Two heartbeats later, the lights in the companionway flickered with an electrical buzz and went out.
The avenue was pitch black.
Then some emergency lights came up slowly. These were overhead chemical lamps that threw a dim yellowish light -- just enough to see by. A few cautionary signs, showing directions and listing safety procedures in a power outage, faded in too; they used the same technology, shining slightly brighter than did the overheads. They could glow on their own for years, but were dank and sad-seeming after the previous brightness.
All the Team members, Floy included, looked at the glowing lamps in confusion.
"Comm's down," Stafross muttered behind, playing with a collarmic on her uniform. I was getting a network loss alert in my eye-view, too. I tapped the commring, to no effect.
"If power's out, Life Support might be as well," Floy announced, turning to the others. "Find the nearest Emergency Locker, and suit up, everyone. Do it now."
"We're not getting any notices, ma'am," the young Three argued. It's what she did best, I could see.
"Primary, secondary, and tertiary lighting systems all just died. Chemiluminescent lamps are the final backups when all redundancies fail. We have a total power loss on our hands. Get those suits on, and stop wasting time!"
The glowing signs pointed to some emergency lockers up the way. The Team johnnies from GenDis found one, and handed out flat-packed pressure suits to each of us. These were not full exosuits. Like the thin, flexible ones on Shady Lady, these were light, unpowered garments with no controls. They had been designed to save the lives of people with even no vacuum survival training whatsoever. Once sealed, onboard tanks would open and provide self-pressurized air for up to twelve hours, while passive filters lining the inside collar scrubbed out CO2. The suits were somewhat insulative, allowing for a moderate amount of thermal protection. Brain-dead simple, they were generally enough to get people to safety.
No one on this station was without training, of course: indeed, a life lived in space meant going through endless emergency drills, and we were all in our suits within two minutes flat. Because the air still seemed good, I opted not to seal the inflatable bubble helmet just yet. The others did the same.
"I didn't hear an explosion that might have damaged station systems," I commented, looking back at the storeroom. "That had to be a folding EMP."
"A what?" Floyeen asked.
"A very particular type of electromagnetic pulse."
I had looked into such things in the past, in both the professional tech journals, and upon the more lunatic fringes of the commercial gunnery boards that I sometimes haunted.
A Folding EMR Generator, or Folder as it was known, could be made small enough to install within the very restricted real estate of civvie missiles. The idea with the Folder was that if you got the missile close, you could disable even a large, well-armed vessel without damaging anything nearby. A high kill potential, with low collateral potential, in other words. That's how military and police forces used them in crowded spacelanes, anyway.
I'd actually been offered the chance to buy one once, from this shady guy I met at a Defense Spesh Conference on Powder Station. He really knew his stuff, and wasn't asking all that much for it, but looked like an addict nearing rock bottom. Where he got the device, I don't know. Frankly, I don't even know if he actually had one, since all he ever showed me were some still images. Folders are considered Mass-Effect Weapons, and are, therefore, illegal in private hands. The only ones you can find for Civilian Class weapon systems, therefore, are scratch-built. The QC of back-alley ordinance is not high, as a rule (and I really had no reason to own one outside of the cool factor), so I took a pass on the deal -- but only after researching it.
"Couldn't be an EMR burst," one of the rifle guys stated doubtfully. He then pulled back his left sleeve, and showed us the time and date glowing from a subdermal display on his wrist. "This wouldn't be working."
"A folding pulse is ring-shaped and highly localized," I explained. "It can penetrate most shielding, but the wave pattern flies out unfocused, before coalescing and running to the edge of its range. It then collapses on itself and rolls back, repeating the pattern and oscillating for several milliseconds. The area immediately around the device would have seen no effect, but any other electronics in the storeroom will be stone dead now. At our range, the effect would have been less severe. This commring is shot, while my retinals and bonecons are fine, so my bioelectric field was enough to protect them. Now look back the way we came...down there, and to the left. Is it me, or are the lights in the connecting companionway still on?"
They looked where I pointed.
"Three," Floy ordered Stafross, "Run back until you find a comm unit that works, and call this in. We need backup."
"Yes, ma'am," the girl acknowledged, and dashed off.
The guards with the Panthers were checking their weapons.
"All my sensor and targeting addons are dead," one of these guys announced, and his partner nodded. "We can still point and shoot, though."
"That's good," the senior of the other guards admitted bitterly, holding up his sidearm, "because these stunners are junk now."
Floyeen stepped to the open doorway of the storeroom, and waved the riflers to follow suit. I, in turn, trailed them. The other two looked like they felt useless, but brought up the rear anyway.
The storeroom provided nothing but silence and pitch blackness.
"TacOps, sound off!"
Nothing.
She called again, and got the same result.
I moved up to the door.
"Let me look," I whispered.
My retinals were good ones. They possessed both infrared and light-amplification filters as add-on features (ultraviolet, too, though that was more of a ground-pounder's feature -- you couldn't get much use out of it under artificial light). The retinals were full-orbital style, covering my eyeballs entirely in a clear protective casing. They were, of course, linked to the matching bone-conducting speaker-mics implanted in my jaw. This all might sound invasive, but getting them installed took less than an hour's time at a tech boutique on Tyree. The implants worked best when paired with an outside communication or computational device, like a wristcomp or commring, but they had some functionality of their own, even now.
Light-amp would not be very effective in this circumstance, so I opted for infrared. I subvocalized the start-up phrase, then waited a moment for in-eye confirmation that the filter was active and ready.
The midnight room became alive with watery reds and yellows. I disliked using wavelength filters, because they tended to cause eye-strain, but it was either risk a headache or trip over stuff in the dark. I told them what I was doing, then leaned in, eyes wide open.
The storeroom was big. When Ghazza had first shown me the place, I was very impressed that so much area had been turned over to a single stowed item, however significant; the greatest irony of living and traveling in infinite space is that you never seemed to have enough of it for all your stuff.
But there was Cageless, standing in the center of the storeroom, on its three spindly legs.
It didn't look much like a ship, really, and was certainly smaller than most vessels that could lay claim to that classification. Maybe four meters across and only six-and-a-half tall (not including the landing gear), it was shaped like a squat, slightly tapering triangular box. It had no windows, and the legs were non-retractable, ending in round, unremarkable foot pads, like serving platters. These struts raised the vehicle off the deck by about meter-and-a-half. The entrance hatch was on the bottom, forcing the pilot to scramble under the hull to enter or exit. Though pressurized within during its test run, Ghaz had explained, there was no room for an airlock in Cageless, and the pilot had worn a pressure suit at all times, just in case.
At the moment, the hatch was unsealed: I could see it hanging down underneath -- round, and nearly touching the metal deck.
That was a change from t
he last time I was here.
"What is it?" Floy asked. I was only a few steps in by this point, and she could see me plainly from the door.
"Someone's been at the prototype. I don't see the TacOps people...wait. Okay, there they are, over to the left."
"Are they hurt?"
"They're not moving. Two are on the floor, the rest are standing in, um, odd poses. Oh, yeah -- that's powered armor they're wearing."
"Crap, that's right!" she hissed. "If the pulse breached their shielding, those suits are completely dead."
"Can they breathe okay?" I whispered over my shoulder.
One of the guards standing at the open doorway, said quietly, "They should be able to -- the suits have passive backups."
"They must all be unconscious, then," I observed after a moment more. "No shouts or anything."
"SOP for power loss is to stay silent if you're in an active threat environment," the guy explained. "Drawing the enemy's attention is very bad when you can't move or defend yourself."
That made sense.
Just as it made sense to set up a booby trap like this one, if TacOps might be the first people through the door.
I turned to the guard who had spoken.
"Were there any glowsticks in the Emergency Locker? Find some -- we need light in here."
He moved away, conferring with the GenDis guys.
"I'm going inside," I told Floy, but she shook her head, and placed an arresting hand on my arm.
"We have to wait! You aren't armed, and we can't see, so we can't even cover you."
"He'll get away," I complained.
"This is the only door." When I didn't reply, she added, "Or we'll catch him later. He can't get off the station."
I placed a hand over hers, which was still on my arm, gave it a reassuring squeeze, and then removed it gently.
"Ejoq..."
She followed for a few steps but stopped when I must have disappeared from view.
I walked slowly, trying to see around the freejump's bulk, in case Shady Lady's Engineer was hiding behind it. My range of view with the IR filter wasn't that great, though, and it was all black back there.
"Dieter?" I called out.
I stood still, waiting for a reply, but there wasn't one.
"Can we talk about this?"
Still nothing.
I stepped to the closest armored soldier, who was lying on the deck. The head was turned away, but he or she wouldn't have been able to see me anyway in the dark. Not in a dead suit. I knocked on the helmet.
"Who...who is it?" came a thickly muffled voice. A man's.
I leaned in close and spoke sharply.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," came his reply. "Suit lost power."
"I noticed. I'm going to drag you out."
I proceeded to try, but it was a mighty prospect: this armor turned people into dense blocks of metal. After a few serious heaves that threatened my lower back (which was still sore from all the furniture shifting in R&D), I had to give it up.
"Stay cool," I called to the soldier inside. "Help is on the way."
Hoping that wasn't a lie, I moved from one to the other of the immobile warriors, saying the same thing. I actually knocked one of the standing figures right over when I stood on tip-toes to yell through the helmet. He or she just pitched forward, and I heard a cottony scream from within. I shouted at the featureless head, and a faint voice assured me there were no injuries, but what flux was I trying to do?!
That was a very good question. Floy had heard the noise, and called to see if I was all right.
"Yeah, just clumsy. I can't move these guys -- they're too heavy. Is there a way to open the suits?"
"Yeah, but we'll need light." She turned away then and shouted at the two that had gone looking for the glowsticks to hurry it up.
Too antsy to stay still, I moved in further, going right up to one leg of the ship.
I thought I heard some faint clunking ahead, but couldn't see anyone.
I called out to Dieter again, with the same result. Those movement noises continued, though.
He was there all right, somewhere.
Sure, I could see in the dark, but not well. And I didn't know what to do if I actually did find him.
Crossing to a bulkhead, I proceeded to circle the vast room, looking for a new door. I walked slowly and carefully, avoiding an empty rack on the wall, and some boxes on the floor.
At the rear of the ship (that is to say, the part facing away from the storeroom door, because the vessel looked the same from every angle), I came across a large maintenance kit upon the deck. It was wide open. Miscellaneous parts and small hand tools were scattered around, and some were under the hull. A few oddly cut scraps of dark fabric were there too, crumpled in a pile. Cables ran from portable diagnostic machines sitting on one side, to some long-term status recorders upon a narrow stand. A tall barrel-like structure against the bulkhead had a thick hose leading from it to a place on the deck just underneath a round coupling in the hull of the vessel, like it had only recently been detached. I didn't know what any of this was for. Probably it was all custom equipment -- original relics, as much as the ship itself.
There wasn't anyone not frozen in metal within my reddish, watery gaze, so I kept moving. Within a few minutes, I'd circumnavigated the entire storeroom.
Help and/or lighting sure was taking its sweet time in coming. I called back to the door.
"What's the delay?"
"I don't know," Floyeen replied, sounding tense. "I think an alarm is sounding down the road, but it's not close. Hold on, here are the glowsticks."
They bustled a bit at the doorway, then several points of brightness jiggled alive. Being military-grade, the plastic devices were throwing a lot of illumination. Floy tossed a few inside so that the place was no longer a complete cave, then she and the two with the rifles moved in slowly, each holding another stick.
I joined them, and gestured to the immobile TacOps soldiers.
"There's a latch on the front," Floy said, when we came to the nearest guy. "It works when there's no power. Here..."
One of the guards stood over the metal giant, while Floyeen fumbled for the tiny lever. After a bit, she found it, and there was a click and hiss, as the armor's upper and lower halves parted at the waist. Between all of us, we got the legs pulled off, and the soldier within squirmed out, looking undignified but relieved.
"What hit me?"
"EMP," I said.
"The suit is completely hardened," he stated firmly.
"Tell it to your friends," I replied, and pointed to them.
He and the two guards proceeded to help his comrades, while Floy and I studied the silent ship, as solid and immobile as the armored warriors.
"I heard movement before," I said quietly. "I'm sure of it."
"Where?"
"That, I'm not sure about. But I went all around the room. There's no other way out of here. Except..."
The realization hit me just a single second before Cageless's pre-flight warm-up sequence kicked on with a grinding hum!
The ship had exterior lighting, and it flashed on then, with small, powerful lamps that dazzled us all. The others behind called out, but the engine was really loud, and getting louder. I don't know what they said.
I'd never heard a ship starting up from the outside, of course -- that was something that only ever happened in vacuum.
It set my teeth on edge. It rattled my internal organs. The whine grew so loud and so high in pitch, that I actually had to cover my ears. After a few moments, the pain faded as the noise rose higher yet, beyond human hearing.
Then the deck shuddered under our feet as the warm-up was superseded by the vessel's reactor/power-plant routine clicking into Main-Ready Mode. It burst on with an overwhelming roar, and I fell down. MRM was a power-plant's normal status when the ship was in motion, as opposed to the trickle of energy it converted when parked, as with Shady Lady out on the hull.
F
loy was still upright somehow, even through the noise and vibration. She pulled at my shoulder, lifting and steadying me until I was able to climb back to my feet.
Cageless had small maneuvering thrusters, but no large reaction drive. In its one and only experimental jump, it had been transported out to the proper orbit by a cargo tug, which set it free to run the test. Another such tug, on the other side of the star system, had picked it up again. It couldn't fly away, therefore, nor were there even bay doors in this room that opened onto vac.
But a freejump didn't need doors!
Both rifle guards had their Panthers to their shoulders and were shooting. I could see the weapons blinking fire, but the noise drowned out any sound. It was a waste of ammo: soldiers guarding doors would only have ship-rated anti-personnel rounds in the clips. Such bullets were specifically designed to deform against -- instead of blow through -- any hard targets, to minimize the risk of hull damage or blowout events. Even the thin polynium plating of the prototype was more than a match for those things, but they fired on anyway, because it was all they had.
There were now two TacOps soldiers up and about, both of them working at freeing their fellows. I grabbed Floyeen's hand, and the two of us retreated, stumbling. Floy smacked the two riflemen off the backs of their heads, and pointed to those soldiers still trapped.
The vibration in the deck was severe, and it hurt my knees and ankles. I fell again, going to all fours. From down there, I could see that the hatch underneath Cageless was now closed. I crawled toward the farthest of the statues. It was one of those still standing.
The vibration caused the soldier to topple over before I got there -- but face-first, with the emergency latch underneath.
I knew I couldn't flip the figure over.
One of its hands had been extended forward a bit when the armor froze, and the giant wasn't lying completely flat. I shoved my own hand under as far as I could, squeezing it between metal armor and metal decking. I pushed hard, and felt my glove snag on something. I couldn't reach any further, though I tried.
The noise was hammering, numbing, and the vibration rattled elbows, hips, spine, and skull. It was hard to even see, because there were bright flashes in my eye-view, like I was being struck on the head repeatedly.
Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script) Page 44
