40
At breakfast the next morning, Mission and Susan arrived together, holding hands. Even Montag said, "Ohhhh."
Mission sat down and said, "I think today we should do some reconnoitering."
Carson said, "Thank God. Send me anywhere but back to the diagnostics pit."
Montag said, "What do you plan to look for?"
Mission looked at Susan. "Any reports from the diagnostics?"
"Just the high level summaries, but they’re enough. All of them contain 100% Paradox recommended configurations. Nothing unusual about the reports at all, except for the high degree of use, the wear and tear factors. And actually ... that's not unusual either. Not in a mining settlement."
Mission nodded. "Well, I think we all called that one. So! I want to see the setup where they maintain and repair the synthetics. I'll bet that's where they’re modifying these guys before they get to our rooms."
Montag said, "That is a job best suited to me. A pair of mining coveralls and they can't tell me from a New Angeles synthetic."
Mission looked at Carson who nodded. "Okay, Montag. The repair facility is yours. Next we need someone to check out the med tech station."
He looked directly at Susan. "I probably missed it, but I didn't see a way to sign in. No numbers, no sign-in book, no keypad, nothing. I just need to know if everything is okay."
Susan put the back of her hand to her forehead and said, "Suddenly I feel faint. It's just the strangest thing."
Mission said, "That's wonderful Scarlett. Next is the manufacturing complex in Hub D. Wouldn't you like to know what’s really going on in there?"
Carson said, "That sounds like mine."
Mission said, "Good. And that leaves me to check out the mining and refining operation. Now ... shall we devote an hour to these tasks, and then meet at the work rooms to continue with diagnostics?"
Everyone agreed and stood to leave. Mission said, "Hold on a minute! Safety. Think safety. They waited until Carson and I felt the possibility of danger was past and then came right out of the ceiling for us. Take no chances. I have these for you."
Mission pulled his com and rapidly punched the keys, "This displays all our com extensions. Remember to use the station module numbers to specify your location. We are significantly outnumbered here. If you’re in doubt, a good bet is to retreat. Questions? Fears? Childhood traumas? Okay, let's do it."
Susan's mind raced furiously as she made her way to the med tech station. She needed a supportable medical problem that would get her into the examining rooms. Then it hit her. Those gravity boot lessons were paying off. She came to the doorway and almost passed it. She opened it carefully and stepped in. The waiting room was dark. Not pitch black. More like late evening.
From the corner of her eye she saw a blink of red light. As she turned, it winked again. It was a sensor over the door. Some light threaded in from the window between the waiting room and the nurse's station.
"Hello? .... Is anyone here?"
By leaning in through the window, she could peer down the short darkened hallway. As her pupils dilated, she could make out the form of a man sitting in a chair.
She tried again. "Hello! Can someone help me?"
Slowly the figure stood and walked towards her, silently. Even if Mission hadn't just given the death on every corner speech, she would be scared. The darkness and the silence. She realized she had to get out.
The door burst open and the nurse came through it, snarling, "Why are you here?"
"Well I'm ... I'm hurt. I ... rammed into the ... the doorjamb trying ... trying to use these ... uh, gravity boots. I ... hit my shoulder."
He looked at her with a sour expression. "Come on back and I'll take a look."
As he turned, Susan said, "I thought maybe you were closed, it was so dark in here."
He turned to look at her. "No, we're never very busy this time of day, so I turn down the lights and snooze."
The med tech looked at her shoulder and probed with his fingers. "That one's a beaut. Your body'll be happy to repair it in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll give you something to relieve the pain. And if the bruised area should become irritated or begin to drain, call me immediately. Okay?"
"Sure. Thanks. What kind of pain reliever is this?"
"High-dose acetaminophen. You make sure you take no more than one every four hours."
"Alright. Oh! And the sign in log. I didn't see it anywhere."
He tilted his head the way a cat would look at her. "Stopped using it, since data records capture every visit anyway."
"But you didn't make a data record of me."
He laughed. "Well the instant you leave I will. I have to record dispensing the medication."
Susan said, "Oh, okay. Well, thanks again. Bye."
She closed the door behind her and breathed a sigh of relief. She wondered how he would make that record when he never even asked her name.
Montag approached his assignment ... well, as expected. Logically and methodically. None of the names on the floor plans suggested synthetic repair. So he downloaded power and cable schematics and searched for good candidates. He developed a power estimate that he felt confident came within 10%.
Accuracy was important, because much bigger power drains dotted a mining settlement. The refining and manufacturing operations gobbled power. There would be several recharging stations in or near the ready rooms for the miners. Most of the individual equipment for the pressurized suits, for handheld instruments, and for individual lighting ran from rechargeable batteries. Of course, they had massive diesel generators with their own oxygen supply for most of the big tools.
Then he correlated power requirement matches to data feeds throughout the city and produced four possibilities. He decided to investigate them in alphabetical order. He noted the time and estimated he could visit only one site before returning to the diagnostics room.
He was acutely aware of the vulnerabilities of the strategy they were employing. The advantage was to cover many possibilities in a single day. The flaw was that each of the three humans he was charged with protecting was operating in what could be a very hostile environment, without the benefit of his protector skills. He would bring this matter to the attention of Mr. Mission at the first opportunity.
Major Carson Pierce felt good for the first time since docking in New Angeles. Preparation was important and could even be fun, but it could never compare to the real thing. The trouble was, he couldn't be sure what he wanted. The idea of battling killer syns seemed great. Real action with none of the mind numbing consequences of engaging and killing humans. He experienced it during the Chinese Pirate Containment and didn't want to repeat it. He felt like his emotions, his very life drained from him until just enough remained to keep him hanging on. But in his estimation, the worst part was that he got over it. The only way he could explain it was to say the memory of the event remained, but without any emotional content. Time simply excised the horror and the sadness from his mind. As bad as it felt, he remembered wanting to keep those horrible feelings alive, to make sure he never forgot how it really felt to kill.
Nevertheless, he did crave action and synthetics would be a good source. Unfortunately, the odds stacked up as a thousand to three. This would indicate that getting the appropriate information and getting the hell out was the only sane alternative. But perhaps he could lock into a controlled skirmish with two or three syns. In truth, the encounter with the female back at Paradox embarrassed him. She knocked him down and took his gun. And while Mission and Montag both took slugs bringing her down, he did nothing. Not that he blamed himself. He knew that life takes strange bounces sometimes. But he wanted the opportunity to balance the books.
Pierce looked back down at his com. One more turn would bring him to the intersection of the C and D modules. He turned left and moved rapidly to the hatch. He started to open the door and then stopped. He put his face up to the translucent portal, trying to see what waited for
him. Something didn't feel right ... there it was. The environmental indicators showed red. He supposed they weren't ready to pressurize yet. Still, there should be something to keep him from opening the door.
He heard footsteps and realized he didn't want to be found here at the hatch. He ducked inside the first door he could open and then closed it and looked through the portal. Pierce ignored the light switches, he didn't want lights on when the pedestrians passed. They walked by and he noted two men in their twenties wearing the standard issue coveralls. They went to the hatch and opened the door. As they turned the wheel, a second hatch door slid out of the wall behind them and produced an airlock. Once the original door closed again, the second door disappeared again. Now that he understood, he was ready for a visit with a pressure suit. It occurred to him that the two men were synthetics since they didn't carry an oxygen supply.
He didn't know why, but his hair stood on end. He sensed someone in the darkened room with him. He stayed calm and started to move his hand inside his jacket. A hand slapped down on his shoulder, firmly enough to hold him right there. Pierce neared panic, trying to get his Stiletto out and pointed at the enemy. He tried to reach out with his other arm and push his opponent away.
"Major. Major!" the voice whispered. "It's me. Montag."
"If you want to kill me, just rip my heart out, don't scare me to death!"
"I apologize Major. I was checking this location as a site for synthetic repair. No good."
The Major nodded. "Come on. Let's head toward the diagnostics room. You know what you need to do? You need to sneak up on Mission like that."
41
Before anything else, Mission accessed the datalink at the station with his com. He wanted shift schedules and rosters, he wanted to know all the station entry and exit points for the crews, he wanted dressing room, equipment room, and staging room locations.
All this information was readily available and he downloaded it. He figured to start by watching the crews coming in at their end of shift. He checked for map coordinates and headed toward the connector between modules A and B.
Mission stood there at the junction for a moment, trying to figure out what he had done wrong. The only hatchway in the area connected the two modules. He looked at the map graphic again and saw his error. Although he was only a few yards from the passage to the outside, he would have to retrace his steps far down the hall to get to the entrance which led through the mining supply rooms and eventually to the outdoor exit/entrance.
The crews propped the hatch door open to provide unobstructed access to the mining rooms. Mission walked in and looked around. The place was virtually empty. He checked the schedules and found that a crew left for the mines fifteen minutes ago, and that another crew would return for the day in another fifteen minutes. Standard procedure. You scheduled a thirty minute overlap between arriving and departing shifts to make sure that the production rhythm kept moving.
He wandered into the locker rooms. Nothing new here. Hundreds and hundreds of floor to ceiling lockers with thumbprint locks. The cold metal benches, the floor that could serve as an advert for athlete's foot, and the smell of men who performed tough physical labor all day. The showers were typical too. Half of the shower heads leaked continuously and one out of ten hot or cold water handles was missing.
Next he came to an equipment room. No matter how sophisticated technology became and no matter how many twenty ton mining toys showed up, every mining operation still used picks and shovels. There were boxes and boxes of heavy duty insulated work gloves. There were work boots, some of which went up to the hips. He couldn't figure that one out. An entire shelf held probably twenty varieties of flashlights. Handheld small beam, the handhelds comprised mostly of a huge battery clipped underneath, lanterns, and hard-hat mounted models.
The adjacent room was locked and the door displayed a Danger - Explosives warning. The next room contained secured drawers filled with radio transmission explosives detonators. There was sounding gear to map out the ores under the ground and portable chemistry field kits to determine the types of minerals on site.
The following rooms really functioned as big bays to hold a variety of engines. He recognized some as massive water pumps to clear shafts and trenches as they filled with water. There were huge pneumatic air hammers and the largest handheld drills he had ever seen. He supposed some of the other engines powered transports, and conveyor belts, and small elevator units.
This took him to the bay that opened to the outdoors. It was massive and he pictured all the entrances to the bay sealing, and then the huge doors swinging open to accept a shift's worth of miners with their accessories. Mission looked around for a place to observe since he couldn't stay in the bay when it de-pressurized.
There! A three foot by two foot observation window in the far corner, the largest he had seen in any of these airtight facilities. He checked again against the floor plan graphic and pinpointed the room and the route he would take to get there. This led Mission out of the operations area and into the management and administration, planning and scheduling realm. The rooms held compartments much like the vue phone booths at the airports. You stood upright with a desktop at about six inches above waist high and connected your com to the databay on the side. These booths held a small locking drawer underneath the desktop, presumably to hold one's office treasures. The desktop itself yielded a small microphone for voice command, and a vue screen hung on the far wall. A lonely and battered metal barstool parked underneath for when you tired of standing.
Mission shook his head. Four booths against a ten foot wall. Four more just like them on the opposite wall with about three feet between a worker on one side and a worker on the other side. He wondered how often people went stir crazy in these settlements, and started shooting anyone who walked down the hall.
As he weaved through the passages, he realized he hadn't seen anyone since he stepped into the mining area. Odd. After all, this was the daytime shift. He thought that at least the management area would be busy. He finally came to the room with the observation glass. The nameplate on the door read Jesse Bolton. Again, no one was there. Perhaps Bolton was the type of guy who wanted to be on site most of the time, making sure he got every second of his eight hours from every worker on the shift.
The lights in the office barely produced a glow. Mission dimmed them a little more to insure that the miners wouldn't see him as they entered the bay. He envisioned the scene as the miners returned. Tired, dirty, and discouraged. That's how you have to feel after pushing the envelope all day, trying to make quota. Jeff told him once that often crews would turn on a mate that didn't do his share, and beat hell out of him right there at the mines. And nothing made you angrier than working to exhaustion next to a syn that never even strained. Quota and bonuses were the only reason any of them were there and the end of the day meant complete exhaustion.
The siren almost brought Mission out of his chair. He failed to anticipate the docking procedure would have to start before the miners could come back in. Great visualization there, Mission. Everything looked alright, you just failed to remind yourself that an earsplitting siren would go off the entire time.
Even from his vantage point, Mission could feel the entire room vibrate as the doors opened. When the first break in the seal occurred, the doors groaned under the pressure to fly open immediately. He could hear the low, whirling shush as the atmosphere in the bay rushed out. A minute later, a final boom echoed through the area as the doors locked into the open position.
The crew members moved quickly inside with the smaller pieces of equipment and thirty seconds later, the siren screamed again as the doors started their slow trek back to the closed position. The crews stowed their gear and stood ready for the bay to re pressurize. As the doors locked down, Mission felt and heard the whine of the engines pumping the atmosphere back into the room.
He watched the miners carefully. The mix appeared to be half and half. The syns didn't wear pressure su
its and the humans, of course did. As the environment indicators changed from red to green, the humans broke the seals and pulled their helmets and then their suits off.
This was completely different than Mission imagined. These miners acted more like they just played eighteen holes with four beers along the way. They looked fresh and happy and energetic. In fact, even their clothes and their pressure suits looked clean. He never imagined that even the crews about to go out on shift felt this good. And something else was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew that he had seen something just now that wasn't right.
As the miners exited the bay, talking and laughing, flirting back and forth, Mission realized that he should leave, before he got boxed in by the workers coming out of the showers and hitting the dressing rooms. He navigated back out of the mining area and headed for the diagnostics room. On the way, it occurred to him that the bay was the first social scene he had witnessed since they entered the settlement. Everything else had been a bored worker or two, here and there. But those miners looked like people who got together to drink and listen to music and play cards and ... well, the things you expect people to do.
Mission shook his head. He hoped one of the other three found more than he did. Otherwise, the four of them would sit around the table agreeing that something was wrong without a shred of evidence.
42
When Mission reached the diagnostics rooms, two people he presumed to be syns, sat in chairs waiting. Mission said hello and moved into the work space. Susan sat there alone and she stood and smiled as he came in. He crowded her into the corner and kissed her hard. Reluctantly, they let go of each other and Susan said, "Mission, if you don't learn to express what you're feeling, you're going to have a heart attack someday."
Living in Syn Page 18