“I believe that that is exactly what it is,” Mal replied excitedly. Skye pulled her Information Transfer Port out of one of the pockets in her suit. She plugged her ITP into the panel; it was a perfect fit.
“When did the colonists come down here?”
“There is no record of this in the Fori database,” Mal replied. “Although, I could see how perhaps someone might have escaped to this point and modified the panel.”
“Maybe we’ve found the survivors,” Skye said excitedly.
“I hope you’re right,” Mal responded.
“Okay, Mal,” Skye said. “Do your stuff.” In a few short seconds, there was a whirr from inside of the door as Mal accessed the system. The door opened with a loud click, and swung open. Skye looked inside expectantly.
Chapter Five
The room was large, and lit by amber-colored lights that hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered in a network of the black tubes, all feeding into to a circle of several pedestals in the center. The pedestals were covered, and the covers were coated in centuries of dust, except for one, which had been broken. Skye walked over to it, examining it. Beside the stone shards of the pedestal was a pool of the viscous liquid that the scientists at Fori had been studying.
“What is it, Mal?” she asked.
“The polyatomic ion flows from the pedestals into the black tubes,” Mal answered. “It must be used as some sort of communication system!”
“Did your scan with the ITP offer any sort of map?”
“I’m having a bit of trouble processing the data, I’m afraid.” Mal said. “I’m beginning to see some of the patterns, but it is taking me a little while to decode—I am wholly unfamiliar with their tongue; the closest approximation in the human system is Earth’s Morse code, only several magnitudes more complex.”
“So the polyatomic ion is a communication device?”
“A communication substance, among other things,” Mal said. “But most importantly, it seems the ion is a biological substance that is necessity for the Celaenans’ way of life—recall the hallway, where the two Celaenans awoke the other using the flow of Celaenium Matter.”
“So it awakens them, too?”
“Yes,” Mal replied. “A multipurpose substance.”
Skye looked across the room from the circle of pedestals. About ten meters away from the pedestals, the opposite wall of the chamber stood. There was a series of steep steps, leading up to a door, and beside the steps there was another door. Skye walked over confidently.
“Which one do you think?” Skye asked.
“The lower one,” Mal said.
“Why?”
“Because it heads into the city.”
“You couldn’t tell me before?”
“I have only just accessed their maps.”
“So we’ve found it. Let’s head upwards, Mal,” she said. “I don’t think we have the time to go any further. We’ve found what we were looking for.”
“I agree—heading back toward the ship is better than continuing to explore—we do not want to run out of time down here.”
“And I don’t know, Mal. The idea of being out of range and running out of time…it’s a bit concerning.” Skye said, walking up the steps and locating another panel beside the door.
“Concerning in what way?” Mal asked.
“Haven’t you thought about it?” Skye asked. “If something happens to us down here, that’s it.”
“I suppose I haven’t thought about it in that way,” Mal said. “We will continue to exist, of course. It’s not as if the network will be lost. It’s the whole point of the program.”
“Sure, there can be new copies of us, but us? This instance of us?” Sky asked. “We would die.”
“Now you’re pulling the Ship of Thesius on me.” Mal said. “Enough dark talk. It makes my circuits shiver.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Skye said. “Anyway, we’ll at least be able to get the rescue crews this far.”
“Farther. I have a decent map of the tunnels leading into the city.” Skye inspected the panel beside the door. It appeared that the link up on this door had been ripped out violently. Pulling out a sonic driver and a pair of chronopliers, Skye began to repair it.
“I wonder how they knew which wires to cross?” She mused as she examined the wiring of the panel; all of the wires were the same matte black, and had the same general thickness.
“Trial and error, I suppose,” Mal replied. Skye carefully matched wires which had been crossed and then loosened, twisting their frayed ends back together. She pulled out her welding tool, bending the metal of the link up so that the link up for her ITP device was in working order again.
“Looks like your work,” Mal said.
“Is that meant to be a compliment?” Skye asked. Removing her ITP, she began to link it with the panel, just like she did before.
“Okay, Mal,” she said. “Let’s see what’s behind door number two.” There was another whirr, and a clunk as the door swung open. Immediately, there was the sound of several Celaenans hissing and clicking. Skye heard their tiny legs skittering across the rock floor. There was another tunnel behind the door, and they were coming on quickly, their scythe-like forearms glinting in the gloom.
“That’s a no-go, Mal!” Skye yelled, grabbing for the panel beside the door, and setting it to “closed.” It began to slide shut, and Skye quickly detached her ITP from the panel. She bounded down the steps, ducking and rolling away from the creatures at the bottom.
Before the door finished closing, four Celaenons scurried through on slender legs. Not wanting to return the way she came, Skye moved quickly toward the door beside the stairs. She found that the panel here already had a modification for the ITP.
“Whoever performed the mod came this way,” she told Mal. “They must’ve ripped out the panel on the other door as a warning.”
“One we did not heed,” Mal replied desolately. Skye slammed her ITP into the port, setting it to “open” and willed it to move faster as she slipped through the small opening at the bottom of the door. On the other side, she set it to “close.” A small, claw-like hand reached through the opening, grabbing Skye by her arm. The force took her off balance and she landed on her head. Suddenly everything around her went pitch black as her HUD was knocked offline. The creature pulled her slowly back through the door as it inched downward. The other Celaenons sliced at her suit with their bladed forearms as she kicked and grabbed against the doorframe for purchase. The chitinous blades clinked against the metal doorframe as they missed, the Celaenans stabbing and swiping with vicious, reckless abandon.
Thinking quickly, Skye pulled out her utility blade, aiming for the creature’s skull. Her utility knife was double-sided; one side was serrated, and the other was smooth. She jabbed with the blade and it deflected off of the hard skull plate and out of her grip, clicking uselessly against hard bone and chitin. Skye watched the blade melt into the darkness. Reaching in desperation with her free hand, Skye grabbed a stone off of the ground in the hallway. It was slim enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and was slightly pointed on one side.
“Aim for the nape of the skull,” Mal suggested. “My diagnostics of the position of chitinous plating reveals a 78% chance of it being a structurally deficient area. ”
“That would be great if I could see!” Skye yelled.
“Working on it!” Mal replied. Her HUD came online as Skye brought the rock down on the back of the creature’s skull, at the very center. It recoiled, shrieking in pain, but did not release her hand. The door finally arced shut, closing on the torso of the Celaenan that held her, as well as on her arm, crushing both with a horrible, sickening crunch.
Skye screamed in agony. The dark polyatomic ion oozed out of the creature and brought on a second wave of pain as it soaked through the suit and into Skye’s crushed arm. Dropping the rock, Skye moaned in pain.
“It burns so bad,” she gasped. “What’s the status of my arm?”
“Ir
reparably crushed, I’m afraid,” Mal replied.
“There’s nothing I can do?”
“Short of cutting it off—”
“Alright then.” Picking up her utility knife once more, Skye inhaled, bolstering herself as she began to saw off the arm with the serrated edge of the blade.
“Oh my goodness!” Mal yelled. Gasping in pain, Skye pulled away from the door, looking at the dripping stump that remained of her arm. It ended just above the elbow.
“Sarcasm is not appreciated,” Skye yelped.
“Skye—are you alright?” Mal’s voice was heavy with concern. Skye reeled like she was inebriated, attempting to get to her feet. She grabbed the wall beside her, finding purchase just in time to slide back down, the world fading to black as she passed out.
Chapter Six
Skye awoke to the sound of Mal’s voice, urgently yelling in her ear. Her head ached from the hard fall she had taken earlier. Her hand was on a smooth, cool surface—the floor here was hewn of stone. The other hand—it was gone, she remembered with a sickening lurch in her stomach.
“Skye! Skye! Wake up!” She suddenly became aware that there was an insistent chiming coming from within the suit, and a warning message flashing across the view on the HUD. Skye felt the throbbing of her arm—the pain magnified at the ragged stump where her damaged arm had been.
“Mal?” she croaked. Her throat was dry and it burned with every breath.
“You are at eighteen percent capacity, Skye. You must repair your arm, and fix the leak that is in your suit. You are losing your supply of oxygen at an unsustainable rate.” Skye was breathing heavily, the pain from her arm overwhelming her in waves. “You were unconscious for far too long. I’ve been trying to wake you for hours.”
“Mal, I need you to turn off my pain receptors,” she said hoarsely.
“I can’t do that,” Mal said. “You won’t be able to sense any other damage to this body. And at eighteen percent—”
“Mal! Just do it! Or we won’t be getting out of here,” Skye rasped. “I can’t think clearly when I’m in this much pain.”
“Oh, very well,” Mal’s voice was heavy with reluctance. Skye felt the pain recede as her receptors were overridden by her neural connection with Mal. Her breathing began to normalize, returning to a baseline, and her mind began to clear and regain focus.
Skye understood the necessity of pain. Her designers had impressed that concept into her early on. Without feeling pain, she would often push her body beyond its limits, causing her to fail in accomplishing her mission. She could still remember the engineers arguing over her fringe cases, and with the introduction of Mal, they agreed she could be given the option to disable her pain if the situation called for it.
She rolled up her sleeve gently, wincing at the raggedness of what was left of her arm. Skye pulled her welding tool out of her tool belt, turning it on. It ignited an electric blue blaze with a hiss.
She touched the flame to her wound, watching as the jagged edges of her flesh began to cauterize, melting into a vague, flesh-toned mass. The smell was horrific—the scent of burning metaplastics caused her eyes to tear. She ran the flame over the wound several times until she was satisfied with her work. She pulled the sleeve of her suit back over the stump, returning her welding tool to her utility belt. She then pulled out a polymer adhesive to repair the sleeve of her suit. As the adhesive dried, Skye picked up the rock that she had attempted to use as a weapon.
It was slate colored and metallic—a solid form of the polyatomic ion, it seemed. It shone a little in the light of her night vision. Her HUD registered the weak glow of minor electrical signals.
“What is it, Mal?” she asked. “What do they use it for?”
“This is confusing. It appears to be a sort of control device—something having to do with the pedestals in that room that we were forced to exit in such a hasty manner. From what I can tell, it carries data—it has a vast memory store. It is old, Skye—ancient.”
“Ancient. Something I’ll never be.” Skye looked at the rock-like device, turning it over in the palm of her remaining hand. She glanced over at the crushed body of the Celaenan. It was the first time that she had gotten a chance to study one—its beady, insect-eyes stared at her blankly, its head cocked at an awkward angle. It was lying in a pool of dark black ichor mixed with the metallic luster of the polyatomic ion, its hard chitinous exoskeleton broken into fragmented pieces.
“Why haven’t the others made it through the door?” Skye wondered aloud. “I mean, if they don’t know how to open the doors, then how could they have built them?”
“A salient point,” Mal replied. “Whoever did the modification to the ITP panel made it so that others without the ITP cannot get through.” Skye got to her feet using her one arm to right herself. She put the rock-like input device inside a pouch on her utility belt. She began to look about the room that she now found herself trapped in. She stood on a wide platform, high above the ground. It was at the top of a series of platforms, over which ran a waterfall of Celaenium Matter. The waterfall originated somewhere above her head, the door that she had come through in a rock wall that she could not see the top of from where she stood.
The room was cavernous—it led to a drop and an opening that overlooked the city of ruins. Its walls were smooth—obviously hewn by hand out of the rock. Each platform was about a meter and a half above the one below it. The platforms were wide; there was enough room beside the waterfall on them for Skye to jump down into the room itself. There were roughly twelve platforms as far as Skye could see, although there may have been more leading down into the city.
“This must be how they get the polyatomic ion into the city,” Skye remarked.
“Indeed. This is hand-made,” Mal said.
“How much of it?”
“All. Look, Skye—it appears that there is the beginning of a network of tunnels. It lines up with the schematics I’ve been trying to decode,” Mal’s voice was chipper in her ear. Skye looked in the direction where red arrows in her HUD highlighted the beginnings of several passageways leading off into the darkness beyond the lowest platform. “Perhaps they will lead us out.”
“I hope you’re right, Mal. I’m definitely feeling sapped.” Skye said, poising herself to take on the five-foot jump.
“Well, we would have thirty hours remaining,” Mal cautioned. “However, due to the leak in your suit, you only have eight hours of oxygen remaining.”
“And we need to get back to the ship in order to upload our findings and report back to the Council,” Skye said. She jumped down off of the first platform, landing in a crouch, using her one hand to support her. She exhaled in relief, walking to the next. She repeated this, always landing in a crouch until the sixth platform, about midway down, she paused. She had spotted a small alcove in the rock wall, up against the platform above the one that she stood on.
More of the black tubing ran along the walls—here, the tubing appeared to have been pulled out of the wall, collapsing it. It gave off small golden sparks of electricity in short intervals, hissing and crackling. Breathing heavily from her exertions, Skye walked over to it, studying it for a moment. A large amount of the Celaenium Matter that had been conducting the electricity through the tubes had spilled out, and was dripping from the end of the tube and onto the floor in a glutinous, shiny metallic puddle.
“Mal,” she said. “Could we possibly create more oxygen by burning the hydration supply in the suit?” She pulled off a length of tube that was no longer sparking, considering the possible uses for it.
“It is a viable option,” Mal mused. “I will warn you, according to Fori research records, the polyatomic ion is highly reactive to the presence of heat—like the sparks that are being produced by the broken tubing.”
“Easy enough,” Skye said, pulling her good arm out of its sleeve. “We can create a closed system using this tube, and then use the sparks to create a heat source.” She reached up with her arm into her helmet
from the inside for the oxygen reclaimer, and pulled the small tube into the carefully sealed pouch that she had created within the sleeve of her destroyed arm. She then pulled the remains of her right arm into the suit.
She double-checked her utility pouch to ensure she still had the polymer adhesive. Next, she held her breath, detached the right arm piece, and slapped on the polymer adhesive to seal the right sleeve of her suit at the shoulder. She waited for it to dry, pinching it tightly with two fingers of her left hand.
She got out her welding tool, and prepped the metal tubing that had come off of the wall, cutting it with her utility knife. It was difficult going with only the one arm. She found that by pushing her stump against her chestpiece, she could steady the piece that she was working on while using her undamaged hand to do the modification work.
She welded a seal in the tubing to close off one end, and then siphoned water from her hydration system via a plastic tube. She poked a small hole into the end of her discarded right sleeve, and poked the open end of the metal tubing inside. Hooking the oxygen reclaimer to the end of the water-filled metal tube, she pulled her left hand back inside of her suit. She attached the reclaimer to her oxygen source inside of her suit.
She held up the tubing to the electrical source on the wall where it was sparking, creating a charge inside of the system that she had created. The charge then split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. She leaned against the alcove, sliding down to the floor as her improvised oxygen generator began to replenish her oxygen source. She watched the level percentage rise by one point.
“How long do you estimate that it will take to fully replace the oxygen supply?” she asked Mal.
“Four hours, two minutes, and twenty-seven seconds,” Mal replied.
“Ugh, that will leave us with—”
“Twenty-four hours, thirty-two minutes, and fifty-three seconds,” Mal supplied helpfully.
“Nebulae.” Skye looked about her. “What do we do while we wait, Mal?”
“What’s the charge on the plasma blaster?” He asked. Skye pulled it from its holster, checking the levels of charge.
The Engineer's Escape: The Swallowtail Voyages, Book 1 Page 4