"You know, the more you slow this down, the more I want to get out of my ship and go exploring," Pixie warned playfully.
Their fighters followed the course Carnie set, weaving between tall buildings, nearly skimming two domes, then moving down to two metres above street level. It was the best way to get better readings from their passive scanners, and he knew they could follow the flight path without running into anything. The grey and brown dust from the moon came up in plumes whenever their thrusters fired towards the surface. The trucks left on the ground had large, heavy-duty tires, were made to hold their own atmospheres, and most still had cargo trains hitched to them. "I wonder why they didn't use some kinda hover tech on the roads?" Carnie asked idly.
"It's a lot more expensive. Moving on wheels or treads is a lot cheaper for tech this old. Are you sure we can't turn our active scanners on? This slow scan stuff is driving me nuts."
"I don't want to activate a dormant defence system."
"I'm sure we could take it out before any gun we've seen could do real damage," Pixie countered.
"That's not the point. If we start flying around, taking out defences, we could do a lot of secondary damage. Sneaking in is the best way to see this place for what it was whenever this happened."
"Right, it’s an investigation, not an invasion," Pixie agreed.
Their fighters slipped into the secondary landing bay and they touched down perfectly. Their scanners didn't pick up any movement, so Carnie gave the word; "Out, bring your full kit," he said, and Pixie's canopy was open an instant later.
"I bet Alice has been on a lot of missions like this," she said as she pulled her rifle from the storage compartment under her Uriel. The full armour she wore made her seem taller, more heavily built. The horizontal metal slats protecting her and the systems within glinted in the faint light coming through the opening behind them.
They both had their support and survival packs on, making the armour even more bulky, but Carnie didn't want to get caught without the supplies and extra systems contained in those long bulges running up their backs. "We haven't talked about her missions much, most of them are still classified, but she might have seen more action than I have. I guess we never compared, it doesn't seem to matter."
"Wait, she might have seen more action than you? I thought that was a given, considering what she does and everything," Pixie said, surprised.
"I spent a year running from bots and dealing with scroungers, even a few people who I'm pretty sure were cannibals. Look up Iora sometime."
"I don't have to," Pixie said. "It's on the no-go list, apparently it's crawling with…"
"Edxi, I know."
"How?"
"Can't talk about it," Carnie said as he made sure both their cockpits were closed and started moving further into the port. "Signal's this way."
"Okay, so you've been on classified missions to places that the Fleet tells us to stay away from?" Pixie asked.
"Can't talk about it," Carnie repeated with a snicker. The system in his helmet compensated for the low-light and he saw two transit shuttles that were riddled with holes. There were three occupants in the nearest. He pointed his free hand at the small, ten seat ship and let his passive scanners concentrate on getting a reading as natural radiation and gravity acted on what was within. "I'm with you on the scanning thing, though. I wish we could just turn them on. I can't even get an estimate on how long these people have been dead."
"People?" Pixie asked as she followed his pointing finger. "The more I see, the more it looks like this was a massacre. Does it look like Edxi?"
"No, not so far. It looks like these people were taken out by short range plasma weapons. Primitive stuff."
"I saw one of those shooters in a museum before The Fall," Pixie nodded. "It was a hundred seventy years old."
"There are no weapons in that shuttle, so whoever did this might have taken them with them after they won the battle."
"Or the people killed here were never armed and this really was a massacre," Pixie added.
Carnie moved on, leading the way further into the hangar. It was an empty space covered in a layer of fine dust. "Something kicked the dirt up on this moon, there's no wind, so it must have been meteorite strikes or something unnatural."
"Like a collapsing mine shaft or falling building."
"Could have been." The red light marking the faint signal beckoned, drawing them to heavy pressure doors. The outer ones were blasted open, fractured, melted metal framing the entrance.
Pixie whistled appreciatively. "These guys liked their plasma. There’s a lot of burn damage.”
"They tried to get through the inner door the same way, but it's even more heavily armoured." The computer system displayed the wiring for the door panel, which was half blasted open. He recognized the circuit type, saw what he had to patch and how much power the door needed to open and batted the screen away. "Okay, I've seen this kind of thing before on really old stations."
"How old is really old?" Pixie asked.
"Three hundred years? Maybe more? They're dependable, heavy duty. Whoever hid behind this door pulled the power from the inside. It's an old trick that works on most inner airlocks."
"Are doors like this normally a metre thick?" Pixie asked. "I've never seen this before."
"No, this installation is protecting something. Considering the control and armour caps on the mineshafts, I'm guessing there's platinum or uranium down there. Maybe something rarer."
"I saw some heavy processing centres on the way in. If we could turn our scanners up…"
"I know," Carnie said. He pried the remaining section of panel away from the circuitry access, then cut through the security panel beneath with a tiny, short range torch affixed to his finger. The radiant heat and light gave his scanners more to go on, and the shape of the area around them became clearer. "Whoever built this place made sure it would last."
A window popped up in his Heads' Up Display, showing him that the port building was actually the uppermost levels of a colony ship. "Wow, I've never seen that before."
"Merlin Shipyards, third generation Colony Ship with industrial add-ons," Pixie read aloud, seeing the same results in her helmet. "It says there were eighty-four made, and they were sold to a huge list of organizations. This doesn’t exactly narrow it down. We still don't have a name for this place."
"We will. No one knows this is here," Carnie said, pulling the tiny plate of metal he cut out of the hole and pulling the wires out with pliers. He made sure there was no atmosphere within, then powered up the tip of his little finger and touched the two wires that would open the door to it. The floor vibrated under foot as the thick security doors rumbled all the way open. "In we go. The signal is nineteen metres ahead through another old airlock. This one has a seal, we might be able to get through it, but we're going to be activating more systems."
"Okay, are we wandering too far from our mission mandate? I just got through a command trial without any trip-ups and good marks, I don't want to blow my officer training record two days away from the end of suit week."
"Our orders are to investigate, and the regulations say we must respond to distress beacons once we've determined that the risk is acceptable. Besides, Rayman put me in charge."
"Oh, so you're taking accountability. I can live with that," Pixie chuckled. "Lead the way."
The hallway was broad with heavy deck plating. It was definitely made to take the weight of large pieces of equipment. "They buried most of the colony ship. I've heard of that, but never seen it. The security here must have been intense." They passed an open panel in the wall where an empty rifle rack provided space for twenty-four guns. It was empty.
"It's so clean in here, like it was just polished yesterday," Pixie said.
A shiver ran down Carnie's spine.
"Giving you the willies?" Pixie snickered.
"You're not getting the feeling we're walking through a haunted house? Passive scanners are picking up so many old
weapon strikes just outside of this section that it looks like a few hundred people were killed trying to defend this place. Could have been thousands."
"Dead is dead," Pixie replied. "No phantom is going to jump out at us…"
"Carnie, Pixie," Oz said as his transmission broke through their comms. "We're watching your progress from the Triton. You're close to a major security checkpoint, that's where that signal you picked up is coming from."
"Do you want us to hold here?" Carnie asked.
"No, you're experienced enough to handle whatever's in there, and backup won't get to you for another twenty-one minutes. I'm giving you the go-ahead to investigate. As soon as you determine the source of the signal, you can turn near-field active scanners on if you feel it's safe. We'll be watching from here."
"Yes, Sir," Carnie said, at the same time reassured by the connection to Triton Mission Command, and intimidated by the thought that the Commodore and other members of his staff were watching. "Moving on to the airlock. I’m going to have to power it up to preserve the atmosphere in there." The schematic for the wiring came up on his HUD and he rewired then powered the doors up in less than a minute.
The airlock lit up, lights and white interior looking brand new except for the scuff marks from boots on the floor. It was impossible to tell how old they were at a glance, but they looked like they were made earlier that day. "I know they say vacuum stops things from aging, but it looks like whoever was here just left."
Carnie remembered what corpses looked like after several months on Iora and pushed the memory aside. "I'll take preserved stiffs in vacuum over planet side rot any day."
"You've really seen some crazy stuff, haven't you? I need stories. We're going to the Pilot's Den the minute we're off duty, and I'm going to buy you drinks until you talk."
"I’ll take you up on that, I guess I've got a few stories I can share," Carnie replied as the airlock cycled, balancing the air pressure with the air inside the room. They stepped inside as soon as the inner doors parted, both looking around with care. "It's a control room, schematics say it's one of a couple secondary port management areas," he said as he looked around at the security, technical and traffic monitoring stations. There was another empty weapons' rack with two corpses beside it. "Looks like the fighting got here too." They had rotted down to bones and rags.
"The blip is behind that console," Pixie said, leading the way with her rifle drawn.
Carnie went around the other way and they were surprised to find a human man. His skin was greying, but the hair was perfect. A light in his right eye blinked red as he stared at the wall blankly. There were three holes burnt through the chest of his Dammel Company jumpsuit. "An android," Carnie said as he knelt down and performed a scan on it. "His main power unit was hit, that's why he's offline."
"Wait, what was that?" Commodore McPatrick asked. "Carnie, can you scan his head again?"
"Yup, oh, wow, is that synthetic brain tissue?" Carnie asked as he saw a long strip of grey matter turn up on his scan results. It had dozens of fine wires attached to it, and was held in an armoured compartment in the upper half of the machine's skull.
"We're checking," Oz said.
"This guy's some kind of cyborg?" Pixie asked as she looked around the room.
Commodore McPatrick spoke to them both over their communicators. "Our experts say no, that brain matter is completely synthetic, and can be deactivated for long periods of time, at least that's the theory they're spinning up here. It looks like he's been well preserved, but we've never seen this tech before. At best, he may be able to tell us what happened here. Hold there, watch over our witness until your support arrives."
"Aye, Sir," they both replied. When the channel was closed, Carnie looked to Pixie. "How does it feel to have a story of your own?"
"Pretty good. If there's a right way to get through your first ground mission, this must be it. I've been able to watch an expert door-cracker who knows his regulations, we found something cool that got the attention of Command, and we haven't had to fire a shot."
"You see, there's another lesson for you; never talk about what hasn't happened before the mission's over."
"Like not getting shot at? Why is everyone so superstitious? I've been running into that kinda thing since I joined up."
"Stick around, you'll find there's something to superstitions while you’re on a mission," Carnie said. "Just… no more jinxy comments until we're done okay?"
"Oh, like…"
"I'm not going to give you an example."
"Jinxy comments like what? Seriously," Pixie pressed playfully.
"You're baiting me," Carnie said, sitting in one of the old rolling chairs.
"So, if I said something like; 'This place has held up for centuries, it'll stay together a while longer.' That would be jinxy?"
Carnie was starting to nod as he leaned back in the chair. The back snapped, dumping him onto the deck. "Yeah," he replied as Pixie screeched with laughter. "Just like that."
Twenty-Five
Energized
* * *
A Clever Class Corvette started circling the Moon Base, it was the Rhino, one of the last ones to be assigned to the Triton. Their mission clock merged with the one on Carnie's Heads' Up Display, and he was surprised at the change. Not as surprised as Pixie, though. "What? They've delayed landing for another twenty-five minutes? What are we supposed to do until they get here?"
"Our orders haven't changed, we're staying put," Carnie said, kneeling down to get a better look at the android they discovered. "But we can scan a few things while we're here." He started performing a more detailed, active scan on the android's head, and was amazed at seeing technology that he didn't recognize at all. There were processor clusters, circuits, but he wasn't sure what he was seeing past that.
"Do you know much about androids?" Pixie asked, leaning against one of the darkened consoles as she watched.
"My best friend is an android. When he was damaged I had no idea how to help him out. Well, not past some power system repairs and joint work, but that's all common mechanical stuff. When the damage got complicated, when it extended to software, I had no idea what I was doing, so I lugged him around with me until I got rescued."
"You're talking about Theodore, he's all over your profile," said Pixie.
"Yeah, so I learn about fixing androids whenever I have time, mostly through videos and holograms. I haven't done any simulated repair shop stuff yet, though, I don't feel ready to work on one, even in virtual reality."
"Why not? They're not real androids," Pixie said.
"Couldn't tell you," Carnie shrugged. "I just don’t feel ready." He gave up on trying to figure out how the android's hybrid computer brain worked and scanned downward. "This guy's got more nerve receptors and micro sensors than I've ever seen in anything. They're all attached to a net in the outer layers of his skin."
"Is that why he's grey?"
Carnie took a closer look at the android's face and moved an earlobe aside. The skin underneath was a normal human tone. "It's just old. I guess the fake skin they used didn't age well. He's been here a long time, the starlight from the portholes must have worn the pigment down or something." He moved on to scan the android's core, watching the internal view appear on a window inside his HUD. "I found his power management system, it looks like really old tech. I miss Theo, he'd know exactly what I'm looking at, and he'd probably love the stranger systems in this guy's head. Synthetic grey matter's a pretty hard kind of tech to master, it's pretty remarkable…"
The android's eyes focused on Carnie. "Remarkable, a good word to wake up to," he said in a voice that sounded natural for a human, not like it was coming out of a system that was at least two centuries old. It didn't have the official sounding enunciation that he'd heard from synthetics. "You do speak Third Era English, no?"
"Fourth, but there isn't much of a…" the android's eyes lost focus again, all animation ceasing.
"Well, that was a short 'hell
o,'" Pixie said.
Then Carnie noticed that his scanner was pointed away from the uppermost hole in the android's chest. "I think it was absorbing the energy my scanner was putting out. Maybe we can bring him back."
"If I were a stickler, I'd remind you that this is way outside our mission parameters, but I want to see what this guy has to say."
"One sec. If this works, then there's something in his power systems that's more advanced than I thought, something that can turn the little bit of energy my scanner gives off into enough to run his brain, animate his…" Carnie smiled as the android came back on line.
"How long was I out for that time?" the android asked.
"Just now? A few seconds, I didn't realize that my scanner was keeping you powered up."
"Your scanner? That's a bad sign, it means that last blast left my energy recycling unit unshielded. Is there a big hole there? I can't look."
"Sorry to say, man, but you've got three big holes on this side," Carnie said.
"Okay, good, the soldiers who got me didn't take any cheap shots after they caught up with me here. So, how long was I out before you found me? You said something about the Fourth Era?"
"The Common Calendar, the one that links back to earth has us at five weeks short of nine hundred ninety-nine," Carnie replied, watching the expression on the android's face fall to despair.
"Two hundred and five years since I was last active," he said quietly. "Time has no mercy."
"I'm sorry," Carnie said.
"It's all right, I should have expected something like this would happen, not that I had time to consider my fate when I was getting shot," he shook most of his melancholy off as he continued. "Do you have some kind of power cell on you? If it has an active mode, you can put it through that hole and I can draw power from it wirelessly. Save some wear and tear on that scanner."
"Sure," Carnie said, pulling a small power cell from his thigh pouch and getting ready to slip it into the wound. Pixie gave him an alarmed look from behind the android, and he thought better of giving it over right away. "I have a couple questions first."
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 13 Page 20
