A door in the centre of the balcony slides open at my approach. I stride through it. Chatter below swells almost to a riot, then, as if dipped in liquid, it vanishes completely when the door swishes shut behind me.
A corridor with an exceptionally high, arched ceiling reinforced by thick metal ribs, curves away to the left but continues straight on to the right. The brown metallic walls are bare but badly scratched up to about twelve feet. It’s cold in here. A strong smell of fireworks stings my nostrils. I wonder where the right hand passage leads, if not around the central Hub of the facility.
A part of me knows that, no matter what else happens, I’m going to get in serious trouble for this little stunt. So why not push it as far as I can, perhaps learn a bit more about this facility I’m potentially stuck in for the next several years?
WHAT IS THE HEX?
I still don’t know answer to that, but it sounds like a puzzle I’ll only get to solve if I explore a little. Blindly playing those gigs in the Hex, obsessed with accumulating points—hell, I could learn more by skimming. I have learned more.
I take the right hand corridor. It goes on and on, the fireworks smell growing stronger and stronger. I pass what appear to be large elevator doors, maybe for freight, in the left hand wall. A little farther, on the opposite wall, is the first in a series of reinforced steel hatches. They’re about four metres in diameter and spaced about three times that distance apart. I can’t tell what’s behind them or even guess.
It’s very cold now. I can see my breath freeze in the dim glow from blue fluorescent light strips bisecting both walls—the only light source this far along the passage. To help, I perform a couple dozen star jumps, just like Thorpe-Campbell showed me in the ice tunnel. It doubles the illumination of my glowsuit.
Before I've finished, a tiny but brilliant lilac light flickers high on the wall up ahead. It's like the glint of a reflection from some dazzling distant light source, but from where? As I approach, it seems to move in little jerks, almost as if it's scurrying toward me. But there are no insects in the Hex. At least none that I know of.
Its light goes out and it leaps off the wall, right in front of me. I flinch and try to swat it but it's too quick. It dodges my swipes and then hovers there in midair, watching me, its dark colours and shape now perfectly clear.
It's a dragonfly. Just like the one from my recurring dream!
So I haven't been imagining it after all? It really does live down here, miles beneath the polar ice of Mars? That's amazing. But how did it come to be down here in the first place, on a planet where insects can't survive? And why is it drawn to me? I haven't had that dream in a couple of weeks, but the dragonfly was always there when I did have it. As soon as I woke up. Without fail.
It suddenly flies away up the corridor but stops before it's out of sight. It shines again, as brilliant as a tiny 1000 Watt bulb, and seems to wait for me. As though it's showing me the way. Guiding me.
I might not have a clue what any of this means, or where it's leading me, but if this is a secret of the Hex, it's time I put my money where my mouth is. To get to the bottom of this riddle, I decide to follow.
Twin trails of dark liquid leading from a second set of elevator doors have already frozen on the floor. The tracks disappear under a regular sliding door in the wall opposite. Here the corridor vibrates, not constantly like a factory but in fits and starts, as if something powerful is drilling through the rock or ice on the outside.
Is some kind of excavation underway?
Whatever it is, it sounds and smells dangerous—the fireworks odour almost makes me hurl—so I carry on at a jog. The dragonfly maintains a constant speed of flight ahead, beckoning me on past the next sliding door. However, this one’s open!
I stop dead, start to shiver. A naked flame quivering in the cold. People move inside the opening; their animated gestures throw shadow and feeble yellow light. I can hear their voices too, overlapping and angry. O’see Hendron is definitely one of them. I’d recognise that exotic accent anywhere. And I’m almost certain the voice shouting her down belongs to Graaf, the Hex’s quartermaster. They’re going at it hammer and tongs, alongside a third party, another man, who keeps referring to “the wipe-all invasion.”
The dragonfly performs a crazy erratic zig-zagging manoeuvre up ahead. Impatient maybe. Or is it afraid?
“But they’ll need at least three more years,” yells Graaf. “For chrissakes, they’re still just buggos. We can’t expect them to face something like that when they haven’t even been tested.”
“Why not? Can’t they complete their training at Alpha? Isn’t that what it’s for?” The third person’s words tremble, but with fear, it seems to me, rather than anger.
“Oh, shut up, Deineken.” Hendron, demonstrating why she’s the O’see. “You’re a bean-counter. You know nothing about pod selection, how carefully we have to fine-tune and combine our recruits, the intricacy of it all. You see numbers, blunt objectives. We see what happens beyond Alpha when they’re forced to make life or death decisions and we’ve misjudged their group dynamics. Warriors can be trained for war inside a year, but our recruits—”
The door slides shut before she finishes. From behind me, the pat-pat of approaching footsteps sinks me low into a crouch. I’m ready to bolt. But where will I be bolting to? The dragonfly seems to know, so I tear after it down the endless corridor.
The footsteps behind me quicken. Crap. Someone knows I’m here. I up my speed down the passage, past about a dozen more hatches and sliding doors. A gradual left-winding curve, followed by a sudden hairpin bend, brings me on a rough heading back toward the Hex. I slow to catch my breath.
Pat-pat-pat!
Whoever this is, he’s determined to catch me. I sprint again. My blood speedometer hikes from Mach 1 to Mach Trillion in a heartbeat. Closed doors and hatches and freight elevators and bulletin boards whiz by. I don’t have time to investigate any of them. Will I get another chance?
All that time on the running track has done wonders for my stamina, but right now I need somewhere to be running to. That powerful firework smell spikes again, and the corridor vibrations resume, but much louder—deafening, in fact—as I near an open hatch door on my right. A quick peek inside reveals it’s a firing range. Older recruits, lying in the sand with their sniper rifles, blast away at winged targets that flash across a dark backdrop.
So this is a military academy after all?
About thirty more metres brings me to a gap in the wall with no door. Instead, there’s a winding metal staircase inside an emergency access shaft. More than one way out, just like Thorpe-Campbell said. The dragonfly whooshes up it. I race in pursuit. Twenty floors.
It brings me out, exhausted, into a long, narrow, curved room with no windows. There's a row of digi-screen consoles along one wall, with a seat for each. Dozens of spare glowsuits, far too big for me, hang in a row along the opposite wall over a stack of four-square metal boxes labelled HEX SEALED—RATIONS EMERGENCY ONLY. At the far end, eight or nine pressurized EVA spacesuits and oxygen tanks stand at attention like sentinels flanking a heavy-duty hatchway of some kind. Maybe an airlock.
The dragonfly hovers in front of a small sensor pad that I'm pretty sure will open the hatch, for anyone with security access, that is. But I'm just a buggo. And a buggo gone AWOL at that. Does this thing really think I have high security clearance?
“I think you made a mistake, pal,” I tell the dragonfly just before I hold my wrist ink to the pad.
As expected, the small sensor doesn’t respond to my signature, and I can’t locate any kind of door handle. In other words, I’m stuck here until I brave the return journey downstairs. And by now the entire Hex security force will likely be on its way. I sigh a weary sigh, then I try the sensor one last time, just to be sure.
No dice. At least, no exit dice.
“Trillion, James. Podnet access approved. Spoor ghosting initiated.”
Number 2 console lights up with a spooky effi
ciency, sprinting through its start-up programs as though there really is someone sat there operating it. Someone with my name and password. The gender-less voice adds, “Full Inner Colonies search available.” Which means I can surf the entire interstellar public network within a fifty light-year radius. Spoor ghosting simply means my cyber tracks are invisible, or ghosted, to anyone who might be monitoring from outside the local network.
Hmm, but what about from inside the network? It’s unlikely this is just a fluke, me getting authorized podnet access without an instructor being present, and at the exact place and moment I might want it. So who’s giving it to me, and why?
Stop asking questions, I tell myself. Seize this opportunity. Hell, this might be my best—my only—chance to get some real info on what's really going on here. And that, I now realise, is what has defined me ever since I first got on that ship with Thorpe-Campbell. The need to know. The rest of the buggos are so wrapped up in their petty points gobbling they’ve stopped asking: Who’s really training us here? What are they training us for?
WHAT IS THE HEX?
Though everything I’ve seen and heard today suggests it is what we assumed—a cross-your-heart-secret military academy—my gut’s telling me there’s something more, something bigger. Something they want us to figure out for ourselves. Why else would they give us scores but no rules? Why else would they let Sarazzin get away with being a complete tyrant? Why else would they be giving me access to the full IC podnet?
FIRST YOUR FEET, THEN THE STARS
They want me to improvise. To challenge the way things are done. To get to the bottom of this project. They want what I can give them...what I gave Thorpe-Campbell that day in the cafe...
USE YOUR HEAD.
A gentle vibration tickles the room, followed by a muffled metallic thunk. A prolonged hiss of released pressure gooses my skin all over, and I realise the room temperature has dropped. I turn and swallow. The dragonfly isn't there. No, it's now halfway down a darkened passageway through the open hatchway. Between us, we've just gained access to the secret heart of the Hex.
“I'm so going to get expelled for this.”
But the dragonfly merely performs its crazy zig-zagging routine in reply, to hurry me up. Why? Where is it leading me? What does it want? Do Thorpe-Campbell and the O'see know about it?
I think about grabbing one of the EVA suits but they're all way too big for me. And surely the facility wouldn't let me go near anywhere I might need one. Think, Jim, think. What would Sergei do?
No, what would I do?
That one's easy. I follow the dragonfly. The giddy fizz in my blood spurs me on. That and a curiosity I can't shake. The disobedience I learned from Sergei, but the rest is all me. I just have to know what lies around the corner. If it's somewhere I wasn't meant to go, even better.
The answer this time, as I stride out into a vast open area, is nothing. But not nothing nothing. It's almost completely black, but my glowsuit illuminates just enough of the floor and nearby wall of the sanctum to give some indication of its shape. It's either circular or elliptical. The surface is non-metallic but reflects dully. I can't see to the other side but I'm pretty sure it's bigger than the central shaft of the Hex. A lot bigger. Very faint shapes of massive vehicles and huge stacks of crates are dotted around the perimeter. A handful of boxes stacked nearby are labelled ALPHA SEALED—RATIONS POD USE ONLY.
Above, high above, a wispy, almost phantom rose-coloured glow forms a perfect circle in what looks like the centre of this sanctum. It's a very long way up, though. I can barely make out a pattern of lines inside the glow. The lines pulse individually from one side to the other, back and forward in random sequence, like complex computer code constantly rewriting itself.
The dragonfly dances its crazy zig-zag dance somewhere in the middle of the blackness. So I follow. Something tells me it's been trying to bring me here for a while now, ever since I first had that lucid dream. That it's been trying to communicate with me somehow, without success, until now. That should probably worry me, even scare me. But it doesn't. I can't explain why. If it wanted to harm me, it could have done that already. No, it wants something from me. Specifically from me, Jim Trillion.
“Okay, what are we doing here?” I ask as the dragonfly rises a few feet above me and hovers there. Silently. No buzz. That's strange. Aren't insects that flap their wings so rapidly supposed to make a buzzing noise?
What is this thing?
“What are you?” I speak up.
Then things get weird.
Every shape, every glow, every shadow inside the enclosure begins to shrink in toward me like an elasticated suit, a sanctum suit, refitting itself around me, infinitely smaller than it should be. The effect is dizzying. It happens so quickly I can't decide whether I've just grown to giant size or the space around me really has shrunk so that I'm wearing it. Even weirder is the fact that I can sort of see through it, and the original shapes and glows and shadowy areas are still there beyond this new “sanctum skin” I'm wearing!
The dragonfly still hovers above me, somewhere between the skin and the real dimensions of the sanctum outside. My glowsuit isn't as bright as it was. Its blue light reflects off the oily skin around me, but beyond it, the rose-coloured glow is everywhere. It appears deeper. There's a charged smell in the air, even inside the skin.
The entire sanctum begins to warp, both layers at the same time. I find myself wheeling upward in a weird but totally smooth motion that disorients me like no gig in the Hex or any theme park ride ever has. It's closer to the floating sensation I have during lucid dreaming, only this time I'm accelerating. My “sanctum skin” appears to pass through the layer of rose mist outside. My ears ring and I feel my balance going. Like when you have a fever and you can’t sit up straight because your equilibrium’s gone. My vision reds out. In my mind I’m tumbling into an eternity of rose red. It’s scary at first, then lonely, then exciting, and so many other emotions in quick succession I can’t tell them all apart.
Out of the red grows the shadowy shape of a dragonfly. My dragonfly. It flaps its wings slowly at first, but the closer it gets to me the quicker it moves. It seems to fly right through me. In its wake it leaves behind a rapid flicker of images that hits me like a shivery shower of déjà vu.
They mean something, these images. I know them, at least some of them, but I can’t separate them because they flicker by so quickly. Somewhere in there is one of my first ever memories—I can’t quite place it, though. Most of the images aren’t memories at all, but they seem close somehow. Important. Like I should tell someone about them.
The next thing I know I'm in a field of grass. Turquoise grass. It's tall and slick and it sways under a strong breeze that somehow I can't feel. Then I realise I'm still wearing the skin from the sanctum, only it's more transparent now and it doesn't have the shrunken features of the sanctum at all. It's adapted to this new place, like a lens, distorting what I can see beyond it.
A whole new world!
The field of grass is at the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley that rises thousands of feet. The lower slopes are wooded, though the trees are not individual; they form knotted clusters around geysers that shoot vapour into the air periodically. The cupped leaves of the trees angle themselves to catch as much moisture as possible. The whole tangle of branches and boughs and leaves writhes and then settles with each jet of moisture. I can't hear any of it through the skin, but I imagine a bizarre collective sighing or gurgling noise enveloping the valley.
In the blue-green sky above, no less than six suns are visible: one is fierce, blinding; the others appear dimmer. Maybe they're moons. Great bulbous clouds roam the sky. But on closer inspection they seem to squash themselves inward and then expand, slowly, like humongous floating jellyfish.
All I can manage is a genuine, soundless wow!
Then I notice bones lying in the grass. Not far from where I'm standing. Dozens of skeletons, bigger than a human's but not by much. No skulls that I
can see. The dead creatures' arms are shaped like wings, and I'm pretty sure that's body armour covering their torsos. If I could only get a closer look...
I realise I've been holding my breath for longer than I can remember. So I inhale. It's the first clue that this isn't all a dream. But the breath leaves me light-headed. I fight it but it's no use. Something about the air inside the skin isn't right. I instinctively take a giant breath to compensate, but all it does is swallow me. The wondrous views of the alien planet fade all around me. The dragonfly swoops into view. Then I black out.
CHAPTER 9
Extracurricular
The bell sounds for first period. It snaps me out of a dreamy daze. I'm lying in bed in my quarters, wearing my glowsuit, but I can't figure out how I got here. The whole adventure with the dragonfly and the secret passages and the sanctum skin and the alien world: I have to admit it sounds nuts, but I can't just dismiss it as a crazy dream. It felt way too real for that. It's lodged itself in my brain the same way my sand bike vacation with Sergei has. It's as real as that. And that tells me it happened, or at least some of it did.
But who brought me back here? How did they find me? Where did they find me? These questions, and many more, prey on me as I try to get on with the rest of my day like nothing unusual has happened.
The next few hours barely register. I’m there in class, but not really there. I’m in my quarters picking at food, but a moment after I chuck it in the trash I can’t tell you what it was. Yet there’s one little detail about my morning’s adventure I’ve overlooked, and it could spoil everything.
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