“Parry,” Connor started, but he was cut short by a sudden noise from behind him. It sounded as though Ben had thumped his fist against the workstation.
“Turn right!” Ben shouted. “About thirty degrees.”
“Will do,” Cate said.
“What have you got?” Parry asked, his voice taut.
Ben didn’t reply.
“Ben, talk to us,” Connor insisted.
“Yes!” Ben cried out. “I’ve got it. Patching it through now.”
Parry turned back around to study the control panel, and Connor leaned forward to peer over his shoulder. The display in the center of the panel flashed into life, an animated blur of colored patterns flitting across the screen. For a second, Connor could make nothing of it, but then as they traveled forward, a set of clear lines resolved: a darker trail among the splodges of vivid color.
“This doesn’t look like thermal imaging,” Connor said.
“It isn’t,” Ben replied. “I ran through all the different kinds of sensor I could find, and this one was geared to show traces of organic life.”
“So what are we looking at?” Connor asked.
“Whatever was powering those vehicles, it seems to have killed any grunge that was directly underneath it. You’re looking at the trail of dead grunge that they left behind.”
“They killed it?” Cate asked. “Was that intentional do you think?”
Connor looked back at Ben, but the younger man shrugged. “No idea. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
“Even so,” Parry said, “that could be useful knowledge. If we could find a way of killing the grunge or even halting its progress in some way…”
“We’ll see,” Connor put in. “Let’s focus on the task at hand. I’m just relieved we found a trail. That’s good work, Ben.” He paused. “Cate, have you got this? Are you okay to keep following the trail?”
“No problem,” she replied. “I can take her up a notch if you like.”
Connor nodded. “Go for it.”
The rover surged forward, the force of the acceleration pressing Connor back against his seat, and he managed a grim smile. At last, they were getting somewhere. At last, they were making some real progress. Hold on, Siobhan, he thought. I’m coming to get you.
And when he looked out the window, the harsh landscape seemed to streak past with a new sense of urgency, a new sense of purpose. The mission was far from over, but it had begun in earnest. And soon, he’d find the men who’d taken his daughter, and he’d make them regret it, if it was the last thing he did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRUCK TWO
“It’s kind of small, isn’t it?” Siobhan said.
Sue Hodgeson moved farther into the tiny cabin and drew aside a curtain, revealing a small bunk. The bunks lined two walls of the cabin, three beds on each side, and opposite the doorway, the fourth wall boasted a small window through which Siobhan could see the landscape streaming past in a blur.
Sue lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. “You get used to it. There’s a rec room just across the hall, so this is just a place to get your head down for a few hours, that’s all.” She gestured toward the bunks. “The top two are taken, but the other four are free, so you get to choose.”
“It makes no difference to me,” Milo said. “Shiv, do you want to choose?”
“All right.” Siobhan looked at each of the bunks in turn. “So who sleeps in here exactly?”
“At the moment, it’s just me and Thaddeus—the tech you met earlier.” She studied Siobhan’s expression then added, “Don’t worry. It’s relatively private with the curtain closed.”
“What about Jim?” Siobhan asked. “And Alec?”
“They have their own cabins. The privilege of rank.” Sue gave them a smile. “I’d better get back to my station. I’ll leave you two to settle in.” Sue squeezed past Siobhan and Milo, then she walked away.
“Thanks,” Siobhan said, but her voice was distant. When she’d first walked into the cabin, she’d noticed something odd about the view through the window, but she hadn’t paid attention. Now, she walked toward the window, her eyes fixed on the shifting landscape beyond the grime-streaked glass. “Green,” she mumbled. “It’s all green.” She shook her head in wonder. “Milo, you have to see this.”
Milo hurried to her side. “Oh my God! Trees!”
Siobhan kept her eyes on the lush landscape speeding by outside, and it awakened a host of almost forgotten memories: the scent of fallen leaves and damp earth, the play of dappled sunlight on the ground, and the gentle whisper of the breeze in the lattice of leafy branches overhead. She took hold of Milo’s arm, and when he turned to her, she looked up into his eyes. “Take a good look, Milo, because none of it will be there for much longer. Your new friends are going to kill it. They’re going to kill it all.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE ROVER
Connor yawned and stretched out his arms. “It’s been dark for hours. How about we stop for a minute and change places? Cate, I think it’s about time you had a rest from driving, you’ve been going for miles.”
“Okay, boss.” Cate slowed the rover to a halt and unclipped her safety belt. She stood slowly, rolling her shoulders. “Are you going to take my place, Parry?”
“Sure,” Parry said. “Just give me a chance to stretch my back for a second.”
Squeezing past each other in the narrow confines of the cabin, the three changed places. Cate moved to the back row, Parry took the driving seat, and Connor sat down beside him.
“I’ll stay here,” Ben said from the workstation. “I’m fine.”
“All right,” Connor said. “But give me a holler if you get tired. I’m sure I could look after the monitors while you take a break.”
Parry rubbed his hands together. “Okay, let’s see how she goes. Connor, keep an eye on the display and let me know if I’m going off track.”
“Will do,” Connor said. He stretched out his legs into the footwell, feeling the muscles in his calves relax a little.
Parry released the brake and pushed the yoke forward, and immediately, the rover jolted into motion, picking up speed. Parry smiled.
“I’d better watch you carefully,” Connor said. “It’s been a long time since I drove anything like this.”
“It’ll come back to you quickly enough,” Parry replied. “One thing you’ve got to watch out for is the—”
A howling electronic whine cut short his sentence, and Parry shook his head in confusion. “What the hell?”
Cate leaned over Connor’s shoulder to peer at the control panel. “Hit the green button! Shut down the primary fuel cell.”
Parry complied, and the alarm shut off.
“What went wrong?” Connor asked.
“Check the diagnostics,” Cate snapped. “Pull up the display.”
“Got it,” Parry said, his hand moving over the controls.
A message appeared on the display:
Warning! Primary fuel cell depleted. Integrity at ten percent.
“But we’re still moving,” Connor said. “Is there really a problem, or is the error message wrong?”
“Goddamnit!” Cate growled. “The message isn’t wrong. We’re still moving because the system switched over to the secondary cell. We’ve got to stop. Now!”
Parry slowed the rover and engaged the brake. “Oh my God! Look at that.”
He pointed to the display. A new message had appeared, and when Connor read it, the blood drained from his face.
Critical error! Primary fuel cell inoperable. Integrity at zero percent.
He turned to Cate. “We can run on the secondary cell, can’t we?”
“Not for long,” Cate replied. “And it’ll seriously reduce our speed.”
“We’ll just have to press on and make the best of it,” Connor said. “What choice have we got?”
Cate let out a hiss of frustration. ”Not even that. Look.”
Another message had scrolled onto the
display, and Connor stared at it, his eyes wide.
Critical error! Secondary fuel cell inoperable. Integrity at zero percent.
Connor opened his mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. He knew what the message meant, but he couldn’t accept it, couldn’t make sense of it. This couldn’t be happening—not to him.
But Parry must’ve sensed his confusion because he looked Connor in the eye and said, “The fuel cells are dead. We’re going nowhere.”
“But, what about life support?” Connor asked.
Parry checked the display. “The filtration system is still running somehow. And the lights.”
“There’s a backup battery,” Cate said. “It’ll keep the filters running for a while, but we should shut down everything else. If we close all the non-essential systems it’ll buy us some time while we see if we can fix this.”
“Shutting down the monitors now,” Ben said. “I’ll switch off everything I can find from back here.”
“I guess, if we wait until daybreak, we can use the solar cells,” Parry suggested. “Surely they could give us enough power to move slowly.”
Cate shook her head. “We might manage a snail’s pace, but they were never designed to drive the vehicle forward. They’re only there to keep the fuel cell running.” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “This should never happen. Even if something went drastically wrong with a fuel cell, its integrity should only ever drop slowly. I’ve never heard of one going below sixty percent.”
“So, for both to fail…” Connor started.
“Impossible.” Cate opened her eyes. “It just can’t happen, not by accident anyway.”
“Mac!” Parry said, spitting out the word as though it had left a bad taste in his mouth. “This must be something to do with him.”
“Wait a minute,” Connor said. “Cate, back at my house, you said something about the fuel cells, and you asked me if Mac could get into the cabin. Why?”
“I was worried,” Cate replied. “The fuel cells are delicate. If the cores get exposed to the air, they start to break down. That’s why they’re sealed. And you can’t get access to them from outside. You have to be inside the cabin to unlock them.”
“What about Derek,” Parry put in. “We know he was in the cave. Would he have helped Mac?”
“Not willingly,” Connor replied. “Derek is a jerk, but he wouldn’t do this.”
Cate ran her hands through her hair. “Well, however he did it, Mac must’ve found a way to get at the cells. The council should never have trusted him. He always was a sneaky bastard.”
Connor rubbed his jaw and stared into space, recalling the conversation he’d had with Mac back at the cave. He’d known at the time that something was off in Mac’s behavior, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Instead of pausing for thought, he’d rushed ahead and denied Cate the time she’d needed to check everything properly. Now, he’d have to do deal with the consequences of his selfish haste, and he could start by listening to his team. It’s about time I stopped pushing and showed some real leadership instead, he told himself. I need to give the team some room to breathe.
Connor unfastened his seatbelt and stood up. “Let’s stretch our legs in the back and grab something to eat. We’ll run through the problem and come up with an answer between us. Okay?”
Parry undid his seatbelt. “Absolutely. Whatever’s gone wrong, whether it was Mac or not, I’m sure we can figure something out and put it right.”
Cate nodded slowly, but she didn’t meet Connor’s eye.
They gathered in the storage area at the back of the cabin, where there was just enough room for them to stand comfortably apart. They’d each brought their own canteens of water and containers of food, and for a minute or two they stood quietly, sipping their drinks and chewing their rations, but then Ben broke the silence, “Cate, the fuel cell uses liquid electrodes, right?”
“Yeah, in the battery component,” Cate replied. “But there’s more to it than that. They’re complex. The fuel cell, the battery, the regulator, the charging circuit, the cooling system—they all work together. I’ve stripped a cell out of its casings before, but that’s as far as my expertise goes. I’ve never tried to open a core—they’re completely sealed so they don’t get exposed to the air.”
“So we couldn’t take a cell apart?” Connor asked.
Cate pushed out her lower lip. “Not completely. We could separate some of the components and take a look, but if the cores have lost their integrity…” She let her voice trail away.
Parry clicked his fingers. “The decontamination chamber. We can pump the air out of it.”
“Yes,” Cate said slowly, “but it’s tiny in there. There’s hardly enough room for a person, never mind a fuel cell as well.”
“If two of us suit up and go out, we could strip the cells down as much as possible outside,” Ben said. “Then one of us could put the cores into the chamber, one at a time, and you could work on them in there.”
Cate nodded. “I suppose it might just be feasible.”
“I’ll do it,” Ben said. “I’m not an engineer, but I reckon I could find my way around with a little help. I could take a portable camera so you could talk me through it.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Parry said. “What do you think, Connor?”
Connor studied Ben’s expression. The young man was keen, and he was the only one of their number who didn’t look exhausted, but did he have the experience to meddle with something as complicated as a fuel cell? Connor shook his head. “I should be the one to go outside.”
Ben’s face fell, and for a moment no one spoke. Then Parry cleared his throat. “No disrespect, boss, but this is a job for Cate and Ben. Between them, they have the skills and experience to carry this thing through. You and I wouldn’t have a clue where to start, but Cate knows how the fuel cells tick. And Ben, you have a background in chemistry, don’t you?”
Ben nodded. “That’s right.”
Connor raised his hand to rub his brow. “I see. I guess that puts a different complexion on it.” He paused. “Cate, would you be able to handle the core?”
Cate took a breath. “I’m reasonably confident I could take it apart, but rebuilding a core under those conditions…well, it would be almost impossible. And even if I could find the problem and correct it, I’m not certain I’d be able to reassemble the cell and get it running properly. Like I said, they’re complex systems. They’re not designed to be taken apart in the field.”
“Wait a minute,” Parry put in. “I think we’re looking at this wrong way.”
Connor frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Okay, so let’s assume that Mac sabotaged the fuel cells. What was his aim?”
“To leave us stranded,” Ben said. “For some reason, he didn’t want us to succeed.”
Connor shook his head. “It more serious than that. He wanted to make sure that we’d never make it back. However he made the rover break down, he must’ve known we’d pin the blame on him. And he must’ve known what we’d do to him if we could walk back to the settlement.”
“Exactly!” Parry said. “So he would have tampered with the cells in such a way that we could travel for some distance before they failed.”
“What difference does that make?” Ben asked.
“The point is this,” Parry said, “if Mac had opened up the fuel cell cores, then they would have lost their integrity while the rover was still back in the cave, yes?”
Cate nodded. “That’s right. But if he didn’t open them up, then what did he do to make them fail?”
Parry smiled. “What if the cores haven’t really lost their integrity? What if he just made it look like they had? Mac was an electrical engineer, remember. What if he found a way to fool the system?”
Cate clapped her hand to her forehead. “Of course! If he reprogrammed the sensor module, it would throw the whole system into chaos. And he could have set some sort of delay, so the system wouldn’t fail unti
l we were far enough away.”
“That bastard!” Ben growled. “When I get my hands on him…”
“There’ll be time for recriminations later,” Connor said. “Right now, we need to figure out a way to get the cores back online. What do you say, Cate? Can it be done?”
“I’ll get a suit.” Cate put her hands on her hips and turned her gaze on Ben. “If you’re still keen to go outside, this is your big chance.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Ben said. “Where are the suits?”
Connor gestured toward the storage lockers. “You’ll find everything you need in there. But listen, you two are going to have to work fast. The batteries must be running low and it’ll be hours before we get any daylight to top them up.”
Cate nodded. “Good point. We’ll need a little battery power in reserve to kick-start the system. If we can’t get it going before the battery dies, we’ll be stuck here until the morning.”
“Then get to it,” Connor said. “I want Parry to check your suits individually before you step outside, and make sure you decontaminate properly before you come back in.” He paused, frowning. “Will we have enough battery power to run the decontamination system?”
“Should be okay,” Cate said. “It’s mainly a chemical spray, and the pumps don’t use much juice. Of course, we’ll need to run the ventilation fans as well, otherwise the fumes will escape into the cabin, and you don’t want that.”
“Anything else we need to take into account?” Parry asked. ”Do you have all the tools you need? Are there any spare parts in this rig?”
“I should be able to get by,” Cate replied. ”Even if Mac has removed some of the tools, I have a basic kit my rucksack.” She paused. “There is one thing though—I’ll need someone to stay on the intercom. The fuel cell compartments can only be opened from the control panel, but it’s best if they stay closed until we’re in position. Do you know how to do that?”
The Trail: A Colonization Science Fiction Serial (Colony B Book 2) Page 6