by Arnot, C. S.
“We’ve found a bloody door,” he said.
“Wow,” replied Fredrick. “Maybe this isn’t all bullshit then.”
Inside, the ground dropped slightly so that Aiden could more or less stand up straight beneath the boulder. Solomon had prised the little door open and was shining a torch into the gloom beyond. It was a long, narrow corridor, cut straight into the rock. The torchlight didn’t show what lay at the end. They stepped into the darkness, following Solomon’s lead.
It took an unexpectedly long time to reach the other end, picking their way along the tunnel. When they did, Solomon fiddled with a keypad by a huge steel door. The door slid open quietly, and the trio went into the dark chamber beyond.
Suddenly there were lights: blue and only just bright enough to make out the layout of the chamber. It was tall and long, with many doors leading off to the sides and one at the far end; all closed. As if he knew where he was going, Solomon set off at a stride across the concrete floor. He put away his torch, but the big pistol stayed firmly in his hand. Aiden felt his own pistol, just to make sure it was still there.
By the faraway door, a dim monitor glowed in the wall. As they drew close, Aiden could read the message it was flashing.
Security Exception.
Over and over and over.
Solomon stood for a moment, considering the panel. “Well, this wasn’t us at least…” he murmured, before tapping at buttons on the screen. Aiden tried to catch a look over Solomon’s shoulder, but he’d hidden it too well.
After a few moments the door hissed open, sliding upwards like the other one. Beyond was darkness. Again, Solomon strode into it without wasting any time. The blue lights came on in the corridor beyond, and as Vika and Aiden followed the chamber behind them darkened.
It was stuffy in there. Warm and unpleasant-smelling… like an old subway tunnel. It reminded Aiden suddenly that he was inside a mountain. The smell and the warmth and the weight of all the rock above him were telling him that this was somewhere he did not want to be. But he followed Solomon’s lead and hurried after him, his ears straining past the sound of their footsteps to listen for anything that might indicate marines… or anything else that might be lurking in the depths.
The corridor began to spiral, following a big, wide corkscrew down deeper into the mountain. Solomon was almost jogging now, and Aiden was struggling to keep up. Vika’s legs were slightly shorter, so she was already more or less at a run next to him. He glanced over at her, noting how set her face was. She looked determined, her jaw set and her eyes almost glowing green. Looking at her then, he couldn’t imagine a face more perfect. She seemed more beautiful every time he saw her.
That wasn’t bloody fair.
And then they really were running. It started with Solomon, but the others fell into step almost immediately. It was a strange feeling as they pounded along the stone corridors, legs pumping. Aiden let the pace carry him. He forgot his misgivings. They were a pack then: a wolf-pack of three.
Suddenly there were more doors in front of them. All were closed. Solomon halted and flicked his head this way and that, looking at each in turn.
“If in doubt…” he said quietly, approaching the middle door. A press of a button and it slid open. There was a wash of stale, warm air. The smell was worse down here, but after the run Aiden had no choice except to pant it in. Solomon, he noticed, was not breathing any more heavily than before.
This tunnel twisted and turned infuriatingly. A few closed doors led off to the sides, but Solomon didn’t pay any more than a passing glance to them. With each turn, more blue lights came on, and the ones behind went out. It was a little unnerving and creepy. Energy efficient, though. Aiden supposed this place had to be, for the batteries to have lasted twenty years.
The corridor went straight all of a sudden. The blue lights flicked on. At the end was very definitely a body. Almost as one, the three pistols were raised. They advanced slowly along the corridor to where the corpse lay face-down by another door. The floor was scuffed in places with shallow gouges, ruining the polished surface. Bullet impacts.
Solomon squatted down by its side. The body had been dead for some time. The pool of blood under its head was dry and brown. Aiden wondered if the corpse was the source of the bad smell. Big, crusted holes gaped in its back. Solomon pinched the body’s shoulder patch, pulling it upwards a little to show Aiden and Vika.
Two badges. One the stars of the NAU, one that said NAUS Gilgamesh.
Nobody said a word.
Solomon dialled the door open. Immediately the stench worsened. As they stepped into the next corridor and the lights came on, they spotted more bodies at the end. From a distance, they didn’t look quite right. The proportions were wrong.
Closer up, he saw that they were mutilated.
For whatever reason, they had been blasted to pieces with large-calibre bullets. The wounds were not unlike those the Iolaire’s gun had inflicted on the bandits in Georgia. The head of the body propped against the wall was gone, mostly. Its stomach was swollen and burst, and the floor was stained black. That was where the stench was coming from, Aiden realised. He fought back a heave. What did this?
The monitor by the door was flashing. Security Exception. Over and over and over.
Glancing back the way they’d came, he noticed the lights in the previous corridor hadn’t gone out yet. That was odd. Maybe the corpse is keeping them on.
As he turned his head away, though, he could have sworn he caught some movement. Just at the crack of the doorway. He shivered. It was probably his imagination, he half-convinced himself.
He made himself edge around the bodies and the black stain, to where Solomon and Vika were standing by the monitor. Vika held one of her sleeves across her mouth and nose, but Solomon seemed unaffected. He was engrossed in whatever he was doing on the screen.
“Somebody screwed up here,” he said, tapping away. “This is where the exception was triggered.”
No shit, thought Aiden, eyeing the shredded corpses behind him.
“What…what did this?” asked Vika, her words muffled by her sleeve.
Solomon pointed above the door then, not even looking from the screen. “Automated turrets,” he replied. “They fold out of the wall.”
Solomon seemed to know a lot about this place for somebody who wasn’t sure what he was looking for just ten minutes ago. He’d been an engineer, he said, for the Union. Maybe this sort of thing was standard issue for top-secret factories.
Brutal.
“Think you can get in?” said Aiden, trying not to open his mouth too widely.
Solomon said nothing for a moment. “I think I can, yes.”
“Well, you know, quicker the better,” muttered Aiden, taking a leaf from Vika’s book and using his sleeve as a mask.
It seemed like forever before the door opened, standing in the silent, stinking tunnel with the dead men. But it did open, and beyond lay another corridor. It was short and straight this time, and beyond it Aiden could only see a black void.
Solomon was grinning. He set off almost at a run along the corridor, unafraid of the darkness at the other end. Vika and Aiden followed him, and the door stayed open behind them. That was good since Aiden didn’t like having his route out blocked.
The corridor ended at a metal walkway, beyond the railing of which nothing could be seen. From the lingering echoes of their footsteps on the metal grill, the chamber sounded huge. It was darker than Aiden thought possible, and the weak blue light from the corridor did nothing to push it back, seeming to stop short at the railing.
Solomon was tapping away at another wall-mounted monitor. Vika, pistol still held in front of her, gingerly stepped over to the railing and peered into the darkness. Aiden tried it himself, but he didn’t like the feeling. It was like an abyss out there, waiting to pull him over the edge. He shuddered.
“Let there be light,” said Solomon triumphantly, and just as he did the chamber flickered into startlingly bright
shape, from huge strips of lights set in the high stone ceiling.
The chamber was even vaster than it had sounded. It stretched easily three hundred metres to its far end, where a huge set of rolling doors stood, but it was what lay in the middle of the chamber that drew Aiden’s gaze.
There, propped on massive struts, was the Enkidu.
It was gigantic. Not anywhere near as large as the Gilgamesh, but still impressively huge: it was easily half as long as the chamber, and a third as wide. The gantry that Aiden was standing on must have been fifty metres at least from the floor, but even then the Enkidu was a good few tens of metres taller than them. Its prow was sharpened, streamlined and faceted, and it gave the impression of some great beast of the sea; a leviathan or some monstrous whale. Just below the prow were two great holes cut in the skin of the craft. Railguns, Aiden knew. Their calibre must have been half a metre.
He realised he was gaping, and snapped his mouth closed.
Solomon gave a short laugh, and raised his arms out to the sides, as if basking in the huge machine’s presence. Vika was just as awestruck as Aiden had been, her pistol hanging almost forgotten by her side.
“She is beautiful,” exclaimed Solomon, letting his hands drop. “My god.”
Huge robotic arms were mounted to the walls and ceiling of the chamber. Each carried a range of smaller ones at its end, and all were folded back from the warship. Aiden realised then that one of the reasons no one had ever heard of the Enkidu was that it had been built almost entirely without people. At most, this place would only need a handful of engineers or overseers making sure the robots did their work correctly. It was possible that humans weren’t even involved in maintaining the robots: that could all be done with other robots. If he was going to build a top-secret stealth warship; that would be how Aiden wanted it done.
He was looking along the walkway, where to one side of the Enkidu it turned into a gangway that led aboard, when he noticed Solomon was facing him. The man was holding his big pistol out, pointing it casually at him.
“What…” Aiden started.
“I’m afraid this is as far as you go,” Solomon said. “Vika, could you kindly take the pistol from his pocket?”
Vika came forward then and fished the little silver pistol from Aiden’s baggy trousers. Her face was deadpan. She showed no emotions.
She was in on it.
“Well do it then,” hissed Aiden through clenched teeth. “Pull the bloody trigger.”
Solomon laughed. “Why? You are no threat, not now. You served your purpose, body-guarding us from any nasty marines. But now, you have done what you came to do. You have seen the Enkidu. Please leave.”
Leave. Why was he telling him to leave? What difference did it make if he was there or not?
“Why?”
“Because the Enkidu is mine, Aiden. I can’t have you meddling and ruining things. Go back, now.”
Then it dawned on Aiden. He wasn’t taking the Enkidu to go after the Gilgamesh. He was taking it for himself. It could be piloted by one man, he’d said. One man could wield all that power.
And Fredrick and Aiden had just handed it to him.
“All you said about destroying the Gilgamesh, it was all bullshit.”
“Not all bullshit, no. The Enkidu could certainly kill the Gilgamesh… but the two will never meet. This is too great an opportunity to risk on some fool’s mission. You can tell Teimuraz that he has my thanks. He won’t be seeing me again.”
“And you, Vika?” demanded Aiden. “You’re with him?”
“Get out, Aiden,” warned Solomon, “before I lose my patience.”
The only expression Vika showed was a little scorning raise of her eyebrows, like she was looking at a fool.
That made Aiden very angry. He was fighting to control himself. He wanted to snatch the big gun from Solomon’s hand and smash their smug faces to pulp with it.
Instead, he took a breath and backed out of the chamber, along the corridor to the dead men’s tunnel. Solomon kept the gun trained on him the whole way back and thumbed the wall monitor to close the door on Aiden.
The last thing Aiden saw of Solomon was a little sarcastic wave, with Vika standing infuriatingly by his side. She was still beautiful; still achingly perfect. But now Aiden knew she was a harpy. A she-devil.
A traitorous bitch.
The door slid closed and locked tight, and Aiden was alone with the corpses and the stink.
He stood there, fuming at what had just happened. He couldn’t quite process it. He had just let a second Gilgamesh loose on the world.
The bastard hadn’t even paid them fully. Aiden shouted a curse at the ceiling.
And suddenly he wasn’t alone in the tunnel any more. A creeping feeling at his back told him that. He spun on his heels, ready to fight.
There was a person standing timidly, just beyond the farthest corpse.
It was a boy, no older than fourteen, and small for that. Small and skinny. His thin frame was almost drowned in an oversized flight suit.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” cried Aiden.
The boy looked at him with surprise, like he hadn’t expected Aiden to talk.
“Hammit,” he said, his voice quavering with adolescence. “I’m Hammit.”
34.
At the Helm
Solomon stepped aboard the Enkidu. It was a small thing, walking up the gangway and through the starboard hatch, but it signified much. It signified that he had won. He had tracked it down, finally, and now it was his. It felt sweet.
The Enkidu was his and his alone. It was his by right and by wits. Now there was nobody who could tell him otherwise. Not even the pretty Armenian girl, though he knew she brought her own agenda aboard. She didn’t hide it very well. No doubt she thought she would claim the warship and bring it to Armenia to aid her father’s cause.
But the Enkidu was not going to be used for such petty errands. Solomon’s plans were grand; his sights were set on bigger prizes, and he knew now that he would have them.
That wasn’t to say that the girl would serve him no purpose… Perhaps just not the one she had envisioned for herself.
When the hatch sighed closed behind him, he stopped and drew a deep breath. The air was purer than he’d imagined. The warship had been hermetically sealed for twenty years, and now that there were souls aboard he could hear the circulating fans gently hum into life, drawing the air through scrubbers and recycling it. The passageway he now stood in was lined with light grey ceramic plating, designed to prevent spall fragments if the warship suffered a hit. Soft white lights shone from the centre of the ceiling.
He had studied every scrap of information he could find for years, just to form a picture of it in his mind. But now that he actually stood within it, breathing its air and seeing its light, it felt like he had come home. And indeed he had. Who could truly have asked for a better one?
He remembered the girl standing behind him then.
“Where are my manners?” he said, smiling. “Allow me to show you to your quarters.”
She smiled back. Solomon led her along the passageway, taking a left turn onto the main dorsal corridor. He knew exactly where he was going; he’d studied the drawings for so long. Soon they came to the doors he was looking for. Large-print signs labelled the crew quarters, cabins A to L. The Enkidu had enough room to give each one of its twelve crewmembers their own private cabin. The little panel on the wall by the door to cabin B switched on as he came to a halt in front of it. He’d considered putting her in cabin A… but cabin A was his cabin. At a touch of the screen the door whispered open.
“If you would like to make yourself comfortable, I must perform some checks before we launch.”
Vika nodded and walked into the windowless cabin, setting her pack down on the simple desk. The bunk was amply sized and had even been set with linen. Everything he saw confirmed what he already knew: the Enkidu was just days from launch when the Union collapsed.
When Vik
a sat on the bunk, bouncing a little to test it, Solomon nodded and left, closing the door.
With another tap of the screen, he locked it.
This time, walking along the corridor alone, he couldn’t stop grinning. The ship really was his. He let his hand brush the ceramic plates as he passed, just to make sure it was all real.
It was a simple, straight walk from the cabins along the dorsal passage to the bridge. The door was already open when he arrived. It had probably sat like that since it was completed. A few steps up, and he was there.
The bridge was an almost complete sphere. There were no windows, and it took Solomon in mind of a planetarium. Dark grey, almost black. In the middle of it all, swivelled to face him, was the captain’s chair. His heart pounding, he lowered himself into it.
For a moment nothing happened. In that terrible second he doubted everything. Suddenly the warship had never been finished; he’d misread something; it had locked him out; it had been twenty years and it was simply dead.
But with a whirr and a whisper, the bridge came to life. His chair swivelled around to face bow-wards, and its glass arms illuminated with a start-up sequence that took only moments.
Then before him, seeming to hover in the air between him and the wall, two words flashed.
Hello World.
Solomon laughed out loud at that. You might remove the humans from the construction process, but that didn’t seem to stop engineers from having their little jokes.
“Commodore Solomon Archer,” said a silky female voice from the walls, “welcome aboard.”
Solomon’s grin widened. How I have missed my title.
“Thank you, Enkidu.”
“My pleasure, sir,” lilted the voice.
“Well, Enkidu,” said Solomon. “Begin the maiden launch procedures.”
“Of course, sir.”
The walls of the bridge lit up. Suddenly he was sitting in his captain’s chair, but no longer inside the Enkidu. To him, it seemed like he was sitting atop the highest prow, with the bulk of the warship behind and beneath him, down where the steps to the door were. It all looked so real; the cavern-hangar all around him and the gantry ahead where he’d first seen the Enkidu. The displays were polarising and splitting the light and delivering it to his eyes so perfectly that he felt he really was sitting in a comfortable chair outside of the Enkidu. Even the depth was flawless. Everything looked just as far away as it should. The only hint that it was a display rather than a reality was the little block of green text that hovered in the mid-distance, telling him the progress of the initial system tests.