by Mark Wandrey
“Wait for me,” Jim said and got to his feet. His hands, shoulders, and back hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. He flexed his hands and smiled a wry smile. I did it. He snatched up the crowbar and noted it had a slight bend to it. He hadn’t thought he was strong enough to do it. Jim pressed the release, but the crowbar wouldn’t fold. He’d bent it enough to damage it. He shook his head and slid it into his pack as he followed Splunk through the opening. Unfolded, it was a little too long and projected out the top.
Splunk was standing a few meters inside the doorway, using her flashlight to pan around the cavernous interior. At first, Jim thought all his effort was for naught, however, as he moved his light around, he realized the walls were covered with framework. More importantly, they were nearly identical to those in a couple of the bays in Karma Upsilon 4.
“Bingo.”
Splunk held up a small hand, thumb extended upwards.
They walked together, examining the rack systems. Being familiar with Raknar, he could immediately see how the huge robots would link into them. While obviously of the same pedigree as those on Karma Upsilon 4, these were distinctly different. It took a minute of examining them to understand—these were designed for use in gravity.
Karma Upsilon 4 wasn’t truly a zero-gravity environment. It had enough mass for a small amount of gravity—about 0.05 gravities—however, for most purposes, it was zero. Even though a Raknar weighed in excess of 1,000 tons, at 0.05 of a gravity, it only weighed about 50 tons. The support structures, while meaty, weren’t constructed like these, which were in a half gravity.
“Raknar frames,” he said aloud. Splunk nodded.
The space was cavernous and a mess. The roof was intact, unlike many of the other locations. However, it had clearly been ransacked at some distant time. No complicated machinery was immediately in evidence, and the dust was 20 centimeters thick, drifting like lunar dust. Jim was glad they were wearing breathing masks as they kicked up plumes which followed them as the two split up to explore.
Jim was checking the base of a Raknar frame, opening drawers on a storage cabinet and finding nothing but dust, when he heard a crash. He spun around, his hand going to his holstered pistol. “Splunk?” The seconds ticked by. “Splunk, was that you?” This time he yelled, his voice echoing off the timeless walls.
“Was me,
Jim fixed the position and quickly slogged through the dust drifts toward her voice. Between the two of them, they’d stirred up enough ancient dust to reduce visibility to a dozen meters or less. It took him a minute to find her at the base of one of the towering Raknar frames. A pile of cabinets—or maybe toolboxes—was there, and she’d partially upended the pile—the source of the crash sitting on the still-settling dust.
For a second, he was afraid she might be pinned under the pile, but it turned out her brown fur was acting as camouflage amidst the clouds of barely moving dust. He heaved a sigh upon seeing her and moved next to his friend.
“What did you find?”
“Thought something. Looks like nothing now,
Jim knelt in the detritus, careful not to impale his knee on some unseen piece of debris. A portable crane or hoist had fallen, crushing the work area. She’d found several things of interest. One was a litter of crushed equipment cases. The remains of components and pre-Union computer chips were scattered about. He leaned in with her, examining the pile of wreckage.
They spent some time going through thousands of the ancient chips. Composed of a form of molecularly hardened polymer, they were nearly indestructible. But nearly didn’t apply to 20,000 years of lying on a floor. It looked like the room had been exposed to flooding at some point in the past, too, though Jim couldn’t be sure.
He tapped a few of the chips on his personal slate. Each chip had a tiny RF transmitter and a direct interface which was faster than the transmitter. The transmitter was hard-wired to the chip’s optical memory matrix and powered via any correctly configured EM field. The slate had such a field, and if the chip didn’t respond with a touch against the slate’s interface/charge zone, it was dead. None of them responded.
“We don’t have time to check all these chips,” he remarked. Splunk sighed and shook her head. At least half of them were physically damaged, cracked, chipped, or deformed. Their sole weakness was a purposeful disfigurement of their structure—a design feature intended to make them destroyable if you really wanted to. Bend the chip sufficiently to crack the internal architecture, and the data was gone forever.
Jim dug into the pile, picking up a big handful and letting them run between his fingers like sand at the beach. They made a mournful sound as they drummed on the other debris, a pile of lost history.
“They can die from sitting too long,
“Twenty thousand years is a long time.”
Splunk slowly nodded. Jim glanced sideways. “What’s that?” Just at the edge of the collapsed crane—or whatever it was—lay a crumpled table. Most of it was under the crane but part of a machine was exposed. It kind of reminded Jim of the EM device chargers you found all throughout the Union. They had slots where you could set your apparatus so it would be close enough to the charger.
This machine was different. It appeared to be designed for only one device. A half meter of the machine had survived, and had little dusty squares. Jim counted seven of them and one spot was empty. He took one of the seven and tried to blow dust from it. He stared at it in confusion when none of the dust moved, until he remembered he was wearing a breathing mask.
Stupid, he chastised himself and rubbed the dust off with his hands instead. He was left with a thin piece of clear material about fifteen by twenty centimeters and no more than ten millimeters thick. “Is this a miniature slate?” he wondered aloud and tapped at its corners, which would activate any normal slate. Nothing happened. If they were indeed slates, they were dead, just like the chips.
Jim grabbed two of the mini slates and a handful of chips, stuffed them into a thigh pouch on his uniform pants, and stood back up. After the exertion of opening the door, his knees creaked painfully. Splunk hopped up on his shoulder, casually securing her little shoulder bag before pointing to the door into the next section.
“Hope it’s not as hard as the last one,” he said. He was starting to think he might have pulled a few muscles. When he reached the door, he saw it was already partially open, and when pulled, opened even further. Even before he had it fully open, he could hear sounds of machinery.
The door opened to reveal hundreds of Vaga standing on their spiky legs, looking at him with beady black eyes. Heavy machinery lined the walls; Jim had no clues as to their functions. In the center was a shaft leading underground with framework elevators and material-handling conveyors.
“It was more than a repair facility,” Jim said. “It was a Raknar manufacturing installation.”
* * *
“I gave you a map to follow,” Klay said.
Jim only recognized him because his translator tagged the alien. There were probably clear differences between them, but he couldn’t tell. “Your map was obviously a distraction,” Jim explained. Several of the Vaga looked at each other, and Jim guessed they were confused about how he figured it out so easily. As the GalNet said, the Vaga weren’t known for their intellectual prowess.
“We have run this mine for years and kept it secret for the Wathayat. It gives our race credits we desperately need.”
“But also makes you a target to opportunists like the Jakota.” Klay made a gesture which Jim’s translator said was a nod. “You could have simply told me.”
“We did not trust you,” Klay said, his claws clicking repeatedly. “We are still not sure if we trust you. Many take advantage of our race because we are a simple people; we are not a merc race, and we do not play in politics.”
Politics? I didn’t think there really was any politics in the Union. “I can assure you I have no interest in
interfering with your operation here. We are only here to conduct research, as I stated before landing.”
While the Vaga pondered his words, Jim took a closer look at the machinery crowding the building. Much of it appeared to be in operational condition and was a mixture of extremely old and surprisingly modern equipment. The Vaga had really gone out of their way to keep the operation hidden. Based on matches in his GalNet records, the machines were all designed for refining. They’d found some rare minerals, was his guess. Splunk was observing curiously as well.
“What are you going to do?” Klay asked.
“Leave,” Jim said and headed for the door.
“Are you going to tell anyone about our operation?”
“I said I wasn’t, and I won’t,” he yelled back over his shoulder.
“They don’t trust anyone,
“Probably with good reason,” Jim replied to his friend.
He briefly considered trying a few other areas which the Vaga had carefully moved him around, then discarded the idea. Klay was being truthful in there, and likely nothing remained he would find any use for. With some work in controlled conditions, he or Splunk might succeed in coaxing one or more of the chips—or even the mini-slate he’d taken—back to life.
Instead, he returned to the vehicle where his assigned driver was watching him with some nervousness; for an insect, it was something to behold. It sat behind the controls, twitching impatiently and casting its beady black eyes in Jim and Splunk’s direction repeatedly.
“Where would you like to go now?”
“Take us back to the starport.” The alien looked at him. “I mean, take us to our ship.”
“As you wish,” the Vaga driver said and put the vehicle in gear.
Thunder rolled across the thin air, making Jim look up at the sky. The white-hot dart of a starship was burning through the sky, lancing toward the ruins. The other ship from the emergence point? He ground his teeth and tried not to worry about it. It didn’t look like a large ship, probably smaller than Pale Rider. He guessed even a backwater shit hole like Q’posa Prime could get two visitors in the same day. Once in a century? Yeah, what were the odds?
They lost view of the ship as it flared and fired its descent engines to land. It plummeted too low too quickly to tell anything about it, and Jim lost interest as they passed building after boring, ruined building. He thought back to the Raknar frames. The structure they’d found held dozens. He considered the scale of the facility. How many thousand Raknar was it designed to service?
The vehicle turned a corner, and Pale Rider came into view a long way down the avenue. Jim realized he’d been feeling some anxiety since they’d confronted Klay and the other Vaga at the ancient Raknar mine. At the sight of his ship, he felt the tension relax, and he sighed. Splunk looked up from examining one of the chips he’d gathered, although she took no notice of his mood or the sight of their ship.
He didn’t know what suddenly set him off, but as they passed the last large building on their right, the feeling of anxiety returned, only much stronger. So much so that Splunk’s head popped up in response to their special connection. An instant later, an explosion lifted their vehicle and flipped it through the air like a toy.
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
Jim opened his eyes and looked around. Everything was upside down and canted at a slight angle. He was lying on the roof of the vehicle with his former seat above him. He felt like he’d been beaten to shit, but somehow was still in a pleasant mood—borderline giddy. What happened? How’d I get upside down? Who beat me up? He laughed and pushed his bulk onto his hands and knees. There was stuff everywhere. It looked like someone had picked the vehicle up and shook it. He giggled at the funny scene.
He cast his gaze around the interior of the vehicle. The driver’s hunched, chitinous bulk lay on the roof of the driver’s compartment. Unlike Jim, he was unmoving. Splunk was hanging unconscious from a safety restraint, and Jim’s breathing mask and backpack rested a short distance away. How’d my mask get over there?
Jim concentrated on getting Splunk down from the restraint. She’d laugh at the craziness, too. Only, some part of his mind was ruining the fun. For some reason, he remembered a snippet of conversation with a long dead friend, Captain Winslow.
“Son, if you ever feel giddy in space, or even high altitude, check your O2; it’s probably hypoxia.”
Jim chuckled. Hypoxia. Such a strange word. Hypoxia. He laughed again, but the thought fought its way to the top, and he looked at the mask. It wasn’t supposed to be lying there. Why was that wrong? Hypoxia. Through the fog, he reached out and grabbed the mask, pulled it over, and slid it over his head. The mechanism blew cool air into his face.
In seconds, it was like he had wakened from a dream. He sucked in air deeply from the mask’s compressor system. He heard it whine as it strained to keep up with his gasping breaths.
“Hypoxia,” he said. “I almost died.” His head cleared faster than he thought possible, and he began to examine his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the driver. He was leaking yellow bodily fluids from multiple cracks in his chiton. Safe to say, the Vaga was probably dead. The second thing he noticed was Splunk dangling from a safety harness, blood dripping from her tiny outstretched hand.
“Splunk!” he cried and reached up to release the strap. She weighed less than ten kilos, and in the reduced gravity, she felt feather light as he lowered her to the roof of the transport, which was now its floor. He pulled the thin, insulated glove off his right hand, ignoring the cold air as he placed two fingers of his right hand against her throat, feeling for her pulse. “Come on, buddy,” he said as he searched.
When he felt the little throb of her artery, he almost cried in relief. Her custom-made mask was firmly in place and operating. He searched for and found the source of the blood. Something had lacerated her shoulder. Her fur was matted with blood, which didn’t want to clot because of the low atmospheric pressure. Then he noticed the fire.
As if almost dying of hypoxia and finding his best friend wounded weren’t enough, the transport was upside down, crumpled, and on fire. What the fuck exploded? He found a strap for the backpack he’d tossed aside when entering the transport and hooked an arm through it. Cradling Splunk in his other arm, he crawled to the side door release and yanked the handle. It wasn’t designed for a Human hand, but he’d figured out its simple function when they’d first ridden in it hours ago.
As he slid out, he searched for a sign of the explosion’s origin. Had the car simply blown up? A couple dozen meters back in the direction they’d come from he saw a sizable crater. While he wasn’t a merc with dozens of years of combat experience, he’d seen enough bomb craters to know when he was looking at one.
Jim immediately arrested his crawl and reversed to lean again the crumpled structure of the car. A line of bullets tore into the aged and faded road surface where he’d been only a second earlier. He felt the familiar sensation of ice dripping down his spine, which occurred any time he narrowly avoided dying.
Behind the concealment provided by the vehicle—and its nominal cover—Jim carefully set Splunk on the ground and reached for his sidearm. His hand found an empty holster. He craned his neck around to the vehicle cabin, and a bullet splanged! against the metal next to his head. He jerked back and ground his teeth. He’d gotten just enough of a view inside to confirm there was no sign of the gun. Shit.
He dug into his backpack and did a rapid assessment of anything he could use against their unseen aggressor. He didn’t have time to wonder who wanted him dead, only to try and find a way to not let them succeed. In the pack, he found exactly what he’d packed—all kinds of gear to explore Raknar ruins, along with a pouch full of the ancient chips and the tiny slate.
“Not much to work with,” he said as he selected his slate and a small silver case. He glanced both ways to make sure he wasn’t already being flanked. Nope, only crumbling buildings. Whoever was trying
to kill him was either patient or paranoid. Whatever it happened to be, the hesitation gave Jim an opening.
He turned on his slate, opened the metallic case, and activated one of the tiny drones. With a nearly inaudible scream, the machine’s two miniature turbine lift fans roared to life, and it rose into the air and hovered centimeters from his face. Jim tapped the icon on his slate, bringing the drone under control, and selected “perimeter scout” before releasing it.
The drone shot straight up and angled away. In less than a second, he couldn’t hear it anymore and knew it was unlikely anyone else could either. With another tap, he told the slate to feed the data the drone accumulated into Jim’s pinplants, which he’d in turn configured to create a virtual battlespace.
He’d used this tactic when leading the Cavaliers into battle. With a battlespace in his head, Jim could quickly see detailed terrain maps, views from any linked units’ cameras, the locations of his troopers in relation to the enemy, and everyone’s status down to how many rounds were left in their MACs. In his present situation, there weren’t any other units to feed him information. Instead, he was relying on the drone to get him out of a fight, or at least show him what he was facing.
The drone effected a sweeping circle within 100 meters of Jim’s location. No bigger than a terrestrial dragonfly, and somewhat resembling one, it would go unnoticed on most planets unless you heard its engines. Despite a somewhat reduced flight speed because of the thin atmosphere, the drone completed a full circle of Jim’s position in only two minutes and identified five targets.
On the drone’s second sweep, he brought it lower to get a better look, hoping to at least identify what race he was facing. As it swerved between a pair of collapsed buildings off to his left, he got a good view of a figure crouched behind a crumbling wall, holding a rifle. The image was so good, Jim could see the blue eyes of the all-too-Human aiming the weapon.