by M. D. Cooper
He still gasped for air due to the low atmospheric pressure, but his heart rate lowered and she could tell he was more alert as his eyes cast about the narrow corridor.
A final crash sounded above them and a long crack appeared in one of the walls. Everyone watched it to see if it would grow, but with a final groan and shake the sounds around them stilled.
“That was a bit too close,” Jessica said with a sigh and leaned against the wall.
Markus had regained some of his color and nodded slowly. “I don’t understand what happened. There was no reason for that ceiling to fall, it was able to support a hundred times its weight… It was eventually to support a building overhead on the surface.”
“We have to assume that we were not intended to survive the encounter,” Tanis said. “We should keep moving.”
“You can’t be serious,” Markus said, and struggled to his feet with Katrina’s assistance.
“I think she’s right,” Katrina said slowly. “That stone didn’t come down without help.”
Tanis could see that Markus didn’t want to admit it, but couldn’t refute the statement. His mouth worked for a moment before he finally spoke. “Let’s move, we can assign blame later.”
She knew where he was coming from. He thought he had put this sort of danger behind him. Over the many years of the Intrepid’s journey Tanis had come to peace with the fact that this would never be over. It was more than likely she had already lived her golden years and all that lay ahead were centuries of struggle.
She held out hope that when the colony was finally established she would have peace, but it was a slim hope and she placed no faith in it.
All of her satisfaction in life would come from her love of Joe and the destruction of those who opposed her.
Angela commented.
Tanis replied.
The question was, who was behind this particular attack. Was it disgruntled Victorians, or was Myrrdan’s hand in it?
Most likely it was both.
She had hoped to draw him out, but a direct attack on her and the Victorian leadership was the last thing she expected. Myrrdan had never struck at Edener leadership before. He had always needed them to further his ends.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Jessica’s voice in her mind.
Tanis nodded her mental avatar’s head.
Tanis watched Jessica’s avatar in her mind. The other woman was emphatic, she showed concern, but no stress—only determination. Finding Jessica in that pod was one of the things that made her really consider the possibility of luck.
To meet such a kindred spirit on who she could rely as a strong right hand was enough to make her consider Bob’s theory. Even if that kindred spirit was prone to screw everything in sight and cause a few interpersonal issues on the way.
Jessica’s avatar rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand.
As they talked, the group resumed its progress through the tunnel. The air wasn’t growing thinner, but oxygen levels still weren’t bountiful. Behind them Markus continued breathing with a light wheeze, and Katrina had to support him as they walked.
Tanis give the elderly man—a man many years her junior—a worried glance. Not for the first time she gave dark thoughts to the Sirius system’s Luminescent Society. While there was disparity in Sol between the rich and poor, all were able to access rejuvenation technology.
It was part of the reason the Sol system was now home to trillions of humans.
Her reminiscing was brought short by an update from her forward nanoprobes. The tunnel ahead had collapsed.
“Hold up, folks,” she said and held up her hand. “Tunnel’s out ahead of us. We’re not going anywhere.”
Katrina gestured backward with her head. “Can’t use your nano to dissolve the rock like you did back there?”
“I could, but I’m picking up a leak near the collapse. If I dissolve that rock we could end up enjoying the surface air pressure real fast. I’m going to see if I can fuse the rock instead.”
“Sealing us in. Great,” Jessica said.
“Think of it as quality time together,” Tanis smiled.
“I’ll do that,” Jessica replied as Tanis stepped around a fallen piece of the tunnel’s ceiling.
The distance to the location of the collapse was only fifty meters, and when Tanis arrived she could feel a light breeze as air flowed past her.
Tanis nodded and pulled out her lightwand. It was a clumsy tool for the task, but beggars and all that.
Tanis nodded and set to her task.
She picked up the first stone and tacked it into place with her light wand.
Because Victoria was a low-density world it was possible to weld these light, ferrous rocks. The downside was that their low mass absorbed little heat and by the time she was on the fifth stone her fingers were beginning to blister.
Tanis completed tacking the rocks in place, ignoring the throbbing pain in her left hand. The air was getting thinner and she hurried to seal the edges of each stone to the sides of the cracks.
She slowly drew the light wand along the edge of the first stone and before long the rock was glowing bright red.
“Shit!” Tanis swore as the tacks gave way and the rock slipped out of position.
She picked up the largest stone she could easily maneuver and held it against the rock she was welding into place. Her blistered fingers complained at the task, and by the fourth stone the rock she was using to brace was getting too hot to handle.
She switched to a new bracing stone and then another. As she sealed the last rock she felt the stone in her left hand slip and tightened her grip as much as she could.
“There!” She cried triumphantly as the last weld was done and her nano reported no further air escaping.
Tanis looked in time to see the stone she used for bracing slip from her fingers, taking much of her skin with it.
The pain hit her like a sledgehammer and she sucked in a deep breath.
“Gods!”
“Stupid brain, it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t hurt,” she muttered to herself as she made her way back through the tunnel to the group.
Katrina caught sight of her hand first and covered her mouth.
“Holy shit, Tanis, what did you do?”
“Rock gets a bit hot when you melt it,” Tanis said through clenched teeth.
“I’ve heard something like that,” Jessica shook her head. “You could have asked for help, you know.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve trashed this hand. It’ll grow back,” Tanis said. “Though I must say I’ve never burned myself this much before… it’s a different kind of pain.”
“Not to mention gruesome,” Markus commented softly, still short of breath.
“Is anyone able to get a signal?” Tanis asked.
“I got a ping for a second, but then I lost it,” Jessica said. “There’s a lot of interference from the MDC, but it is subsiding, shouldn’t be long now.”
Tanis rested her back against the wall and slid down. “Good, I think I need to see a doctor.”
Jessica tore a strip off her shirt and knelt down to wrap Tanis’s hand.
“You’re getting blood all over this nice tunnel,” she said.
“Sacrificing a sexy outfit for me? I’m touched,” Tanis replied, as she closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, while Jessica folded her hand into a fist and wrapped it tightly.
The wait, as it turned out, was a little over an hour.
It didn’t take long for the rescue crews to locate them, setting up a stasis field and filling it with atmosphere took longer. Several other workers had been trapped in the city hall buildings at the other end of the atrium and were rescued first.
By the time Tanis was in the infirmary she had dozens of messages in her queue, but there was only one she cared about.
Joe chuckled.
Joe laughed over the Link.
It was Tanis’s turn to laugh.
She broke the connection and brought her thoughts back to the world around her. As she suspected, the doctors were approaching with a laser cutter and a cap for her forearm.
“Figured I trashed it,” Tanis sighed. “Time for hand number five.”
“Your medical records show this as your sixth,” a nurse said.
“Really? Oh yeah, there was that time on High Terra I only lost my fingers. Not sure it counts.”
The procedure was quick and painless. The doctors had used localized shunts to shut down all pain receptors and fake the signals of a real hand to her brain. As far as her mind could tell, there was a functional hand was at the end of her wrist.
Once the cap was on, the surgeon anchored it to the severed bones in her forearm and cautioned her to be careful until the Intrepid’s doctors could attach a new hand.
Tanis ignored their admonitions and once they were out of the room she exited the small hospital.
Outside, two Marines stood at attention; a third waited in a nearby ground car.
“Ma’am,” the lieutenant said as he and the corporal at his side saluted sharply.
Tanis returned the salute. “Good to see you, I assume you’re my escort to the CIC?”
“Yes Ma’am,” the lieutenant spoke as the corporal opened a car door for her.
“Jessica and the Victorian leaders are conducting the investigation from there.”
They rode in silence, the Marines eyeing every vehicle and pedestrian on the underground street with suspicion.
Tanis kept a wary eye as well, while also reviewing the report Jessica had provided via the Link. As she had suspected, the MDC drilling unit creating the new tunnel had malfunctioned and its aiming mechanism directed the matter decoupling array toward the surface over the new city hall.
No other sections of Landfall had been affected and miraculously there were no fatalities.
Tanis checked who was on scene at the MDC drilling unit and saw that Sarah was overseeing the site.
“Do you have a nano-restock?” she asked the lieutenant.
“Ma’am, yes ma’am, it’s in a case under your seat.”
Tanis pulled the case out and passed a token to it over the Link. The clasps popped open and she drewout two cylinders of flowmetal.
Drawing up her right sleeve she pressed the flowmetal cylinder against her forearm. The cylinder melted against her skin as the hidden receptacle absorbed the material and began manufacturing new nanobots. With the first cylinder gone, she pushed another into her arm; once it was dissolved into her flesh she instructed her nano to craft a new left hand. The process took one more cylinder, but less than five minutes later Tanis gave her new silver hand a tentative flex.
“That’s an impressive feat, ma’am,” the corporal beside her said. “I’ve never seen that be done so quickly—except in vids.”
“Helps when half your body is already made out of spare parts. The neural hookups are already in place and there’s little chance of dysphoria.”
“You don’t look that modded—if you don’t mind my saying,” the lieutenant commented from the front seat.
Tanis smiled. “Top of the line gear here, Lieutenant. Do as many undercover ops as I have and you lose track of what was original equipment. But the force never skimped on repairs and some folks on the Intrepid seem to think I’m worth keeping around too.”
“Trust me, General Richards, no one begrudges you a thing,” the lieutenant smiled. “We’d all be dead several times over if it weren’t for you.”
“It was a team effort. You’ve all seen action keeping our collective skins together. You deserve as much credit as I.”
“Thanks for saying so,” the corporal at her right said. “But we all know that’s not true.”
“Take the next left,” Tanis instructed. “We’re visiting the drilling rig first.”
“Is that wise?” the lieutenant asked. “I—.”
“Doesn’t matter if it’s wise, lieutenant,” Tanis said without rancor. “We need our people there inspecting and with Jessica at the CIC we’re the closest qualified.”
“We’re qualified?” the corporal asked.
“Well, Angela is.”
“Tanis!” Sarah said with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought I’d come take a look at our homicidal drilling rig here.”
The drilling machine lay at
the end of a mile-long horizontal shaft. Drilling with an MDC was quite a feat. The control required to ensure the field maintained the desired shape and strength was beyond most engineers. It certainly was not done with this level of finesse—nor near habitations—back in Sol.
The tunnel had straight sides and an arched ceiling. Likewise, the floor was perfectly level and clear of debris. The unit itself also appeared undamaged, though its emitter appeared to be fully open and it was still aimed toward the town hall’s atrium.
There the tunnel wall had a wide hole in it. Tanis’s nano were well ahead of her and she flipped her vision to see the picture they provided. The hole was wide and flat, the edges were sharp at first, but then they became jagged and diffuse as the field had spread.
Three hundred meters in, the stone was solid, though fractured through and through.
“No one died, did they?” Sarah’s shock response to Tanis’s earlier statement brought her attention back to the physical world around her.
“Sorry, no. Not homicidal then, perhaps just very angry,” Tanis replied.
“The crew reports that there was a short in the emitter array that fed back into the control circuits. They shut it down as quickly as they could. I’m glad no one died,” Sarah replied.
Tanis looked at Sarah with every sense she had. The woman’s skin was moist and her heart rate was elevated. The flick of her eyes and fingers told Tanis that Sarah was hiding something. She didn’t have the tells of someone directly implicated, but she knew something.
“I don’t believe this was an accident,” Tanis said.