He almost said to stop so she didn’t lock the mechanism up. However, given she’d already gone through ten tries, he didn’t think it was very likely at this point. Then he came across a passage that amused him greatly.
“Aww! There’s a little note in here from your father about you! ‘Little Aiddie’s turning ten today! Can’t wait to take her riding!’ Tough to imagine your hard ass as a little squirt. Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Man, you grew up so fast. I feel old.”
Aidele gave a noncommittal grunt and reached for the panel again. Then stopped. She closed her eyes and shook her head.
“Oh, you jumpin’ jackass…”
“Sorry.”
“No, not you… shut up. So, fucking obvious.”
She reached for the panel again and typed in four numbers. The light on its front lit green and the door slid open with a satisfied chirp and a subtle swish. Beyond the doorway, lights automatically came on and they saw a short corridor leading into a stairwell rising upwards for what seemed like two stories.
“Great,” Durante muttered, “More stairs. How’d you do that?”
“It’s mah birthday.”
“Oh, well, happy birthday.”
Her head slowly turned towards him wearing an expression that asked, ‘Are you fucking with me?’ Durante smiled and held up his hands.
“Kidding. Kidding. Your birthday is the code. Got it. Your thousand-yard stare is not required here.”
Aidele said nothing as she proceeded towards the stairs. Durante followed right behind. At the summit of the stairwell and through a closed door that thankfully wasn’t locked, they found a large circular room with hallways running off in six different directions like spokes on a bicycle wheel. The lighting here was very bright revealing an environment that was white and felt like a hospital waiting room. Between two corridors, straight across from them, were three elevators. All the other walls separating the various corridors were settled by chairs, vending machines, racks of magazines, and one very colorful plastic ficus.
“Jesus… How big is this place?”
“Ah think it’s the middle one.”
“Huhn?”
Aidele crossed over to the elevators and pressed the summons button and waited. Durante followed suit.
“Ah’m pretty sure this goes to the top level,” she said barely looking up at him. “We’re almost there. Ah’m positive.”
“I hope so. It feels like my legs are about to fall off.”
There was a ding and the elevator door slid open. They entered the lift and Aidele reached over to the level panel. There were only two buttons, a call switch, and an emergency stop knob. The two buttons were for the floor they were already on and the top floor labeled, ‘CEO Offices’.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about going down.” He smiled as Aidele hit the CEO Offices button.
The elevator lurched upward and Durante clasped his arms behind his back. He started making popping sounds with his mouth. Aidele shook her head in annoyance.
“Must you?”
“Sorry. Not good with uncomfortable silences.”
She sighed and frowned. “Well, I can give you a little conversation then. Back at the stairwell door, you expressed shock at my having been a kid. And it got me to thinking, you were apprenticed with my dad.”
She glared at her own reflection in the polished steel of the lift walls. Durante tilted his head.
“What about it? Sorry I didn’t see you more. You were like twelve or thirteen, I think. Rather aloof. Loved playing with your horse.”
“I’m not talking about that…” she was turning a little redder in the face. “You spent time in the labs…”
“Well, yeah. Most of my time, that’s true. When the professor went to visit you guys on the weekends, it gave me time to finish my own projects. Sometimes, I’d head out to Aquila Mons. You wouldn’t believe how crazy the nightlife there gets.”
He smiled and made an ‘okay’ gesture with his fingers and thumb.
Aidele snarled at him. “Are ya really this dense!? This entire time you’ve been acting like ya don’ know where we were going! An’ ah very specifically tol’ ya we were headin’ fer the labs!”
She thrust her finger downward as he stared at her puzzled.
“I… what’s wrong? Why are you so angry?”
“Why am ah angry!?” Her intense glare found his eyes and he felt like melting into the walls to escape. “Durante! You’ve been to the labs! Practically lived there! Didja never come this way!?”
“OH! Well… no,” he replied watching her ball her hands into fists. “I always came by shuttle. In the shuttle bay.”
Aidele’s jaw fell. “There’s a shuttle bay attached to the labs!?”
“Yeah. Just on the other side of the Crags. Built around thirty years ago along the canyon side. Guess people used to take the train when the labs were an office complex. Never knew about the trams though. I never took the train myself. Always came by shuttle.” He looked at her, forced a wide grin and gave a tepid chuckle.
“Are ya fucking serious!?”
“I… take it you didn’t know about the bay then?”
“Why in the hell din’t ya tell me ‘bout it!?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t think about it! What with us constantly fleeing for our lives, it just slipped my mind!” He flapped his arms at his sides. “I didn’t even know we were coming here until you told me about the trams under the research station! And even then, do you know how many years it’s been since I was last here!? I’ve been on Earth for the last five Hinon cycles! That’s like, what, a decade on Earth!?”
Aidele brought her hand to her temple and rubbed. “Two-and-a-half days, Durante. Two-and-a-half days! When I told you our destination, you could have mentioned that fact. Anything about it! We weren’t being chased or shot at then! Just… any mention of a shuttle. Any! There’s a transport dock not even an hour away from that first waystation we crossed! Two-and-a-half days!”
“Well, I’m sorry! I didn’t know I was supposed to be thinking about that!”
“I… I haven’t bathed in nearly a month. I smell like spoiled pork marinated in a trash heap, flavored up with just a hint of liquified shit…”
“That’s a wonderful picture you paint.”
She jabbed a finger at him. “And you don’t smell much better, either!”
“Gee, thanks. But at least we’ve become accustomed to it. So, there’s that…”
“Un. Fucking. Believable… Two-and-a-half… days… And there’s a fucking shuttle…”
Durante twitched his lips. “Yeah… you might’ve mentioned that already.”
The ding came and the doors slid open with almost no sound.
“Hey, look at it this way, we’re here now.”
Aidele flashed a look that might have said, ‘Eat shit and die a thousand, horrible deaths’, and exited.
Durante tottered after her. They were in the lounge room. Circular with three connecting hallways. Two were the ringing corridor around the rest of the facilities. The third was the main hall straight ahead leading towards the recreation room. He always thought the lounge was reminiscent of a university study hall with its numerous soft covered seats, tables, and the shallow depression in the center with its encircled steps leading to a holoprojector (a spherical object set on top of a four-foot pedestal which holographically displayed video into the air all around it and was visible as one clear image from any seat around it; too often it reminded Durante of a cat-scratch pole with a ball on its summit) standing on a pedestal in the middle.
Aidele walked around the depression heading straight for the main corridor. Her walk suggested she was more than a little annoyed and he was almost tempted not to say anything. He cleared his throat.
“To the left.”
She halted and glared at him. “What?”
“You… want a bath, right? Well, the bathroom is… that way. at least, it’s quicker to get to that way.�
�
She shook her head and scowled, but turned to the leftmost hall just the same. “Fine.”
Durante suppressed a chuckle and a smile as he followed her along the curving corridor. “I find it strange you didn’t know about the shuttle bay. Did your parents never bring you that way? It would be the easiest way out of Aquila Mons.”
“No. Never,” she grumbled. “Anytime we came, it was by the tram. Except the first time we came to the ranch. That time was by train.”
She slowed down to a degree, the irked tone in her voice subsiding. “One time, though, I convinced my mom to bring me to the labs by train. She was really opposed to it, for some reason. But, eventually, she caved in and told me never to tell anyone we went that way. Especially not dad. Didn’t think nothing of it. At the time.” She looked back at him. “Now that you bring it up, though, it does raise some questions.”
“Your father did want to leave Aquila Mons in quite a hurry. He never told me why. And, honestly, I really didn’t mind. It was always much more… peaceful here. But, if he was going through all that trouble to not be seen, what was actually going on?”
“I don’t know…” Aidele sighed. “Whatever it was, I can’t think about it right now. I need to wash up. Eat. Crash for a week.”
“Doubt we have that kind of time.”
After passing two doors on their left, they came to a door in a wide circular room to the right. She pointed at the door and looked at him. He shook his head and pointed to a door a little further on.
“That’s the restroom. The bathes are in there.”
Aidele headed towards it, glanced left and stopped. They were now in the circular observation room and at its far wall was a massive floor length window running wall to wall. And its view was the glittering Plasmic Shielding Network of the Wastelands. The window curved downwards from the ceiling and she could see the great expanse out beyond. She hesitantly took a few steps forward, gaze locked on the view beyond.
Durante crossed his arms as she took the two steps up from where there was a raised section of floor. There were four sets of chair/table combinations in various places around this section. She ignored them and raised her hands to the window and leaned forward. Below, the outer wall sunk far down and into the rocky Crags. At that base, the shielding network shimmered from past the framework generating it.
“By… the Spirits…” he heard her say, a slight quiver in her voice like she was experiencing some sort of nauseous vertigo.
He walked up beside her and took in the view for himself. He’d seen it numerous times and could relate to how she felt. Looking down was vertigo inducing. He followed her eyes to the rusty red and blue tinted stones where the framework collided into the Crags. The framework rimmed all the way around the sheer walls of the former Atlantus Clutch (now the Wastelands) and far to the east where a mazelike series of valleys known as the Reach of Vales (which, when viewed from above, resembled an ant farm with the shield covering all of it like glass) was the final barrier between the tortured terrain of the surface and the life defending domain within.
The network itself was practically invisible from within the Wastelands. Save for the odd tendency of light to shimmer like a rainbow rolling across the sky. Other than that, looking up one would find mostly clear blue skies with oranges, reds, and yellows towards evening and morning. Though it was an illusion, the network still emulated what the sky would look like were there an actual breathable biosphere. What shocked Durante most, though, was that the network could also replicate weather effects (to keep the vegetation alive and healthy, of course).
He looked at Aidele still staring down in awed wonder.
“You never saw this view?” Aidele shook her head. He frowned. “But you came to visit your dad here sometimes.”
She seemed to struggle to find her voice. “I… I always just went straight to the labs. We never stayed overnight. I was in their bedroom a few times, but never stopped to really look. Saw the view from the rec room of the Great Valley canyon, of course. But never explored the rest of the buildings…” She looked up at him wide eyed. “It’s so amazing. When you’re in the Wastelands, you don’t think about what’s above. It feels so real. But… it’s an illusion. I never thought about it before. This… this is the reality, isn’t it?”
She looked back at the network. Durante did the same. It was getting dark on the surface. So, the shielding was even more impressive. It was a shimmering mosaic sea of shifting color. Deep blacks and blues, purples and reds, roiling like waves in an ocean. Highlighted by oranges, pinks, and bright greens in random intervals. A strange reflection of the skies above as dusk collapsed on the horizon where it met that rippling ocean of plasma. He imagined that, from outside, the lab towers looked like a lighthouse on the shore of an alien sea.
Stars twinkled brightly in a clear black sky as the twin moons of Phobos and Deimos lazily chased one another over that endless looking abyss. Aidele leaned her forehead against the window.
“…This is where we live. Beautiful. Horrific… Just one pillar standing between us and oblivion. Everyone just… gone. Our only protector… a rainbow ocean.”
“Yeah…” Durante replied taking a deep breath. “It’s truly awesome how precarious life is. Easy to take for granted. Harder to understand our places in it. …How fragile it all is.”
Aidele looked up at him and stood there for a moment, mouth slightly agape. Then forced herself to turn away from the view. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Ah, yes. That door over there.” He strode past her. “Let’s see if everything is still functional.”
Durante opened the leftmost door at the back of observation and entered, Aidele close on his heels. He hit the light panel and they found themselves in a lavish washroom. To the right, a large tub built into the wall. To their left, one large shower also built into the wall. Straight ahead, a serious counter with four sinks and a wide medicine cabinet above it with five mirrored doors.
“Well, we already know the electricity is still on. Somehow.” He walked over to the tub and turned the faucet. “And we’ve got water too. Awesome!”
“Not going to argue so long as I can get a bath.”
“True enough.” Turning off the faucet, he stood and wandered over to the medicine cabinets. “If I remember correctly, the premises here had actually once been an office complex. Not sure when it got repurposed to be the labs, but the amenities can’t be dismissed, that’s for sure.”
Aidele stared at the tub and ran a hand through her hair. A finger snagged on a tangle. Without further thought, she tossed off her duster, ripped off her borrowed shirt, and practically leapt out of her jeans as she made a mad dash for the tub. Durante noticed none of this as he was busy checking the contents of the medicine cabinets.
“We have everything we’re going to need I think.” He heard the tub water running and decided he should probably get out of her way. He shut the door and turned around. “Oh boy!”
Aidele sat on the edge of the tub butt naked testing the water, a slight grin cracking her face as he immediately turned back around.
“You blush any deeper and yer gonna be redder’n me. You’ve already seen me naked anyhow, sir.”
“That was patching you up! Had to be done since you were a dirty, bloody mess. Not looking to sneak a peek while you were out cold!” He shook his head. “Just… wasn’t expecting you to already be naked. You must have flown out of those clothes because I couldn’t have been over here more than ten seconds.”
“What part of ‘I need a bath’ were you not getting? Believe I mentioned it’s been weeks. Time to clean myself up!” Water sloshed as she lowered herself into the tub. “Sweet titties glowin’ in the dark! Oh, nice and hot and… mmmm!”
“‘Sweet titties…’? What?” He glanced back at her and saw she was wearing a broad, satisfied grin as she leaned back and closed her eyes. Her breasts were bobbing enticingly like pert islands of tanned flesh. He turned back around, his eyes to the c
ountertop and not the mirrors.
“Remind me later to give you the rundown on Wastelander idioms.”
“How are your injuries?” He said at once. “Still ache? Are they healing all right?”
“Could always just come take a look fer yerself. You’re the one who patched me up.”
Durante quirked his lip and sighed a chuckle. “You are really something else. I think you’re knowledgeable enough to give me your assessment on the matter.”
“They’re healing up just fine, thanks to you. There’s some aching, yes. And my boob still occasionally itches where that one bullet is. Likely have a few extra scars. However, I’m doing all right.”
“Good. Glad to hear it. My back still aches time to time from that shard of glass, too, now that I think about it. Was blazing when we were escaping Mr. Berricks.”
“Welcome ta the Wastelands, Mr. Weiss. If’n ya ain’ got a hole or a scar somewhere, ya ain’ livin’ right.”
“Just as well not go back, if it’s all the same to you,” Durante said and she chuckled as he turned towards where her clothes laid haphazardly on the floor. He went to pick them up and saw the shirt was a complete loss. The duster looked salvable though. “You popped all the buttons off your shirt.”
“Eh, that shirt was useless to me anyhow. Felt like my tits were going to fall out any second and the only thing holding them back was mah jacket.”
“Guess… I’ll go see if I can find you a towel. Maybe some fresh clothing too. Your parents’ room is right down the hall and…”
He stopped speaking and looked over to her. He hadn’t meant to mention them. It just slipped out and he wanted to make sure she wasn’t angry. He also didn’t want to make it any worse. His mouth hung open, words unwilling to form.
“Knock yourself out.” She waved a hand absently.
He couldn’t help but to notice the growing knot of scars on her body. She was right, there was no fresh blood and he saw she’d removed her bandages at some point, revealing white puckers of flesh that were a stark contrast to her deeper tones. Otherwise, her skin was quite smooth and only accentuated her taut musculature. It wasn’t unappealing and cut a firm curving figure. Her stature might be short, but of all the adjectives that could be used for her, strong came first to mind.
Red Star Sheriff Page 29