“Thank you, Dean,” she said through the translator.
“How far have you gone?” Slate asked her.
“Not very. I was afraid I’d get lost, or that my father would track me. But that’s foolish. The Stones don’t keep track of destinations. He wouldn’t know where I’d traveled to.”
“Boss, let’s keep moving the way we’re heading. It has to lead somewhere, and if we aren’t expecting any baddies hiding out in the shadows, we can move quickly and not worry about noise,” Slate said.
I looked at Suma, hoping we could trust her story. Every instinct was telling me we could, but I’d been wrong before.
“Let’s move.” Slate grabbed my pack, taking the burden from me, and I was grateful for the respite. We’d only left the complex that morning a few hours ago, but it already felt like days.
We moved as quickly as we could. Suma’s short legs carried her quite well, and she had no problem keeping up with us. We kept going, checking doorways as we went along. Half of the rooms were empty; the other half didn’t seem to have a purpose we understood. If the race had vanished a long time ago, maybe they’d packed up and left the world in search of somewhere else.
Eventually, we came to a large door, with nowhere to go but back or through it. Beside it a smaller slab stood, probably a maintenance closet. The large door had a viewscreen on it, but with the power out, it was blank, so we couldn’t see what was on the other side.
“This has to lead somewhere important. It’s the first entry with a viewscreen, and it’s much larger than all the others,” I said. “Suma, what do you know about these people?”
“Not much. We study the worlds in school, but I didn’t see what diagram I touched. It was all an accident. If it’s one of the outer worlds, it’s rumored they ran from something, abandoning whole worlds, traveling far away, never to be seen again.” She shifted on her large flat feet.
“Adds up. It looks like these guys left of their own volition, but why?” Slate asked, reaching for the manual lever. “Do it?”
I nodded. “Do it.”
The door opened, and we were hit with a gust of wind, sour air pouring in from outside. I walked over, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. We had to be a couple thousand feet up. Huge buildings were erected into the clouds, with intricate pedway systems between them. The city went on for miles in all the directions I could see from my vantage point. I felt nausea creep upward from my toes to my head, before settling back in my stomach. It looked like something from a nightmare. The sky was dark, electricity shifting from cloud to cloud before shooting lightning bolts down toward the ground.
Slate closed the door to shield us from the blowing wind. “What now?” he asked.
Suma’s back was against the wall, and I remembered she didn’t have an oxygen mask like us. “Suma, can you breathe?”
Her eyes were wide, and her snout frantically flailed. I slipped the mask off my face and hoped giving her oxygen wouldn’t do more harm than good. She breathed deeply through what passed as her nose but was still struggling to get enough air without a proper seal.
Slate opened the small door beside the entry. “It’s a closet. Bingo.” Slate rifled through piles of junk before he pulled out a mask, passing one to me.
“How does it work?” I asked, but Suma was already grabbing it and placing it on her face, twisting a cap on the bottom. It hissed and her panic subsided.
After twenty or so seconds, she removed the mask. “If we go outside, we will need these. The planet’s atmosphere is not stable.”
“There’s no tank on this thing. How does it work?” Slate asked.
She moved her lower arms in a gesture I took to be a shrug. “Look at your mask. Does it have a tank? Same principle.”
I hadn’t given it much thought, but it appeared a filter mask worked with a science that was beyond me. Or it was magic. Either way, I was okay not understanding it.
Slate, on the other hand, was playing with one, trying to comprehend the process.
“It’s the end of the line. Let’s mask up and go out there. The power source may be underneath us, a mile or so from the base of the building,” he said, looking at me for confirmation. When I nodded, he passed me one of the masks. “These look superior to the flimsy airline ones we have attached to us. Let’s use them.”
“What makes you think the power is under us?” I asked.
He pointed inside the closet door, where a paper blueprint hung above a shelf. It showed a few buildings, with blue lines coming from a source below that looked similar to the stones in the room we’d found earlier. It appeared to power a few square miles, each building having lines connecting to it. The image was detailed, and I ripped it off the wall, folding it up and shoving it into a pocket.
“Might come in handy. And here I thought you had some insight into alien technology,” I said, smirking at him. “How do we get down there?”
Slate started for the door. “Let’s find out.”
“Suma, do you want to stay here?” I asked the small alien female, who was already putting the mask back on. Her snout bent to the side inside the glass-encased mask, but she could still speak through her translator, though the squeaks were muffled.
“I will come. I may be of help,” she said.
The last thing I wanted to do was put her in danger, but if we didn’t power up this dead building, we’d all die here, so I didn’t argue with her.
Slate opened the door, the cool stale wind blowing against us again as we moved from the relative safety of the structure to outside. The lightning crackled, startling Suma, who grasped my arm; I patted her hand, letting her know it was okay. Even in the wind and eerily black sky, it was near silent out there, and that added to the strange feeling in my gut.
We were on a balcony that wrapped around the rectangular building. I walked around it, getting much more of the same vantage: miles of similar skyscrapers, all dark and dead, pedways connecting each of them. I pointed to a building next to us. “That has to be where we came from.” I ran a finger in the air, tracing our steps from the room we arrived in, across the pedway, and toward the door we’d met Suma at only a half hour ago. Out here, it looked like our journey so far had been nothing but a quick jaunt across a couple of city blocks. The sheer distance the city went on for, and the fact it was supposed to be abandoned, made me feel uneasy.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath of filtered air, calming myself. The only way to get back to New Spero was to power this grid up. I only hoped there was a way to do that below.
Slate was already walking in the other direction, his stride full of purpose. Suma walked along behind him, all four arms firmly at her sides.
“Dean,” Slate called, “I think I found the elevator.”
I hurried to catch up, focusing on them the whole time to forget I was so high up from the ground. I was worried vertigo would kick in and I’d be left clutching a wall, unable to help. I neared and saw the device he was talking about. It was a lift with four sides, but no visible cables. “What do we do with this?”
Suma stepped forward, pulling a small tablet from a pocket on the back of her uniform. “There is an energy reading still. Sometimes these civilizations ensured they wouldn’t get stuck, so they had backup systems in place.”
Slate looked at her dubiously. “They don’t consider the Shandra worthy of backup power?”
Suma just did her lower arm shrug again and continued. “I don’t begin to suggest I understand their reasoning. The lift appears to be controlled by these foot pedals.” She pointed with her top left hand to a spot where two metal squares were etched with different symbols on each.
We were all standing on the lift, looking closely at the floor, when Suma crawled over and pressed one of them. We didn’t have time to react as we started to move very quickly. I fell, pressure keeping me down on my knees as we lifted higher and higher. “Stop it,” Slate croaked.
Suma hit the same lever again, and we came to a stop at
the next level. I stood up, this time getting a full view of the city. We were even higher, twice as high as we were, and even in the darkness, I could make out an ocean of lava in the deep distance. To the other side, mountains, as black as midnight, loomed like a bad omen. No wonder these people had left their home.
“I’m going to guess the other lever takes us down?” I hadn’t finished the question when Suma hit the lever, and we were quickly descending. This time, knowing it was happening, we were able to stay on our feet. I grasped the railing on the side of the lift, as did the other two, and I wondered if a harness system would have been safer.
As we lowered, I kept my eyes out for a structure we’d seen on the blueprint. There it was, a few standard blocks away, maybe half a mile in total. I only hoped we’d find a way to turn the power source on once we got there. I pointed toward it, and Slate nodded as the lift slowed and stopped at ground level.
We exited the lift, my legs and stomach both glad to be off the thing. The ground was made of a concrete-like substance, and considering how long it had sat at rest, there were very few breaks in it. Every twenty or so feet, I could see signs of something trying to come up through it. Nature always took over, unless you were on an abandoned alien planet. Maybe the lava and lightning were what constituted nature on this world. I didn’t intend to be here long enough to find out.
Slate moved with efficiency, Suma and I following along, me with my gun at ready, though I could see no sign of any threats. It never hurt to be prepared.
Suma began to slow, and I slowed alongside her. “Are you going to be okay?”
Her snout twitched under the clear face-plate of the filter mask. She squeaked a reply. “I’ll be fine. We don’t move this much at home.” I kept with her slower pace, Slate eventually noticing we weren’t right behind him. He slowed as well but kept fifty yards ahead.
There wasn’t much of interest down on this level: mostly just the bases of the skyscrapers, and some maintenance sheds. The living appeared to all happen above ground on this planet, or at least in this city. It wasn’t long before we made it to our target. The building, a squat, square brick-walled complex, looked out of place among the thin, cloud-high structures around it.
I ran a gloved hand along the smooth stone walls as we looked for a door. It all worked together: the traveling stones, the gemstones in the clear cylinder up top, and now this. My mind flashed to the stones we’d worn to stay on Earth while everyone else was lashed into the ships. It all worked together on a scale as large as our universe. One day, I suspected we’d understand it all. Today, I just wanted to find a door, get some power, and leave.
“Over here,” Slate said from around the corner. It was still quiet down on the ground, but the wind was blowing small debris around. Pebbles and small metal sheets clattered down the streets, reminding me the planet wasn’t so much different from our own.
Suma and I rounded the side of the building. Slate was there, pulling on the door. It wouldn’t move. I grabbed hold of what had to be the handle, and we both tugged on it, even putting our legs on the wall for leverage. Nothing.
“Keep looking for another way in?” I asked, but Slate was shaking his head.
“I’m growing tired of this place.” He lightly shoved me back and unslung his pulse rifle, red beam blowing a hole in the rocks. He did this a few times, until the opening was large enough to get through.
Suma had jumped and hid behind me. “You’re safe, Suma.”
She shook until Slate put the gun away. “What is that?” she asked.
“It’s a gun; a weapon.”
She tested the word, a strange sound through her small snout. “Weapon.”
“You don’t have guns where you come from?” I asked, curious that a race might be non-violent. No wonder she hadn’t seemed too afraid of our guns when we’d encountered her. She was just afraid of seeing pasty near-hairless aliens.
“We don’t have guns.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Boss, can we do this later?” Slate was getting into Rambo mode, and I was good with that. I closed my eyes for a split second, seeing Slate standing over Mae’s bleeding body. Target down. I shook it off and patted Slate on the shoulder.
“We can do this later. Let’s get some power.”
SEVEN
The inside of the power plant, for lack of a better term, was black. Our LEDs lit the way as we entered, guns raised against the off chance we were about to be ambushed. We stood at rest, listening for any sounds. All we heard was the wind dancing around outside the hole in the wall.
Slate motioned us forward, and Suma stayed behind me. I couldn’t tell if she was more afraid of the unknown or of Slate. Either way, I would try to keep her feeling safe. We were in a small room with lockers along the wall and a table in the middle of the room. I searched through the cubbies, finding uniforms and heavy boots. The material was thick on everything, but clearly made for something other than a human. I held one of the one-piece uniforms up, and imagined thin legs and a tail, with arms down to their knees. I guessed I’d never know for sure.
In the middle of the room, Slate searched under the table, and found an assortment of tools. Some looked much like ones you’d find in any house’s garage, and others were far more complex. “I hope we don’t need to use one of these to turn the power on.” Slate held up a device with ten prongs sticking out of it, and what looked like thousand-year-old grease piled on each tip.
Suma walked over to him, sorting the tools on the table, not saying anything. I smiled and headed for a doorway that would lead us further inside.
“Are you ready?” I asked, more for the sake of saying it than needing to.
Slate was always ready. He nodded, raising his gun as I turned the handle, feeling the years of neglect fight me as I pressed the lever. It eventually moved, and I pulled, opening us up into the next room. It was the right door, which was good, because it was the only door.
“This is it,” Slate whispered as we walked inside the large open bay room. Machinery sat in clumps along the edges of the room, but the center was what drew our eyes. A massive clear crystal the size of a dump truck sat glimmering as our lights reflected off it. The thousands of edges on it each angled the light out in a beautiful pattern around the room’s wall and ceiling. “Isn’t that something.”
It was. Where the crystals in the “boiler room” we’d seen up top had been glowing a tiny bit, this one was dead. It was just a crystal down here. The largest single crystal I’d ever seen, but it was here.
“Does the rock power things, or does it just act as a transmitter?” Slate asked, and I shrugged, having no idea.
Suma came behind us, her black eyes even wider than normal. She walked around the room, and just as I was about to tell her to be careful, I noticed she wasn’t just out for a stroll; she was figuring it out. She found an input into the crystal and traced it back to the machines sitting idly around the edges of the room.
Five minutes later, she was standing at a large machine that looked like a combination of a commercial furnace, an icemaker, and an oil derrick. It was just ten feet wide and twelve or so high, but she stood at the hunk of junk like it was going to be our savior.
“What do you have there, Suma?” I asked, breaking her from her analysis.
“This is the start. We fire this up, the rest will follow. In ideal scenarios.” The small alien continued to astound me. Clare would love this one. Mary would too. I’d been trying to forget about my friends and loved ones since we’d traveled, just wanting to focus on the task at hand. Thinking about Mary and getting back to her gave me a well-needed boost of energy.
“What do we do?” Slate asked, hands ready to work.
“We have to get each operational again. Mostly cleaning and lubricating.”
A few minutes later, we started moving from machine to machine, of which there were about seven, leading up to the initial power generator. Slate held the ten-headed lubricator tool and stuck it out, trying to get m
e to take it.
“No way. You made the joke earlier, you deal with it. It’s only fair.” I spoke too soon, because that meant I was crawling under the machines to make sure the wiring was in place and intact. They looked different than the cables I was used to, but I imagined the principle held the same. They were thick, round, and clear. Instead of metal as the conductor, it looked like a fiber-optic material, possibly the same as the crystal. I wasn’t sure.
An hour later, we were covered in dirt, grease, and sweat, but Suma thought they just might be operational.
“Let’s move back, just in case something goes terribly wrong,” I suggested, moving from the center of the room to the side, beside the first machine, from where we could also make a quick exit.
“It has a hard start,” Suma said, moving to a panel on the machine. It had a touchscreen on the outside, but it was dark.
“How do you know all this?” I asked her.
“My father is the Gatekeeper, and my mother studies how other races tick. She’s a technology expert of many solar systems. She wants me to take after her, so I’ve learned how to understand machines.”
“Is that what you want to do?” I asked.
Her lower arms raised up into her version of a shrug. “I suppose. I really want to take after my father, but after today, I suspect I’ll never be allowed in the Shandra again.”
Her honesty was refreshing, and I hoped we could get her home to hash it all out. Whatever she did, she’d do it well. Her hands found what looked like a large primer and pushed it, while turning a knob to the left and holding it. Soon my feet vibrated, along with the floor.
“You did it!” Slate exclaimed. Suma beamed, her snout twitching inside her filter mask.
Lights appeared on the first machine’s touchscreen, and symbols I didn’t recognize glowed on a white background. Suma peered at them thoughtfully before hitting a series of icons. The vibrations increased as each machine began to spring to life, one at a time, ten or so seconds between them.
The Survivors Box Set Page 49