Grateful for the Captain’s leadership, Rhonda nodded. When it came to handling this kind of situation, she trusted him. “We can go around them this way." She showed him her compad.
The Captain nodded. “Lead the way.”
Rhonda started at a stealthy run. She felt tempted to set her phaser on explode, so it would act like a grenade and send a burst to blow up a whole group of prisoners at once. But that wouldn’t be wise. Such a blast depleted the weapon’s chamber, and it took several minutes to recharge afterwards, minutes during which she would have no long-range weapon.
As she circled around the populated areas towards the next set of stairs, Rhonda realized the scope of their situation. She turned to her Captain as she kept jogging. “Do you intend to lock us down here with all these prisoners on the loose?" She cringed inside at the insane thought.
“It could be worse." The Captain grimaced but didn’t miss one step. “If all the cells on this floor are open, there is a possibility that all the cells on all the levels below us are open as well.”
“You mean we could have thirty thousand of the most dangerous convicts at large? And you still want to lock us down with them? Just the two of us?" This mission sounded more and more reckless, even suicidal, but Rhonda didn’t say it.
The Captain showed no sign of changing his mind as he jogged alongside. “We now have two missions. Repair the cooling system before the nuclear reactor overheats, and keep the prisoners under control, no matter what. It’s our job. That’s why we get paid the big money."
Of course, and Captain Cole Riggeur always did his job with the utmost dedication.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fast. They won’t even know we are here." The Captain offered a strained smile. “But if the prisoners on the loose ever reach the upper levels, they would execute all the guards and probably hundreds of prisoners as well.”
The thought hit Rhonda like a revelation. She could die here today. She didn’t want to.
Chapter Three
Level Sixteen - Yellow Zone
Silencing the warnings going off in his head, Cole braced himself to tighten the wheel of the thick titanium door then punched in his security override to disable it. The job took longer than he’d hoped. He leaned on the yellow durancrete wall briefly. Was it hot, or did the stress make him sweat? He took a sip from his canteen and offered it to Rhonda who shook her head in refusal.
“Any prisoners in the vicinity?” he whispered. Cole could check his own compad, but Rhonda needed the practice. Although she’d never navigated the complex by herself before, she seemed to be learning fast. He felt proud of her.
Rhonda watched her compad. “All clear for now.”
Cole tried his implant for the fifth time. “Control room, come in. Whoever can hear me, please respond." No answer. He turned to Rhonda. “Sorry to get you in this mess, kiddo, but we can’t afford a nuclear meltdown or mayhem.”
Rhonda shot him an angry glance. “Why do we have to lock all the doors on all the floors? Why don’t we just gas the lower levels, get down as fast as possible then after we fix the reactor’s cooling system get back up and lock down each level on our way up?" She charted a course on her compad and started running.
“I wish we could, believe me." Cole almost had to jog to keep up with her. “But the wall panels aren’t responding and I don’t have a link to the control room to gas them."
“Then why not lock down only Level Sixteen. Even if they are loose in the deeper levels, which is a big if, as long as they can’t make it above Sixteen, the Garrison should be safe enough.”
Cole hated to explain himself, but he knew Rhonda would never give up. “There is no such thing as safe enough. In this business, what you don’t know can and will kill you.”
Rhonda stilled looked peeved but didn’t argue.
“From here on, we need to inspect each floor as we go. The quakes could have opened breaches in the walls, exposed panels where prisoners could rewire the security circuits.”
“Really?" She frowned but didn’t slow down. “They have the knowledge to do that?”
“Some of them might. The worst criminals are often very smart. We have to assume the worst. What if some broken walls bared gaping service conduits? What if the prisoners climbed the pillars to reach the ceiling pipes?”
Rhonda glanced up at the ceiling crisscrossed with wide air ducts and pipes of all calibers. “It would give them an opportunity to crawl up from inside, all the way to the surface?”
“And bypass all the security locks. How safe would the Garrison be then?" Cole wondered how safe the other guards were now but didn’t share that thought.
Rhonda looked unsure but kept walking while watching her compad to avoid loose prisoners. She demonstrated an uncanny ability to navigate around them.
Wishing for more options, Cole realized he had no choice. “From here on, we do everything by the rules. Only when the cooling system is restored and the lower floors are secure, do we find our way back up, understood?”
“Yes, Captain." Rhonda’s voice shook. “Then what?" She stopped in front of another door.
Why did Rhonda have to ask so many questions? Going through the routine, Cole pressed his hand on the scanner then punched in his code. “Once everything is secure, we’ll send a call off planet and sit tight until a special team arrives to help us return the prisoners to their cells.”
“What if we don’t make it back up?" Rhonda’s voice quivered, but her face remained calm. She looked away and resumed her fast walk toward the next exit door.
Cole felt terrible as he followed her and cleared his voice. On such a dangerous mission, he owed her the truth. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, but that’s a risk we must take. Sorry about that, kiddo. I don’t like playing hero either, but it seems logical to sacrifice two people and save as many as we can, rather than let everybody die, including us. We can’t afford to take any chances. The Garrison relies on us.”
She looked at him sideways and didn’t challenge him. But as he feared, Rhonda couldn’t keep silent very long. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the crew earlier, Captain, but I think I figured out why the Duran personnel left.”
“By all means, Sherlock, tell me." Cole had a feeling she would tell him whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“When I worked in the lab, I warned them about mining the Styx crystals at such a reckless rate." Despite their brisk walk along the yellow-striped corridors, Rhonda didn’t sound winded.
“What do you mean?" Cole smiled inwardly. Of course, Rhonda would tell Duran how to conduct their business.
“You see, they leave all these abandoned mining shafts in the mantel of the planet and don’t fill them back up. There are deep underground tunnels that go for hundreds of kilometers through rock and ice, sometimes dangerously close to natural trenches and rifts between tectonic plates.”
“And?" Cole kept walking, amazed by Rhonda’s staying power.
Suddenly she stopped and motioned for him to stay behind. “There is someone in that corridor,” she whispered.
“Dead or alive?”
“Can’t tell. It’s not moving.”
“How far?”
“Twenty meters.”
Cole dropped to the floor and inched his head around the corner to take a peek. A prisoner lay on the floor. “He’s down. Still, be careful, he could be alive and give us away.”
Carefully, they entered the connecting corridor and approached the inmate who looked dead. Rhonda stopped and knelt to take his pulse.
“What are you doing?" Cole couldn’t believe she would stop for a convict.
“If he’s alive... It’s my job, too.”
Red dots on Cole’s compad converged toward the two guards. “We don’t have time for that,” he whispered. “Get moving, we have company.”
As if with regret, Rhonda rose and focused on her compad. So did Cole as they left the body behind. With all those inmates at large, two pairs of eyes offered b
etter safety.
Once out of earshot from the many red dots on the compad, Cole asked, “What were you saying about Duran’s mining techniques?”
Rhonda looked at him with surprise on her face. “Oh? Yes, this is a living planet, not a dead moon. It has a hot core and magma below the crust.”
“Everybody knows that." Cole wondered where she was going with her train of thoughts.
“And the tremors have become more frequent lately, haven’t they?”
“Yes, but they usually happen in cycles." He’d show her he remembered a thing or two from his days at Upsilon Three’s renown university. “This is probably a stronger cycle.”
“I don’t think so." Rhonda bit her lips as she walked. “I suspect all these voids in the mantel have destabilized the tectonic plates. If I’m right, the domino effect will bring more frequent and more violent tremors on the entire planet, and the rate will quicken. It’s already accelerating.”
Boy, she had a flair for the dramatic. “That’s pure conjecture, Rhonda. We don’t know that for sure. You have a fertile imagination.”
“Oh, I know what I know all right. I may not be a professional guard, but I am a scientist." She turned into a corridor, eyes on her compad. “Next, new volcanoes will emerge, the ice will melt, forming lakes and oceans, magma will rise to the surface, and things will only get worse from there.”
“I doubt it very much. You sound more and more like a pessimist." Cole hated doomsday prophets, and this trait in Rhonda bothered him. “Give Duran some credit. They’ve been mining this planet for fifty years and they know their stuff.”
Rhonda shrugged. “There were no tremors before they started mining, and the conditions only worsened with time. Duran got greedy. They couldn’t dig out their precious Styx fast enough.”
Cole checked his own pad to make sure Rhonda followed the right path, avoiding any red dots. She did great. “What makes you think you’re right?"
“They left, didn’t they? And fast." She glanced at him sideways as they walked. “That can only mean there is little time. They expect the planet to go critical soon.”
“Nonsense." Cole had never heard such absurdity. “If there was danger, they wouldn’t abandon us here.”
Rhonda scoffed. “Wouldn’t they? They probably didn’t tell you about it, because they knew you would insist upon evacuating the guards, along with some of the low-security prisoners, and there was no time and not enough room on their transport. So they decided to leave us here to die with our charges. Shrewd but efficient.”
“I refuse to believe that." Cole feared the stress had turned Rhonda bitter, if not raving mad. “Duran takes care of its own. Always has.”
“Ha!" She accelerated her pace. “Believe what you want. But I’m telling you, if we don’t find a way off this planet soon, it won’t matter whether the reactor melts down or not, or whether the prisoners are secured or not. We’ll all die.”
Cole wished she would shut up. She painted a sinister picture he hoped, for all their sakes, would not come true.
Rhonda stopped suddenly into a small recess as if to catch her breath.
Surprised, Cole stopped as well, welcoming the respite.
She turned and planted herself in front of him. “Captain, we have to warn the Garrison, let them know they must find a way off the planet and fast.”
Stunned by the intensity in her tone and the fire in her deep brown eyes, Cole feared the stress must have gone to her head. “Get a hold of yourself, Rhonda." He felt hot and sweaty under the uniform and opened his collar. “The temperature controls must be fried.”
A buzz in his implanted chip signaled an incoming communication. Thrower’s voice sounded in his inner ear. “Can you hear me down there?”
Cole motioned for Rhonda to listen on his frequency. She turned on her own comchip and returned her attention to her compad.
Relieved by this welcome communication, Cole smiled. “I see you fixed the com, Thrower. Good job! It’s good to be connected again.”
“Everything okay, Captain?”
“Not exactly." Cole sobered. “It’s worse than anything we expected. All the prisoners are loose on Level Sixteen, and we have bodies, lots of them.”
Thrower whistled through the implant. “Gee whizz! How is Rhonda holding up?”
Rhonda shot Cole a furious glance but didn’t say a word. Cole noticed that she behaved professionally by keeping watch on her compad for unwanted visitors.
Cole suppressed a smile. “Rhonda’s doing just great, but we need reinforcements. I have reasons to believe more inmates are loose on the lower levels, and we may have problems keeping them at bay while we program the repairs. What about sending us one of the teams from the surface? What did they find out up there, anyway?”
“Doesn’t look good, Captain. We found out why the Duran employees left. It’s really bad news here, too." Thrower cleared his throat but said no more.
Cole hated the ominous silence. “The suspense is killing me. The hell with it, Thrower, spit it out!”
The implant gave out static, then Thrower’s voice. “The off-scale seismic activity is only the beginning. All the plates are moving now. We expect the planet to destabilize.”
Cole avoided looking at Rhonda. He dreaded the triumphant told-you-so expression on her face. “How much time do we have?”
“Ten days, twelve at the most, before it gets critical.”
“How critical?”
“Looks like the planet won’t make it, Captain. According to the computer projections, it will eventually blow up.”
Cole tried to assimilate the information, reviewing in his mind all the ramifications and consequences, but it seemed too much to process.
As Cole remained silent, Thrower said hesitantly, “There’s worse, Captain. They’ve collapsed the communication tower.”
“You mean the quakes did?”
“No, Captain." Thrower hesitated. “It was deliberate. Someone sabotaged the emitter. I can’t send any message off world.”
“Damn!" Cole felt utterly betrayed. He’d worked for Duran over twelve years and believed they appreciated his dedication. Didn’t they have at least a shred of integrity toward their key personnel? Whatever happened to trust and loyalty? The corporate bastards knew the planet would blow and they intended for the Garrison to perish! No one would ever know. It would look like an accident.
“Looks like we are stuck here without possibility of rescue." Thrower sounded as mad as Cole felt.
But Cole had to control himself and think about his crew. “A transport would take weeks to get here anyway. We just have to find our own way off this rock.”
“How do we do that?" A hint of hope surfaced in Thrower’s tone.
“Don’t worry, Thrower, we’ll make it." Cole glanced at Rhonda who drank from her canteen. She listened stoically, showing no sign of falling apart. She didn’t collapse into sobs. He’d underestimated her courage. To Thrower he said, “Send the team closest to the surface looking for a ship, anything that can fly.”
“Amani and Nya are on the surface now,” Thrower said. “I’ll send them on a search. But given the circumstances, I doubt they left any ship left that’s space worthy.”
“We don’t need a real ship. There might be a few reconnaissance flyers and small cargo shuttles that can jump us into high orbit and hopefully a little farther. Tell our guys to search the maintenance bay and the old abandoned hangars. See if they can come up with something, anything.”
Rhonda recapped her canteen. “Whatever they find won’t take us to the nearest planet, Captain.”
“True." Cole smiled to reassure her. “But from space, we can send an SOS to other planets and wait to get rescued."
“Like an escape pod?” Thrower exclaimed through the internal chip.
“That’s the idea." Cole rejoiced at the effect of his words on Thrower’s morale and hoped it would heighten the mood of the other guards as well. “We’ll need food and water for at least
three or four weeks.”
Relief and excitement now tinted Thrower’s voice through the microchip. “Okay, Captain. I think we can do that. And I’m sending Javel and Xerna in your direction.”
“Wait. We are on lockdown." Cole punched a sequence on his compad. “I’m disabling all the doors below Level Fifteen. Let me send you the new code." He pushed the send button. “Got it?”
A violent quake rumbled and shook the corridor. Ceiling pipes and conduits broke loose and clattered on the duranium bars topping the cells. Electric sparks flared as exposed wires swayed, hanging from broken tubes. Cole side-stepped to avoid a shower of dirty water that splashed on the yellow floor.
He glanced in Rhonda’s direction. She had retreated into the relative safety of an empty cell and crouched, holding on to the bolted bunk bed. She’d even managed to stay dry.
Cole joined her inside the cell and crouched at her side to weather the aftershock. He attempted to re-establish the communication. “Thrower? Can you hear me?" He only heard static. “Shit!" He tapped his comimplant but it had shut down. “I hope Thrower received the code."
A nervous twitch danced around Rhonda’s brown eyes. “Captain, do you really think we stand a chance to make it off this planet alive?”
“Of course, I do." Cole didn’t share his doubts about his desperate plan. He considered Rhonda with renewed respect. She had seen the cataclysm coming and went on their dangerous mission anyway. It took determination.
“But even if they find a bucket of bolts that can fly, who will pilot it?" Rhonda showed a surprising ability to foresee problems. She had already analyzed the options and dealt with her fears rationally.
“One problem at a time, Rhonda." Cole didn’t remember any guard listing piloting skills on their job application. “I’m sure we can find a low-security prisoner on Level Seven who has a pilot license."
Cole rose and walked out of the cell. The search for a ship gave the crew new hope and something to do. Cole had to keep their morale high. One way or another, he would try his very best to give them a chance to survive. And right now, the best he could do was make sure his crew didn’t get killed by a nuclear meltdown, or by escaped convicts, before finding a way to leave this disintegrating planet.
Alien Lockdown Page 4
