Void All The Way Down: The Sliding Void Omnibus

by Stephen Hunt

  All three of them re-entered the lodge, the humans tentatively, the robot shuddering as his legs adjusted to carpet. Calder left Momoko with instructions to look after Lento in the viewing room and make sure she stayed put, while he went to explore the rest of the lodge. He discovered seven guest rooms, all tidy and identical. Each with a double bed, silk sheets and an ensuite bathroom. No dust. No personal possessions as clues to the previous occupants. A small oak table with a single drawer containing an old-style paper book which looked like the corporate philosophy of the company that owned the lodge. A cartoon cat that resembled Momoko grinned on the cover, lifting up a smiling child in front of a vast orbital solar array – the kind that could reflect enough power to a ground station to power a continent. An interface on the table activated the room’s entertainment system, walls suddenly filled with live views of the jungle outside. Calder shivered and changed the display. An Asiatic-faced woman appeared in a red silk dress, her arms stretched out towards Calder, singing in the same language that Momoko had initially chattered at Calder. He shook his head and turned the walls off. Moving on, the young nobleman found a large stainless steel kitchen that resembled a laboratory. After checking the taps were still fed by a filtered well, Calder excitedly bypassed the ovens and examined the room’s food production unit. It was still under power and operational. He could feed it with vegetation from outside – even dirt – and it would process the molecules into something approaching terrestrial food. The best news I’m likely to get today. They could hole up here and await rescue without starving or going thirsty. On the other side of the lodge he came across a boot room with lockers for clothes and weapons, glowing screens flickering with pictograms to indicate what each locker should contain floating next to a silhouette of an androgynous figure. All the weapons had been taken, along with most of the ammunition. But he could charge his gun’s cell here. What was left in the way of bullets, pellets, shells, fuel and energy packs were half a century out of date for Calder’s rifle. Pity. And from the pictograms, some of the weapons looked a lot more deadly than Calder’s rifle . . . bazooka-sized guns with smart ammunition, flame-throwers, pulse energy weapons. Everything you would need to bring down the massive beasts that haunted this slowly dying world. He did find a couple of spare safari suits that would fit him and Lento at a pinch. Adaptive camouflage as well as fibre cooling, the suits turning mottled grey the instant he activated them, perfectly matching the back of the locker. He finished at a set of stairs leading to the roof, a hatch up above like an airlock, ready to mate with the shuttles that carried the hunters to Abracadabra. He opened the hatch but no craft rested above. The shuttle must be where the comms the safaris relied on had been situated – for there was none inside the lodge. Someone had left in the last vessel to land; and been in too much of a hurry to take the corpses. Only the robots to bury them and keep the lodge functioning, waiting for another batch of visitors who never came. The only other thing of note lay in what passed for the lodge’s basement, steels stairs descending to a subterranean level occupied by a thermal tap . . . unlimited energy supplied from deep below the world’s surface. Calder examined the control panels for the lodge’s systems, not much different from the interfaces he had trained on in the Gravity Rose’s engine room.

  Calder jumped, reaching for his rifle as something moved in the corner of his eye. But it was only the robot. Momoko wavered into view from behind the bank of an energy generator, the comical metal cat ears on his head rotating as they fixed on the new arrival.

  ‘I thought I told you to look after Lento,’ said Calder.

  ‘The honoured female guest is asleep in Client Quarters Two,’ said Momoko. ‘I am watching her now on the room’s security cameras. The lodge is sealed. For your safety. All night-time defence protocols are now activating.’

  ‘There’s one that needs to be deactivated,’ said Calder, tapping experimentally at the controls. The screen blinked back at him. ‘I need to drop the lodge’s camouflage cover.’

  ‘The holographic chameleon field is protection against the aerial carnivore designated Species 1056C by the standard planetary survey – colloquially: “Draco”, the great flighted hyper-lizard. Lodge risk assessment protocols do not permit night-time hunting by honoured guests or engaging Species 1056C at any time.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve come across those monstrous dragons before,’ said Calder. ‘They tried to attack my shuttle on the way down to Abracadabra. But it’s not them I’m looking to attract. My starship will be looking for me. This lodge is the only source of artificial light outside of the mining camp. If we drop the field, the Gravity Rose could pick us up on their next orbital sweep and send a shuttle to pick us up.’

  ‘The hunters will return one day and you will leave this place,’ said Momoko, with a trace of almost prophetic awe in his voice.

  ‘Damn straight,’ said Calder.

  ‘But,’ said Momoko, raising three bulbous metal fingers and a single claw like thumb, ‘the lodge’s lights will also attract Species 1056C to attack the honoured guests.’

  ‘I think we’re just going to have to take that chance,’ said Calder. ‘There are at least five graves outside filled with your company’s guests who were a lot better armed than me and Lento.’ And whatever they had met on this world, their heavy weapons hadn’t been protection enough. ‘Your fence and lodge wasn’t enough to shelter them. This is the fastest way of getting rescued. Will you help us?’

  ‘I am always reasonable,’ said Momoko. It reached out and worked its way through the menus until it reached the field control display. It cut the power to the field, a blinking red alert twisting on the screen, imploring to be restored as a steady beeping sounded. As it flashed, Calder heard a scream echoing from the level above. Lento! He dashed up the stairs and along the corridor towards the bedrooms, unshouldering his rifle and he ran. He found her in the bed, quivering. Her room had automatically defaulted to the exterior jungle view – the line of trees and strange plants beyond the toxin fence, so high-resolution they might have been standing inside the rain forest, hidden speakers bringing distant hoots and the low vibration of insects buzzing inside the lodge. He could just see three moons visible in the dark swirling sky, evil red disks replacing the distended sun. The toxin fence quivered as though something had just touched it before withdrawing.

  ‘It’s covered in spines,’ whispered Lento, hardly loud enough to hear.

  Calder switched the view to what looked like corporate propaganda for large scale solar energy deployments and killed the audio’s foreign gabbling. ‘Go to sleep. We’re safe in here.’

  As safe as those mounds outside? He left her door open and walked into the viewing gallery. The thick slanted windows were darkening as they covered up, armoured storm blinds rolling down from recesses at the top of the lodge. Solid enough to stop one of those dragons ripping them off? Calder wasn’t sure.

  Momoko caught up with him. ‘Does the honoured female guest wish me to sing to her? The lodge protocols contain many renowned company songs.’ It started to croon, accompanied by a burst of jaunty recorded music. ‘The Etruka Energy Company is as powerful as our shafu; our never-ending energies come from without and within; only by giving our all will our honoured customers win.’

  ‘Maybe later.’ He remembered the toxin fence swaying as though something had just brushed it. ‘Can you show me what’s outside on the wall here using the cameras? The fence perimeter?’

  Momoko pointed to the steel blinds. ‘Cameras are covered when the carbon-reinforced storm shielding comes down. All but the shuttle cam on our roof.’

  ‘There’s not a storm outside.’

  ‘Fear the night,’ said Momoko. ‘Storm shielding protocols have been over-written.’

  And Calder could guess by who – five graves full of who. Safe inside, or trapped inside? Momoko activated the roof-top camera, a view of the night sky appeared on the ceiling, dark swirling clouds pierced by the wan wine-coloured light of the world’s three mo
ons. No sign of a rescue shuttle or his ship streaking like a comet through the heavens. Lento had survived outside for over a week. The driver might have come through the experience slightly deranged, but she and Calder Durk were now inside a human-built lodge specifically constructed to survive the rigours of the jungle. How hard can it be to get through a single night? Maybe he should have asked one of the suicidal machines standing decapitated in the lodge’s charging stations. Or the mounds in the garden.

  ‘Can you rotate the camera? Turn all the roof’s spotlights on and keep them on.’

  In response, the dark sky twisted around above them, dizzying Calder. He was getting a crick in the neck looking at the view.

  Janet Lento appeared, white silk sheets wrapped around her. She looked like the sort of deranged elder meant to haunt the upper levels of drafty castles. Saying nothing, she approached a makeshift charging station set-up opposite the board in the viewing gallery. Presumably this was Momoko’s work. So the robot would wake up in the morning with amnesia and read the instructions right away . . . then download what passed for the lodge’s maintenance manual and get on with its job. Lento sat down by the robot’s feet, like she was its pet, huddled under her blankets. Her eyes still stared wide and glassy. But there was something else there now. Resignation? She stared at the heavens, waiting for a sign. Calder felt dog-tired. But if he closed his eyes now, he’d go straight to sleep on one of the sculpted sofas – leaving his fate reliant on a mute woman in deep shock and a robot caretaker about to forget everything that had happened to it today, including its visitors’ presence. Neither the mine driver nor machine seemed a safe bet to trust his life to. So he stayed awake and watched and waited for help to arrive. It started raining outside. Big fat gobs of water which steamed as they hit the roof, dripping down the external camera dome and generating artefacts across the projected image and . . . a dark shadow flickered at the edge of the image for a fraction of a second. Calder might have written it off as a symptom of his tiredness or the storm front building outside, but Lento had obviously seen it too. She started rocking and moaning beneath her blankets. Calder felt a chill run down his spine. Something sharp and razor-edged yet lethally sinuous and flowing. What could bypass the toxin fence out there?

  Calder stared at Momoko. ‘Did you see that? It looked like a humanoid figure.’ It’s covered in spines.

  ‘I did not see anything,’ protested the robot. ‘And anything I did, I wish to forget.’

  Calder checked his rifle. It was still set to single shot. Over a hundred projectiles. He boosted the magnetic acceleration to maximum and damn if the gun’s energy cell lost its juice. He could always recharge it in the lodge’s boot room. A rail rifle on max-mag. He could blast flechettes through a castle wall and watch them pass out the other side with enough kinetic energy to penetrate a tank. He jumped back as a massive clang came from the outside wall. It sounded as if the tank he was planning to shoot had just collided with the lodge. Another loud metallic boom, and a dent appeared in the wall, the nearly indestructible composite metal as pliable as clay under the raw force of whatever was battering the lodge.

  ‘What is out there?’ shouted Calder.

  ‘It’s not written on the board,’ said Momoko. ‘Soon, soon,’ it hummed to itself. ‘I will forget soon. I am powerful and fun.’

  Lento joined the robot’s mutterings with a low keening noise. Calder ran to the viewing gallery’s wall, banging it in futile anger with the butt of his rifle. ‘I am Calder Durk, a prince of Hesperus,’ he roared. ‘I fought the Narvalak fleet to a standstill with nothing more than a flotilla of ice schooners and loyal men armed with crossbow, shield and sword. I’ve laid piles of corpses around me until the heaps grew larger than even the bards’ songs could accurately count. I am an apostate, sentenced to death by burning by every dirty priest and corrupt cardinal on my planet. I have been betrayed and exiled. There is nothing in this damp, humid, furnace of a half-corpse world that can cost me more than I have already lost, so I spit upon you, you wall-banging coward. Throw aside the shadows and enter! Face me and let us see which one of us knows fear!’

  The banging seemed to stop. Calder was amazed. He’d only been trying to mask his creeping sense of dread. Has the prowling entity actually taken my challenge to heart? Behind him the robot hummed about its impending self-inflicted amnesia like a priest holding to a mantra. What was left of Lento had tugged the sheet over her face; as if she couldn’t see the threat, it wouldn’t exist. I’m as as good as on my own here. Calder eyes flicked towards the ceiling, desperately searching for any sign of what he thought he had seen outside. The moon on the left winked at him. Then the smaller moon on the right. Then the fat crimson lunar disk in the centre winked too. All three moons sending him a strange semaphore signal. Is this how Lento’s madness began? Suddenly, the blinking orbs resolved into the fluttering shadow of wings. A flight of dragons dropped close enough for their cawing challenge to overwhelm the external speakers’ ability to process the volume. Calder and Momoko spilled over as the lodge rocked and shook on its foundations, the exiled nobleman sprawling across Lento’s huddled form, the afterimage of lizard-like heads as large as ground vehicles throwing their thundering open maws against the roof. Fang scratches left against the juddering camera dome. Calder had dropped his rifle in the dragon-created earthquake. He scooped the weapon up again. A mouse lifting a toothpick against an ambush of tigers.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The mother-lode.

  Lana glanced up as Skrat’s shuttle drifted away over the rain forest canopy, steam burning up from the clearing where the craft’s engines had scorched the ground, Skrat’s craft dipping down low enough for her and Zeno to leap off its loading ramp. In the distance she could see the mountain range’s black shadows and the glow of the mine head. Zeno had transformed their mission to uncover the truth behind the local operation into one of his sim melodramas, altering the pigment of his artificial skin into dark camouflage stripes. You could take the actor out of the android, but you can’t take the android out of the actor. Lana knew he was well capable of adjusting his face to match the background in real-time . . . becoming almost invisible to the naked eye. The camo tiger strips were purely for show. Possibly to show Lana what he thought about her half-baked plan to sneak into the mine.

  ‘The road to the mountains is half a mile in that direction,’ said Lana. ‘You want to walk to it, or would you prefer to roll across the ground and take cover behind the trees every few yards?’

  ‘I’m as serious about getting this done as you are,’ said Zeno. ‘Relations between you and the professor are frosty enough as it is. I don’t need us to be discovered creeping around the miners’ mineral stores for things to get any worse.’

  ‘I’m not letting my feelings about that damn woman get in the way,’ snapped Lana. ‘I’d be doing the same whoever Dollar-sign sent to mine this world.’ And I’d be doing this for any member of crew, too. Not just Calder.

  ‘Sure,’ said Zeno. ‘Keep on telling yourself that. There can be only one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘From the classics,’ said Zeno. ‘Don’t worry your fleshie head about it.’

  ‘I won’t. You lead the way,’ said Lana. ‘Seeing as you’ve got perfect night-vision out-of-the-box.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll get eaten first, too,’ said Zeno, gloomily.

  Lana checked her rifle was running hot with a full magazine. ‘Most of the really dangerous creatures are lizards. They’re not nocturnal hunters.’

  ‘Everything on this rotten world’s dangerous,’ said Zeno. ‘Including half the vegetation. Evolution, she sure does get cranky when she reaches the final stages of her solar cycle. It’s like all the fauna and flora on Abracadabra have realized they’re heading for a supernova and lights-out, and are all operating with their “irked-off” button jammed on full in protest.’

  ‘I know how they feel.’

  ‘And those flying monstrosities we faced during our landing .
. . they’re part-warm blooded, even if they do look like Puff the Magic Dragon’s angry big cousin. They can operate in the dark.’

  ‘Pretend you’re acting in one of your old movies,’ suggested Lana. ‘Zeno the Dragon Slayer or something.’

  ‘You’re not really helping.’

  ‘Sure I am. You’re just too pig-headed to admit when the captain’s right.’

  It took the two of them half an hour to reach the road between the main landing field and the mine-head. Lana nearly tripped over a line of tree stumps left by the side of the strip, blackened and dead from being speed-sliced by an industrial laser on high power. She suspected Zeno had let her wander into them as punishment. The road itself was a quick-spray multi-layer composite, resistant to rain and weeds – the ugly kind of non-degradable tech that would have placard-waving environmentalists suicidally throwing themselves in front of diggers . . . if the nearest human population centre of any size hadn’t been a hundred light years away. Spike-like beacons had been driven into the dirt by a pile driver on both sides of the road – to help ensure drone equipment didn’t slip off the highway. With the level of static from solar flares, it would be suicidal to rely on sat-nav to guide drones out here.