“Very well, Nero,” the girl called Talyah said after another one of her pauses. “You may come with me.”
And with that, she turned around, and on her long legs, began to stride quickly down the alley. Without a second thought, Nero followed her. He didn’t think about where they were going, nor even about his bag, left alone in the small alcove behind him.
They walked for half an hour, or perhaps it was nearer to an hour, making their way through the alleys and streets of the city, until Talyah finally slowed down, and came to a halt outside what looked like an old, disused shop. Set in the bottom of one of the great metal and glass skyscrapers, the ground floor fronting had been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole in the bottom of the building. Inside, an old counter could still be seen, though it looked like the others had long been removed. In passing, Nero wondered why no one was living in this shop. A makeshift wall at the front, and you’d have a pretty decent place.
When nothing further happened, and they were still standing in front of the building, Nero turned to Talyah. “What are we waiting for?”
“Patience, Nero. We must wait.”
Getting the message, Nero proceeded to wait without saying anything further. About five minutes passed without Talyah making a movement, and then Nero heard a faint noise. It was a sort of grinding sound, as of metal brushing past another bit of metal. Glancing at Talyah, he saw that he wasn’t imagining it. To Nero’s ears, it had come from inside the shop, though he could see no other doors in there, nor any other sign of movement.
The noise came again, but louder this time. Almost as if a door was grinding open. Then from behind the single remaining counter in the shop emerged a head, with a body following it. Out stepped a huge man, built like a tank, holding the largest laser rifle Nero had seen. The weapon looked as if it could punch a hole through a few inches of metal, at the very least. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised Nero if the man himself could punch through a sheet of metal. He must have been seven feet tall, with arms and legs as thick as Nero himself was. Pointing the weapon directly at Nero and Talyah, the man strode towards them.
As he approached, the stern expression that looked ingrained on the giant’s face transformed itself into a big grin, immediately putting Nero even more on edge.
“Talyah!” he boomed, lowering the weapon. Perhaps he wasn’t a danger.
“It is nice to see you again, Mal.”
“You as well, little one,” he said, with a slight twinkling in his eyes. “And who is this you bring with you?”
“This is Nero. I found him in Section 93. He’s safe to bring below, Mal.”
“Very well, Talyah,” Mal said, giving Nero an interested glance, but not stopping to question the young girl’s assessment. The big man turned around, and gestured for Nero and Talyah to follow him into the shop. “Do you have a last name, lad?” he asked.
“Leydon. Nero Leydon.”
As they reached the counter, and passed around it, Nero saw that the rear section, and part of the floor, had disappeared. In their place was a wide set of steps that descended into darkness, with just faint strips of light on the edges of the steps visible going down.
“After you,” Mal said, as he gestured down the set of steps. Nero glanced nervously down the stairs, and let Talyah take the lead going down. He guessed that she was already quite familiar with them, but to him, the dark passage seemed very ominous. However, after a short distance, wall mounted lights appeared, casting the stairs in a less sinister light. The steps changed as well, becoming rougher, as if they had been carelessly hacked out of rock.
“We think that shop used to be a weapons store of some sort,” Mal said as they walked, “since it had that secret set of stairs leading to a storage room below. But we built these steps we’re walking on now. You can tell by the lack of craftsmanship.” Nero could hear the jocular tone in Mal’s voice, but he wasn’t in a joking mood himself.
After they had descended a surprising distance, they finally emerged into an underground cavern, stretching off for about a hundred metres to their left. There were perhaps ten people milling around, some chatting, some playing a game, and some poring over papers on a table. In the distance, Nero could see two smaller tunnels leading off the main chamber.
“What is this place?” Nero asked.
“This, my friend, is our home,” Mal said, gesturing expansively to the space.
Nero could indeed see a number of flimsy beds set up at the edges of the cavern, along with a couple of cookers nearby. He wrinkled his nose when he saw some ancient, and not very clean, faeces compactors near to the cookers. Otherwise, the cavern was pretty bare.
As he was staring about the place, one of the men from the table strode over on seeing them arrive. Nero glanced up to look at the man. He was much smaller than Mal, but was still a large man, with an intimidating presence. All the other people in the cavern stopped what they were doing, and watching Nero and the other man intently.
“Talyah,” the man said in a deep, gravelly voice, when he stopped in front of them. “Who is this?” His eyes, icy blue, were fixed on Nero the whole time.
“This is Nero, Ryate. I found him in Section 93. I think he could be useful.” The man called Ryate glanced over to Talyah, as if to determine what she meant. Evidently seeing some sort of confirmation in her eyes, he decided to accept her decision, just as Mal had before him. Nero couldn’t fathom why these two grown men would put so much stock in what Talyah thought, but he was grateful for her influence all the same.
“Very well, Nero, you may stay with us. Talyah has obviously seen something in you, and if there’s one thing we’ve learnt, it’s never to ignore Talyah’s instincts. However, that doesn’t mean you have free run of this place. You will always be supervised, and you will do as ordered whenever anyone here addresses you. Is that clear?”
“It is, signore,” Nero replied, surprised, and relieved, that he would be allowed to stay. It was far better to stay here than to try to live in an alley on the surface. He knew of too many people who had simply curled up and died of cold, or starvation, that way.
“Good.” Ryate abruptly turned around, cutting off what little conversation they were having, and headed back to the table.
“Alright, son,” Mal said, speaking in the silence that followed. “You heard the boss. You’re not to go wandering off, okay?” Nero nodded. “Now then, we need to find you a bed. I believe you’re in luck; we lost a man a couple of days ago, so you can have his.”
Nero glanced at Talyah, who was already making her way to another area of the cavern, and followed Mal to one of the beds by the wall.
****
Late that day, Ryate and some of his men were preparing to leave the cavern, if what Nero had overheard was correct. Earlier, they had laid out an impressive collection of weaponry, which included a number of the laser rifles that Mal carried, as well as some non-lethal pistol-type devices. They also had an EMP disruptor and a number of minute flying drones. Nothing very advanced, but Nero, who had only seen a couple of laser rifles from afar in his life, had found it all fascinating.
Now, with the men strapping on utility belts and preparing to leave, he walked across the cavern to where Talyah was stood, watching them get ready for whatever it was they planned on doing. She had her arms crossed, and was staring intently at them with her golden eyes.
“What’s going on?” he asked, as he stopped beside her.
She glanced over at Nero, and then returned her attention to the preparations.
“They’re going to find some supplies, Nero.”
“Where?”
“Nearby. Ryate found a way into one of the Scrapers. They went in about a week ago, and found a large supply of food. They’re going back in now.”
“They actually got into a Scraper? I thought that was impossible,” Nero said, disbelief in his voice.
“From the surface. But they aren’t guarded as well against underground penetrations, it seems. It didn’t tak
e long with a lightdrill to break through from one of our tunnels.”
“Weren’t they discovered?”
Talyah glanced at Nero. “They wouldn’t be here if they were, Nero. They were lucky; they broke through into a small storage area, and were able to cover their tracks.” Her tone of voice suggested she thought it was an unnecessary risk, breaking into a Scraper.
Nero was about to question her further, when Ryate started to speak. He quickly looked at the grizzled older man, curious as to what he might say.
“Alright,” Ryate said, in his gruff tone of voice, as he glanced at the men stood around him. “You know your places in this task; same as last time. And Nero.” Nero glanced into Ryate’s eyes, surprised to be mentioned. “You’re coming with us. We could use someone your size, and if you’re eating our food, you need to help get it.”
Without waiting for an answer, Ryate turned and strode towards one of the tunnels leading away from the cavern, the other men falling in behind him. It seemed like everyone here was used to Ryate’s abrupt way of speaking, but Nero found it a little odd. Still, he was about to follow the men out of the cave, when he realised that Talyah wasn’t going with them. He glanced over at her.
“Everyone has to contribute, Nero,” she said, misreading his hesitation as a reluctance to go. “Mal will look out for you.”
“Sure I will, boy,” Mal said as he walked over. “This should be fun. Not many boys get to go inside a Scraper.” He put a hand on Nero’s shoulder, and gave him a slight push towards the far end of the cavern, where the others were already disappearing into one of the tunnels.
Nero allowed himself a slight smile as he entered one of the tunnels leading from the cavern, which, he noted, was surprisingly well made. The walls, ceiling and floor were all plain rock, but perfectly smooth. He reached out to touch the wall, and it felt like running his finger along a piece of metal. Mounted in the ceiling above him were two strips of light, stretching far into the distance, which provided a clean, even light to walk in.
“Did you make these tunnels?” Nero asked after a time, speaking to Mal just in front of him.
“No, lad,” he replied, glancing at Nero over his shoulder. “These were here long before any of us were around. No one knows who made them, or why they were made. We just found them, and put them to good use.”
They walked on in silence. After a couple of hundred metres - though Nero found it difficult to judge distance in the uniformity of the tunnel - they came upon a crossroads, at which they turned left. This tunnel was much the same as the first, except that the lighting was a pale blue in colour, instead of white. Before Nero could say anything, Mal answered the unasked question. “The colour aids navigation. There are lots of tunnels that connect down here, and each one is a slightly different colour. It tells us where we are, and it means that if anyone were to break in, they wouldn’t have any signs to give them directions.”
“Smart,” Nero said.
“It was a hard-learnt lesson.”
After a couple of minutes walking in the blue tunnel, Nero spotted a gaping black area in the wall up ahead. As they approached, he saw that the hole extended deep into the wall. A closer look revealed a piece of metal at the far end. Ryate stopped just beyond, and in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, spoke to one of the other men in the group, a man Nero had overheard to be Nicko.
“You go in first,” he said. “Scout out the area, and we’ll follow.”
The man called Nicko nodded, crawled into the tight hole, and flicked on his jacket’s light strips. The hole was illuminated by a bright white light, and carefully, he approached the sheet of metal at the far end. Nero watched as he grabbed hold of two handles that had been stuck onto the metal, and pushed the sheet outwards, ever so slightly. He held it in position there, slipped one of the tiny drones through the gap, and pulled the metal cover closed again. On his jacket’s arm, a holodisplay came to life, and Nero could just make out the feed from the drone. Nicko watched for a moment, and satisfied that the area was deserted, he removed the metal panel and dropped down into the Scraper.
The other four people in the group followed Nicko through the hole, emerging into a small white room, a few metres square, filled with boxes. Looking into the nearest one, Nero saw that it was full of small containers marked as cleaning fluids. Not very useful, he thought, as he watched Mal replace the metal panel, hiding their route of entry. Meanwhile, Nicko sent the drone out of the room’s door, and followed it out when he didn’t see anyone outside.
The others again followed, stepping out this time into a corridor. Unlike the storage room, this corridor was vast. It was at least four metres high, and six metres wide, with stunning white metal walls that appeared to glow slightly, lighting the corridor in a strange way. Nero, momentarily stunned, looked up and down the corridor, amazed at the scale, and cleanliness of the place. He glanced behind as the door to the storage room slid shut, noticing the intricate embossed pattern in the white metal door. He glanced over at Mal, who was watching him with a slightly amused expression on his face.
Nero continued to study the corridor as he followed Ryate down past a number of doors, noticing subtle glowing text legends above the doors that illuminated as they walked past. Eventually, some way down the seemingly-endless corridor, they slowed as they passed a door with ‘Seminterrato Med Storage’ written above it, which pulsed red, and then stopped at the adjacent door, marked as ‘Dispensa 3’. This text was white, and didn’t pulse as they stood before the door.
With a wary glance up and down the deserted corridor, Ryate pressed a glowing green metal panel to the side of the door, which was immediately followed by the door sliding open before them. Ryate quickly stepped inside, and the others followed, Mal bringing up the rear. Nero heard a slight hiss as the door slide shut behind them.
“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Mal said, once they were safely inside the room. “A bit more impressive than our little cavern, eh?”
“Yeah, it’s so... big,” Nero replied, struggling to find the right word to describe the building.
Mal chuckled. “Big... that’s one way to describe it.”
Nero glanced at the man, not sure if he was being mocked or not. “I thought it would be harder to break in,” he said, changing the subject.
“I did too, the first time,” Mal admitted. “But I think the people who live in these Scrapers don’t expect intruders. After all, they’ve got thick walls, and we all think these places are impenetrable. So no one tries to break in. And maybe they’ve become a bit complacent.” Mal shrugged. “Or maybe these buildings were never built with security in mind.” He walked further into the room as he was speaking, and pulled an empty bag out of the small pack he had on his back.
Nero walked forward as well, and looked around the room they were in. There were rows of transparent preservation units stretching back from the door, each filled with food. He looked through the top of the nearest one, and saw it was filled with protein sticks. Another looked to contain carb sticks and nutrient drinks, whilst another even contained some sort of dried fruit. Nero paused to look at that one, having only heard about the stuff before. If all the other units contained as much food, then there would be enough food in this one room to feed hundreds of people.
“Nero,” Ryate called, breaking into his line of thought. “I have a job for you.” Nero walked over to where Ryate was already in the process of filling one of his bags with protein sticks. “Did you see the med storage room next to this one?”
“Yeah...” Nero replied, thinking about the pulsing red lettering above the door.
“The door is locked, and we couldn’t break through the last time we were here. But this air vent,” he said, pointing to a small vent high up in the wall, “leads directly to that room. We sent a drone through last time. I want you to see if you can fit through, and take whatever meds you can find in there. We’ll send a drone in ahead of you to check it’s clear. Got it?”
“
Um, yeah. Okay.”
“Good.” Ryate gestured to Nicko, and the man who seemed to be in charge of drones turned his attention to the holodisplay built into his jacket’s arm. A moment later, the tiny drone that had followed them into the room hummed slightly as it flew towards the air vent, and then slipped through the slats.
Nero watched as Nicko studied the feed from the drone, and was somewhat relieved, and somewhat apprehensive, when Nicko gave the all clear. “It’s deserted, Nero,” he said, with an encouraging smile. “Best go now before anyone turns up, eh?”
“Before anyone turns up?” Nero repeated, already climbing up onto the preservation unit below the vent.
Nicko smiled. “Yeah, well, you never know, do you?”
“Alright Nicko,” Ryate said, his voice as serious as ever. He stepped over, and reached up to prise the grate off of the wall. It sprung away with a slight bang, and he placed it on the ground, waiting for Nero to get in the hole.
“Okay,” Nero said to himself, and grabbed onto the edge of the air vent. With some effort, he managed to scramble up the wall, and somehow maneuvered his small body into the very small hole. He grunted as he inelegantly shuffled forward. He must look an idiot, he thought, as he imagined his legs kicking around in the room behind him. But the vent at the other end wasn’t far in front of him, and very shortly he was peering through the slats down into the adjacent room.
As Nicko had said, the room looked deserted, the only light coming from the illuminated medical storage units around the sides of the room. In the centre, there were units much like in the pantry behind him, lower and longer, but they weren’t illuminated. Reasonably satisfied that the room looked safe to enter, he pushed the vent in front of him upwards and outwards, in much the same way that Ryate had prised the other one off, and it fell to the ground with a clang as it was freed of its catches. Nero cringed inwardly at the sound.
On Galaxy's Edge: Ascendance Page 2