. Its inhabitants would be feeling the heat, though their cooling tech would protect them for the moment, providing they remained inside. However, Phaedra was particularly concerned by the hamlet’s position near a vent that released volcanic gases. With the current level of activity, who knew what might come out of the mountain? A large enough cloud of carbon dioxide would turn Delphi into a ghost town within minutes.
This was somewhat of a white lie. There was a possibility that a seismic event could permanently alter the local landscape, perhaps even take out the mountain. But Phaedra was not above embroidering facts when it came to saving human lives.
She had done her best. The Delphinians were free to choose what they did with their lives, like every other New Canaanite. That was kind of the point of the place.
Phaedra turned her attention from the hundred and nine Delphinians to the thousands of willing evacuees. Attica was now empty and silent, which was fortunate, as there had been a strong earthquake quite close to the capital a few hours previously. The last to leave had been the Marines who had been helping to keep things under control. They had gone to the city at the southern pole, Actium, to aid the final evacuees there.
Attica had been emptied out first due to its proximity to Poros’s devastating eruption and its topography, which was slightly less seismically stable, but the eruption’s effects were global, so Actium was also experiencing them, though to a lesser degree.
Phaedra issued the passenger lists to the spaceport coordinators, who would handle the finer details of informing individuals which shuttle they would take as the evacuation ships arrived.
After the last of the evacuees finally departed, Phaedra would remain on Athens—for the time being, at least. The planet’s future remained unclear. Perhaps she would be recalled to work on another of New Canaan’s planets, or perhaps she would be given the option to stay.
She laughed at the irony. She had been trying to persuade the Delphinians to do something she herself would not choose. Though, to be fair, she would not die if Athens became uninhabitable, and should she be at risk, her core’s housing possessed a launcher to send her into orbit.
Soon, it would be just her and the Delphinians, clinging to their preferred, harsh life in the Badlands. She wondered if she could persuade them to move to one of the poles.
Except she was forgetting the people on the PETER…Lark and the visiting engineers. And Isa, Erin’s wife.
How long will it take her to accept that Erin died?
The poor woman seemed to have formed a delusion that Erin was somewhere on the PETER. Governor Richards had taken pity on her and allowed her access to the PETER’s plans so she could search and see for herself.
Well, she can’t do any harm. It’s only kind to allow her grief to play itself out.
Erin’s death was a great loss to everyone. Phaedra made a mental note that Isa would also require transportation to Carthage at some point.
An uptick in a seismometer reading caught her attention. Pressure had been building along that fault line for a while. The adjacent sensor also registered a rise in activity. The next sensor did the same, and the next.
Phaedra sent out warning to all the evacuees waiting in Actium.
Forty-one seconds later, the earthquake hit.
Through her cameras placed all over the city, Phaedra saw the roads shake. The paved areas were flexible to withstand stresses and strains, yet the AI saw cracks opening up. This was a bad one, and it wasn’t over yet.
The sensors told Phaedra that the epicenter lay eighteen kilometers from the southern capital, but the quake was exceptionally powerful, the strongest in her records. Soil was undergoing liquefaction. Branches dropped from trees. Even the quake-proofed buildings of Actium were losing tiles, and their windowpanes were cracking.
Phaedra’s audio sensors relayed the frightened shouts and screams of the people waiting to leave the spaceport. She issued instructions, telling them to get under strong structures like doorways if they couldn’t get outside, and to move away from buildings if they were already outside. She also issued instructions to Actium’s EMS personnel, but there was little anyone could do until the shaking stopped. And it seemed like it was going to go on forever.
Athens was too hot. Its magma was roiling hard beneath the crust, grinding the planet’s tectonic plates against each other, and when the pressure was suddenly released, the surface suffered, churning and juddering. The place was simply unsafe.
Phaedra had to evacuate the remaining people, fast.
She decided to talk to Marvin and the people of Dephi again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
STELLAR DATE: 05.14.8942 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: PETER (Planetary Exo-Thermic Extraction Ring)
REGION: Athens, New Canaan System
