by Dave Bara
“Wow,” said Renwick, “that was close.” Kish nodded inside his helmet.
“You’re not kidding,” he said.
“We’re here,” called Renwick into his com. Again there was no response. He turned to look back at the shuttle. It was a far distant dot in space. Suddenly an object began moving from the shuttle towards them.
“What the hell is that?” said Kish.
“It’s the android,” said Renwick with certainty. As they watched the object got continuously closer, making the trek that had taken them three-quarters of an hour in mere minutes. They watched as the Yan android approached and made contact with the hull of the station, then started walking along the skin at an inverted angle towards the gash in the station’s side. The shuttle began moving in a few seconds later.
“They used her to get an accurate measure of the distance,” said Kish. “I’d bet on it.” Renwick just nodded as he tracked the android, watching her as she strode commandingly up and over broken shards of metal, disappearing inside the station.
“I guess that’s our cue,” said Renwick.
“Cue?” said Kish.
“Yeah,” replied Renwick. “Time to go inside.”
22. inside the station
Renwick watched from inside the station as the shuttle closed to within a few dozen meters of the opening in the station. Amanda positioned the shuttle to station-keeping and after a few minutes she and Zueros emerged from the airlock. Amanda crossed first, without an EVA suit, bringing a tether and a large pack, then came Zueros, visibly armed with an oversized coil pistol and invisibly armed with god-knew what else. Amanda, who’s skin had taken on the same undead tone as Yan’s in the vacuum, offered oxygen canisters and power packs to replenish Renwick and Kish’s EVA suits. With the new supplies they had about two full hours of dive time again. Renwick looked at his watch; the Soloth fleet was only about three hours out now. Whatever they were going to do, it had to happen fast.
Once they were all inside the station, the room was illuminated by a light carried by the Yan android. The ceilings were a good two stories high, and that was true on all the decks Renwick had passed during his climb. He also was able to determine from the gash in the station’s side that the infrastructure wasn’t made of metal. It more closely resembled some kind of dense ceramic.
The room itself was laid out with pads and pallets that looked like they were grown out of the wall. What could have once been workstations were now melted piles of the ceramic material. The walls were covered with blast scars and burn holes. Something big had happened in here.
The far end of the room, which would have been the equivalent of a large warehouse on any human scale, showed a huge portal that undoubtedly led further into the station itself. Renwick activated his suit light and Kish followed suit. Zueros chose to stay un-illuminated.
“You and Mr. Kish will proceed into the station,” ordered Zueros. Renwick saw no real option but to comply, but he pressed Zueros for information first.
“What are we expecting, Zueros? Androids? Aliens? Preservers?” he said. Zueros responded quickly.
“That is not your concern,” he said, raising the pistol as if he knew how to use it.
“Oh, but it is. If we die by your hand or by the hand of some unseen force beyond that door, we are still dead. And that certainty gives us a small amount of bargaining power,” said Renwick. Zueros laughed.
“I see now why your government chose you for this mission,” Zueros said after he had finished chuckling. “You have nothing to bargain with, Senator.”
“At least give us a weapon to defend ourselves,” bargained Renwick. Zueros nodded to Amanda. She broke out two of the old Mark IV coil rifles from the large metal pack, unfolded them, and handed them to the two men, along with a single power pack each. She also pulled another of the formidable-looking pistols like the one Zueros had from the pack and trained it on them.
“And so you are armed, gentlemen,” said Zueros. “Your rifles will fire one round every three seconds. After thirty rounds you will have to replace the power packs. Amanda has those. Our weapons, in case you were wondering, fire thirty rounds per second. Any attempt to attack us will end up in the two of you being cut into pieces. Now, is the situation clear?”
“Clear,” said Renwick, hefting his weightless rifle. “Except for my first question. Who or what are we expecting to fight?” To his surprise Zueros had a ready answer.
“Let’s just say that I want to be sure that those that control this station, if there are any left, are of the same school of thought as I am,” he said.
“School of thought?” asked Renwick, still probing. Zueros responded by waving his coil pistol at them.
“Get on with it,” he ordered. Renwick was resigned to not getting any more answers, at least for the moment, so he turned to Kish, powered his rifle, and started for the portal while Zueros and the two pasty-looking androids stayed put. The walk was difficult in zero-g, with the gravity boots almost more of a hindrance than they were a help.
They got to the portal, which was impossibly tall. Except for the rim around the portal there was no indication that it had any functional controls at all.
“How do we get it open?” said Renwick to Kish.
“You got me,” replied the engineer. Then he walked up and pushed against the portal, his hand sinking part way into the ceramic. To their surprise, the portal started to open from the center, sliding away into the walls.
“Power’s still on,” said Renwick.
“Must have been activated by my touch, radiant heat or the power from my EVA suit,” said Kish. They both stepped back and raised their rifles as the portal opened completely to reveal a dark and empty corridor. There was no hiss of escaping atmosphere nor a hint of internal light. The corridor was as dead and empty as the warehouse room was. Renwick looked back to the three figures waiting for them.
“We’re proceeding,” he said into his com. Then he said “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” to Kish.
“Me too,” said the engineer. Then they stepped together into the darkness, rifles at the ready.
THE WALLS OF THE CORRIDOR were covered in a blue-green coating, similar to the ceramic material, but crystallized by long exposure to deep cold. Large areas of the walls and ceiling were scarred with blast burns. They started down the corridor slowly. There were portals to other rooms as they passed, but neither man was inclined to open them and Zueros didn’t order it. Renwick noted that the alien and his androids had closed the distance between them considerably.
“Do you want us to investigate any of these rooms?” asked Renwick of Zueros. Kish gave him a quick, hard look for even asking.
“Negative,” came the reply from Zueros.
“Thank god for that,” said Kish.
Renwick let out a sigh of frustration. “It would help if I knew what we were looking for,” he said to Zueros as they continued their reconnoiter down the corridor. Zueros, as was his wont, said nothing for a moment, as if he were calculating the value of responding.
“There should be, eventually, some sort of transport shaft,” he said. “That’s what we’re looking for.” The two humans continued clunking along down the corridor in their gravity boots, coil rifles charged and poised.
The corridor seemed to stretch on forever, the darkness only illuminating about ten meters in front of them at a time. Renwick slowed to examine a hole burned through a wall, large enough for a man to enter with ease. He stuck his head inside a darkened room and turned on his light as Kish ambled on.
There were no features in the room except for the same type of pallets and pads, and the melted consoles. “Looks to me like someone used a self-destruct on these consoles,” he said rhetorically. “All of them are melted in the same pattern.”
“Not your concern,” said Zueros, who had stopped behind Renwick. “Now get moving.” Renwick looked back at the trailing group, Zueros in his EVA suit and the two featureless, dead looking androids walking
in the dark. The sight gave him a shiver. He recovered and turned back to Kish.
The engineer was frozen in place, only half illuminated, standing right at the edge of Renwick’s suit light range. Renwick started moving. “Kish? What is it, man?” he called as he came rushing up in the gravity boots. When he got to the engineer’s side he looked to where Kish was focused and trained his light in the same direction.
There was massive torso and head, smashed and partially melted, blocking the path in front of them. It was the same pale green color as the surrounding walls. It looked for all the world like a giant automaton robot, almost identical to Thorne from the Kali.
“What do we do now?” asked Kish. Renwick walked up to the debris. It took up most of the corridor width. He flashed his suit light through some gaps in the wreckage. There were more of them down the corridor.
“Looks like we found the elephant’s graveyard,” said Renwick. He turned back to Zueros. “What happened here?”
“None of your business, Senator. Now back away,” said Zueros. He and Kish did as instructed. Amanda walked up to the giant and set a charge of some kind on it, then came back to the group. She raised her hand and sent an electronic pulse wave, visible as a burst of light, to the giant. It began to degrade and disintegrate into a pile of melted debris, like the consoles in the empty rooms. Obviously similar technology was being used. Amanda repeated the exercise five more times before they fully broke through the debris field. Renwick had counted a dozen of the fallen giants. Whatever had happened on this station, it wasn’t pretty.
They were on their way again with ninety minutes of environment left, and precious few more than that before The Soloth arrived. A few minutes later they found what appeared to be the transport shaft.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” said Renwick to Zueros. The alien came up and looked in. The shaft was empty, and it went up to heaven and down to eternity.
“Yes. We’ll have to disengage our gravity systems and propel ourselves up,” said Zueros. He gave an order to Amanda in a language Renwick didn’t understand and she came over and disarmed them, handing their rifles to the Yan android. “Amanda will lead us from here,” he said. Amanda entered the shaft, disengaging her gravity field and starting propelling herself up the long shaft, her means of motion was undetectable. Zueros went next, using the cone jets of his EVA suit, followed by the Yan android.
“You may come or not, Mr. Renwick,” said Zueros as he climbed, “to see the wonders of the universe.”
Renwick looked to Kish, who nodded inside his suit. The two men disengaged their gravity fields and stepped into the shaft, firing their jets and accelerating upward, into the unknown.
THE DECK THEY EMERGED on was as dark and dead as any of the others, with one exception; in the middle of the room was a huge domed chamber, with a rainbow of pulsating lights emanating through opaque glass windows. The lights vibrated with a rhythm and pattern that suggested conscious function, if not even possibly life, to Renwick. Zueros was already on the deck, with the two androids in attendance. They watched, weapons drawn, as Renwick and Kish floated down and re-engaged their gravity fields as they gently touched the deck.
“A tabernacle, gentlemen,” said Zueros, turning from them to look at the chamber. “A room in which to lose one’s soul, or find eternal bliss.”
Renwick contemplated the chamber. It looked to be a hundred meters high and three times that in width, sitting in the middle of a deck with ten times that volume in any direction. There were no other features on the entire deck, it was as empty as space, and as cold. But Renwick could practically feel the warmth of the energy radiating from behind the walls of the dome. There was a rounded portal entrance directly ahead. Zueros started to make the crossing towards it.
“Do we follow?” asked Kish. Renwick swallowed hard.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” he said. “This place is obviously the hub of this station. Whatever answers there are, they’re all inside that dome.” He started to follow Zueros and the androids. Kish came with him, a step behind.
Renwick approached the portal, trailing only Zueros. There was a multi-colored key to the right of the portal opening. He watched as Zueros gave Amanda a hand signal and she approached the portal key. The female android extended her hand and a series of color pulses emanated from her fingers, the light touching the portal key in a specific sequence. The key lit up in reply each time. After a few minutes of this dance of light the key shut off. Amanda stepped back. The portal door was opening.
It opened from the center, like a camera aperture, peeling away until the portal was completely open. Inside was a room of opaque frosted glass, with another aperture portal on the other side. Otherwise the room was featureless.
“Air lock?” said Renwick to Kish.
“Likely,” said the engineer. The crew of five explorers, two humans, two androids, and one alien, stepped through the portal. Behind them the aperture swiftly closed. The next few seconds were a whirlwind of activity; lights pulsing from above, the sound of air venting into the room, a sensation of a gravity field activating. Renwick disengaged his EVA suit gravity in anticipation, but of what he wasn’t sure. Seconds later the second inner aperture opened.
Into Paradise.
Renwick stood with his mouth open in awe. The room inside was illuminated from above by a yellow glow, similar to that of a standard g-type star at dusk. All manner of foliage filled the chamber, from palm fronds to massive primordial ferns and tall trees reaching to the sky. And there was a sky, what for all the worlds looked like miles up. Water flowed down a rock outcropping from a small but steady stream, and Renwick could see his breath building up fog on the inside of his EVA helmet. He turned to Zueros, who had already removed his helmet. The two female androids were shedding their pale blue appearance for the warm pink of human-looking skin again. Renwick peeled off his EVA helmet. The air was warm and thick with humidity, like being on the surface of a warm-climed planet. He took in a deep breath, savoring the moist air. It felt like the tropics of his home world, Ceta, a feeling that was most welcome after months in space.
“What is this place?” said Renwick.
“As I said, Mr. Renwick, the wonders of the universe,” said Zueros.
“This is a projection,” said Kish, who had also removed his helmet. “At least the sky is. It’s an artificial environment designed to provide the users of this station with a reasonable representation of their home world. A sanctuary, I would guess. I’d love to study it.”
“Let’s not get distracted,” said Renwick as he watched Zueros and the androids head deeper into the dome. “C’mon.”
It was a short walk to the inner chamber, situated in the middle of the domed room. They stepped over trails bounded with natural grasses, rocks and running streams and trees as they went. Renwick had no doubt that they were heading to the control room of the station, and that was where Zueros intended to carry out his plan, and where Renwick, if he could, had to stop him.
When they arrived the control room was sealed. It was much smaller than Renwick expected, barely a small hut compared to the rest of the scale of the dome and the station. Amanda was circling it and appeared to be scanning, taking measurements and looking for something. Finally she approached a portal on the front of the control room and used the same light sequence she had used to get through the aperture lock, this time with no result The room appeared dead. Zueros gave her commands in his sharp staccato language and she opened her pack one more time and placed an ominous looking device on the key lock.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” said Renwick to Kish. “Why do they have to bust into their own control room?”
“Because someone doesn’t want them coming in?” said Kish. Renwick nodded.
“I agree, but who?” he said.
The two men backed away to a safe distance and took cover behind a rock formation, dropping their EVA helmets to the ground. Zueros and the androids were all now brandish
ing their impressive looking weapons as they took cover themselves. Renwick looked for the pack Amanda was carrying. She had laid it down near her feet. Inside the pack were their confiscated rifles and other munitions. He watched as Zueros covered his face.
“Down!” he said to Kish. The two men went to ground as the room rattled with the whump of a compression explosion. Renwick was completely disoriented as he found himself on his back several feet from his last location. “What the hell?” he said, then he rolled over and scrambled for the rock cover again.
He looked up to see the dome ablaze with the sound and fury of coil rifle fire. He watched as Amanda and the Yan android advanced relentlessly on the breeched door of the control room, both of them firing full bore with their advanced coil weapons. Fire was being returned from the control room by what looked like automaton robots, similar to Thorne. Around them the foliage was lighting up with fire, seared by the energy bursts of the automaton’s return fire. Zueros was staying undercover, only firing to provide the minimal cover necessary to keep his servants from being taken out.
“We’ve got to get to those rifles,” said Kish, coming up next to Renwick. “We’re helpless without them.”
“They’re still too close to Zueros, he’ll burn down either one of us if we try to get to them now,” Renwick replied.
“We need a distraction. I’ll go-“
“No,” said Renwick, grabbing Kish by the arm. “I’ll go. You get those rifles.” Kish nodded. Renwick pulled the finger jump drive from his EVA suit pocket. “We’ve got to get this into Yan if we’re going to have any chance of shutting the station down.” He stuck the drive back inside his suit and counted down on his fingers from three.
