by P. N. Elrod
The orbit of Riganth’s moon was such that it eclipsed the sun once a day. Its apparent disc was much larger, blocking light and warmth for a long, cold hour, sometimes more, depending on the planet’s own orbit. It made the planet’s weather system. . .interesting.
“What’s wrong?” Farron asked.
“Take a nap, we’re fine.”
Farron lay down and kept himself to himself as she spooned her back against his front. She felt awkward, unused to such contact. The need for shared warmth was more important than her need for body space; she stifled the urge to move away. The wind wailed around them; sharp gusts eddied in, plucking at her. Oblivious, Farron coughed twice, fretting in his dreams. She tried not to breathe his breath.
The delay was impossible, but she couldn’t help resenting it. They might stumble forward in this dry storm, but in the twists and turns needed to negotiate the rough terrain, they’d soon lose their way. It was just too dark.
She filled the time scanning the black sky for the telltale lights of a flier among the shredded clouds, unlikely as that might be. No pilot in her right mind would choose to go prowling under these conditions. That left remote scanners, their operators safe indoors, but those would be grounded as well. The little machines were tough, but had their limits.
If any operators were left. Kella became aware of an orange glow against the flying cloud cover.
Riganth still burned?
The moon’s transit crawled to a conclusion; the day’s second dawn asserted itself. Shivering, Kella stood and stretched warmth into her stiffened limbs.
“It’s time, Farron.”
He mumbled, coughed, and tried to roll away into the peace of his folded arms.
“Come on.” She nudged him with her foot.
He shoved it away.
“Get up, unless you want to die.”
He struggled briefly with his eyelids and lost. “There’s no difference between catching it here or anywhere else,” he mumbled. “One way or another we’re dead. Yours is more work. I’d rather save myself the trouble.”
His speech was reassuringly lucid. Some parts of his brain had slept off more of the drugs during the respite; the rest of him just hadn’t realized it yet. All he needed was a little push to get moving. “Would you really? If you’re that tired of living I can fix things for you.”
“Don’t do me any favors.”
She stooped and closed both hands around Farron’s throat and squeezed. She did it slowly. His petulance changed to panic and he struggled, then actively fought. He broke her hold and twisted away, gasping and coughing. She kept her distance, hiding her own sudden fatigue.
Farron was fully awake, on his feet, and glaring. “You rotten—you were really going to do it!”
She showed her teeth. “Who says I’ve stopped?”
“I do, I was just joking.”
“Your humor could be the death of you.”
“Only with you in the audience. All right, you got me up.” He gestured for her to assume the lead, obviously reluctant to have her or her hands out of his sight.
Kella took a bearing from the sun and struck off.
“Where are we going, anyway?” he asked.
She tried to answer, but the words didn’t so much as form in her mind, much less turn to speech. She had a mental picture of their destination, but her ability to tell him about it was . . .temporarily offline. “You’ll see. We’re close.”
She hoped.
But their pace remained slow over the uneven ground. She was tired to the bone, hollow with hunger, and terribly thirsty. She speculated on the edibility of the plants, but knew better than to risk it.
Farron called for a stop; Kella ignored him and plowed on, right into a low solid object that cracked her shins as she fell onto it.
“Hey, didn’t you see that? I tried to tell you.”
It was a mound of metal and plas-crete, less than a meter across, sprouting from the earth like an exotic strain of edible fungus. It was colored to blend with the surrounding land. Kella stared, trying to recall what it was and why it was important.
“What’s the matter with you?” Farron demanded.
“Nothing,” she snapped. She ran her hands over the smooth metal top.
“Well, are we going in?”
Her memory flickered and she stood back, favoring her bruises. “You first.”
He made a face. “Of course, always me.” He examined a plastic housing. “Locked,” he pronounced, “and probably for a good reason. This is part of the prison, isn’t it?”
“No, of course not.”
She’d fallen over a. . .the correct word escaped her. A door then, she impatiently provided. The one she’d been looking for, though not the one she’d visualized. Her expectations conjured something more vertical. With a building attached.
All right, so the building was underground, shelter was shelter, and this was the way in. “Open it.”
He grimaced. “With what? I need specialized tools.”
“What kind of tools?”
“A cutter and circuit probe would be helpful, and maybe a bypass with a program override.”
“Improvise.”
“With what, leaves and dirt? Without the right tools you’d need a battering ram to open that.”
“I might just try one, providing the impact element is your head.”
The look on her face was evidently inspiring. He found a rock and after several tries, cracked the housing, peering at the exposed works.
“This is more along your line,” he stepped back. “Have a go.”
Her fingers began trembling as she probed the mess. Her heart raced, and sweat suddenly popped out on her forehead. She broke off before Farron noticed.
“Anything wrong?”
“No, and this is hardly my line. You’re the specialist, you do it.”
Farron swallowed his puzzlement and had another turn. “I’m not sure what you mean. I’m expert enough with the right tools, but these multi-binary probability codes are a bit over my head—I could spend the rest of my life doing this.”
“That is entirely possible,” she said, with meaning.
“Still, I could try a more direct approach. This tech is just old enough for us get away with. . .there, press that down and hold it.”
Kella had to struggle to keep from throwing up as he touched a bare wire against a contact. Sparks flew and her hand jerked back.
“Wants to bite,” he remarked, sucking his own stinging fingers. He coughed and looked around. “What the hell is that pong? Something burning?”
She’d been too distracted to notice the worsening smell. The sky held more smoke than clouds. No point climbing a hill to look. She could hear the approaching fire. A vanguard of cinders tumbled toward them on the wind.
“Get it open, Farron. Now.”
He tore a ragged hem from his shirt for insulation. “Use this and hold it down hard.”
There were more fireworks and slow smoke from melted plastic.
“I heard something give.” He grasped a crank set into the door and gave it a turn. Kella had taken it for a decorative sculpture. It was stiff, but worked; deep within, metal grated against metal.
The lid came up with a rush of warm, stale air.
“Smells all right,” he said hopefully.
She peered down a narrow circular shaft. A metal ladder clung to one section of the wall and disappeared into blackness. “Get in.”
He hesitated. “Not sure I like the look of that. Isn’t there an easier way?”
“If you want to go looking for it.”
He glanced once at the landscape: endless hillocks, stinking haze, no food or water. To a man used to the finished walls and readily available comforts of an automated culture, running about unprotected on an open planet was the closest thing to hell.
That and. . .
“Hey. . .that—that’s a fire,” he said.
“They usually come with smoke. Get in.”
“But it’s a fire. Shouldn’t someone put it out?”
She knew he wasn’t stupid. He’d been raised in a superbly controlled environment where flame suppression systems kept people safe. A wildfire stretching from one horizon to the next was simply outside his experience. He couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t have to, feeling the baking heat on her back. She gave him a shove. “In, dammit!”
Objections forgotten, Farron swung his legs down, his slippered feet tapping against and finding the rungs. He shifted his weight and descended. Kella copied him, pausing as her head came level with the ground.
Flying ash, a roaring, the wind spiraled flames into reaching tentacles; the fire would soon roll over and past. They were safe enough, but the angle was wrong for her to pull the cover shut. It was designed as an exit. She couldn’t reach the crank. There had to be a way to close it from inside.
Ducking, she spotted the control and a blinking red telltale. Its message that there was a breach in the base would be echoed somewhere, giving away their position. The control had a simple diagram. Even the most illiterate work drone would be able to figure out that pressing a button would move the cover in some way. Kella understood it, but could not bring herself to act upon it. Even the idea of trying made her hands go slick with sweat. Bad move, when she needed them to grip the ladder.
When her sight blurred, she looked away, and that eased things.
The hell with it. The Riganth authorities would come here first, regardless. Shutting one door wouldn’t make a difference; there wasn’t anything she could do. But that was the fool in her, the bleating, terrified creature that made excuses and distracted her from her goal of survival and escape despite the odds.
It was a stranger in her head. She’d not been born with that miserable whining voice. Sometime during those three hundred days it had moved in and learned how to paralyze her to inaction.
Before the burgeoning fear could take over, she raised a mental image of slamming a lead shield in its face. There. It could claw and bleat all it liked. She would keep it contained, leaving herself free to concentrate on the task at hand: getting down this damned ladder without falling.
Two rungs below the top she found the manual crank that would close the cover.
Her face went hot with embarrassment. I should have known this would be here. She worked it off, awkwardly turning the thing until her arm ached. Tech was her bane, but she could still operate mechanical backups. Perhaps they thought that such limits would make her harmless.
Bloody fools.
Slowly the lid lowered into place, taking away the fire and the sky, sealing her into the silent darkness.
Blind, but feeling safer, she felt her way carefully, one rung at a time. No need to hurry. There was enough shielding above to foil the most sophisticated scanners. Any searchers would gather only negative information; they’d eventually come back for a closer look and find the broken lock, but by then it might be too late.
If things worked out. If her fool’s luck held.
Of course, searchers could skip a topside hunt, enter by the main door, and activate the systems. A little work with the internal sensors would—
But they might be delayed by the wildfire. The prison was still burning hours after the initial assault. She didn’t see how that was possible; the place was fire-proofed and shielded as well as any military facility. There were weapons to get around such safety measures, though. She’d even used them once upon a time. They were expensive and hard to acquire. If the attackers had those in their arsenal, then the inmates could not have been of concern to them.
Farron puffed out that he’d touched ground. He was too winded to do more than stagger out of her way.
Coughing.
It was worse, a deeper, uglier sound than before. After water and food, she’d have to find a med-unit for him.
Her boots hit bottom. She kept hold of a rung, breathing hard. Behind the ladder a faint light at eyelevel seemed bright in the blackness. She orientated to a round tunnel with enough clearance to walk upright. They were at a T-shaped intersection; small lights at long intervals emphasized the darkness and distance. More eye level lights indicated other ladders along the flat top of the T, part of an emergency escape system. Farron muttered something not meant to be intelligible but managing to express his unease.
“Better than nothing,” she responded.
“Not by much. These are service tunnels? To where?”
She gave no reply, not sure herself.
The tunnels had been carved into the raw earth with flash-dry crete-foam sprayed to keep the walls from caving in, cheaper and faster than laying pipe. She couldn’t smell sewage, which was a plus.
“Which branch do you fancy?”
“The center.” She had no idea where it led, but she had to sound decisive.
“Think anything’s living down here? And hungry?”
“You’ll be the first to know.” She gestured ahead with an open hand.
“Thanks very much. I suppose it hardly matters, I’m so starved now I wouldn’t make a good meal anyway.”
The pace was faster on a level floor. Kella counted steps; at fifty they reached a locked door in the right-hand wall.
“I suppose you want me to open it?” he asked without enthusiasm.
It could be a storage closet or a cavernous service bay for ships, no way to tell. She pressed a palm flat to the surface. “This might lead to the power plant, feel the warmth and vibration?”
He nodded. “How old is this place?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Radiation. Sometimes older complexes were thrifty on protection, especially down in the cellar.”
It was a legitimate worry, but then Farron liked to worry. “This is the top,” she reminded him.
“Oh, wonderful, that has to make a difference.”
She continued along the main tunnel. “Come on.”
“To where? Is there an end to all this?”
“When we find it. The maintenance crew had to live somewhere when they weren’t working.”
“Are they gone? I mean, is this place empty?”
“Yes.”
“Seems odd to build something this big then move out. Was it System?”
“Who else would have the resources?”
“That means this is System military?”
“Yes. One of their groundside bases.”
“But the soldiers—” His eyebrows climbed well up into his high forehead.
“They’re gone,” she told him in a firm tone. She’d overheard quite a lot from the prison guards on the subject.
“If it’s empty, why is the reactor still online?”
“It has to be ready when they come back.”
“When is that?”
She shrugged. “Everyone was pulled out and deployed elsewhere during the war. Losses were too high to make manning this base practical immediately afterward, but they meant to return and left the automatics running.”
“I just hope no one stayed behind. Why are we here?”
“To look for a way out.”
“That makes sense, since we just got in.”
They approached another heavy door, this one with a thick transparent panel and garish warning notices attached. The lighting was better, and more pale light bled out from the panel.
Farron halted, crossing his arms. “That’s the reactor section and I’m telling you flat out, I’m not going in.”
Kella peered inside. There wasn’t much to see, just an entry room and another door in the opposite wall bearing even more warnings. It was ajar.
She stopped breathing.
“You think the soldiers might come back?” he asked, shifting unhappily from foot to foot.
This was indication that they’d already returned. She had, in fact, been counting on it, but it seemed wise not to burden Farron with the knowledge. Kella tried the lever, but it was solidly locked, as it should be.
All that she could see through t
he second door was a slice of innocuous corridor. The lighting was dim, though. If the System had begun a reactivation of the base, the techs would have started here first to bring the power fully online, including plenty of light to work by.
Its lack reassured her. Only now did a wave of fatigue wash over her, and she realized how fast her heart had been beating.
“There’s another opening ahead,” Farron announced.
The lighting improved as they approached.
She tried the lever. It gave easily. One open door, especially in the reactor section was suspicious enough, but two. . . “I don’t like this, it’s not right.”
“Someone just forgot to secure it.”
At times the man could be as dense as a neutron star. “Or someone else was recently here instead.”
That put a new face on it for him. “We can go back.”
“Not a chance.”
They cautiously entered a wide gray passage lined with more doors. The lights were closely placed and brighter, the walls finished and vertical.
Farron looked inside one of the empty rooms.
“Living quarters for drones. Nothing but bare wall cots. There has to be a mess hall close by. Drones have to eat.”
Kella passed him, having spotted something useful. “Map.”
It covered a large portion of the wall and might have been mistaken for decoration with its patchwork of colored blocks showing hundreds of sections. The code key and other labeling were dark, along with the info-screen. Kella rested a tentative finger on one spot.
“We’re here, this is the only intersection of this type off the reactor area.”
“If that red part is the reactor and not just a big lavatory.”
“It’s the reactor.” There was an unnecessary edge to her tone. Farron had only been joking, she told herself. Get a grip. Don’t let him see you sweat.
But Farron was too distracted to notice, busy tracing pathways on the map. “All right, then light blue is barracks, yellow is for halls, the access and service ducts are green, and dark blue is. . .?”
“Let’s find out.”
Ignoring side passages, they went straight to the dark blue sector, finding themselves in a large, dim room. It was furnished with chairs, gaming tables, entertainment screens, and other comforts.
