Kellen retraced his steps along a ten-meter stretch, as Izmit and Abby watched. Five symbols stood out, with the third and fourth seeming more important than the others. One comprised a rayed circle with two juxtaposed arms, the other a pattern of bent arrows. He stopped midway between them, where the warm feeling peaked.
Kellen touched the unmarked surface between the last two symbols. Something about the curve in the tunnel felt right, as if he’d been there before.
Abby and Izmit walked over to stand beside him.
“Here?” Abby said.
He nodded. “Here.”
Izmit frowned and struck the tunnel wall with a pick. The metal rang.
“Thick,” he said. “The metal is thick here.”
Abby and Izmit exchanged glances.
“We have to cut it,” she said. “We’ll need to bring a torch.”
Izmit narrowed his eyes and considered the anonymous length of tunnel Kellen had indicated.
He doubts me, Kellen thought.
Izmit sucked in some air, then blew it out. He rapped the metal with his knuckles. “It’ll be difficult, but we can do it.” He gave them a satisfied smile.
Another task, Kellen thought, another place to dig. That’s what Izmit lived for.
They came back the next day with cutting torches Abby had scrounged up from somewhere. Sparks flew, and the metal dripped. Kellen grew bored and walked down the tunnel, passing into one branch, then another, until the light of the torches grew dim. He stopped, considering whether to keep moving forward, but turned back, not wanting to get lost.
He’d gone farther than he thought. By the time he found his way back, a piece of the tunnel wall lay on its face, the gaping hole it had left behind dark and ominous, a cold breeze emanating from within. He steeled himself, knowing they would go in there. The spot he’d found led somewhere. The fact not one of them knew where was beside the point.
Izmit took off his hat and wiped sweat from his brow.
Abby stood up and grimaced as she rubbed her neck, but managed a smile. “After you, Kellen.”
Izmit nodded.
Kellen had led them here, dubious honor though it seemed to go first into that dark, mysterious nothing. Izmit held out a light, and Kellen took it. This is why we came, he reminded himself.
Five centimeters thick, the metal edges were still warm to the touch as he levered himself through the hole into the larger space beyond. Kellen fanned out the light, and its dim beam revealed a walkway stretching out from the hole they’d cut, a meter-wide peninsula of smooth metal in a sea of dark. Away from the walkway, he sensed a vast, cavernous space. The cool air moved against his face. He turned and helped Izmit through, then Abby.
Izmit walked out along the walkway. Kellen and Abby followed until they stood in the center of a circular platform several meters across. Abby’s more powerful light illuminated a greater space around them beyond the platform, a vast spherical concavity stretching over their heads, down, and underneath. Bright edges of machined metal and mechanical components formed a complicated, enclosing surface that reflected the light back into their eyes. Kellen stood, amazed, in the heart of that space where every sound amplified within an expectant stillness.
“What is it?” Kellen asked in a hushed voice. “Some kind of machine?”
Izmit shrugged and smiled. Kellen guessed the Digger was just happy to have found it. Whatever it was.
Abby re-examined the platform where it joined the tunnel wall through which they’d entered. “There’s a power connection here.” Her tools clanked against the wall as she scrambled back into the tunnel. “And there’s a power conduit I can tap in the tunnel.”
Everything they’d been doing assumed a new gravity. They had transcended fun and games, abstract ideas and imagination. Standing on that mirror-smooth platform, everything felt different. He was different. Transformed. This place had been made by chines for no obvious purpose, yet purpose it had. They were connected to it now, or they always had been.
Chapter 4 – Gone
In a somber mood, Sheemi strapped her K and reported to the hospital at zero nine hundred. She made her way down into the lower levels to a waiting room full of soldiers she didn’t know except for a sergeant from First Platoon. He waved her over.
“What’s this about?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Haven’t got a clue.” It wasn’t completely true. She did have one. She just didn’t know what it meant. Dad, she thought, feeling as if the floor had just fallen away, what is this?
“These guys are from all over,” he whispered. “Not just Xico and Jesup. I met one guy from Suzu, another from Umuekwule. This isn’t some King City caper.”
They called his name. “Shit. Luck, Sheems.”
They banged knuckles, and he went through the door.
The room emptied as more soldiers were called. She was second to last when her turn came. Doctors worked her over like a stray dog. Stripped, sprayed, injected, swabbed, and probed, she felt thoroughly humiliated.
The docs let her dress. Stiff, new clothes with her name already printed. Shiny new gear. Even her K dripped with disinfectant. She joined the other soldiers in a hallway.
A pack of MPs escorted them down the hallway and onto a train. The train started forward but stopped ten minutes later. The train doors opened onto a vast interior space and the maelstrom of noise and commotion it contained. Technicians and mechanics rushed about with parts and tools, welding, cutting, stacking, pumping. Soldiers stood guard on the periphery, and there was brass, lots of brass, observing, conferring, and giving commands. She assumed they’d entered one of the city’s factories, but why?
Three main-class shuttles, dull black behemoths, squatted dormant under a bristling cocoon of scaffolding, cables, and hoses, each at least a couple hundred meters long, noses pointed up toward…what? She looked even higher and saw geared tracks far above. Hangar bay doors open enough to reveal a slice of night sky, stars dim but visible despite the bright lights around her. She’d thought orbital shuttles had been grounded since the Hexi arrived.
Her group was led to the middle shuttle. The bustling crowd parted before them with a surprising reverence.
We’re going into the shuttle, she thought. Into the shuttle. Was this the mission, Dad? You’re sending me away?
She wanted to kill him. Why couldn’t he have just left her alone? Memories crept in uncalled for. Her family back when she and Brin had been kids. Brin had been the one, the only one, to get her through. Dead mother, distant father. The two of them against the unstoppable decay of their childhoods, the invasion a nightmare they’d graduated into together.
Tears crept from the corners of her eyes, the first she’d shed since Brin had died. She looked around, embarrassed, but the others seemed lost in thoughts of their own.
A tech took her gear, then had her stand in front of a white, human-shaped clam.
“Step into it,” he said.
She did as ordered and the suit self-assembled around her, first the legs, then the torso and arms. It felt like being hugged by a stranger. She fought to stand as the tech tugged at her suit, pulling on seals and catches.
“Fits. Now turn around.”
A helmet was placed onto her head. It fastened with a snap and hissed as it pressurized. She was a fish in a bowl, looking out at a curved world. The tech’s distorted face looked in at her.
His voice crackled to life in her helmet. “This is a Xu-7 automatic suit. It will feed you and clean you, but it won’t tell you bedtime stories. Take good care of it, and it will get you home in one piece.”
She slowly lifted one arm against the suit’s resistance. It reminded her of the hazmat suits they’d trained in.
“Try walking,” he said. “Good. You’ve got it.” He explained how the suit would work, bringing up diagnostic menus and running through them faster than she could follow.
“Understand?”
She nodded. She didn’t.
“Great,”
the tech said with a slap to the back of her helmet. “Good luck.”
Sheemi was guided to a lift and boarded with three others, all of them awkward in their new suits. The lift stopped with a thud, and she stumbled forward. Techs helped her climb down inside the shuttle into a seat. She tried to stay calm as the seat’s harness locked down around her.
The noise diminished. She couldn’t see much other than a few glowing switches on the opposite bulkhead.
I’m inside a shuttle set to leave Earth, she thought.
She hadn’t even had a chance to discuss it with anyone, to protest, to mutiny even. As if she would do any of those things. Dad had raised them to be loyal and true, to follow orders.
I would never disobey, and you knew that Dad, didn’t you? Your way of getting me out of the fight, goddamn you.
Anger bloomed all over again, staining her thoughts black. None of it changed anything. Brin was dead, and the fight, the one thing that had kept her going, had been taken from her. He had taken it from her.
The shuttle roared, drowning out her thoughts. Vibrations rattled her skull, and she tried to remain unflustered. The last thing she wanted was to wet herself inside this shiny new suit. The noise swelled, and her entire body was pressed into the chair.
The acceleration let up after the first fifteen minutes. Drained of energy, Sheemi slumped in her seat. The day’s unbelievable events caught up with her all at once. At least she’d made it through without pissing herself. Then she remembered the tech’s lessons. Somewhat fearfully, she relaxed and let her urine go. The suit absorbed it or captured it. However it did it, she felt no discomfort.
Hours passed like drips of honey, then slowed even more until her time perception blurred. She fell asleep, then woke abruptly. Something felt off, a wrongness in her head like the last, faint vestige of an especially noxious hangover. Dizzy, she noticed a message and blinked it. The suit was prompting her to eat and drink. She affirmed, and the suit gave her water and food paste through tubes. The paste didn’t taste too bad. Roast meat and potatoes, then some kind of fruit. She had some more water, and a tiny droplet spun past her eye. Fascinated, she watched its perfect rotations, like a miniature ocean planet. It floated toward the edge of her helmet, where it accelerated and disappeared from view, sucked up by her suit.
Her stomach gave a clenching heave, and she vomited. Droplets of stomach fluid spun along unique trajectories before the suit suctioned most of them away, but she no longer appreciated the phenomenon. Nausea took hold and wouldn’t let go.
Eventually, she acclimated enough to play with the suit’s menus and found the comms, but none of the channels would activate. She tried looking outside her suit, but all she could see was the seat in front of her. She’d resigned herself to indefinite misery, when someone finally activated a comm channel.
“Good morning people. It’s eight forty-seven and we’re a third of the way to the moon.”
She heard some hellos, some hello ma’ams, and some mumbled statements that might have been curses. She was surprised to hear the word moon. Hadn’t Luna Colony been destroyed when the Hexi first arrived? That’s what everyone had been told by the government media. Clever fuckers.
“Sorry to keep everyone in the dark so long. I’m sure many of you aren’t feeling well right now. You’ll get used to it. My name is Colonel Minako Go. I’m your new commander. We’ll receive a full mission briefing when we arrive on the moon in about thirty-two hours.
“Few of you have had training in zero gravity, so this is a good opportunity to acclimate. First Sergeant Mertik and I will observe as Master Sergeants Quid and Sargsyan walk you through some tasks in zero-gee, one row at a time for fifteen-minute intervals.”
Two sergeants called out instructions and corrections. Each person was expected to cross from one bulkhead to the other using handholds built into the seats and walls, then complete a few controlled push-offs to certain targets. Flailing space suits drifted past. Someone kicked her helmet in passing. As instructors, the sergeants were often encouraging, sometimes not. A few particularly clumsy individuals earned curses that made her feel right at home.
She remembered being somewhere in the middle rows, and it was over an hour until her turn came. The locks disengaged, and she reached out for something to hold as she drifted from the seat. She tried to grab the hand-hold on the seat in front of her but failed to grasp it. The suit’s gloves made moving her fingers difficult. Someone pulled her around.
“Relax, Tanamal,” he said. Her suit identified the speaker as Master Sergeant Sargsyan. “See the hand-holds along the ceiling? Grab ’em.”
She looked up, down, then sideways to find the ceiling. She’d gotten turned around in less than a minute. Sweat gathered along her face. Her nausea threatened to rise up again. She began to gulp air, her face hot. Why was this so difficult? She imagined everyone watching her, laughing. Slow down, she told herself. Slower. You can do this, Sheems. She reached out and wrapped her fingers about one of the metal rungs. Then she brought herself around, grasped another rung, and felt more secure.
“Good,” Sargsyan said. “Now get yourself down to the aft bulkhead. No, not that way!”
She turned herself about and looked down the long row of rungs above the seats. Her ears burned as she remembered the others must be listening in. Don’t fuck this up, Sheemi, she thought, pulling herself along rung by rung.
Once she had some momentum, she just had to guide herself without exerting much effort. For several moments she glided past the rows of helmets. She had begun to enjoy the feeling when her boot collided with a wall strut. She spun about and crashed into the wall. Her helmet made a cracking sound, but it seemed intact.
“Get back to your seat, Tanamal!” First Sergeant Mertik shouted.
Sheemi reoriented and returned as fast as she could. She wrestled her body back into the seat using grips built into the armrests, and the seat locked her down. The person next to her bumped a fist into hers, and she felt some comfort in that small show of solidarity.
Sometime later, when no more suits floated by overhead, First Sergeant Mertik told them to get some sleep. Things quieted down, and Sheemi complied. The next thing she knew, Mertik’s voice was ringing in her ears.
“Okay, folks. We’ll be acquiring moon orbit soon. I need to explain to you how we’ll be getting to the surface. In case you hadn’t thought it through, this shuttle can’t land on the moon.”
#
It seemed pretty simple. Sheemi’d rappelled before. But this was outside her experience. She locked her feet onto the lip of the hatch, her arms wedged into handles on either side. Sargsyan had clipped her onto the line some time ago, and she’d been drifting toward the open hatch as the people ahead of her disappeared one by one. She tried to breathe normally. She’d never been one for heights, and the sight out of the hatch made her heart race and legs wobble.
A cable stretched out toward the surface of the moon. She could see the horizon on either side if she turned her head. The moon’s surface stood out in sharp relief, white and gray. Mountains and craters yawned below. She didn’t know the geography, had never thought she’d need to. She’d stood on the brink for hours and hours it seemed, but her suit clock showed just over a minute.
“Tanamal, go!” Sergeant Quid yelled and pushed her out the hatch.
She stopped cursing midway down the line as she got used to the motion. The moon slowly loomed closer, but there was no sound of wind, no clouds rushing by, just the big gray orb getting closer and brighter. As she neared the end of the line, she could make out others on the surface, helping people unclip and move away from the line in time for the next one down.
Then it was her sliding down the line as it sloped to its anchor point. The topography rushed by below.
Blood pounded in her temples. Too fast—I’m going too fast! She would break bones if she hit at her current speed. She thought she might mess herself.
Her clip mechanism slowed her descent, and her ten
sion dropped a notch. The line dipped closer now, people up ahead and slightly below with hands up as if she was a ball they were going to catch. Seconds later, they grabbed her suit and dragged her down. She hit hard, despite their slowing her fall, and crashed to the ground.
“You okay, Tanamal?” Sargsyan asked over the suit comms.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Earth shone brightly overhead, its blueness shocking despite the photos and vid she’d seen. What was happening back in King City, with her unit, her father? She turned as the last few people came down the line, and they assembled there in the bright dust.
Sargsyan and Quid marched them toward a cluster of structures a few hundred meters away. Dust kicked up as they walked, but fell back down. No wind, she remembered. Sheemi took a bounding leap and sailed ahead.
“Slow it down, soldier,” Go said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sheemi replied.
As they approached, a few people came out to guide them. The structures were concrete buildings, the surfaces riddled with pockmarks of varying sizes. Everything looked gray but suffused with bright light. The few viewing ports she saw had been shuttered from the inside. Aside from their guides, not one sign of life revealed itself as she looked around.
They passed through an open hatch in one of the buildings and made their way down below the moon’s surface. Their descent took longer than she’d anticipated. How big was this place? They entered a wide cargo bay filled with supplies and equipment.
They worked their way through the bay to a series of airlocks. An hour went by before they’d all passed within. Inside a long hallway lined with lockers, Sheemi took off her helmet and happily breathed in air that didn’t smell like sweat and vomit. She couldn’t get out of her suit fast enough. Her sense of gravity was off, everything lighter than expected. She folded up the bulky suit as best she could and stowed it in a locker.
Colonel Go and the other officers had already left with their guides. A major gathered the civilians and led them off separately. Civilians. For the hundredth time, she wondered what this was about. No way they could fight the Hexi here.
The Farthest City Page 3