by Doug Farren
An image of a dark opening in the side of the cliff appeared.
“It looks like a cave. I think it’s a tunnel. The floor is level with the landing zone and it was built under the overhang of the cliff so it would be impossible to see from space. I think we’ve found the home of the gods. Let me know when you’re up. I want to go check this out as soon as possible.”
The image vanished.
“Interesting,” Lashpa said.
“I agree,” Krish replied. “Tom has asked that I inform him when you are awake—shall I do so?”
“Only if he’s awake.”
“He is. According to Orion, Tom has not yet slept.”
A few minutes later, Tom, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and dripping water on the floor, walked into the Krish’s small kitchen while Lashpa was eating breakfast. Lashpa deposited the squirming multi-tentacled creature into her mouth and started chewing.
“Good god that stinks!” Tom said. “It looked like an octopus. What the hell is it?”
“It’s called a birn,” Lashpa replied. “The smell is caused by a toxin secreted by the birn’s skin. We’re immune to its effect although it does cause a slight burning sensation as it goes down. Why are you wet?”
“It’s pouring out,” Tom replied.
“You look terrible, why didn’t you get any sleep last night?”
“Too busy looking over the scans from the Mountain of the Gods and thinking about what we might find there,” Tom said, holding up his cup of coffee. “I’ll be running on caffeine today. So what do you think? Have we found the creators of the Mowry? Or, at least their base of operations?”
“You might be right,” she replied, wiping her mouth and hands with a towel. “But I have my doubts we’ve found the creators of T11-N106, which is why we’re here. It’s obvious that the facility on the top of that mountain has been long abandoned. Still, I would like to take a look at it.”
“The Voice of Gwon-Go did say that the Purists had gone up there but they refused to tell him what they found. They either found something or they were just being typically Purist.”
Lashpa looked at the container sitting on the table. It held several more of the octopus-like birn. She considered grabbing another but decided against it. Picking it up, she slid it back into its storage slot in the wall. “The Gwon have been gone for centuries,” she said. “And I doubt there was anything of value to be found. But we’ll check it out. Since the Purists were there, I suggest we do our investigation in combat armor.”
“If they did find something, they’re not going to want anyone else to know about it,” Tom replied. “I agree—combat armor. The sun will be coming up soon. Let’s go!”
“Krish,” Lashpa said, “Take us to the Mountain of the Gods.”
“Acknowledged,” the ship replied. “ETA three hours via atmospheric flight.”
“You should get some sleep,” Lashpa suggested.
“I’ve had far too much coffee,” Tom replied as the ship’s propulsion system came to life. “How about a game of chess instead?”
Three hours later, the Krish’s AI informed them that they were nearing the mountain. Tom gratefully tipped over his king conceding the game he was losing to Lashpa.
“You played a terrible game,” Lashpa told him.
“I told you I was tired,” Tom replied.
Lashpa turned and headed for the control center. “Perhaps you should have gotten some sleep instead of staying up all night,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m going to check the area out before landing.”
Lashpa settled into the control chair that was specifically designed to accept her Rouldian physique. It looked more like a long couch than a chair. “God mode,” she said.
The ship heard the command and a moment later most of the control center vanished as the ship’s computer took control of her cybernetic eyes. She could clearly see everything outside the vessel as well as the controls needed to maneuver the ship. Taking manual control, she slowed their approach and then began a long slow spiraling descent. A moment later, Tom’s disembodied head appeared, floating in the control center just to Lashpa’s left.
“I’ve remoted into the Orion,” he said. “I’ll start at the top and perform a spiral around the mountain until I get to the level of the landing zone. You like this god mode, don’t you?”
“I do,” she replied. “I’m even beginning to like the name you gave it.”
God mode was something Tom had created as he explored the abilities of his own ship. At first, it was called ‘external view’, but recently he’d started calling it ‘god mode’. After giving it a try herself, Lashpa decided it was a superior way to fly the ship instead of relying on her instruments alone.
“I’m not picking up anything unusual on any of the sensors,” Lashpa reported. “If there’s a facility under that mountain, it’s very well hidden.”
“My scans are clear as well,” Tom said. “Defense installations would be easy to spot,” he suggested. “Perhaps the builders decided against them in return for a lesser chance of the facility being found.”
“That’s a possibility. I’d like to sweep this entire side of the mountain from a height of 30 meters before landing,” Lashpa announced.
“Agreed.”
Forty-five minutes later, Lashpa slowly descended and touched down on the Mountain of the Gods as close to the entrance as possible. The Orion landed next to her, setting down with its hull less than a meter from Krish’s.
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll meet you outside,” Tom said just before his head disappeared.
It took only ten minutes for them to don their combat armor. Lashpa walked down the Krish’s ramp and looked around. Other than a flat expanse of rock with a few weeds growing out of the cracks, she saw nothing. She walked out from under her ship and stared at the tunnel. Even with her enhanced vision, it looked like nothing more than a dark hole in the side of the mountain.
Her proximity detector told her that Tom was approaching. He stopped a few meters away and looked down.
“Look at this,” he said, pointing to a spot on the ground.
Lashpa came over and looked. “Crushed rock and drag marks,” she said. “Looks like someone was here.” Glancing around again, she added, “They cleaned up pretty well though.”
“Let’s go see what they found,” Tom said. “Deploying drones.”
A small cloud of tiny drones detached themselves from both of their suits.
“Set them to attach to the tunnel wall every 30 meters so we have a communications link back to the ships,” Lashpa suggested. “Deploy the rest ahead of us in case the Purists left any surprises behind.”
“Done,” Tom said after a minute. “Care to go first?”
Lashpa walked toward the tunnel, every sensor on the lookout for danger. For the first 20 meters they saw only rough-cut rock. As the light behind them began to fade, they encountered a thick metal wall. Based on the thickness of the opening, the door must have been enormous. The door, however, was gone.
“Take a look at the edges,” Lashpa said, shining a light around the edge of the door. “Most of the metal is dull but the edge is shiny.”
“There’s spatter marks and streamers of hardened steel on the floor as well,” Tom said. “Someone recently cut their way in. I wonder where the piece they removed is?”
“They might have just tossed it off the cliff,” Lashpa replied. “It could be anywhere down the mountain.”
“Or they took it away to have it analyzed,” Tom suggested.
They walked past the missing door and into a long, empty tunnel, their boots creating strange, reverberating echoes off the smooth walls. The tunnel here was painted a light shade of green with light fixtures mounted to the ceiling at regular intervals. They walked in silence for another 100 meters until they encountered an open door. This one was considerably thinner than the first. After examining it closely, they came to the conclusion that the latches had been cut and the door f
orced open.
“This place was most likely sealed when the Purists found it,” Lashpa said.
On the other side of the door, they encountered a small alcove large enough for a dozen people to comfortably mill around. Three other doors, all obviously forced open, led into the facility.
“See those holes along the walls?” Tom asked, pointing toward the top of the wall. “Could have been weapon mounts.”
Lashpa looked through the door to her right, the powerful lights of her suit illuminating the long hallway. There were dark entryways at regular intervals on both the right and the left for as far as she could see. “Sleeping quarters?” she asked.
Tom had poked his head through the center door. “This looks interesting. There’s- - -”
“Return immediately!” Orion’s voice, transmitted at high volume, began. “There’s been a- - -”
The transmission abruptly ended as a low rumbling sound filled the air. Lashpa’s suit informed her it had lost communication with the ship. Both peacekeepers turned and ran back the way they’d just come. A few seconds later, dust began to obscure their vision. Lashpa slowed as her suit automatically ran through the frequency bands trying to find a way to penetrate the dust eventually settling on an ultra-sound frequency that at least allowed them to see enough to continue moving forward.
Toward the end of the tunnel, she encountered a wall of rock. A moment later, her suit said, “Lethal atmosphere detected. Suit sealed until analysis is complete.”
Checking the HUD, she noted that the suit’s automatic air quality sensor had detected the presence of a possible hazardous chemical. It would take a few minutes for the suit’s systems to identify the chemical’s exact composition. In the meantime, her air would be supplied from built-in oxygen tanks.
“Well,” Tom said, as they stood next to the pile of rocks blocking their exit. “You sure called that one. If we hadn’t been in our armor we’d most likely be dead.”
“Possibly,” she replied. “If we’d been closer to the entrance the rocks might have crushed us.”
“If the rocks didn’t get us, the poisonous gas would have.”
“That depends upon the exact chemical used,” Lashpa said, bending down and pushing a rock out of the way.
Tom joined her as they began digging their way out of the tunnel. “How the hell did we miss a bomb?” he asked, hooking a large rock with his hand and shoving it behind him with enough force to cause it to roll down the tunnel. “From the amount of rock filling the tunnel, I’m thinking it had to be fairly large.”
“They probably planted several small ones inside the rock face,” Lashpa replied. “We probably triggered a hidden detector in the tunnel. The explosion was set on a time delay to make sure everyone was inside before trapping them inside.”
Tom stopped digging and stood up. “There must be at least 15 or 20 meters of rock blocking the exit. That explains why we can’t contact our ships. Maybe we should conserve our power in case we’re stuck here for a while. Our ships should already have called for help.”
“Conserving power is a great idea,” Lashpa said. “Our ships might try to use their tractor beams to remove some of the rubble, but if it’s too unstable they won’t be able to get too far.”
An indicator flashed as Lashpa’s suit finished its analysis. Looking at the indicator caused the details to appear on her HUD. The suit had detected hydrogen cyanide in high enough concentrations to be quickly lethal to both her and Tom. The suit’s built-in filtration system could remove the poison for a few hours before the filter canisters became exhausted. Lashpa gave the okay to switch back to using filtered outside air.
The dust was beginning to settle and the suits were now able to switch back to using external lights to see. “We’ve got some time,” Tom said, standing up and looking back into the facility. “We may as well look around.”
“And what if the Purists have left more surprises behind?”
“I doubt it,” Tom said, taking a few steps. “My guess is they stripped everything they could find out of this place and then booby-trapped the entrance just to be nasty to anyone who might come snooping around. Come on.”
Lashpa took one last look at the blocked entrance, then followed Tom into the ancient facility.
Chapter 13
The facility built under the top of the Mountain of the Gods turned out to be far larger than Tom expected. The door Lashpa had looked through earlier led into a very long tunnel with what appeared to be jail cells on either side. Doors made of sturdy metal bars, many of them still locked, led into a tiny room containing two bunk beds and what appeared to be a small toilet. The tattered remains of a thin mattress hung off the steel slates of the bed frame. Faded plastic labels identified each room but the lettering was in a language neither of them recognized.
Glancing at her HUD, Lashpa noticed that the concentration of hydrogen cyanide was dropping. After bringing it to Tom’s attention, she added, “If the concentration continues to drop, our filters will be able to last a lot longer.”
“You do realize what’s going to happen if we can’t contact our ships within another 23 hours or so?” Tom asked.
“I’ve not forgotten. We should make sure we’re close to the entrance before our cybernetics are switched into slow mode.”
Tom stopped so quickly that Lashpa almost ran into him. “I’ve never thought about this before, not even after my ship was destroyed by that Chroniech warship almost a year ago and I was trapped inside. What happens if our cybernetics completely lose power?”
“We will be rescued long before that happens,” Lashpa pointed out.
“I realize that,” Tom admitted. “But it’s still something to think about.”
“We would become deaf, blind, and immobile.” Lashpa replied as if reporting on the weather.
“But that’s only the first phase of energy conservation,” Tom said, moving on to the next room. “All vital systems will still continue to operate. They have their own dedicated emergency batteries and will run for weeks before the batteries are depleted.”
“We would also be deprived of most of our sensory feedback,” Lashpa added. “We would have no sense of touch from our extremities. If such a state was allowed to continue for too long we would probably become mentally unstable.”
“In other words, we’d go insane.”
“Precisely. I don’t know about Terrans, but sensory deprivation can cause a Rouldian to begin hallucinating in as little as three days.”
“I think it’s about the same for us,” Tom shuddered as he considered the consequences. “We’d go crazy and then a few weeks later die as our hearts slowed down due to lack of power.”
“Not a pleasant way to end one’s life,” Lashpa said.
After looking into a dozen more cells, they discovered a curved corridor going off to the left.
“This must lead to the other branches,” Lashpa said.
“Let’s finish checking out this area first,” Tom suggested.
After another 40 meters, they made their first discovery. “This room’s different,” Tom said, as he glanced into what he thought was going to be just another cell.
Lashpa instructed her suit to show her what Tom was looking at. “It looks like a recovery room in a hospital,” she said. Taking a few steps, she looked into the next doorway. “This one’s the same.”
Tom moved on to the next room on his left. “This looks like a small operating room,” he told her. Stepping inside, he opened a cabinet mounted on the wall. “There’s a lot of stuff still here,” he said. “Looks like what you’d find in an emergency surgical kit. Scalpels, gauze, staple gun, syringes, and bottles of who knows what.”
“An operating room?” she asked. “I thought this looked more like a prison. Were they doing medical experiments on whoever was locked away here?”
“Most likely the Mowry,” Tom said. “But why hide all this inside a mountain?”
“That’s a very good question. You don�
��t build a facility like this deep inside a mountain unless you’re trying to hide your activities from very powerful enemies. Perhaps those responsible for genetically modifying the Mowry were still tinkering with their creation’s DNA.”
They found two more recovery rooms and a dozen more cells before reaching the end of the long corridor. Turning around, Tom and Lashpa retraced their steps then took the connecting corridor over to the next section of the facility. Here, they found sleeping quarters not much bigger than the staterooms provided to those serving on military starships as well as several empty storage rooms.
As they worked their way back to the central hub, they found a small dining area along with a kitchen and an open refrigerated storage unit. The remains of rotted food lay on the shelves.
“Looks like they left quite a bit of stuff behind,” Tom said. “It’s as if they moved out quickly and took only what they needed.”
“I didn’t see any remains inside the cells,” Lashpa said. “At least they didn’t leave any of the prisoners behind.”
As they approached the hub, they encountered the room Tom had been looking into just before the explosion. Several racks were bolted to the floor near the center of the room. Storage shelves lined the walls as well as a few larger racks.
“Armory,” Tom said.
“Agreed.”
Back at the hub, there was only one more door left for them to explore. Shining their lights down the last corridor, they could see that it was only a few meters long. A large open door was on their left and a smaller door could be seen at the end. Looking inside the larger opening, Tom saw a room filled with machinery.
“I was beginning to wonder where all this was,” Tom said. “This facility had to have a power plant and an air purification system.”
“That one’s recently been dismantled,” Lashpa said, pointing out a large machine not far from the entrance.
“Must have been something the Purists were interested in,” Tom replied. “I don’t see a fusion reactor and I’m not picking up any residual radiation.”