by Richard Fox
Popov laughed, trying to wipe her face, a useless gesture while wearing her battle helmet. “Damn, it’s like having a horrible itch I can’t scratch.”
Carson sat up, activating her infrared filter. She found heat plumes emanating from several wide holes in the mountain top. She counted almost sixty seconds as superheated air escaped from the openings. Three bursts of air came out, then ten minutes passed before the pattern repeated itself.
The vents were about two meters across, surrounded by a thick metal ring embedded into the rock. Spoil from where the shafts had been bored out of the mountain lay strewn around, discolored by exposure to the extreme temperatures.
The team held back, watching and resting from their climb.
“Birch,” West said, “send your drone in there for a quick look at the shaft wall. Something’s bugging me.”
The Gremlin slipped out of Birch’s pack and flew into the vent. Video beamed to the team’s HUDs a few moments later. Carson frowned at shallow curves snaking their way up the rock.
“Ibarra standard asteroid drill bits,” West said. “I recognize the grooves.”
“The first colonists dug this out?” Nunez asked.
“Their equipment was used,” Moretti said. “That doesn’t mean they did it.”
“What aliens could figure that out so easily?” Nunez asked, then caught himself. “Aliens that can futz with doughboy production and carve giant pants-shitting sculptures into mountainsides…OK, fine. But why wait until the colonists were here to dig out these vents?”
“These have to be recent if they used human tech,” Birch said. “We all got a good up-close look at the carvings on the way up. There’s some weather erosion from blowing sand. That’s not something that happens in a decade; that happens over thousands of years in this kind of an environment.”
Despite her suit’s self-contained environment system, Carson felt the heat from the gases. She adjusted the suit’s sensitivity level and the sensation faded.
“That’s our way in.” Carson pointed to the vents. “Our suits can take the heat for a few cycles; after that, they’ll degrade. Given the heat of the air and the rate at which it’ll rise in this air pressure,” she typed in equations on her forearm screen, “the shaft can’t be more than…”
“One hundred twenty meters deep,” Popov said, computing the answer without a calculator.
Carson did a double take and tapped her screen.
“She’s right,” Carson went to the edge and looked down into the abyss.
“Long drop, even in this grav,” Moretti said, “and we’re not sure what we’d land on.”
“Let’s send a Gremlin down there first,” Carson said. “I’d rather not drop down into a den of snakes, if you know what I mean.”
Birch sent a Gremlin diving down the shaft. The walls remained straight as it corkscrewed down. At twenty feet, it passed through a forcefield, sending ripples of light across the width of the shaft, and the video fizzled out.
“No worries,” Birch said. “I’ve still got the telemetry feed. There’s enough electromagnetic interference from the shield to kill video feed. The drone will return automatically if I lose all contact, but it knows to get pics of whatever’s down there.”
As they waited for the Gremlin to report back, Popov and Nunez set up a remote com-station at the edge summit. Two solar panels folded out of the side of the unit and a small array twisted from a recessed panel, then proceeded to align itself with the Rover on the ground below.
“Okay, connection online,” Popov said. “Valiant’s not in line of sight, but I can have a message in the queue for them when they reconnect.”
Carson stared into the abyss. Maintaining a hold on the shallow drill bit grooves would be difficult. Climbing down the entire length would be slow and painful as more hot air hit them. She considered her options before finally shaking her head.
“Rope,” she said.
Birch looked up from his forearm screen. “Rope?”
“It didn’t occur to me to bring rope.”
Something slapped down on the ground at Carson’s feet, kicking up a small cloud of dust. She couldn’t help but laugh at the spool wench and a large bundle of thin graphenium composite repelling wire. The millimeters-thick wire was thin but strong enough to hold Carson’s entire team at once.
“You think that’ll be enough?” Carson asked, reaching down to pick up the bundle of rope.
West pulled out a second spool, holding it up for Carson to see.
“On the ball, West. Good work.”
West held up three fingers.
“Heads up,” Birch said, standing.
A second later, the Gremlin flew out of the shaft, and then angled around to land back on its housing in Birch’s shoulder compartment. “Give me just a minute and I’ll upload the footage.”
As Birch worked, another gout of hot wind broke out of the vent.
“I kind of wish,” Nunez cleared his throat, “we were going through the mouth instead of the—”
“Shut. Up,” Moretti said.
“Anyone speak French?” Nunez asked. “Because we could get hoisted by this mountain’s petard if—”
Birch put a large hand on Nunez’s shoulder.
“One more?” he asked.
Birch’s hand moved to the back of Nunez’s neck.
A connection icon appeared on Carson’s HUD, followed by a wire diagram of the mountain shaft. It dropped a little more than a hundred meters into the mountain before opening into a large space, the true size of the space not collected by the drone. In the center of the room, directly under the shaft, were three generators the size of large cargo containers.
“Those are HT36 generators,” Birch said. “They must be running at max capacity for them to put out this much heat.”
As the diagram expanded out, the video feed showed rows of capacitors and cables surrounding the generators. The holo stopped on two altered doughboys, one carrying a large club and the other with an arm that ended in what looked like a cattle prod.
“The drone came back soon as it detected a threat,” Birch said.
“At least we’re in the right spot,” Nunez said.
“Guard presence is minimal,” West said. “Birch, no sign of intrusion detection?”
“None,” the big man said. “My Gremlin’s next gen tech compared to everything the first colonists have. Maybe whatever’s controlling the doughboys has something we’ve never seen before. But so far, they’re relying exclusively on human equipment and know-how.”
“Complacency kills.” Carson pressed the spool of wire to the edge of the vent and drills bored into the rock. She snapped the thin cable to a clamp on her belt and activated her camo cloak. “Ghost up. Let’s get in there.”
Chapter 9
Carson reached the bottom of the shaft just as the exhaust from the old human generator vented. With her armor’s sensitivity down, the heat had no effect on her inside the suit, and only a marginal impact on its surface. Pathfinder armor was rated for extreme environments, including vacuum. Without it, though, Carson was pretty sure she’d have been baked through and through.
Her camo cloak, on the other hand, was not as resilient. Color rippled up and down the fabric as heat bled away.
She dropped out of the shaft, pushing herself toward one wall as she let out slack in the cable. She swung out and caught hold of the rough rock wall, anchoring herself there with her gauntlet. She turned, keeping an eye on the two doughboys, then jammed the second spool into the wall as they disappeared down a far row.
Carson held her breath as the spool whirred, releasing cable. Fortunately, the incessant humming from the generator drowned out the sound and the guards didn’t seem to notice. She stopped the second spool when the tip of the cable was a few feet over the walkway below. She let go; when the cable went taut, she opened the clamp on her belt and dropped down, grabbing the next line and slowing her fall.
Birch appeared next, stopping just
inside the lip of the shaft, hanging upside-down, watching the doughboys as they patrolled the rows of machinery.
The floor reminded Carson of the decks she’d seen in older starships: grated metal over cables, conduits and fiber optic lines underneath. She silently thanked the generator for its loud thrumming as she stepped across the floor, fully aware that her boots would be making a racket otherwise.
She drew her combat knife from the sheath on her chest and crept toward the two guards. Moretti had given the team a quick lesson on doughboy physiology. While they were constructed for combat and far more resilient to injury than humans, they still had vulnerabilities. She rubbed the edge of a finger against the knife’s guard, wishing the medic had done a more complete analysis of the dead doughboys on Terra Nova. Their outer appearance and prohibition against harming humans was certainly different; what else their masters changed was still in question. The doughboys from the Ember War were extremely tough, simple-minded warriors. Ask them to fly a Mule and they’d give you a blank stare; ask them to hammer a brick wall to pieces with their bare fists, they’d smile and go to work.
She knew from firsthand experience that a headshot or well-aimed round center-mass would drop one almost instantly. She readied her blade and hoped putting it through its brainpan would do the—
A loud metal crash reverberated through the room behind Carson, making her jump. She froze as the alien guards whirled around. The guards looked right at her, and the edge of her camo cloak near the overheating generator rippled like air over a fire. Carson felt the weight of her knife in her hand and suddenly felt like she’d come to this fight unprepared.
The guard with the prod arm started to say something when Carson lunged forward, burying her blade in its heart. The other one stepped sideways, bringing the club off its shoulder as Carson twisted the first around. The club came down hard, connecting with the back of the other guard with a loud crack.
The impact sent the guard falling forward as Carson struggled to pull her knife free. The heavy corpse pitched forward and landed on top of her. Carson went down, trying to push the heavy creature off as its partner raised its club again.
The guard let out a wordless yell as it hefted the weapon overhead. Its war cry cut off in a wet gurgle as something slammed into its face, sending it backpedaling. The alien wildly whacked the generator, then dropped the club to cover its bleeding face. Birch’s Gremlin hovered in the air above Carson, slimy green ichor dripping from the front of its chassis.
Carson rolled out from underneath the alien as the first guard backed into a waist-high railing. She grabbed the club and had to use her suit’s strength to manage an unbalanced swing. The club slammed into the guard’s chest and sent it over the railing.
Boots clanging against the floor signaled Birch’s approach from behind. He ran past the Chief to kneel down next to his Gremlin, which had landed on the floor a few feet away. He picked the drone up, wiping the gooey liquid away with his hand. “Please be okay,” Birch told the drone.
“I’m fine too, thanks for asking,” Carson said, sitting up. She turned and saw Popov picking up her carbine off the floor. That was what alerted the guards.
“Sorry,” Popov said. “Slipped when I—”
“We’ll talk about your weapon discipline later,” West promised her.
Carson rolled the first corpse over and pulled her blade free, wiping the blood away on the guard’s overalls. She moved to the railing and looked over. The doughboy had fallen into a deep chasm, the bottom nothing but darkness. She put a foot against the one she’d stabbed and sent it rolling over the edge. She looked to the generators and saw each one was on a platform suspended over the chasm.
“Not the best emergency shunting system I’ve ever seen,” West said, stepping up to the rail. “Colonies are supposed to have a containment drop for a generator before it melts down completely. This’ll work, but it’s still lazy.”
“Reset your cloaks,” Carson ordered. She tapped a key on her forearm computer and her camo shifted to match the rock walls and metal floor. Small blotches of dead fabric marred her cloak, but some obfuscation was better than nothing. The rest of the team’s cloaks fared little better.
They moved into the passage, lit by small lights hung from the cluster of cables along the ceiling. Carson stopped at a T-junction, trying to decide which direction to take.
“Incoming.” Birch pointed to the edge of long shadows that just appeared at the junction.
Heavy footsteps reverberated down the walkway from the left as five doughboys appeared, all carrying those large clubs.
“Over,” Carson hissed, grabbing the railing and swinging herself over the edge. She held on to the edge, feet dangling over the long drop beneath. She flexed the muscles in her forearm muscle assists, careful not to bend the metal. She looked over at her team, all hanging like they were out to dry.
The group of guards marched past, oblivious to the team of cloaked Pathfinders hanging from the rail below them.
Carson sighed, relieved that they didn’t turn to go to the generator room. The guards stopped at the dent in the side of a generator. One touched the tip of his club to it, then grunted. Carson’s mouth went dry as the guard’s boot stepped on the bloodstained grate. The guard nodded back to the T-junction and led the others away. After they’d moved out of sight, Carson pulled herself back over the railing.
“Come on.”
At the junction, she took a quick look down both paths. One way led to a battery park, cubes the size of a truck connected by thick cables. The other led to a wide passageway with metal doors in the rock walls. Lights bolted over the doors were askew; more than one was dead, giving the passage the feel of an alley in a bad neighborhood. Carson hurried to the first door, her team behind her. A metal plate was fastened to the rocks next to the door with bent nails. The word HYDROPONICS was written with crude punches through the material, like someone had stabbed the letters in with the tip of a knife.
A door further down the hallway opened and two guards came out, escorting a human man in tattered overalls and with bare feet. He pushed a wheelbarrow full of potatoes, head down and shoulders slumped.
They’re alive, Caron thought. The first colonists are alive. She debated returning to the top of the mountain to relay the news, but this wasn’t enough information. Hale would need enough to plan a rescue operation. Seeing one colonist wasn’t enough.
One of the guards slammed the door shut, then pushed a heavy bolt lock built into the door into the frame with a strain of effort.
Carson looked at the door next to her; it had the same locking mechanism. The bolt was massive, several hundred pounds of metal. She thought back to the oversized club she’d used to dispatch the guard. There was no way an unsuited human could wield that club or open the lock. How the doughboys kept their prisoners in line was crude but effective.
“Popov,” Carson said. “Bring me your scope.”
The Pathfinder pulled a long flexible line from a pouch on her chest and handed it over. With a flick of her finger, Carson turned the device on and waited for it to sync with her HUD. A second later, a fisheye image of her own face appeared in a window in front of her.
Carson fished the line through the crack in the door, twisting it around to get a visual of the room on the other side. It was filled with plants, from small tomato vines to large trees that seemed to grow out of nutrient vats on the floor. Bright panels along the ceiling illuminated the expansive chamber, the light partially obscured by hanging plants whose vines hung down thirty feet to the floor.
“No sign of guards,” Carson said, panning the camera around a second time. Halfway through her turn, she paused, seeing movement behind some one of the trees. A figure, hidden behind branches sporting leaves more than a foot wide, moved back and forth between two unseen points. “Hold on.”
She held the camera steady, until finally the figure emerged from behind the foliage. “Bingo,” Carson said.
A woman, wh
o appeared to be in her thirties, carried a rack of brown beans to a table in the middle of a walkway. She set the beans down, then looked around quickly. She pulled a small pouch from underneath her loose-fitting shirt and hastily poured some of the beans in, filling the bag. Frightened eyes darted around as she slipped the pouch back under her shirt.
Carson retracted the camera and stood. “Subtlety, people.” She grabbed the dead bolt and slowly moved it to one side. She pulled the door open just enough to squeeze through and hurried inside. She ducked behind a small orange tree and waited until Nunez, the last of the team to follow, locked the door behind them.
The woman was working furiously, dividing up beans into small portion cups. Carson stepped around one of the large trees and whispered, “Stay back, I’m going to make contact.”
Remembering the two boys at the data facility, Carson deactivated her active camouflage and removed her helmet. She pushed through the wide leaves, keeping herself partially concealed.
“Psst.”
The woman looked up, searching for the source of the sound. She stared in Carson’s direction but made no sign that she’d seen the Pathfinder. After a moment, she frowned and went back to sorting her beans.
“Psst.”
The woman’s head snapped up a second time, looking directly at Carson. This time, she seemed to see her. Her eyes bulged. Carson held up a finger to her lips as the woman opened her mouth to speak.
“It’s okay,” Carson said. “We’re here to help you.”
Shock and confusion covered the woman’s face. She glanced around, frantically looking for something.
Carson tried to keep her tone as reassuring as possible. “The guards are gone.”
The woman’s eyes locked on Carson’s. “Who are you?”
“Chief Carson, Pathfinder Corps; call me Kit. But first, is there any monitoring in this room? Video surveillance?”
“I… I’m…No, no cameras.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Where did you come from?”
“We can discuss that later. What’s your name?”
