“Gizmo, how far in is the access point?”
The little robot was already moving in through the tunnel. “Approximately two meters past that point.” It pointed to where the collapsed roof structure met the floor.
“Dammit, we’ll have to dig.”
Fortunately the biodome was well stocked with tools for moving soil and before long Xenon had organized a team. They quickly worked their way forward through the tunnel. A spade clanged off the floor. “I think this is it.” Xenon tapped the floor again as a hollow sound revealed the location of the long forgotten access point. Jann knew it would be similar to one in the module attached to the medlab. A flat, hinged, plate lying flush with the floor. They swept the dirt off it, and Xenon jammed the edge of the spade into the gap, and leaned on it. It cracked open enough for the others to grab it with their fingers and lift it up to reveal a dark hole descending into the Martian sub-surface. Gizmo shone its light down. They could see a ladder extending a short distance to the floor of a narrow tunnel.
“Do you think you can climb down there to check it out, Gizmo?”
With that the little droid grabbed the sides of the opening and lowered itself down, telescoping its arms as it went, then finally dropping onto the floor below. It moved its light slowly around the space and then disappeared off down a tunnel. They could hear it move around and, after a few minutes, it returned.
“There’s another airlock up ahead that leads into the soil processing cave.”
“Does it have an atmosphere?”
“Yes, it should.”
“Okay, let’s try it.” Jann descended the ladder and looked down along the dark passage.
“I see it,” she shouted up to Xenon and the others.
A trickle of dirt started to fall down into the opening and Jann looked up. “What’s that?”
“The tunnel roof, it’s becoming unstable. Quick you better get out of there now.” Xenon was shouting down to her.
“No, we’ve come this far, I’m not going back.”
More dirt fell in as the roof shifted, its enormous weight too much for the flimsy support the colonists had rigged up.
“Go…” Jann shouted at Xenon. “Get out… get out now.”
The trickle of dirt turned into a cascade, then into a torrent and the space began to fill up at an alarming rate, forcing Jann and Gizmo to move farther along the passageway.
“Quick, Gizmo. Let’s get this airlock open.” Jann moved just as the tunnel roof finally collapsed in a tsunami of dust, and dirt, and darkness.
12
Sanctum
Jann spat and coughed as grit filled her mouth. Darkness enveloped her. “Gizmo?”
She stood up and felt for the wall, or anything that would orient her. She heard Gizmo’s motors whirr and turned to see a light emanating from the little robot’s head, as it extracted itself from a mound of soil.
“Gizmo, are you okay?”
“I’m 98.6% operational, excluding that fact that I have no external systems access.”
Jann coughed again. “We need to get this airlock open, the air in here will run out soon.” She spun the locking wheel and opened the door as a waft of stale air overpowered her nostrils.
“Ahh… what’s that smell?”
“I am sorry, I can not offer any assistance in that regard as my olfactory sensors pale in comparison to the performance of the human apparatus.”
“Count yourself lucky you can’t smell this.” She held her nose.
They moved into the airlock and Jann spun the locking wheel on the outer door. A green light flashed on an alert panel.
“Okay, here goes.” She tugged at the door.
“It’s not moving.” She put her foot against the wall and pulled. It refused to budge.
“Help me Gizmo, if we don’t get this open I’ll run out of breathable air.”
“I estimate you have forty-two hours before you die.”
“I really don’t need to know that, Gizmo.”
“My pleasure, I am here to assist.”
Jann looked at the eccentric robot as it grabbed the door handle.
“Are you sure a rock didn’t fall on your head and readjust your brain?”
“Quite sure, Jann. My brain is not in my head.”
“Never mind. Let’s push… one, two, three…”
The door moved a little. Buoyed by this achievement Jann redoubled her efforts and they finally created an opening wide enough for both Jann and Gizmo to pass through.
They entered a long narrow passageway. The air was fresher here, gone was the foul smell from the airlock. After around ten meters or so, it opened out into the main soil processing cave. This was where the colony extracted its water. Robotic harvesters fed the processing plant with soil acquired from outside. At the far end of the cave, automatic airlocks facilitated the coming and going of these robots. Some fed the plant and some removed the spent soil back out onto the surface. None were moving when Jann and Gizmo entered. This was not unusual, as the reclamation and recycling system in Colony One was highly efficient. The plant only needed to top up the reservoir every so often, and since Martian soil contained a lot of H2O, the process required only brief periods of activity for the harvesters.
They moved through the cave illuminated only by the light from the droid. Jann caught glimpses in the shadows of the slumbering harvesters, waiting patiently to be called into action by the colony systems. They passed by the main access route, a stairway leading up to a concourse near the operations area above. Jann could take this route but it would only lead her right slap bang in to the hornet’s nest. If the Chinese were planning the defense of the colony then that area would be busy. Instead she was heading for the cave beneath the medlab. The same one that Nills had taken her when he had rescued her and Paolio from the demented Decker, where she had first met Gizmo. This cave had been utilized by Nills and the other colonists as a refuge from the mayhem that raged through the original colony population. It was in there that he had carved out an operations center for clandestine surveillance. It’s the perfect place to… do what? thought Jann. What exactly am I going to do, even If I manage to get there?
She put it out of her mind and concentrated on finding the location of the access point. This was not an easy task, as it had been sealed up long ago. What was the point of having a secret place if anyone could find it and enter? And since the soil processing area was frequently visited by technicians maintaining the equipment, the access point would be well hidden.
“Gizmo, where are we?”
The little robot projected a 3D schematic into the space directly in front of them. It zoomed and rotated as Gizmo calculated the correct orientation. “This is us here,” a red dot illuminated their position on the diagram, “…and that should be where the entrance is.”
“Okay, let’s keep going.”
Gizmo led the way, as its sensors derived their position in space from a combination of ultrasonic and microwave frequencies. It was like a bat. It did not require light to know where it was or what surrounded it. It might not be able to smell as well as a human but it had many more useful tricks up its metallic sleeve.
“Here it is.” The droid stopped and shone its light onto a bare cave wall.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“It is here, behind approximately one meter of regolith.”
“Great, more digging.” Jann started looking around for something to use as a tool.
“Wait,” said Gizmo, “I have a better idea.”
The droid went quiet for a moment, not moving, not saying anything. Jann began to wonder if it had shut itself down. “Gizmo?”
Before it replied she heard the whirr of an electric motor starting up, and she spun around to locate its direction. Across the cave the sound grew louder, moving toward them. She stepped back, “Gizmo?”
Out of the gloom a harvester bot trundled across the floor.
“I thought one of these would be useful. After al
l this is what they are designed to do— dig.”
“Gizmo, you are a genius.”
“Yes, I know.”
“But how did you do that? I thought you were denied access to the colony mainframe?”
“These are on a sub-system, low level stuff. I am able to access those sectors.”
The harvester moved over to the cave wall and started to literally eat it. It began to churn up the hard compacted regolith and fill its hopper. Dust filled the air as it chewed into the wall, loose dirt piled up around it like crumbs from a mechanical feast. It worked at a furious pace, devouring everything in its path, both soil and rock fell equally to its mechanical jaws. It stopped with a loud wheeze, dust billowing up from its base, then reversed out of the gaping hole. Gizmo shone its light inside.
“There it is, just as I calculated.”
“The only problem now is, how can we hide this? If someone were to come down here they would see it?”
“I can set the harvester to clear away the debris into the processing plant.”
“We’ll still need something to conceal the entrance. Even if it’s just cosmetic. I don’t think there’s anything we can do that will pass a close examination.”
Gizmo slowly swept the area with light, coming to a halt on a stack of storage containers.
“We could move these in front of the entrance, and pull them in closer once we are inside.”
“Okay, let’s get going then.”
They moved fast to drag everything into position. Jann’s main concern now was of being discovered. Any moment the door to the concourse area above could open and the game would be up. As it was, they were making one hell of a racket.
“Hurry, Gizmo.” They squeezed in behind the container camouflage they had just assembled. Jann grabbed the locking wheel on the door and put all her weight behind it. It was stiff from the dirt that had penetrated the mechanism it had been entombed in for so long. But it moved. And after much grunting from Jann they finally entered the hidden space that she had repurposed for her experiments beneath the medlab.
“Quick, Gizmo, get the door shut. I’ll see what’s going on.” She sat down at the monitors and flipped a number of switches to bring them online. Screens flickered to life as Jann tapped icons to display camera feeds from inside the colony. It was the same setup that Nills had used to monitor the whereabouts of the unfortunate ISA Commander Decker.
“Jann, my sensors have picked up activity in the soil processing area.”
“What? They must have heard us, dammit.” She tapped an icon to bring up a video feed. It was dark and grainy, but some illumination had entered the space from the direction of the stairs to the operations area.
“Look.” Jann pointed to movement on the monitor. “It’s the robot, Yutu. They must have sent it down to investigate.”
The quadruped moved silently into the camera’s field of view, then stopped, and its head slowly rotated.
“I do not like that robot,” said Gizmo.
“What’s it doing?”
“It is scanning the area for anomalies.”
“Define anomaly—wait, it’s stopped.” The robot’s head was pointing directly at the storage containers that Jann and Gizmo had just moved. It rose up on its four legs and started to move again. This time straight for the containers.
“Shit, it’s coming over.”
The robot moved slowly and purposefully, like a big cat stalking prey. It arrived at the location of the containers and started to move around the stack.
“Godamit.” Jann jumped up. “Quick find something we can jam into the door handle, anything.”
Gizmo picked up a long steel rod. “This might do.”
Jann grabbed it and raced for the door. But before she could reach it the ground shook with the force of an explosion somewhere up above and the cave was plunged into total darkness.
“What the hell?”
13
Battle
Emergency lighting flickered on inside the cave as Jann’s brain tried to make sense of what had just happened. It took her a moment to reorient herself.
“The main power source has shut down. The facility is now operating on backup power.” Gizmo was at the console, seemingly trying to reconnect with the broader colony systems. Jann stood motionless, her senses on high alert. She realized she was still holding the steel bar. “The robot, Yutu, is it still there?” she said as she moved to wedge it into the door’s locking mechanism.
“I have no feed, minimal systems operational.”
“Life support? Do we still have life support?”
“Affirmative… backup systems coming online now.”
The monitors started to flicker back to life as Jann returned to the desk. “What the hell is going on?”
“The facility still has full structural integrity. No loss of pressure.”
“That explosion came from outside.”
Jann’s fingers danced across the screens, tapping icons, bringing up video feeds. “Biodome looks intact.” She could make out groups of startled colonists looking around, clutching each other, they were frightened. She scanned the faces and spotted Xenon. At least he got out before the tunnel roof collapsed, she thought.
Another feed flickered to life, showing the operations room above; several of the Xaing Zu crew worked the systems at a frenetic pace. They too were trying to figure out what was going on. “Look.” Jann pointed at the screen. “It’s Yutu. The robot must have been ordered back.”
“I do not like that robot,” said Gizmo again.
“Gizmo, snap out of it… talk to me… comms, anything on comms?”
“Nothing. But my calculations put the explosion at fifty meters due south of the facility. Near the location of the main reactor. They probably targeted the main power line.”
Jann sat back and watched the monitors for a few minutes, trying to divine some meaning from the images. She located two of the Chinese in the operations room, along with Yutu. Two more were outside the biodome door, and armed. That left… how many? She wasn’t sure if all of them were in the facility or if some had been sequestered back on their ship.
“I am picking up a transmit,” said Gizmo, as radio static hissed out from the comm speaker. Jann could see that the Chinese in the operations room were also getting it, their body language changed suddenly.
“This is Commander Kruger, of the Colony One Mars Consortium. You have failed to comply with our request to vacate our facility.” The metallic voice broke through the hiss of static, the sandstorm raging outside causing the signal to break up. “…last chance… leave now…” Then it went dead.
“Xaing Zu are up to something. Look.” Jann pointed at the monitor of the operations room. The Chinese were putting on their EVA suits. “Are they planning to go outside, in this storm?”
“It could also be that COM are coming in.”
“But why EVA suits, then?”
“Because they fear a loss of pressure.”
Jann looked over at Gizmo. “You mean, if they don’t leave then COM are going to open a hole in the facility—oh shit.”
“Indeed,” said Gizmo. “For what it is worth you are relatively safe here, as this section is sealed and isolated from the main structure.”
“But what about the biodome, the colonists? This will be a disaster—the end of Colony One—we have to do something.” Jann jumped up from her seat and started pacing. “This is nuts, they’ll destroy everything that’s taken over a decade to establish—and for what? So they can simply repossess it?”
“Activity on the surface around the perimeter.” Gizmo jolted Jann back to the immediate situation by projecting a holographic image of the Colony One facility onto a small holo-table. It stuttered and fizzed as it rendered.
“The storm is interfering with the sensors.”
Nonetheless, they could clearly see two dots approaching the colony from the northern side.
“There, look, what’s that?” Jann pointed at the d
ots.
“COM rovers approaching, judging by the speed.”
“Do we have any cameras working on the outside?”
The monitors flickered through a series of blurry images of dust and sand. They failed to penetrate the swirling maelstrom, serving only to show a few meters of visibility and rendering a vague outline of the exterior of the colony. But it was enough to make out a new addition to the infrastructure. On the roof of one of the airlocks, a bulky pulsed energy weapon had been mounted. It was squat, not unlike a standard artillery piece. As Jann studied the structure she could see a suited figure operating it, moving the weapon, aiming it at something.
“Are they’re preparing to fire that weapon?”
But before Gizmo could reply another explosion rocked the cave, dust rained down on Jann, the power flickered off, and all went dark again.
“Shit. What was that?” Jann tried to orient herself in the pitch black of the cave before Gizmo flicked on its lights. The little robot moved back to the operations desk and started to investigate, interrogating and probing what colony systems still remained operational. A few seconds later auxiliary power came back online.
“The airlock in sector two has been compromised… loss of atmosphere in sector one… extensive damage.”
“Shit, COM must have taken out that weapon before Xaing Zu could fire it.”
“Still losing atmosphere in that sector… rate slowing…”
“The biodome?”
“Integrity at one hundred percent, still one atmosphere.”
The monitors flicked back on again and the holograph of the facility ballooned back to life. They could see the advancing dots had reached within a few meters of the facility. From the exterior cameras that still worked, several COM mercenaries disgorged themselves from the vehicles—all heavily armed.
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 40
