by Ian Whates
“Why, Captain, you’re not seriously suggesting we rob them, are you?” Bren asked, feigning shock.
“No, actually I’m not.” Not yet, at any rate. “We’re not pirates.” At least they weren’t when they had a representative from First Solar Bank on board. “I’m just saying that tactically we’ve got the higher ground so to speak; we’re mobile while they’re just squatting there, which puts us in a strong bargaining position, that’s all.”
“If there’s anyone left alive to bargain with,” Nate said.
“Do Xters really go in for that sort of thing – robbing caches, I mean?” Bren said.
“Sure they do.”
“Since when did you become such an expert on alien behaviour, anyhow?”
“What if they don’t come up?” Anna asked.
“Sorry?”
“What if they never emerge from the chamber?”
“Then we can assume the cache defences got them, which means there’s one less source of competition for us to worry about.”
“Oh, right, of course. We just have to worry about whatever it was that killed them,” Bren said.
“That’s where we came in, boys and girls.” Pelquin pointed out. “So let’s just sit tight for the moment and see what happens, shall we?”
No one had anything more to add. They waited for a little over half an hour without any sign of activity, the Comet circling in as tight a holding pattern as she could manage in atmosphere.
At length, Anna said, “We’re burning up a lot of fuel, skip.”
Pelquin was aware of that.
“I don’t think there’s anyone left alive in there,” Bren opined.
“I reckon you’re right,” he agreed. “Anna, set us down close to the other ship, but keep the engines warm and be ready for a quick dust off.” He then turned to Bren, saying, “Let’s get one of those new probes programmed and set to fly, shall we?”
“Now we’re talking!”
New tech; always guaranteed to float Bren’s boat. She was on her way in an instant.
“I’ll give her a hand,” Nate said.
“Okay, but don’t use being down in the cargo hold as an excuse to slope off and take a peek at the Xter ship.” Nate had a stubborn streak; he’d always been a bit of a maverick, but in the past Pelquin had thought of him as his maverick; now he wasn’t so sure. “We’ll have a look at her after we’ve claimed the contents of the cache. Understood?”
“I hear you.”
The ground was uneven and dotted with sparse vegetation. Even so, Anna brought the Comet down with enough of a bump to jog the froth off a cappuccino but little more. Pelquin rated that as pretty impressive given the lack of a landing area.
“Are we still trying to contact the Xter ship, Anna?”
“Yup; I’m running standard greeting on a continuous loop. Reckon it’s a waste of time, though. Still no one over there who wants to talk to us.”
“The probe’s ready to go,” Bren reported within minutes of the ship having settled.
“Send it out, then,” he told her.
Considerably larger than the spyflies that had dogged his footsteps on New Sparta, the probes were still wonders of miniaturised tech. Torpedo-like and around the size of a chunky pen, they provided better images than a spyfly ever could and cost a good deal less – though that was purely relative. The damned things were still far from cheap.
With the probe’s systems slaved to the Comet’s control board, Anna was able to fly the tiny drone out of the ship’s hold. She and Pelquin had the best view – the triple screen in front of them showing a panoramic 3D representation of all that the probe encountered. Leesa, Drake and the doc were crowded in behind them, watching over their shoulders. They were soon joined by Nate and Bren.
The native terrain leapt into abrupt focus as the drone set out. This was the same rugged scrubland they’d witnessed on the ship’s monitor screen but it had now been brought vividly to life; the uneven ground, which was festooned with tussocks of grass and small spiky bushes, took on contour and gained substance as a result. A series of digits winked into being at the bottom left hand corner of the central image, detailing such things as temperature, barometric pressure, atmospheric composition – Pelquin barely noticed, his attention focused on the hole in the approaching cliff face. Seen from this perspective it didn’t resemble a cave at all; more a wound. The opening was too stark and too fresh to be mistaken for anything natural.
As the drone drew closer, the central image zoomed in, while the two side images remained at a more natural definition.
“Residual energy readings,” Bren murmured. She was evidently paying more attention to the numbers than he’d been. “A weapon’s been discharged here recently.” At times like this he was glad to have an ex-soldier on the team.
The first evidence of the party that had preceded them waited at the entrance. Leaning against the left hand wall, apparently abandoned, was a piece of equipment – small, light, and unfathomable.
“We ought to collect that on the way in,” Bren said. “Xter stuff can be valuable in its own right.”
He murmured acknowledgement.
Under Anna’s expert guidance the probe slipped slowly inside the tunnel. Pelquin was pleased by the way its systems automatically compensated for the change in lighting conditions, ensuring that the quality of the images remained pretty much constant despite the drop in illumination. A little further in they came across what looked at first to be another piece of abandoned equipment, but this one proved to be different. Because of the way it rested, slumped against the wall, it took Pelquin a few seconds to realise that this was an Xter spacesuit, and it hadn’t been abandoned; except by life itself. The body of the suit’s occupant remained firmly in place.
“That’s one bulky suit for an Xter,” Drake commented.
“Yeah, I agree,” Bren replied. “Armoured, I reckon.”
Pelquin nodded. “Looks as if they went in there expecting trouble.”
“If so, I think they found it. See the wound where the suit’s been breached? And that has to be blood. Drying but not yet dried; so this is all very recent.” Bren leaned forward and pointed at a position towards the bottom of the left hand screen. “Anna, can you focus there for a sec.”
Their perspective pivoted as Anna complied, so that the indicated spot took centre stage, and then they zoomed in.
“Thought so,” Bren said. “See where the rock’s scorched? And it looks as if something’s melted there. The temperature readings are still high as well. Rock retains heat. This area’s taken some concentrated energy fire, and not too long ago.”
“Nate, what do you reckon?”
“Looks like the smashed remains of the laser trap we hit when I was here before, except that we took it out that time around.”
“Then someone rebuilt it.”
“Seems so.”
The probe continued and two more Xter corpses appeared. They were lying close to each other in the centre of the tunnel floor. Again Anna paused so that they could try to determine what had killed them.
“I don’t think it was lasers this time,” Bren remarked. “No sign of injuries or damage to the suits.”
“Could be sonics,” Drake said. “I’ve encountered that sort of defence before at Elder caches.”
“Whatever this was, it looks as if the Xters managed to neutralise it,” Anna said, highlighting four points on the tunnel walls where something had been destroyed, presumably by weapons’ fire.
“These Xters are doing our job for us,” the doc murmured. “Two of the cache defences destroyed already.”
“Yeah, but it looks as if the defences did for them in the end,” Bren reminded him.
“Bren’s right,” Pelquin said. “Let’s not get too smug just yet.”
Next they came to a part where the tunnel had partially collapsed – the left hand wall and ceiling having evidently come down.
“Will there be enough room to get the buggy through?
” Pelquin wondered.
“I think so, hang on,” Anna replied. Some deft repositioning of the drone produced a further scroll of digits. “Just, if I drive carefully and pull the shielding in. We’ll have to move that Xter body out of the way first, though.”
Two more fallen Xter suits marked the spot; one of them half-buried beneath the rubble. The other was lying prone and blocking the still-open right hand side. A line of fused circuitry – resembling crystal more than anything else – was embedded in a vertical groove in the tunnel wall, exposed by the collapse.
“What do you reckon this was?”
Nate shook his head. “No idea. That wasn’t there last time.”
“Do you think this is the last of the defences?” Bren asked.
“Only one way to find out.” Pelquin signalled Anna to continue advancing the probe.
“We’re not that far from the cache chamber itself,” Anna murmured. “There can’t be too many more…”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the screens abruptly went blank. There was a suggestion of rapid movement in the left hand screen and, before anyone could comment let alone react, all three winked out simultaneously.
“Whoa!” Anna said, giving a startled jump.
“One more defence at least, I’d say,” Bren quipped.
“Shit!” summed up Pelquin’s feelings on the matter. Scrub one expensive piece of kit. Fortunately, he had two equally costly replacements, but no point in committing either of those just yet.
Anna sat forward again, her fingers dancing frantically over the control board, but after a few seconds she shook her head. “Sorry Pel, it’s completely dead; nothing’s responding.”
“Can we replay the last few seconds?” Pelquin asked.
They did, first at normal speed, and then slowed down, and then a third time grossly slowed down. Even at that exaggerated pace, the speed with which the line of pointed metal bars shot out of the wall was frightening. One of them headed straight towards the watcher – the probe – far too swiftly to register let alone evade. Even so, it was pure luck that any of the spikes had caught the probe. They were at least three times its circumference and there was more than enough space for the tiny drone to pass between them. Had it been ten centimetres above or below its actual elevation the probe would likely have survived, disturbed only by the wind of the bars’ passage. As it was, one of the spikes had scored a direct hit.
“Let’s wind things back a bit and examine the patches of wall those spikes emerged from,” Pelquin said. The images played in reverse, the spears retracting to be swallowed by the wall, leaving no apparent trace. “Is there anything to tell us that the spears are there? Anything at all to say that this isn’t just another ordinary stretch of tunnel wall?”
Anna shook her head. “No, not as far as the probe’s sensors are concerned at any rate.”
“Great,” Bren muttered. “So we could all end up skewered at any moment. At least it would be quick – at that speed you’d be dead before you even registered the threat.”
“The buggy has a more sophisticated sensor system than the probe, so we might be able to spot them,” Anna said, sounding far from convinced. “Plus we now know where these ones are. If they’re the only set of spikes, problem solved.”
“You reckon? Knowing where they are doesn’t mean we know how to get past them,” the doc said.
Anna summoned up a diagram: a 3D representation of the tunnel. “Okay, judging by the images from the probe, this is what we’re dealing with.”
The image displayed twin sets of eight spears pushing out from either wall, their tips interweaving at the tunnel’s centre.
“Both sides?” Pelquin asked. He had only spotted movement from the left.
“Yeah, if you check the final few frames the spikes release simultaneously from right and left. You just focus on the left ones because they’re nearer and that’s the direction the probe-killer comes from; it’s the most obvious thing there and sort of grabs your attention.”
“And once we’re in the tunnel, we can pinpoint the exact spots where the stakes emerged?”
“Sure.”
“Good. We’ll use bonding foam on the placements.”
“And if that doesn’t work we’ll come up with something else,” Bren said; showing the sort of support he’d once taken for granted. Hearing it now came as a relief.
“Exactly.”
“We’re intending to go in through the entrance, I take it?” Nate said.
That brought a sharp look from Bren, as if it had never occurred to her they’d be doing anything else.
“Yeah, looks to be the best option. The Xters have already done at least half our work for us. Trying to open a new tunnel is going to take too long, and this way we avoid any risk of a cave-in.”
“We hope,” Anna murmured.
“Fair enough.”
“You were seriously considering opening a new tunnel into a cache chamber?” Bren asked.
“Considering it, yes; to avoid the defences. Now we’re actually here, I’m not so sure it was ever a good idea, but…”
The guardian knows we’re here, Mudball told Drake.
You can sense it?
Oh yes, and I hope your friends don’t expect to simply stroll in there and help themselves to the contents. They’re in for a fight.
This wasn’t like Mudball. Normally the little alien was all cocky swagger, boasting about how he could wipe the floor with any guardian of any cache. This time around he sounded almost… worried. Is this guardian different in some way? Drake asked.
Strong; very strong.
And does it know you’re with us?
No, it’s not looking for anything like me and I’m keeping my head down, so to speak.
But you know what it’s got planned?
Not the specifics, no. Trying to find out would reveal my presence, but, trust me, that’s one seriously pissed off guardian who isn’t about to stand by and do nothing.
Duly noted.
No one had yet come up with a wholly satisfactory explanation for the guardian entities. When they were first encountered, in the very early days of cache hunting, it was assumed that these were automated defences which had remained active despite the passing aeons. Not impossible; in theory mankind could readily devise mechanisms of comparable durability. Then it became clear that there was something more going on, that the defences were reactive and in a few cases even proactive. That meant a whole different level of threat, a programmed, guiding intelligence, and slowly the reality of guardian entities dawned on humankind. They weren’t always present, tending to occur at the larger caches rather than the smaller ones – though that was far from a universal truth – and they varied in capability and viciousness. It was assumed that these inconsistencies were explained by the passage of time, that some of the guardians had failed to survive while others had deteriorated over the years and were now less than fully functional.
Even the assumption that these were sophisticated systems left in place by the Elders to safeguard the caches was hotly debated: safeguard the caches against what? And why leave the caches behind at all if you were then going to guard against them being accessed?
Nobody had yet found the physical housing for these guardians – the systems they inhabited – and many had looked. Some believed that the Elders had found a way of utilising the very rocks around the caches for this. So many bizarre forms of unexplained tech had been discovered in the caches that nothing could be ruled out.
Drake had his own opinions and his own questions about the guardians. You would think that having Mudball riding on his shoulder and in his thoughts would make him an expert on the subject, but you’d be wrong. If Mudball wasn’t a guardian entity, what was he? And if he was, then the guardian entities were not programming at all, at least not in any conventional sense.
On this subject as with so many others Mudball remained evasive to the point of reticence. Of course there were reasons; it wa
sn’t that he didn’t want to be helpful, it was just that his memory was impaired… that he had only vague recollections of events so long ago… that the Elders had excised all knowledge of such things from his mind… that it wouldn’t be helpful to either Drake as an individual or humanity as a whole to know too much… Drake suspected that this last might at least hold some grain of truth.
One thing Mudball had stipulated at the start of their arrangement was that he wouldn’t comment on the nature of the Elders, claiming a similar argument. Drake had agreed at the time – his life had just been saved and he would have agreed to anything – but it wasn’t always an easy undertaking to abide by.
They were going in armed. The weapons locker was the only compartment on the ship routinely secured, to the best of Leesa’s knowledge. Voice activated, it opened at Pelquin’s command; a section of wall sliding away and a double-sided rack emerging from the resultant slot. The arsenal was hardly extensive but it was enough to ensure that everyone would at least be packing something. The stock weapon seemed to be machine pistols – matt black compact weapons with truncated nozzles. Leesa recognised the type: comparatively light, easy to handle, ideal for the enclosed conditions of the cache chamber. They fired slender bullets at high velocity, each slug packing an explosive tip. Two hundred and fifty rounds to a magazine, which was built into the weapon’s handle. The captain handed one of the guns each to Anna, Bren, Nate, and Doc.