by G R Matthews
In the top drawer, when I got to it, was a Bible. It is a strange thing, these different faiths that people put their faith in. Apparently, we were now reliving the flood. Only this time, no single mad man had built a barge to save all the animals whilst letting all those innocent children drown. The book stayed where it was.
The next room was the same, as were the two on the opposite side of the corridor. No personal effects, a single jump suit and a bible. The base had been set up to be a monastery, or a temporary stopover. You arrived, changed, did a little reading, prayed and slept before heading off. Which begged the question, where was the food? The toilets? And the maid who kept all these rooms clean. There wasn’t a speck of dust on any surface.
The second question was answered on the next door down. A toilet, which I was happy to use, and a sink where I could wash my hands and drink some water. It was clear and fresh, if a little warm. I took a little time just to run some water through my hair and clear more of the Oxyquid. Watered, washed and dressed, I felt better. Some shoes would be nice, but beggars can’t be choosers, just thieves.
At the junction I had two choices. Left or right. There were no handy signs on the wall or the floor. I suspect you either knew your way around or you learned quite quickly. Four beds, two bathrooms, for a total of four to eight staff or Monks, depending on their domestic arrangements, and a maid who might have a room elsewhere. The dock wasn’t big enough to have much more than a four-man sub tied up.
I chose left. As before there were doors on either side, but these all had little signs on them to identify their purpose. The first door on the right hand wall had a yellow triangle, outlined in red, with a lightning bolt upon it. The power room. Leaving it alone, I padded onto the next which had a green circular sign with arrows going around the perimeter. In the centre of that sign was the chemical symbol for Carbon Dioxide. The air scrubbers then. Both useful rooms for any city or base to have. The two doors on the opposite side both had signs proclaiming their purpose as store rooms.
The last door, the one set into the rock wall at the far end of the corridor, was the first I had seen with a window in it. Not a large one. It would be a stupid architect who built a large window in a door that might have to resist the pressure of inrushing water. No, this window was small. It was also single glazed, but just that the one pane was the thickness of the door, about fifteen centimetres in all.
There was the ghost of movement over to the left. It was impossible to see clearly through a lump of plastic as thick as that. There were also a million little scratches across it. Quite clearly it had been in place sometime. I ducked below the view port for a moment and thought.
Keller was in the room beyond the door. I hadn’t seen anyone else so far so it was likely, unless the other corridor was full of the important rooms, the base was empty apart from him. There were no other subs here, the beds hadn’t been slept in and the jumpsuits were ready for people to use, but they hadn’t been used. It was an easy conclusion to reach based on the evidence I had. Time, therefore, for Keller and I to have that conversation.
With Elena’s face firm in my mind I stood and pushed open the thick door. The room, now exposed to clear view, was a mess hall. Two rows of tables, regularly spaced, and a kitchen area opposite the door I’d entered through. The walls were bare but there was a cupboard full of cutlery, plates and cups at the far end of the room.
“Keller,” I said as calmly as I could, “you and I need to have a talk.”
The door closed behind me as Keller, who had been sat at one of tables, his back to the door, slid the chair back and rose to his feet. He was taller than I remembered and wider. I also noted that he seemed to be wearing a base standard jump suit.
“I’m not Keller,” the man said and turned to face me. He was right, he wasn’t Keller.
“Sorry, wrong room.” I reached for the door. He headed towards the kitchen and what looked like a fire alarm button. “Shit.”
He was a big man and moved with the slow confidence of big men. It was an arrogant walk. It was telling me there was nothing I could do to hurt him. He didn’t even look at me. That made it easier. I ran across the room and leapt up onto his back.
Nothing would have pleased me more than to have knocked him down and finished him off with a swift kick to the head. To my painful regret, that didn’t happen. The big man staggered when I landed on him and I wrapped my arms around his neck, squeezing as hard as I could. He took two more halting steps, regaining his balance before standing up straight and grabbing my arms.
He pulled and I resisted. The sad fact was, he was stronger than me and, centimetre by centimetre, he dragged my arms from his neck. With a final shrug of his shoulders, he deposited me on the floor. I scrambled backwards and up onto my feet as he turned around.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“We all make mistakes,” I said, wincing at the renewed pain in my ribs.
He rolled his shoulders and closed his hands into great fists, raising them in front of his face. “You certainly have.”
A big man will generally beat a small one and, in my experience, then continue to beat them until the smaller man is black, blue and unconscious. He stomped towards me. I backed up, pulling one of the tables in the way. It proved a minor inconvenience as he lifted it with one hand and sent it skidding across the floor.
He lunged, both meaty arms outstretched and I had nowhere to go. I tried to kick him in the fork of his legs. Already falling backwards, all I managed was to graze his thigh. His arms clamped around me and he lifted me off the floor in a bear hug. My ribs screamed in agony. I had one arm free, the other caught by my side.
The big man began to squeeze and for the only time during our acquaintance I was glad he was so muscled. All of those bulging muscles in shoulders, biceps and chest actually prevented his arms from contracting all the way. It was still bloody painful, but I could, at least, gasp in short breaths.
I stuck my free palm below his chin and pushed backwards. My arm against his neck and I was winning, just. His head tilted back and visible now was the grimace of effort on his face. My panting breaths were not providing enough oxygen to keep this up for long and it wasn’t doing anything about his arms. I extended my arm as far as possible, arching my back against his arms. When my arm was at full extension, I held it there for a second, then let go.
His head shot forward now the resistance was gone. At the same moment I snapped my head down, leading with my forehead. I hit him where I’d hoped, right on his nose. The cartilage and flesh collapsed, warm blood, his blood, splattered over my cheeks. I hit him twice more, this time with the elbow of my free arm.
The big man’s head bounced off a table as he fell. It was only when he hit the ground that his arms relaxed their hold enough for me to struggle upright and stagger to the wall. He looked unconscious or dead. Either one worked for me. Blood still poured from his nose, but his arms didn’t rise to hold his face.
When I had my breath back, I bent down to check his pulse. It was there, but by the time he woke there was every chance he’d wish he had died. The broken nose would be painful and so would the lump on the back of his head from the table. I watched him for a moment, considering. If I’d been wearing shoes there would be a strong temptation to boot him in the head a few times just for the purpose of security.
“Bugger.” For a big man he had tiny feet. His boots clattered into the bin. I took hold of his shoulders and dragged him into the kitchen area, out of sight. In the cupboards behind the counter was a selection of food and it was lunchtime.
Chapter 23
I left the wrappers and cutlery on the table then went back to check on the big guy. He was lying on the kitchen floor and still out cold. My ribs hurt. But, all things considered, I felt that I’d come off the better. The possibility that Keller was not alone on the base was higher than I had given credence. There could be a few more here, or it could have just been the big man and Keller. The sub in
the docks was a two man and that made sense. However, a false assumption had led me into trouble once and, from now on, it would pay to be careful.
The view through the scratched window in the main door showed the corridor was empty, so I crept out. Fed, but aching and without shoes. Bypassing the first four doors, I stopped at the intersection and peered around the corner. Empty. So I continued straight on down the right hand corridor.
Here the doors were offset from each other, completely at odds with the other corridors. On the right, as I walked, the first door had a window through which the room appeared to be used for meetings or conferences. A large round table surrounded by eight chairs and a large screen at the far end. Other than that it was empty. I moved on.
The second door, on the left wall, was thicker than the others. A proper bulkhead door. All thick metal and no viewport. I put my hand against the locking wheel and gave a gentle push. It was locked and, for the moment, I was content to leave it that way. There were three other doors ahead, none of them bulkheads and more likely to have rooms beyond.
The next door, on the right, was unlocked and I went in. As everywhere, the lights were already on and that made my rooting around easier. It was set up as a science lab. Large metal tables down the centre covered in microscopes, glass vials, grey trays full of bits of rock and other specimens. The right hand wall was all filing cabinets and clear, locked, cupboards full of chemicals. The back wall was covered in view screens and precisely none were switched on. Evidence of a deserted base perhaps?
The left side was lined with desks. All had notepads and computers with small screens upon them, and all were neat and tidy. Not in use. I picked at a few keys to see if the computers had been left on. They hadn’t. A quick inspection of the filing cabinets only told me what I already knew. It was science lab and looking at rocks. Beyond that all the arcane language used might as well have been magical spells for all the sense I could make of them.
Opposite the lab, the next door was a storeroom for more science equipment. I didn’t bother going in. The room, through the window, looked a mess. Next to the storage room was a door labelled ‘Server’ through which a quick peek revealed the computer servers for the base.
The last door on this corridor was at the far end and again it looked empty. It was clearly the command post for the little base, being relatively large, and around the walls were six desks and a large bank of screens with readouts above them. These were on and working. The centre bank of screens seemed to show an ever updating graph of temperature variations and readouts concerning mass, density and oxygen concentrations of a location called Deep One. The screens to the right showed similar readouts for a place called Deep Two.
My first thoughts were that the data related to two bases, Deep One was this one and Deep Two was somewhere else close by. The left hand screens didn’t solidify that guess in anyway. However, they did answer a few questions I’d developed since I’d entered the base on the back of Keller’s sub.
Four beds, eight chairs in the meeting room, three desks in the lab, six in the command centre and a mess hall that could cater for twelve easily. Everything had been built out of proportion to the number of beds.
The screens to the left were live feeds from cameras. I couldn’t see anyone moving around in them, but they did show another dock. A much larger tunnel and dock area that could easily accommodate a ten, or even a fifteen, man sub though, more likely, a small cargo sub. Next to the docks, a large tunnel and I could just make out the large bulkhead doors about five metres into it. The other screen showed another mess hall and kitchen area.
Perhaps, Deep One was joined to Deep Two. It seemed a logical conclusion and answer to my questions. Deep Two was a mine and Deep One, if I was correct, a lab to check rocks for something or other. My knowledge of geology was fuzzy at best. Not a major mining operation, but small scale could often float beneath the notice of the big corporations.
It still didn’t tell me why Keller had infiltrated a Silent City, with all its paranoid security checks, and destroyed it. On second thought, those security checks seemed a lot less paranoid now. Someone was going to lose their job over this when the news got out. When I got out and told someone.
I checked the corridor, paranoia creeping into my behaviour, making sure it was empty, before I sat down at one of the desks and flicked the computer screen on. It asked for a password which I couldn’t give, so I settled for rifling through the drawers, one on either side of the desk. I found a few pencils, all worn down and in need of sharpening, and some paperclips. Many of the clips were bent out of shape, some straightened, some curled and turned into knots. The sign of a worker with time on their hands and a boring job. Or maybe one who didn’t take their job too seriously, because in the other drawer, underneath the pencils and other stationery supplies was, taped to the bottom, a list of random letters and symbols. All those at the top of the list had been crossed out leaving the one at the bottom unmarked and easy to read.
The computer accepted the password without complaint and I was in. The first few minutes were spent going through the worker’s personal documents. There were some pictures of family. A man, woman and small red-headed child. It wasn’t clear which one of them worked at this desk, though the child did have the spark of intelligence in her eyes. There were a few personal messages too, nothing racy or even interesting. I skipped past them and started to look through the files for information about the base.
The first few files I pulled up were long lists of replacement parts for mining equipment, for computer spares and office supplies. The paperclip budget wasn’t as high as I’d suspected. I moved on. A few spreadsheets of mining yields were next. The quantities were small, confirming my belief in that regard, and, judging by the dates, it was an intermittent operation. They’d mine for a week or two and then nothing for a month. Round and round it went in the same pattern. The furthest the dates went back was four years. They’d been here before the city and defended their claim it seems. To what, I hadn’t yet discovered. I sat back in the chair and pondered the screen.
Sadly, I didn’t hear the door open and close. I did hear the soft tread of feet as they came up behind me. Rising from the chair, I twisted to face whoever it was.
All I saw was a heavy wrench swinging at my head and all I knew was I couldn’t dodge it. My last thought, before it all went dark, was about Keller’s hair colour. It had changed. Then the wrench hit my head and my head, along with the rest of me I suppose, hit the floor.
Part Four
Chapter 24
I woke up. My head screamed. It shouted in my ears, dug fiery fingernails into my skull and ripped chunks of flesh and bone away before piercing the grey matter below with a million ice cold daggers. I passed out again.
# # #
I woke up. My head felt as though a dozen whales had fallen on it and were, even now, slapping me with their massive flukes, making it clear how much they viewed the whole thing as my fault. The room started to darken again. I fixed my, admittedly blurred, gaze on a grey object in the distance and took a long, very careful, deep breath. The dark lightened so I took another and then another.
Each heartbeat pushed a torrent of blood up through my neck and the pressure threatened to blow my brains right through the top of my skull. The floor was comfortable so I stayed there.
# # #
For the third time in... actually, I have no idea how long, I woke up to a headache. My vision was clearer and I feel could the pain in other parts of my body. Surely that was a good sign. It meant that, although my head hurt it had now given up its top spot and let other bits take the lead.
I lifted a hand to my head and almost passed out again. Red and orange spots exploded behind my closed eyelids. I had to take a few deep breaths, letting the blood return to the parts of my body it was supposed to be in. It took a few more breaths before I felt able to move again.
With a careful fingertip, I probed at the large lump on the side of my head. The
re was a crust of blood and my hair was matted together in great clumps. The lump itself felt enormous, like someone had stuck an anvil on the side of my head and were repeatedly bashing it with a heavy hammer.
The blurred room struggled into focus and that didn’t help matters. It was a box, twice as long as I am tall and a little wider. In the far corner, a low chest of drawers, metal ones, of the type mechanics use to keep their tools in and organised. That could be handy. The door I noticed, with no surprise whatsoever, was closed. On a bright note, there was a handle on my side of the door, but depressingly, below that a lock.
The rest of the room was bare, empty. No help. Flat grey walls merged into the sprayed cement floor and ceiling. No joins, no weak points. A few pipes, painted grey, came into the room, passed over the door and out through the opposite wall. Whoever did the interior decor was clearly paid too much.
Nothing to see, so I listened. The thrum of power generators vibrated through the floor, I could feel and hear them. Nothing else, and no chance of learning anything new from the floor. I’d have to move and wasn’t looking forward to it.
I took a deep breath, my ribs hurt. Rolling over, onto my side, I pushed myself up onto my knees. My head felt heavy. It wanted to fall off my shoulders and roll across the floor. I stayed on my knees until the room came back into focus and my stomach stopped threatening to throw up the food I’d eaten. When was the last time I had eaten? Crap, now I felt ill and hungry.
My balance was not the best, but I managed to stagger over to the door and try the handle. Locked. There were two likely outcomes. First, Keller had decided that I wasn’t going anywhere and had locked me in this room until I died of starvation, asphyxia or boredom. Or, the second option, and my preferred one given the circumstances, Keller had dumped me in here as a holding cell and would be returning at some point to... well, now, here was the issue. What would he be returning here to do? Kill me or set me free? Sadly, it was more likely to be the former.
