by R. A. Mejia
She extends a tentaclelike cord and plugs into an access port on the back of my suit and various sensor modes flash across my visor as she accesses them.
“I believe that you might have found what we’re looking for. There are signs of recent seismic actively as well as active burn damage to the ground around this area.”
Proud of my find, I ask, “What do you think happened then?”
“We’ve already seen that the crust of this planet has a deep layer of loose topsoil above a porous crust filled with naturally-occurring tunnels and caverns. That’s what let the forward portion of the ship crash halfway into the earth. It’s also what allows the graboids to move so freely. The cargo hold must have crashed through to the tunnels and caverns. The mountain poured into the hole it created as it crashed, covering any observable trace of its passing.”
“That’s a surprisingly detailed hypothesis.”
“Well, it’s only a speculation until we actually find it. If I’m correct, there must be another way down.” Remembering the pockets where steam billows from, I’m inspired. “Why can’t we use those steam vents? They’re big enough for a man to fit through.”
“Not a bad idea, John.”
We have to backtrack a little but eventually we find a hole big enough for both of us to drop through. Looking down through the hole doesn’t show anything, and dropping a rock into it reveals that it’s very deep. Thankfully, we brought the automated pulley system and soon I’m descending. It gets progressively darker until it’s impossible for me to see, and I have to turn on the exterior lights on my suit. In an instant, I wish I hadn’t. I’m descending into a massive underground cavern full of shadows cast by large stalactites and stalagmites, and I’m reminded of the mouth of some great monster ready to devour me whole. The descent takes a long time, but I eventually place my feet on the hard rock of the cavern floor.
“Watch out below!” is the only warning I get as a round object plummets down from above me. I have to scramble to get out of her way as SAI hits the ground with a loud clang. The poor robot bounces off of the floor, hits a side wall, and then bounces back into the air again. When she finally comes to a stop, you can tell that her outer casing has been damaged, and I’m unsure if her internals are still fine.
“SAI? Are you okay?”
There’s a static-filled giggly reply, “Yes, John. I believe I am functional. Although, I may be slowed down.”
I shake my head in disbelief at what she did. “Why didn’t you use the rope to descend, SAI?”
“I thought it would be fun to show you my imitation of a pinball.”
Replaying the fall in my mind and see humor. She rolls forward away from her landing site. I try to hold in a giggle as I watch her. Because her outer shell is damaged, she looks like a car with a flat tire, rolling along with a limp.
Looking around the massive underground cavern, with ceilings too high to even see, I ask, “Where are you going, SAI?”
She pauses her limping roll and turns to speak to me. “I’m moving towards the location of that massive object you detected. Didn’t you see that I marked it on your map?”
Honestly, I hadn’t used the map feature in a while, instead relying on SAI for direction. I pull it up on my helmet display and see the green dot marked ‘Possible Crash Site’ and my own red dot in the center of the map. I’m about to thank SAI for her forethought, but when I look down at her, she’s already rolled ahead, and I have to jog to catch up.
The two of us travel through the cavern, zig-zagging through the stalagmites that have grown up from the floor and climbing over fallen boulders. At one point, we come across a massive circular tunnel that bisects the cavern we are following. It’s much smoother than the natural cavern and I can only guess that it must have been made by something massive that I hope to never meet. The two of us quickly travel along the smooth tunnel until it again crosses the natural cavern. After several hours of travel, we finally reach the area we were looking for. Checking my readouts, I still have six hours’ worth of oxygen and electricity.
Even with the limited light from my suit, it’s easy to tell that our hypothesis was correct: something large came crashing through the ground above, and the mountain came down after it. There’s a massive pile of loose dirt and rock that leads to a partially-covered section of the Argonaut. Thankfully, our journey through the underground caverns has deposited us exactly where we want to be. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to tunnel through all that fallen rock by hand.
I have to dig away enough debris to reveal an access hatch normally used for repairs on the outside of the cargo hold, and once I do, SAI plugs into the ship and releases the clamps holding the door shut from the inside. The circular hatch opens, and SAI drops through without hesitation. Not knowing where or what I might land on, however, I take my time climbing through. The lights of my suit reveal a crawl space designed to give access to the internal mechanics and wiring of the ship. It’s a tighter squeeze that I’d like in the suit, but I slowly crawl after SAI, following her through tunnels and down ladders until I find her waiting for me at another hatch.
A little breathlessly I ask, “Is this it? Is this the hatch to the cargo hold?”
“Yes, I just wanted to make sure you caught up before I opened it,” she says. Two cords extend from her robotic body and plug into a port next to the hatch. There’s a pause, and then the door beeps and opens. SAI rolls forward, giving me enough room to push the hatch open and crawl out into the darkness beyond. I’m glad to get off my hands and knees, and as I stand, I brush off the dust off my engineering suit.
The light from my suit is the only illumination in the dark hold, and looking around, I feel like I’m in another massive cavern, only this one is made of steel. The light from my suit barely reaches the ceiling, but I am clearly able to see stacks of crates of all sizes that are higher than I am tall. Some are the size of a small house, and some are as big as a bread basket. The intent to create an efficiently-packed space with little aisles between major piles to travel through is evident. Unfortunately, the crash messed up the neatly-organized plan. As I walk through the aisles, it’s evident that the force of the crash snapped the lines and straps holding everything down, and some of the cargo has gone flying and been destroyed. There’s a pile of opened crates with thick cylinders of some shiny metal. A quick spectral analysis shows it to be Titanium, and SAI informs me it’s used in the frames of ships that frequent high-temperature planets. Another pile of crates has spilled open, and a liquid has poured out. A peek at the contents makes me gasp. There are dozens of broken bottles of Andarrian Ale, one of the best liquors in the settled galaxies. I once saw a thousand-year-old bottle go for enough credits to buy a fully-outfitted cargo ship. While I doubt these bottles are nearly that valuable, their demise strikes a pained chord with my drinker’s heart. That is until I see that there are two undamaged crates. Then, I only wish that I had some super straw to pour some of it into my suit or that I could get the atmosphere in this cargo hold to be Earth normal so that I could take a sip of the brew.
“John, stop gawking at all the broken cargo. We have work to do and little time to do it.”
The admonition pulls me away from the treasure of booze, and I follow SAI around the cargo hold. We have to climb over several mounds of toppled crates and detour through several aisles. I can’t help but wonder at some of the strange items I see in the hold and wonder what I could have deconstructed them into if I’d only had access to all this stuff. Maybe there would have been some way to contact the Federation?
SAI stops and turns to me, her lights blinking excitedly. “Here we are, John.”
I look around and find myself staring up at a massive crate two stories tall and at least half again as wide. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t something this big. The fabricator in the ship wasn’t nearly this large. “Wow, that’s way bigger than I expected.”
Without any hesitation and completely deadpan, SAI responds,
“That’s what she said.”
SAI’s quick response catches me off guard, but after a moment’s pause, I feel a huge grin spread across my face, and I start to laugh. It’s been such a long time since I’ve heard anything resembling a good joke that the unabashed amused laughter just spills forth from my throat like a torrent of bubbly happiness. It takes me a few minutes to get it all out, and by then, I’m leaning over trying to catch my breath.
“From your laughter, can I take it that my attempt at humor was received well?”
Still chuckling a little, I answer, “Yeah, SAI, you can say that. That was a really well timed ‘that’s what she said.’ I don’t know that I could have done better. Congratulations on succeeding in your humor experiments.”
The lights on her cover turn a shade of pink. “Thank you, John. I studied comedic timing while you were traveling to the communications section.” Her lights change back to their normal blue, and she continues, “But we should really focus on the task at hand. We need to remove the cargo cover from the military fabricator and start up the machine if we’re going to accomplish anything. I don’t know how long it will take, so we should get started.”
I activate the sonic wrench on my left arm and start to remove the fasteners holding the cargo crate together. It takes a while, but the crate collapses revealing the prize inside: the awe-inspiring military fabricator.
Chapter 13
Finally, I’m able to get a good look at the military-grade fabricator that we’ve been after. It’s so large the lights from my suit can’t encompass the whole thing at once, but each piece I see is more impressive than the last. The closest section is where the fabrication is done. It has three steps that lead to a smooth circular platform with dark metallic railings around it. It is reminiscent of the one in engineering, but this one is three times the size of that. We had to fabricate my new suit in pieces and then assemble it all, but this one looks as if it could make three suits all at the same time and still have room left over. Additionally, the one in engineering was integrated into the ship with wires, pipes, and the storage system all spread out. This one, however, appears to be self-contained. Overall, it looks like one of those crabs that carries its shell on its back. It is over two stories tall and half again as wide with six crab-like legs that let it stand upright, a pincer-like appendage on each side with industrial excavator heads, and several large-man-sized canisters on the opposite side of the fabrication platform.
“SAI, are you sure this is the right thing? It looks more like a giant arthropod than a fabricator.”
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s a self-contained, mobile fabricator that is able to move around as a mobile unit so that it can go to where the resources are. It also has top-of-the-line condensing units that enable it store enough raw elemental materials to construct a small space ship in one fabrication pass. A self-contained reactor provides all the power the unit needs.”
I imagine this huge machine walking around a planet, grabbing resources and feeding itself. It would seem like an ever-hungry monster to some civilizations.
“So, the military uses this thing to make ships and stuff?”
“Oh, no, John. The fabricator has plans for robotic soldiers, weapons, armored vehicles, and aerial support. The military uses a machine like this to take over a planet. The fabricator is dropped off along with a small military force, and it makes its own army.”
The amount of power that this machine represents staggers my mind. I genuinely hadn’t thought about it in those terms. It’s no wonder those pirates are willing to expend so many resources to get their hands on it. “So, now that we’ve found it, what’s next? Do we just start it up and fabricate an intergalactic communications system?”
The rolly-polly robot turns to me, and its lights turn yellow. “Yes, John. That’s exactly what we do. Once we get control over the system, we can make that and just about anything else we can find the resources for. And, with the elemental storage tanks already in the cargo hold, there’s not much we couldn’t make.”
“What do you mean take control over the system? Don’t we already have control of the fabricator?”
SAI’s yellow lights flash, and I think it means she’s laughing at me. “No, John, it’s not as simple as turning on a switch and entering in a schematic like we did in engineering. This is high-grade military tech. It has its own A.I., security system, and operating parameters. We’ll have to hack in first in order to gain root access to its system before it’ll make even a simple screw for us.”
I hadn’t realized we’d have to go that far. “Uh . . . I don’t know if you know this, but my computer skills are rather limited. My wife had to show me how to get our house A.I. to work.”
“It’s fine, John. When I said ‘we,’ I really meant me. I’ll interface with the system and try to explain to the military A.I. what’s happening. Hopefully, I’ll convince it to let us use the fabricator. Otherwise, I’ll have to take control and that won’t be pretty for either of us.” SAI swivels in place and continues, “I don’t know how long all this will take. It may be minutes or days. I’ll need you to help me, John.”
“Sure. Anything. I want to contact the Federation as much as you do.”
“I’ll be vulnerable while I talk to the military A.I., John. I’ll need you to defend me against any outside influences. I can’t access the systems in the cargo hold without power, so I can’t back myself up there. If the pirates come, they’ll recognize what I’m trying to do. If they destroy my robotic body before I’m able to convince the A.I. to help us, they’ll destroy what’s left of me in here.” SAI’s lights turn a pale blue. “Please don’t let them destroy me, John.”
“I promise you, SAI: I’ll do everything I can to make sure the pirates never reach you. It’ll take an army to get through that cave in, and even if they do get through, I have plans to stop them when they get here.”
SAI is silent for a moment before saying quietly, “Thank you.” Then her lights brighten. “Before I start my work, let’s get your suit’s systems recharged. There should be spare oxygen pods and batteries here in the cargo hold.”
The two of us search through the massive cargo hold until we find the supplies we need. SAI replaces my oxygen and batteries, bringing both systems back up to 100%, and then we go back to the military fabricator where she extends two data cables and plugs herself into its ports. The huge machine lights up immediately, its display console activates, and its crab-like legs raise the whole thing off the ground. While I take a step backward, afraid of getting crushed, SAI calmly stays where she is. The lights on her start to flash a spectrum of colors, and the military fabricator responds in kind with long strings of code flowing across the display console. The two artificial entities seem to have begun some kind of communication process.
I try to ask SAI how things are going but don’t get any response. I don’t know if she’s just talking to the fabricator A.I. or if she’s already trying to hack it. I worry for a moment that SAI might not win in a digital fight with a military-grade A.I., but then I remember all the years’ experience she has flying through space, dealing with strange alien races, and how she’s already proved her mettle in battle with the pirates. I’ll have to trust that my friend can handle herself. I realize that it’s the first time I’ve consciously thought of SAI as my friend. She is though. She’s saved my life on more than one occasion and helped me to survive this hostile alien world. Without her, I’d have died a dozen times over. More than that, she’s stopped me from giving up and provided me with hope of seeing my family again. I feel a little moisture in my eye and go to wipe it with my hand but only hit the helmet. I laugh at how comfortable I’ve become in this stupid suit that I forget I have it on sometimes.
After ten minutes of standing there watching the pretty lights, I decide to sit and think of any way to defend this position from the imminent pirate threat. Despite what I told SAI, I don’t have a plan to deal with the pirates. I actually do have a few ideas about h
ow to stall them, but it will take time to figure out how to implement them. Unfortunately, I only have a limited amount of time to figure it all out before the pirates track us down.
I start by walking through the cargo hold and noting all the resources that are available to me. On the far side, there are huge one-story tanks that hold all the elemental materials that the engineering fabricator would use. It undoubtedly has everything I’d need to make weapons, traps, and armor, but we don’t have access to the fabricator yet, and I can’t depend on getting access to it any time soon. Luckily, I find a datapad in one of the lockers on the wall that still works and contains a catalog of all the materials in storage here.