by Nathan Lunn
“Kye!” Danny’s voice echoed from all directions. He was caught further off guard by the momentary flash of the Goggles dropping, and thought he noticed a shadowy figure in front of him, activating his adrenaline and heightening his senses. His arm was intuitively moving for him, keeping mobile in preparation for any potential intrusions. Holding his breath, he heard the sharp clink of metal scraping on metal, and whirled around to his right, arm already moving for him. A shot rang out across the concrete, stopping Danny in his tracks. Incredulity spreading across his face, Kye lifted his arm back, ears ringing from the explosion that occurred just a few feet from his ears, fingers gripping the muzzle end of a pistol he had just wrenched from Wei’s outstretched hand. His shoulder was sore, but he used his unlimited strength to close his fist around the gun, bending the muzzle out of shape and rendering it useless. Wei scrambled back as Douglass found the shattered pad on the floor, tapping at it in vain to get some light back into the dark hold – when this didn’t work, he dropped it to the floor and moved onwards. Kye moved forward, his eyes having grown more accustomed to the lack of light, and able to pick out just a few moving figures in front of him. Grabbing the one nearest to him, he lifted them up to his face, hearing a yelp which could only be from Danny. Kye snarled, and dumped him to the floor, before moving towards the next figure – reaching with an extended arm he grabbed the heel of a scurrying shadow. Wei shouted, sliding back into Kye’s grasp, wrist and shoulders scraping against the hard concrete.
“Wait, wait. Look, I helped you, see!” Wei yelled out, scrabbling at the hand desperately as he did so. “Stop! Let me go!”
Kye’s arm reshaped to its normal form, and he was left with Wei hanging from his outstretched grip, feet kicking as Douglass finally made it to another interface. He ported in manually, getting the lights back on with a full reset that tripped the security alarms and brought the freight haulers traipsing back to the cargohold. Wei found his voice, spitting at Douglass and shoving Kye to no avail, “You idiot! They’re going to come down and check on us now! And you! Let go of me!”
“Let him down, Kye, we have to go!” Douglass yelled, inching forward until he saw Kye drop Wei to the floor and run after him. He slipped through the door, closely followed by a shell-shocked Danny and distressed Wei, each passing by the cracked tablet without a second thought. The alarm system pushed into their backs as they slammed the door shut, hearing a definitive click and easing their worries a little.
16
Julie stormed through the corridors, tailed by an agitated Eddie, complaining incessantly about every off detail. She wove through the tight metal maze entirely ignoring the sounds of protest as she made her way back to what she thought was Wei’s office. Arriving at the next door, she blasted through and straight out into a large bright open space. Faltering, Julie came to a stop. Eddie walked to her side – as he took in the area around him he let out a soft curse, barely audible to Julie over the sounds coming from inside the room.
Bright dome lights dotted the hall every few metres, providing a sterile white glow to the room that felt more like an interrogation light to the intruders than it did a cleansing one. The walls and furniture were also washed in an almost luminous white paint, both spotless save for screen interfaces and the occasional janitorial sweeper wiping down the smooth surfaces. This gave the whole space an untouched and innocent feeling, as though it had been abandoned in a dustless world – however, this illusion was quickly broken by the source of the noise itself. Milling around the tables like flies to a carcass were various scores of soldiers, plastic trays in their right hands, slop that constituted meal rations piled high and steaming hot. They were dressed down: no armour, but the most noticeable feature of them all was the identical weapon they had fused into their left arm, replacing their hand with a cold steel cannon – as per military standard.
There was no segregation in the whole hall, the open space welcoming all ethnicities and genders – on the closest table alone, Julie could pick out two post-Asians, a man and a woman, and on the table behind that, there were three ungendered, all sharing the communal dessert placed in the middle of the table. Julie spoke over her shoulder to Eddie, “Let’s keep moving. Slowly.” They inched forward, noting the lack of change in the room as an incentive to continue forward.
Eddie whispered to her as they slid between the tables, heading in the most direct path for the opposite door, “Are you serious?” His voice started to rise to a low hush. “We stand out like a sore thumb here! Just hide your hand in your sleeve.” Julie turned to face him, a stern look cutting through his speech and silencing him. She indicated the door nearby with a shunt of her head, and turned to walk around the table in front, directly into the path of a hurried soldier. The sudden collision caused him to drop his tray to the floor, clattering with an obvious bang and drawing the attention of most of the room to them. Leaning down to pick up his tray, the man spoke. “Nice one asshat. Walk much?”
The soldier laughed, breaking the tension for the rest of the room but not for Julie and Eddie. Eddie started to push on her back to keep her moving but she stood her ground, watching as the nearest Janitorial Sweeper landed at her feet and began to suck up the red splatter on the floor. She smiled, in an attempt to match his joking tone, replying to him loud enough for the room to hear, “That’s my bad. Let me get you another, here–” Julie pulled a credit chip from her pocket with her left hand, drawing a groan from Eddie, and extended it to the bemused soldier, stepping over the Sweeper to get closer. He wavered before he spoke.
“Meals are all free in the mess hall. Shouldn’t you know that?” Eddie winced behind Julie, as she slowly put the chip back into her pocket. The soldier continued, his own hand dragging towards his hip, “Matter-of-fact, where are your uniforms? Where’s your weapon? Who are you both?” A murmur ran around the mess hall, and Julie felt all eyes waiting on her response, all hand-cannons poised to shoot, all legs waiting to stand. She stuttered, searching her mind for an acceptable response, whilst Eddie did the same. Her eyes dropped, the soldier’s left arm rising as a member of the recently established audience jumped to their feet.
“Hang on there, Adam! They’re with the special guest right? The two escorts Sarge told us about?” Another murmur rippled through the room, though this one was much less hostile and much more understanding. Adam (the soldier in front of them both) hesitated, keeping his hand cannon at an angled length, but staring deep into Julie’s eyes looking for a confirmation. Mustering her courage, Julie gave him a strong smile, echoing out feelings of confidence and security as best she could. It appeared to have worked in her favour, as – although he was slightly suspicious – the soldier placed the tray down for a moment, lifted his hand back to hers and leant over to guardedly shake it. She complied, and Eddie did the same as the room returned to their conversations, uninterested in the newcomers just moments after their strong suspicions were shut down.
Julie queried the soldier to catch him before he moved away, “Adam, was it?”
“Aye, that’s right. What you want?” Adam spoke gruffly, making his way back to the front of the mess hall. He dumped his tray into a deposit for cleaning, grabbed another from the washed pile and slid it to the robot at the back of the dining area. The robot beeped, and regurgitated some food from a tube in its torso, dropping a small white bread bun and water bottle to the different compartments in the tray. “Well then. You just gonna gawp? What, you want some food?”
Julie gathered herself, having been given enough time to work out exactly what she wanted to say, and spoke. “No no, we were just wondering, my colleague and I–” she gestured to Eddie, who was fidgeting restlessly with the hem of his coat– “where we were supposed to be headed?” Suspicion flashed across Adam’s face once more, and Julie rushed to finish what she was trying to say. “Just we got a little lost trying to find our way, do you know which way the guest has gone?”
Adam walked back from the robot, and sat on the nearest tabl
e so he could start eating his food. He took a few bites, before irritatingly staring up at them, and replying, “He’s gone to the Debriefing Theatre, alright? That's along that corridor and then follow the bloody signs.” They thanked him, and as they walked off Julie heard him speak to the others on the table, saying, “What a shitty escort.”
Julie scowled and debated turning back before Eddie grabbed her arm and steered her towards the doorway, speaking urgently as he did so, “Just leave it. We’re heading through here and working our way back to the Cargohold, okay? Let’s hope we don’t run into anyone else like that.” Julie nodded, matching his pace as they left the bright of the mess hall and were plunged into darkness once more. Heading through the claustrophobic corridors, they squinted their way around the signs, walking past the second and third exits until they reached the fourth. A sign proudly displayed above held the information they were to follow, motioning that they should head down this exit to eventually get to the Cargohold. A few metres ahead, they saw the sixth exit, which was clearly the busiest doorway of them all. Multiple men and women ran through, hurrying different items in their hands, rolling piping on carts and scaffolding on their shoulders. Eddie nudged her side, commenting as he watched the proceedings voyeuristically, “I reckon that’s to do with the ‘special guest’ that girl was talking about. Who do you think they are?”
Julie shrugged, taking her hand off the door panel as she joined in with his watching. She replied, more thinking to herself than talking to Eddie, “Well it has to be someone important. Ah, it doesn’t matter, let’s just go back through this way. I mean, they clearly weren’t welcoming to anyone who isn’t this guest of theirs, or I suppose anyone close to them.”
Eddie grabbed her arm, stopping her from opening the fourth exit, talking quickly as he tracked the steady stream entering with his eyes. “Aren’t you interested? We could go have a quick look who it is, and then be back in time for purchase. I wouldn’t want to miss out, like, who knows? Maybe it’s unveiling of new tech? We should get the inside scoop and report back to Douglass.” Julie started to protest, but Eddie’s insistent tone cut her off immediately. “Julie, I’m serious, what if there’s something even more experimental on site. Like Kye’s arm? We could get some exciting tech for ourselves.” She looked at him, noticing the hunger in his eyes. With a sigh, she moved her hand off the pad and started to walk down the corridor towards the sixth exit. Eddie, a grin spreading across his face, followed her, keeping close and quiet. They were able to slip into the procession without anyone noticing, joining into the line behind a man chattering away on a headset and tapping on a pad. Julie and Eddie exchanged a look, listening in to the one-sided conversation:
“Yeah, we have around fifteen-hundred coming for the first talk. Yeah, that’s right. No, we’re a few minutes from setting up now, he’s not arrived yet. I assume he is planning on getting here just before, but we’ve spoken to his escorts and they seem certain that his ETA is in ten minutes. Josh, that’s not enough time for the Pyrotechnics. No, no showboating, you know how he hates theatrics. I’m sure it’ll be fine–” The man’s voice disappeared as he ran down a side corridor, and Julie and Eddie were pushed into the Debriefing Theatre, coming to a stop in the entryway as the funelled groups of people dispersed outwards. Julie looked up and around, once again in awe by the scale of the room they were now in.
True to its name, the room was indeed designed like a theatre. The ground floor was set out like a hall, empty save for the repeating rows of hard metal chairs, laid out in a cramped and regimented fashion. The chairs ran to the walls on all sides, which were themselves made of a dented silver alloy rising three storeys high without any interruption. Flexible screen fabric was plastered over the metal sheets, dark black and on standby, shading the room in more shadow than usual as it waved around, pushed lightly by the air-conditioning and pressure-maintaining system. Above Julie, on the backside of the wall, there were three outcroppings of metal – fenced balconies with more lavish chairs that served as a deluxe viewing box. Both the boxes and the chairs were facing the main draw of the room, the stage. Already a storey above the ground floor, the stage was a long and overly ornate centrepiece for the confusing room – workers and soldiers running about the front were doing their best to quickly set up and add some unnecessary embellishments to the already elaborate design. Two more blank screen fabric banners straddled the podium, which was perfectly centred and raised even higher off the floor – golden and sculpted with various thematic additions, claws and wings were set into the side and forward faces. A microphone was in the process of being set up, attached to the front side of the podium, which held its own screen fabric banner; whilst this was being attached, a team of helmeted workers were setting up the audio output. Two sets of large wireless speakers were dropped below the banners, whining with high pitched feedback as they connected and began to transmit. A man to Julie’s left spoke out loud, presumably through a commlink connection, as he tapped on his temple, “Okay! Testing banners.” Each tap brought one of the banners on, flashing with a bright default white and instantly bathing the theatre in uncovering light. A collective of groans ran through the hall, which the man to their left returned at with a shocking bark, affecting those furthest away just as badly as it did those nearby. The man spoke again.
“Alright, and the final touch. Uploading design now…” A black buffering shot through each of the banners (apart from the two nearest the podium), disappearing in turn as the design finished uploading. Blue washed over Julie and Eddie’s face, which dropped as they saw where it was coming from. “Okay and the centrepiece? Success. Looks good.” The man tapped his temple and left the room, nodding to Julie and Eddie as he did so.
Eddie spoke first, leaning in to Julie’s ear, “Which one is that then?” Julie gasped as she turned her gaze from the blue lion endorned on the banners to the podium, and the loaded banners on either side. Proudly displayed in the centre, dressed in his military finery and adorned with a ludicrous amount of medals on his chest and praising and patriotic graphics above his head, was Godfrey Croft.
She spoke, barely a whisper. “Shit. That’s the Uncle. Godfrey Croft.”
Eddie nodded, speaking slyly out of the corner of his mouth. “Must be the special guest. We need to get out of here, now. Come on.” Julie agreed and pointed to a doorway at the front of the room, placed to the right of the stage.
“Over there. Signs says that should double back to the offloading area where we’re parked. We can get to the cargohold from there.” They walked through the hall, sticking to the far right as best they could – the sneering eyes of Godfrey's banners tracking them as they went. They reached the exit, and Julie moved her hand to the panel to open it. With a swish, the door opened, and an imposing figure walked out into the hall. Julie stumbled back over her feet, as Godfrey Croft slid through their exit and into the room. Stopping in front of the doorway, he surveyed his audience, and spoke out with a booming voice.
“Pulled out all the stops, I see! Quite an incredible spread!” He smiled wide, showing off his perfect set of teeth to the room, all eyes of which were on him. He was a tall, middle aged man with thick, weathered skin and a shaved head; a deep scar ran from the top of his scalp, past his left eye, and underneath to crudely fuse across his cheek. Broad shoulders connected to thick muscled arms, bookended by a wide calloused hand, all fingernails trimmed to perfection; his left forearm held a cold steel hand cannon, clearly scratched from multiple years of use but laying dormant. Clearly dressed to match the banners, Godfrey looked almost exactly the same, down to each individual medal of honour in their correct place. His leather shoes had been shined so aggressively that they picked up the blue light coming from the banners and bounced it back into the room. Julie and Eddie shrunk under his stature, trying their best to seem quiet and uninteresting so that he would ignore them, and they could slip past without issue. Godfrey stayed put, waving his arms around in some form of mock appreciation, exclaimi
ng, “Love what you’ve done with the place. I feel so welcomed! And so humbled! Look at this one here, rendered silent in awe.” He spread his palm towards Julie and Eddie, who froze like deer caught in his headlights. “Come here. No no, it’s okay. Come stand by me.” Julie shook her head meekly, trying to sneak away from the limelight. Godfrey’s face and voice changed, turning stern. “I said come here.” Julie moved to his side, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close to then address the room once more. “Now this is true appreciation. One of our finest soldiers, a true specimen of what we are all about here at Fugurah Station. Exactly what I’m here to talk about today!” His hand cannon brushed against her back as he moved aside, and Julie shivered a little, recoiling from both the cold and his closeness. She tried to push away from Godfrey. Pointing down, he spoke. "Don't worry, it's deactivated now. Though it can handle a variety of upgrades." He gave Julie a slimy wink and she smiled back weakly. He stopped smiling, and muttered to her as he let her go and moved to the stage, “I’m not known for asking twice. Don’t let it happen again. Come and see me after the talk, I’ll be looking out for you.” She let out a breath she had been holding, as Eddie slipped into the doorway without issue. Godfrey walked to the stage, talking to the room again. “Can you connect me to the system please? I want the script pulled up on my commlink in five minutes, it wasn’t sent to me.” Julie walked into the doorway, shuddering as she took one final look at Godfrey, and moved out of the Debriefing Theatre.