‘That’s where we need to get to,’ he said, pointing between two tall trees.
Sure enough, in the distance, right in the middle of the circular stern-side wall, was an impressive looking blast door. It was the only bare metal object I had seen, since leaving the liberty boat. I could also just make out it was completely surrounded by a doughnut shaped mountain of shrubs, dirt and rubble that had tumbled towards that end of the atrium from the gardens. We would have to climb over the rubble to get to the door.
Just then, as if we hadn’t got enough to contend with, the bright blue-white lights, that imitated daylight, started to flicker, and a few moments after that they went out completely. Seconds later dim red emergency lights came on, but they were few and far between.
Yet another automated emergency announcement declared, ‘Life support has now been discontinued.’ And as if to underline that point, the constant droning noise of the air-conditioning ceased. Once the sound of the fans had died down, it became much quieter and I thought I could hear my own heart pounding once more.
Aleq assured us that Vitcha had turned off life support merely as a ruse to ensure every last one of the passengers and human crew would return to their cabins and put themselves into stasis. And now that had been done, the lack of fresh air would make no significant difference to Tukarra and myself for several days at least.
Having to carefully pick our way downwards through the messed-up gardens, it seemed to take an age for us to reach the pile of debris surrounding the blast door. And when we finally arrived at the foot of the pile; what a sight we were greeted with.
Soil from the flower beds had mixed with a deluge of water: spilled over from elegant fountains and also from a flume ride that once meandered through the gardens. There were several bodies draped in and around the mud; a couple of Elite, a few humans, and several androids. Yet the soaking wet heap of muck and rubble that partly buried them was not the colour of dirt, it had turned a shimmering green. It was covered in those grass-like tendrils we had seen earlier, but they were thicker now, and swaying as though they were in a breeze. It seemed certain this atrium was going to suffer the same fate as Suran’s Arboretum - all the indigenous species (including us) would soon be completely strangled by vines and roots similar to Eric’s.
However, it was not only the rapidly growing roots we had to be wary of. As we started to climb up the mountain of rubbish, we also had to make sure we kept our distance from several robot arms, reaching out from the rubble, trying to grab at us.
One of the half buried androids did manage to catch hold of Tukarra’s shin, and its sleek grey head and torso started to rise up out of the mud.
But even before Tukarra had chance to cry out, Ellie was already on the case. Taking a hand-gun from the utility belt she was still wearing, she shot the robot’s expressionless face through the eye, at close range. I then rushed over to help prize the crippled machine’s tightly locked fingers, one by one, off from Tukarra’s leg.
After climbing to the top of the debris, we realised the blast door we were making for was still out of reach. The door actually formed part of a circular wall, at the top of a death slide. According to Aleq, the slide had been a popular attraction for many of the passengers.
He speculated as to why the shiny giant metal door had gone unnoticed, ‘I think our guests were having so much fun on that ride; they just didn’t see that massive door behind them - especially when they were sat on the threshold, about to push themselves over the edge.’
There would be no-one enjoying the ride on this occasion, however. Because of the star cruiser’s constant rotation and continued acceleration, the slide seemed to run away from the wall at a crazy angle, above us.
There was a passenger lift associated with the ride but its entrance was buried under the mountain of rubble we had just climbed. Aleq would not have allowed us to make use of the lift or its shaft, anyway. Fortunately there was a service ladder alongside the lift, and we started to clamber up that.
Aleq and Ellie arrived at the blast door first. Tukarra and I were not far behind them, but took a while to get our breath back after reaching the platform.
The strange gravity in the vicinity of the blast door acted perpendicular to the door, gently pulling us onto it, and making the death slide completely redundant.
I remember thinking to myself that, from where we were stood, it might have been more appropriate to describe the door as a hatch, because it was now directly beneath our feet.
Whilst Aleq and Ellie searched for the door’s locking mechanism, Tukarra and I decided to take advantage of our new location and have a look around. Although my eyes had adjusted well to the dim red emergency lighting, I still had to rub them. Way over my head, I could see through the leaves of the tallest trees, across to the opposite wall of the atrium. I could hardly believe what I saw. The huge circular wall appeared to be bulging, as though it was covered by an enormous rising soufflé. That awful fungal growth had found its way into the gardens with us. You could see it was sapping the very life force from the plants just in front of it. Even the now fully grown Eric-like roots, just ahead of the mass, were wilting, then shrivelling and falling to the ground - where they were overwhelmed and ingested by a web of silky white filaments. The armies, Aleq had talked about, had finally met. A war was being raged both on the large scale (man-eating plants versus a giant mycelium fungal bloom) and on the small scale (microscopic nanite machines versus the fine criss-crossing hyphae fungal threads). Evidence of this epic struggle could be seen as a thin ribbon of purple light, wriggling through the darkened gardens towards us; produced as each particle of Astracite was encountered and then consumed by the fungus. This advance guard was closely followed by a front line of toadstools, swelling, maturing, spreading a dark mist of spores, and eventually coalescing to extend the steadily advancing fungal blanket.
‘Look up there,’ Tukarra shouted pointing around us towards the curved floors of the atrium. A number of androids were picking their way through the wreckage of the surrounding restaurants and bars, along an obstacle course of broken bottles, overturned chairs, tables and flower pots, trying to work their way down to us. They looked like they meant business. Many of them were brandishing a variety of tools and makeshift weapons.
It was then we heard the deep distinctive voice of Vitcha Kesinko himself, booming over the public address system, and more disturbingly: emanating from the mouth of every approaching android.
‘I don’t know what you think you are doing Aleq,’ he said. ‘You cannot win. Even now my plants are dying for me, in the name of science. They will soon be able to identify a poison that will kill your fungus. I’ll have to fumigate the whole ship of course. I’m afraid your son and his new found friend won’t survive.’
Vitcha’s voice sounded more unhinged with each sentence.
‘It is unfortunate Rhett showed up, against all the odds, to spoil everything for me,’ he continued. ‘I was enjoying taking my time, obtaining my revenge for what you did to me and my starship programme, by watching you deal with the pointless immortality I have granted you.’
‘And you Ellie, you have shown me your true colours. If you and Aleq are going to use the gifts, I have bestowed on both of you, against me, then I cannot allow either of you to live.’
‘So give yourselves up now, and help me to rebuild the human race when we get to New Earth. If you do not comply with this simple request then you may have noticed my toy robots will be coming to, shall we say, de-construct you both.’
‘Ignore him,’ Ellie said forcefully. ‘The very fact that he is talking to us like this only goes to show he is worried we might succeed in de-constructing him first.’
‘Well said,’ agreed Aleq. ‘On we go then.’
*
My father knelt down to press a few buttons on an old fashioned keypad by his feet, adjacent to the blast door, but nothing happened. He quickly tried several different key sequences as he attempted to unlock the door
, but without any luck. All the time, I watched the group of menacing looking androids (Vitcha had referred to as his, ‘toys’) gaining in numbers, and they were getting closer and closer. In fact, the first pair had made it to the base of the muddy spoil heap the four of us had scrambled over only minutes earlier.
‘What now!’ I called out.
Ellie answered with, ‘Watch and learn.’
Out from the rucksack, she had brought with her from the Tug, she produced yet another gun-like object of some kind and two large chunks of threaded metal.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is in fact a powerful drill, and these are explosive bolts. They are the same type as those that fastened the Tug down onto the surface of Hydra.’
She motioned Aleq, Tukarra and myself to move back from the door. We took shelter underneath the curved surface of the death slide.
Whilst we waited for Ellie to drill two large holes side by side in the door jam, Aleq took out his own hand-gun, and contemplated firing it at any android that might have been getting too near us.
Ellie fitted the bolts into the holes she had made and jumped beneath the death slide to join the rest of us, in hiding. She then took out her hand-gun once again and aimed it, around the edge of the slide, at one of the bolts.
Tukarra and I put our fingers in our ears as Ellie pulled the trigger.
Chapter 31 – The Brain
There was quite an explosion, and I saw the fist sized head of one of the bolts, hurtling at high speed, ricocheting around the atrium. The blast heftily shook the structure we were clinging on to.
Ellie had positioned the charges expertly. The huge blast door was now ajar and surprisingly little damage had been done. Clearly its designer had not considered the possibility of explosive charges being deliberately placed to prize the bulky armoured doorway open. Rays of strong white light now spilled out from of the crack, streaming across the circular wall, to give the trees and plants at our end of the atrium ghostly white highlights against the dark red shadows.
We came out from our temporary hide, and stood on the wall to one side of the now, only slightly twisted, blast door. The hydraulic motors in Aleq’s arms were only just strong enough to lift the heavy door sufficiently for Ellie, Tukarra, and myself to squeeze through the opening. Ellie and I had to join forces, pushing up on the underside of the door, to allow Aleq to slither in after us.
After letting the ill fitting door fall shut behind us, we tried to take stock of the new environment the four of us had lowered ourselves into. We were now stood, clinging - one above the other - onto the rungs of a metal ladder, in what would normally have been described as a brightly lit corridor: of a tubular construction. To us though, the smooth white corridor looked like a deep hole in the ground. The ladder had been fixed to the ceiling for such an eventuality, but it was all too clear our progress would still be slow; for one thing I could see a closed bulkhead door below us.
Aleq announced, ‘We are now in the older part of the ship. The doors, we will encounter from now on, are not connected to the Ether. We will have to negotiate at least seven bulkhead doors like the one down there, before we reach any command and control rooms. But not to worry; I should be able to open every door, one at a time. I should also be able to close and lock each of the doors after we have passed through them. Even so, I do not think that will keep Vitcha’s androids at bay for long.’
He attempted to stress the next few words by introducing a cheap tremolo effect into his voice, ‘So we need to get to Vitcha before those robots get to us,’ he said. ‘And they might well inadvertently trail some of our fungus in here with them!’ he added.
‘So no pressure then,’ I said. However, my attempt to lighten the mood had fallen on deaf ears.
Without further ado, we all started down the ladder, pausing only to open and pass through several of the bulkhead doors, locking each of them behind us, just as Aleq had suggested.
As we continued to make our descent, the more I became aware of a drumming noise - and yes, I was now certain that was the heartbeat I had been hearing since our arrival on the Paricianne.
I began to feel a measure of claustrophobia. The smooth white walls seemed to be closing in on us. The further we progressed, the harder it was to believe we were aboard a real spaceship. True, there were a few windows, but instead of being able to see stars through them, there was a mass of slimy brown entrails pulsing up against the glass - pulsing to the ever present heartbeat that grew louder and faster with every step down the ladder we took.
Tukarra faltered, by one of the windows, curiosity had got the better of her. She was grimacing, her face screwed up with revulsion, as she desperately tried to comprehend the throbbing wall of muscle, gristle, veins and arteries, she was looking at.
I called out, ‘Aleq.’
My father’s robot head turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and he shouted back to Tukarra, ‘Keep together everyone. You must all keep up. As former captain of the Paricianne, I am still privy to the whereabouts of all my crew, and I can tell that our pursuers have already broken through the first bulkhead door.’
Even as he spoke, Aleq began to realise we needed to gain a better understanding of where we actually were; he had no wish for simple curiosity to slow our progress for a second time. Therefore, as we continued to descend the ladder, he tried to explain our surroundings.
‘We are now inside what is left of the Starship Kesinko. It was a prototype spaceship, designed to test Dark Matter Engine technology. It was only intended to hop between the closest stars within our Milky Way. But Vitcha’s goal has always been to go to the Andromeda spiral, and this prototype starship was simply not big enough to sustain him on the long voyage.’
‘Furthermore, during his “Dark Time”, the many years before he decided to revive the human race, most of the electronic equipment failed. So Vitcha developed the only technology available to him. He found a way to use the nanites, that connected his brain to the computer systems around him, to grow biological replacements for the failed systems, and enlarge the spaceship itself. So the Starship Kesinko is now literally buried deep in the heart of the much bigger Star Cruiser Paricianne. Almost all of the Paricianne’s accommodation, and services are built from sustainable, self healing, bio-mass, half-plant, half-animal, direct extensions of Vitcha Kesinko’s brain. What you see outside these windows is the tissue that surrounds and protects a massive heart. Every corner of this vessel, and the great cruise liner that envelops it, relies on that heart for a fresh supply of blood (or is it sap?) to acquire and supply oxygen and nutrients for every other corner.’
Aleq’s speech was cut short by the sound of a bulkhead door - one we had passed through less than a minute before - being worked on by the mob of androids. They were almost upon us. And suddenly, to make matters worse, all the lights went out again and we were plunged into total darkness.
The four of us stopped in our tracks, reaching out, trying to make sure we could touch each other.
‘Listen,’ said Tukarra.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘The beating heart. It has stopped,’ she replied.
Sure enough. There was no sound at all. Even the android mob had fallen silent for the moment.
Aleq said, ‘The fungus is growing much more rapidly than I expected. The Paricianne is dying. We are running out of time.’
Fortunately, Tukarra and I were still wearing our glow-in-the-dark uniforms, and it didn’t take long for our eyes to become accustomed to their calming aura of pastel pinks and blues.
We soon arrived at a point down the shaft where four more corridors branched off at right angles.
‘These lead to the bridge, the engine room, the fusion reactor, and the computer room - where Vitcha is,’ Aleq explained.
‘I’m sorry but we will have to split up here,’ he said. ‘And as you two are our only source of light; may I suggest that you Tukarra, come with me to the bridge. You can help me to make the Kesinko ready to brea
k free of the Paricianne just as soon as we regain control of the engines from Vitcha.’
‘Yes,’ answered Ellie, on behalf of Tukarra, with an unusual modulation in her voice that possibly indicated a little too much enthusiasm. ‘And Rhett can help me to find a way to kill my father on behalf of all humans everywhere.’
Aleq scolded her, ‘Ellie, you must not kill Vitcha unless I ask you to. Do you understand? Keep me informed of your progress and await my instructions.’
I had to check this new development with Tukarra, ‘That’s okay with you?’ I asked her, ‘To go to the bridge with my father?’
She briefly gripped my hand and kissed my cheek.
‘I guess it will have to be,’ she replied with Aleq and Ellie pulling on our arms, hastening us to part company.
As soon as Ellie and I moved away from the central axis of the ship, gravity started to act in a more reasonable direction. We found we could abandon the ladders and start running again.
But the robot mob were hot on our heels now. I could see a shower of sparks flashing in the darkness behind us, presumably from some kind of cutting tool.
After passing through one last bulkhead door, and managing to securely lock it behind us, we found ourselves stood in the middle of a T-junction.
There was a passageway to the left, another to the right, and yet another locked door directly opposite us. A sign over the door clearly stated, ‘Computing and Communications’.
‘We need to get in there,’ Ellie hissed: clearly frustrated and annoyed because this new door sported a prehistoric rotary combination lock.
‘I suppose there could not be a more secure mechanism in this day and age,’ I thought.
The construction of such intricate mechanical devices was considered a black art even in my youth. I could only remember seeing the shadow of one when Humphrey Bogart opens a safe in those reruns of Casablanca.
‘What’s the combination?’ I asked.
Escaping the Sun Page 25
