Cold Welcome

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I’d say tear one down and look, but if it’s a completely different culture their software might be so different it’d take years to figure out.”

  “Humans figured out the controls for power and communications—”

  “I think the communications we see were built into gap space by the people who occupied this place,” Betange said. “And they may not have done anything to the power supply, just retrofitted standard Slotter Key stuff so they could use it easily. Did you notice that the light fixtures are much newer than the openings for them?”

  “No,” Ky said. It had never occurred to her to wonder if the age of the fixtures matched the age of the building. Tech thinking—and, in the circumstances, she was glad she had techs to notice what she ignored. “So…what in this space looks new? Is it possible that the humans using the facility never made it this far? And if so…maybe that could be useful to us?”

  “We could hide out here? Bring food and water and some mattresses—”

  “It’s ventilated—the air’s not stuffy—so I’d worry about gas.”

  “We’ve been so focused on the vehicles,” Gossin said, “that we haven’t searched for more things these rods will open. Or where on vehicles such dimples might be.”

  “One day,” Ky said. “Today, look for any hidden doors, controls, anything on the vehicles or in the rooms. Anything you find, or any other ideas you have, let someone else know, and pass it up to me. Betange, come with me and let’s see if the newcomers modified anything in the power control room other than putting stickers over the original labels.”

  By suppertime, they had discovered that no sign of modern—“newcomer”—change existed beyond the door Inyatta had found. Access hatches had been cut to intercept power cables, and there were what looked like master switches—though not common usage ones—behind some of the hatches. Next to those were clearly newer control boxes using the types of switches and labels common on Slotter Key. Betange explained all this to Ky.

  “It would’ve taken an experienced electrician—probably a team of them, and plenty of money—to convert the output to something our appliances could use. What do we call whoever did the original installation, oldtimers?”

  “Good enough,” Ky said.

  “I wish I had a crew and time to really study it.” Betange—completely focused and interested—was a different man from the anxious, depressed one she’d seen for so long. “I don’t quite get it—the complexity of it, the reasoning—but it would be great to know. Were they even human?”

  Ky blinked. “Do you really think they weren’t?”

  “Admiral!” That call came from somewhere back down the passage. “We got one running.”

  Ky hurried back that way; Betange followed.

  The vehicle was a twin to the one Ky had launched through the roof exit. Instead of up, it went forward and back, and wove an accurate path through the other parked vehicles as Droshinski tapped the control cylinder.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Cautious experimentation,” Chok said, grinning. “Turns out there’s a dimple inside this back end we’ve been calling the cargo area and one inside the cab. If you push a rod into one of those, the rod extrudes little textured buttons—show her, Droshinski.”

  Droshinski held out the rod. Ky could see the buttons. “This one at the bottom is stop. The others are away, to me, and turn.” Ky nodded, repressing a desire to grab the rod and start pushing buttons. “It won’t hit another vehicle,” Droshinski said. “It won’t hit a wall. It turns whichever way there’s more room.”

  “We think we’ve found guide paths, though,” Hazarika put in. “When it goes between parked vehicles, it always stays on the same path, and the path is not equidistant from adjoining vehicles. And one guide path leads straight to that wall—” He pointed. “It’ll go close, but then back up and turn around.”

  “I think that wall’s not a wall,” Droshinski said. “I think it’s a big door.”

  “There’s a dimple over here,” Lakhani said. “But we didn’t try it yet.”

  The same control that opened the other doors did not open this one—if it was a door and not a wall—but it did generate a sound, a rising and falling tone.

  “A warning,” Sergeant Cosper said. “Like a siren, but not so loud.”

  “Droshinski, try driving that vehicle toward it; let’s see what happens.”

  A startled look from Droshinski and Cosper both. Then the vehicle rolled forward, turned, and straightened out as it approached the wall. A wide section of wall—wide enough for any of the vehicles—slid sideways, opening onto a gently sloping passage where lights blinked on, one after another. The vehicle rolled through.

  “Stop it,” Ky said. “Back it up—we don’t want that door to close again with it on the other side.” Droshinski stopped the vehicle and backed it until it was in the new entrance.

  “I could ride it through, and then bring it back,” Droshinski said.

  “I hope you can, but I’d like to find out without your getting stuck on the other side. We do need to know what’s down that corridor.” If it came out somewhere useful—if it could be blocked from intrusion by the enemy—if there were multiple entrances by which the enemy could penetrate—if, if, if.

  “Now she’s got it open, I can head down that way on foot,” Cosper said. “Get some idea of what’s there.”

  “Try it,” Ky said. “But not past any doors—and not farther than a kilometer, if it goes that far.”

  Without any ifs at all, the passage, plus a working vehicle, gave them mobility. Just one vehicle could carry more than all her people combined. “Get another working. As many as you can,” Ky said. “Wherever we go is better than staying here, and now we have supply carriers.”

  By the end of the day, they knew all the vehicles would respond to commands, and Cosper had made a second foray down the tunnel, leaving his pack as a marker at ten kilometers, the farthest distance Ky would let him go.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  MIKSLAND

  DAY 216

  The next morning, their meeting had a different tone. “We have supplies. We have small-arms weapons, enough for everyone,” Ky said. “And now we have transportation. Time to leave.”

  “But we don’t know where that goes! What if we’re trapped?” Corporal Barash’s voice rose.

  “Admiral’s led us well so far. Why not trust her?” Yamini glared at Barash.

  “Easy for you to say!” Barash glared back.

  “What d’you mean by that?”

  Ky thumped the table. “No personalities. Thinking. Barash, what do you think will happen if we just stay here?”

  “You say there’s a force coming that will kill us.”

  “I asked what you thought.”

  “I—I don’t know. They might be on our side, the ones who land first. Rescuers. You said you’d been in contact…why wouldn’t they come? Or we could hide until they do. We could—we could hide in that part the others never found.”

  “That we think the others never found. We can’t be sure. If they do know, or if they have some kind of detection that can find more voids, this is a nice big open trap. Clearly this secret—the whole continent, this base, whatever else they’re keeping down here—is important to whoever it is—a family, a corporation, even a foreign government. They might even be willing to drop a bomb that would blow the top off this to get us.”

  “But they couldn’t hide that.”

  “They’ve been able to hide everything up to now. I think they’re desperate to keep their hold on this continent and its contents—this base and whatever else. Our side can’t be certain of getting here first; they don’t know how much opposition they’ll face. They’re trying to move fast, and secretly, but they know the opposition is aware of them.”

  “Your aunt is the Rector; surely she can have whatever she wants. Troops, transport, weapons—” Gossin, this time.

  “Apparently not.” Ky looked around. Faces
now were sober; some were once more scared. “You remember when Vatta was attacked?” Most nodded. “There’s still opposition to her, as a Vatta, within Spaceforce and the Defense Department; she had a row with Air-Sea Rescue when the shuttle went down. She’s not sure she can trust all the senior commanders.”

  Ky paused, but no one said anything. She went on. “There are troops on our side, but they’re not in position yet. Another few days, but we may not have another few days. What we can do here—improvise blockages, create killzones—is not enough. We can’t protect against heavy weapons, and we don’t have enough of us—or weapons or ammunition—to fight a prolonged battle. Sure, I would prefer to know where every branch of that tunnel goes, how deep it is, what’s on the surface, but we don’t have the time. We’re leaving as soon as we’ve loaded the vehicles.”

  “We should take all the control rods we can find,” Inyatta said. “That will keep them from opening the secret doors or operating any vehicles we leave behind if they blow them open.”

  “Good thought,” Ky said. “Now—since we have vehicles and aren’t limited to what we can carry—”

  “Food,” Gurton said. “How much should we take?”

  “Everything we can get into a vehicle,” Ky said. “Concentrates first, but if we can take every scrap, all the better. Then they’ll have to use their own supplies, and that will delay them, at least a little. Staff Sergeant Gossin, you’re in charge of assigning work parties to strip this place of everything we need or they might use against us. Staff Sergeant Kurin, you’re in charge of getting the vehicles loaded, making sure they can move with what you pack inside them, with room for personnel as well. Pick your four; you’ll get more help when all the supplies have arrived here.”

  Gossin began assigning work parties for the rest of it. Ky went back to Greyhaus’ office and dug through his desk for anything of possible use to Grace. She had to use a chisel and hammer to break the lock on one drawer, but what she found was worth the delay. A list of contact numbers, some with names—officers in various military units, all the way up to very high ranks—and some with initials only and code numbers after. Journals, like Greyhaus’, from previous commanders of this facility, dating back…over two hundred years. And more.

  She had brought a duffel from Supply, and loaded all that, along with the flight recorder from the shuttle, into it, then carried it down to the hangar. Here Kurin was already ticking off incoming supplies, while Kamat, Betange, and Barash were arranging them in vehicles by weight and bulk, and Hazarika was stacking ammunition.

  “We’ve got all the weapons down here; I found more ammunition in Stores, heavy locked crates. Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” Ky said. “If they make it into the tunnels, I want them to think we will shoot back. It should slow them down a little, anticipating ambushes.”

  “Right,” Hazarika said.

  Packing proceeded well as the hours rolled by. All the control rods they’d found, all the food—surely more than they would need—medical supplies, water, the most useful sizes of pots and pans, tools, firearms and ammunition, clothes including extra protective suits, powerpaks to recharge batteries, all the outdoor survival gear they’d found in Stores (two tents, four small portable stoves, four water purifiers, ten sleeping bags, folding seats and one folding table, two fishing rods and a tackle box of lures, extra line, and hooks).

  “Clearly somebody was out wandering the countryside,” Sergeant McLenard said.

  “Probably the officers,” muttered Lakhani. “Hunting and fishing.”

  “Very good,” Ky said. “We’re almost ready to leave; do a final check of the rooms and see if you find anything left behind, and be ready to guide the others back down.”

  “We could eat here tonight, couldn’t we? Even sleep here? They can’t get here before late tomorrow at the earliest—” Gurton said.

  “If we’re right about their plans and the weather where they’re starting from. We can’t be sure of that. It’s too close. We need to be farther away when they arrive.”

  The little caravan moved almost silently through the hangar door into the tunnel. When the last had passed, they all stopped on signal, and Ky walked back to shut the door using the control rod and the dimple on the tunnel side. She hoped that meant it would stay closed even if the enemy found the hangar and figured out which wall might be a door.

  The first few kilometers of their journey counted, to Ky, as known territory; Sergeant Cosper had walked ten kilometers out and back, noting every marking he saw, every light fixture, even (using a level they’d found with the tools) the slope of the passage floor. The tunnel tended downward so gently that the view behind was obscured only when they went around turns. The first two of those were at right angles, but the next was a gentle arc. Ahead of them, lights in the overhead came on—not the familiar lights of any Slotter Key office building, but sections of the overhead that had looked the same plain gray as everything else flicking on to a greenish-white glow. Behind them, the lights went off again.

  Droshinski had discovered that the vehicles would not move faster than fifteen kilometers an hour in the tunnel. So it wasn’t long before they saw the pack Cosper had left to mark his most distant point. Ahead the tunnel seemed straight and level, vanishing in darkness. Another hour passed, and another. Ky, in the lead vehicle, heard a loud shout from behind. She signaled a halt and when all had halted, walked back to see that a wall had cut off the tunnel behind them, ten meters from the back of the rearmost vehicle.

  “It just slid out—no warning, nothing!” Sergeant Chok, tasked with being rear guard, looked as upset as he sounded.

  “Have you tried opening it with a control rod?” Ky asked.

  “No, Admiral. I didn’t know if you wanted—what it might mean—”

  “Try it.”

  Chok walked over to the new wall and felt around the margins for a dimple. “It’s not here.”

  “Try the middle of the space,” Ky said.

  “Aha. Here—” He touched the rod to it and fingered the sequence that had opened other doors. Nothing happened.

  “Are we trapped?” That was Droshinski, who should have stayed with the vehicle she was controlling. “What if there’s another—?”

  “Put this one in reverse, Droshinski. See if the door opens when traffic approaches.” It would make sense, Ky thought, to have safety doors at intervals that protected others from…whatever those who’d built this place feared.

  With the usual dramatic toss of her head, Droshinski climbed into the back of that vehicle while Chok and Ky moved to the side of the tunnel. As it reversed, the door slid aside.

  “Forward now,” Ky said.

  And as the vehicle once more cleared ten meters between itself and the door, the door slid shut again.

  “Whoever they were, we share some ways of thinking,” Ky said as Droshinski climbed out of the vehicle. She looked forward to see clusters of her team outside their vehicles. As she walked back to the front of the line, she said the same thing to each cluster: “Not a problem; the door reacts to vehicles just like the one in the hangar. We’re going on.”

  In another hour, the tunnel opened out into another room, not quite as large as the hangar but large enough to park the vehicles side by side and walk around outside them. Six doors on one side and two on the other. “Try them all,” Ky said. Inside one was a room with obvious water fixtures, though they did not look like standard Slotter Key versions.

  “Rest stop,” said Ennisay. “Like it’s an ordinary road trip.”

  The fixtures worked; water came out of faucets, flushed through toilets, and even (Ennisay got wet trying this out) rained down in abundance in what was afterward obvious as a shower. “I thought it was just part of the floor,” he said, dripping. “And I found the dimple and wondered what it did so I pushed—”

  “You didn’t see the grille in the overhead?” Cosper asked.

  “I didn’t look up.”

  “Bet you will ne
xt time,” Cosper said. Ennisay just grinned.

  Ky looked into the space behind the next door—four tables, each with six stools around it, all the same gray as the walls and overhead. What might be a serving line of some sort along one side. Or something else entirely. Gurton said, “Since we’re experimenting—” and sat down on one of the stools, only to jump up when the table opened a seam at her place and extruded a bowl with some dry gray-green substance in it. “That can’t be food…” She picked up the bowl and sniffed at it. “Somebody didn’t wash the dishes?”

  “Or freeze-dried food that only needs water?” Betange said.

  “I’m hungry,” Ennisay said. “It’s been four hours—couldn’t we have a meal?”

  “A snack,” Ky said. “And not food that we find down here. Food we know is safe for us.”

  “I could just try wetting it,” Gurton said. “Just to see what happens.”

  “Food from our own stores,” Ky said. “A snack. We’re not going to stay here long.”

  Others came and sat down; when all the stools at one table were full, the table extruded a central cluster of…something that might be containers. One looked like salt. The rest were unfamiliar.

  “Condiments,” Betange said. “The aliens have condiments and they sit around during meals. More and more like us.”

  “They might be us,” Yamini said. “Ancestors.”

  “Or not,” Ky said. She bit into one of the chewy snack bars Gurton had packed, feeling the day’s strain weighing on her. The others looked tired, too, but they hadn’t gone far enough to risk stopping here for the rest of the night. She finished eating, drank some water, and used the facility while the others finished their snacks. Then she looked into the other spaces. Two had shelves jutting from the walls that looked rather like spaceship bunks, twelve in each of the rooms. She felt the surface of the lowest. Though it looked all of a piece with the walls and floor, it felt soft, like a thin mattress.