***
It took the better part of two hours to find a way into the underground chambers but that left a full ten hours to move the crew and passengers underground. In addition, they managed four equipment and supply runs before conditions outside prevented further ventures to the now deserted and abandoned Bluefin in orbit. Ken's pinnace was parked over the opening to the caverns, with its shields extended to protect the entrance. All signs of wildlife had disappeared several hours before. Apparently the locals had learned to seek shelter underground when the temperatures outside began to rise.
The caverns appeared natural to the untrained eye but that was only because of their age and state of overgrowth.
Cat, Ben, and Doctor Lacidem were one of six exploration teams that were venturing deeper into the complex network of tunnels and chambers they had found. There was no longer any question about the artificial nature of the facility, as Ken had started to call it.
There was no power but clearly there had been at one point. Littered about the various rooms were machines and consoles that looked like they could have been used and built by humans or humanoids. They were, however, as dead as anything currently trapped on the moon's surface.
Cat toggled her commlink. "Ken, what are you guys finding?"
Ken was with Running Stream's group. Like Cat's party they were looking for a source of water that could be made potable.
"Lots of dusty rooms and dead equipment. The engineer in me would give my eyeteeth to be able to spend some quality time with this tech, but as for water... nary a drop."
"Same here. If we don't come up with something we may be forced to use the Esperance to scoop seawater. Sassi's best estimates indicate we may be down here for as long as a couple of months before the swollen radiation belt has degraded enough to allow us to live on the surface again."
"Understood, Admiral. I'd love to try and power up a few of these systems to see what they do and to see if one of them might be a city directory."
Cat smiled. "We'll keep that as an option. For the moment lets continue mapping the areas we can reach. When we get back together with the other groups we can compare notes."
***
Sassi worked on a portable computer console they had brought from the Bluefinand set up in the main chamber. This chamber was no less than fifteen hundred meters wide and several dozen high. It was massive. The floor was a polished marble-like stone that, despite its age, had not so much as a single scratch in it…once the accumulated dust was cleared away. The Bluefin had a limited supply of shelter tents that had been erected. It was in one of these that Sassi's equipment was set up.
He was collecting data feeds from the various exploration teams and constructing a three dimensional map of their new underground home. It was clear from the data he was seeing that the facility was organized in a series of concentric rings and spokes. The size however was astronomical. He estimated the diameter would approach ten kilometers and there was every indication that there were multiple levels.
"Admiral. This is Sassi. I believe you should see a corridor about ten meters ahead on your left. Am I correct?"
"Indeed you are, Lieutenant," Cat said. "Can I assume your mapping software is detecting a pattern?"
"It is, Ma'am. I think if you follow that corridor it will branch on to a much larger one. Follow that one to the right and you will arrive at something in about four kilometers."
"Did you say kilometers Lieutenant?"
"Roger that, Admiral. You are in an outer ring of what looks to be a multi-ringed spoked wheel. I'm directing you towards the central core on the assumption that this is where facility-wide services will congregate."
"Logical, Lieutenant. I'll get back to you with what we find."
Cat looked at Ben and the doctor. "Sassi just gave me directions to what looks to be a central core or nexus. It's several kilometers away. I'm going to leave you two here and go check it out. Ben, protect the doctor. If something happens to me you are to return to the main camp, drop the doctor off, and only then lead a team back—if the situation warrants."
Doctor Lacidem started to open her mouth to object when she saw Cat take off at a run down the corridor. She covered the ten meters to the corner in less than a quarter of a second. Ben chuckled.
Cat dialed up her ocular sensitivity. The nanites in her forehead began to emit light in the ultraviolet range. Her Heshe enhanced retina captured the faint light and amplified it. For Cat the corridor might have been a brightly lit causeway located in any major city. She proceeded according to the directions Sassi had provided. Her encounter unit recorded everything she saw, which they could review later. As a result, she didn't spend too long to consider what was flashing by. Her legs carried her in an effortless run that chewed up ground at over eighty kilometers an hour. She could run faster but this was unknown territory and she wanted to play it safe.
Within three kilometers it became clear that she would not be able to proceed all the way to the hub nexus. Much of the corridor had become impassable by virtue of a collapsed system of ducts.
"Sassi, this route has some serious issues with structural integrity. If I back up to the previous branch, will I find another spoke leading in towards the hub?"
"Unknown Admiral but that would be consistent with the overall layout. Of course, there is no guarantee that the wheel and spoke pattern continues for a full 360 degrees."
"OK, monitor me closely. I'm going to give it a try and see if there is a better passage through one of the other spokes."
Cat's next attempt, as well as the one after that, met with the same type of obstacle. It was on her fourth, and what in her mind would be her final attempt, that she finally found a passage that led all the way to the hub. In total she traveled a little over twenty kilometers in the course of an hour. Her Heshe enhanced body barely felt the strain.
She followed the passage until it opened into a chamber that was beyond massive. The entire Bluefin, and Yorktown for that matter, could have fit in the room with relative ease. Unlike the other areas she had viewed, this one was pristine. The floor was clear of rubble and dust. Its surface was marbled in green and gold. It extended twenty yards into the chamber. At that point it simply stopped. The floor ended and a chasm opened up.
Off to the side, about sixty yards away, Cat spied a glass column. She approached the column and was caught off guard when a control panel flickered to life. She stopped dead in her tracks and extended her augmented senses to their maximum range. She could sense the lingering swirls of air from her passage. She could hear perspiration evaporating off her skin. She could see individual motes of dust floating by. Strain as she might however, she could sense no other activity. Three amber lights lit a small panel. Three lights and nothing else.
"Captain... I've found something interesting."
"Go ahead, Admiral. Where are you and what did you find?"
"I'm in the central core. Lieutenant Sassi can give you directions. I've found a vertical shaft that extends down as far as I can see. There are dozens of levels."
Cat heard Running Stream shout assembly orders off comm. "I've got a couple of survey teams heading your way."
"Captain, we have an active power source. Might I recommend an engineering team as well?"
Cat heard a noise down the corridor. She counted six distinct footsteps. Likely this was her D'lralu friend and the Bluefin's doctor. Given the acuity of her hearing she estimated they were still the better part of a kilometer away. If they were planning on spending any time at this site they would want to set up a system of electric trolleys, given the distances involved.
Next Cat did something no human would normally be capable of. Her body's construction nanites were capable of harvesting and transforming foreign matter. The little machines were in constant communication with her internal Heshe designed encounter unit. This unit, a massively parallel quantum neural net, was in reality a computer system and database second to none in human space. Stored in its archive
s were the designs, at a molecular level, of dozens of complex tools. In Cat's experience, however, none of her schematics were as useful as a simple flashlight.
Having found a suitable piece of metal and using some of the silicon stored within her tissues, she instructed the nanites to fashion a series of LED lamps fed by a small super capacitor. The units were capable of illuminating a sizable area for up to seventy-two hours. Cat had just finished anchoring the fifth such unit when the others showed up.
Doctor Lacidem stood in awe. Being unaware that the LED array was Cat's contribution she immediately went over to inspect one of the lights. Ben of course was quite familiar with this little trick that Cat could play. He smiled at the Admiral as he headed over to the console with the three red indicators.
"Figure out what they mean and I'll fabricate some chocolate."
Ben turned to look at her with a look of utter distain on his canine face. "What, do you think I am? Some type of domesticated animal content to perform for treats?"
"Yes."
"I do so hate it when you are right," he said in a resigned tone.
The doctor joined the other two. "Those lights are nothing special. Just some type of light emitting diodes coupled with a temporary power source. What I don't understand is how they powered up."
Ben smiled at Cat. A D'lralu smiling was a horrifying sight. Cat burst out laughing. Lacidem wrapped her trunk around her neck in confusion. Her ears were unusually large and almost hid the Modos nestled on her shoulders.
"OK," the doctor said. "Something is funny. My studies indicate a similar appreciation of humor between our various species. Clearly though, I have missed something that you two are finding humorous."
Cat held her hand palm up and instructed her construction nanites to fabricate another lamp. The device appeared at first like a molten puddle of quicksilver in her hand which undulated and roiled into a flat disk that exactly resembled the five other units. Cat tapped the top and the device began to illuminate.
The doctor's trunk went slack and she fell silent.
Cat explained. "My body is filled with several different types of artificial microscopic machines we call nanites. They function to repair and augment the normal operations of my body, but they can also repair and construct based on a directed need. Given the raw materials and a template, my nanites can build virtually anything."
"You could do this... always? You were never our prisoner," she said in awe.
"No, I was not; but it was critical that you believed I was," Cat agreed with a gentle smile.
"We scanned you. I conducted your medical assessment myself."
Cat smiled again, warmly. "You were most thorough, but I have an embedded AI that can monitor a situation and actively feed your sensors values that you would expect to find while cloaking those you don't."
Finally accepting that Cat was, as they had always suspected, much more than she seemed; the doctor waved a Bearephant hand about the room. "But you discovered something. If not these lamps, then what?"
Cat pointed to the marginally lit console.
The Modos doctor looked at the softly illuminated red lights. "Not your work?"
"No."
"Whose then?"
"That," Cat said softly, "is the question of the day."
Chapter Eleven: The Other Side...
The furniture was just the first of several items to brush by the crippled Honey Dipperover the course of the next several hours. Honey directed the automated repair systems to focus on sensors and—because of an abundance of hydrocarbons in the area—a new body for herself. The body grew out of the surface of the navigation console where her head was in less than two minutes. Honey's new body was in a folded and crouched position when the organic fabrication was done. She rolled nimbly off the surface and onto the floor into a standing position. She stretched both arms and her legs, standing at one point on her tippy-toes. The feeling was luxurious.
She saw Ricky take notice and then proceed to blush a deep red that started at the back of his neck and worked its way forward to envelop his face. He quickly turned away. She chuckled to herself so as not to offend him and donned her cream-colored jump suit.
"Sensors are coming back online soon." she said while zipping up the front.
"Is it safe to turn around?" Ricky said with just a slight tremble in his voice.
"Do you think I'm dangerous?"
"Absolutely!" Ricky answered while turning to face her.
She gave him a coy smile and a wink. "You do know how to say the nicest things to a lady, Cap'n"
"The sensors?"
Honey reconfigured the navigational console to bring up a 3D holographic display. "They are auto-calibrating now. I should be able to bring up something any second now... DAMN!"
The newly activated display showed a horrific sight. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of twisted shards of metal drifted in an ever-expanding sphere centered on their current location. That wasn't the source of Honey's expletive, however. Less than a kilometer away was one of the Modos cruisers that had been part of the original attack fleet. It was heading straight for them.
"I take it we are not cloaked?" Ricky asked.
"Dearest, we are lucky to be airtight, much less cloaked."
"Are there any other energy signatures in the area they could be heading for?"
"Nary a one, Cap'n. They are most certainly coming to have a look-see at us."
"OK, if we can't hide let's at least appear to be something we are not. Can you fake a systems failure?…a power loss or something?"
The light's immediately began to flicker and then went out. A second later they came back on at half intensity and continued to flicker sporadically.
"Good job."
"Nothin' to it. I was having to work hard just to keep things go'in’. Faking a failure is really just a matter of let'n go of the reins."
"If we have ship-to-ship comms start broadcasting a general distress beacon. Claim we are survivors on a disabled and unarmed GCP prototype research shuttle." He shifted on the supply boxes he had started to use as a seat. "We want them to take both us and what’s left of the Honey Dipper onboard."
"In other words you want me to make us look tempting without looking like I'm trying to make us look tempting."
"Exactly," said Ricky as leaned back in his makeshift chair. "The key is going to be finding a way to keep them from separating us."
***
Cat scanned the now well-lit nexus room. Ken and the engineering team from the Bluefin had cleared the corridors and run a series of power lines from the pinnace parked at the entrance of the ancient facility. In addition, Ken had used his ship's fabricators to construct four very serviceable electric carts that could carry six people plus equipment with efficiency.
The Modos engineers were beside themselves in excitement when they saw what Ken's replicators were capable of. The Modos had 3D printing capability, but it was comparatively slow and limited to homogenous materials. The ability to create fully functioning machines and electronics out of complex materials—and to do it quickly—was a complete novelty.
Captain Running Stream looked like a kid who got to open his Christmas presents early. He kept glancing at Cat when he thought she was not paying attention. For the most part those looks preceded a covert smile.
"So," the captain of the Bluefin said as he exhaled deeply from his trunk. "You call these things caramel apples?"
Cat turned to look at him. Earlier Ken had been demonstrating the flexibility of the replicators. This included a demonstration of fabricating foodstuffs. Commander Ben had insisted that chocolate be among the items demonstrated. It turned out the Bearephant palate was not suited for chocolate. While they enjoyed the sweetness, the excessive presence of flavonoids, which for them was very sour, destroyed the taste. Ben was initially unwilling to have further dealings with a race that disliked chocolate, until Cat explained he would no longer need to compete with them for it. Interested in exploring the
Bearephant palate further, Ken had created a series of samples ranging from popcorn to caramel apples. It was this last that the Modos captain had taken a real liking to. Apparently the flavonoids in the skin of the apple complemented the natural tartness of the apple in a way that didn't happen with the chocolate.
"It would seem we have much to learn from each other," the captain continued.
"Indeed," Cat agreed. "I would also hope we learn more about the builders of this underground base."
"I'd like to see if we can't get to that other side of the central chasm before we start working our way down to the lower levels." Running Stream finished his apple complete with stem, core, and stick. Apparently the Bearephants were used to chewing woody twigs and viewed throwing those parts away as a waste of good food.
Exploration Page 8