“Safety override mechanism? Why would a drive this small need that?” asked Clem.
“Why indeed. I had the same question. Upon further examination, it appears this drive was once part of a larger array. I don’t suppose you’d know where it came from?”
Clementine grinned abashedly.
“No, of course not,” Hatch said with a hint of a smile. “There are two ways to disengage a hard security override of this nature. The first is to take everything apart, remove the safety module, reassemble the drive, and pray it still works. The other, and this is my preferred method, is to perform a targeted electromagnetic surge amplification.” He held up two wires connected to a large black box.
“So you electrocuted my hover-drive,” Clem repeated with an eyebrow raised.
“Well, yes. I suppose you could say that,” he conceded.
Clementine uncrossed her arms and smiled. “Hatch, you’re infuriatingly brilliant, you know that?”
“Well, you know what they say, when all else fails, shock the tutty out of it!” Hatch roared with laughter.
The pillar completed its descent, coming to a stop twenty feet above the disc with a mechanical clunk. The massive blades of the device rotated slowly around the pillar’s base. Clem was again struck by the sheer size of the machine.
“Initiating disc inversion.”
BRRRRMP! BRRRMP! BRRRMP!
An alarm reverberated throughout the canyon.
There was a deep mechanical rumbling as the disc began to turn on its axis. This is it. She had one last chance to get out of this alive. Clem pulled off her backpack and ripped it open. She grabbed her mag suit’s black rubbery power supply in one hand, and the power distribution belt in the other.
The disc tilted ten degrees.
She pressed the inside of the power supply against the control bank, and held the distributor belt in her other hand. With the amount of raw electromagnetic power in this chamber, there was about to be a lot of energy between the two. Please let this work! She slammed the inside of the belt buckle against the other side of the control bank.
There was a loud POP! Clem came to on her back. The power supply and belt were lying on the floor beside the console.
Fifteen degrees.
It didn’t work. The disc was still turning. Clem reached out just in time to grab the power distribution belt, which had begun to slide away. She collected the power supply as well and shoved them both into her backpack.
The angle of the disc continued to grow steeper, threatening to dump her off. Clem was close to giving up when she realized that something had changed. The electric hum was gone. She looked out over the disc and saw that there were no longer any bolts stabbing down at it. The massive sweeping metal blades were slowing as well!
Twenty degrees.
Clem looked up toward the rising edge of the disc in the distance. To her left, one of the blades slowed to a stop. She ran toward it in a slanted crouch, balancing with one hand along the floor.
Twenty-five degrees.
It was a short drop from the central platform to the massive, flat metallic blade. Clem jumped down onto it without hesitation. She landed in a crouch and nearly lost her balance on the incline. I need to get to the edge and hang on! She scrambled the last thirty feet up the broad side of the arm.
Forty degrees.
With a final burst of determination, Clem leapt and grabbed for the edge of the blade. She wrapped her fingers around it and her body crashed into the surface.
Sixty degrees.
The disc rotated until the angle was far too steep to stand on. Clem closed her eyes and held on for dear life.
Ninety degrees.
The colossal black disc had completed one half of its inversion. One edge pointed directly up toward the ceiling of the canyon, and the other edge pointed down. Clementine hung from the blade with her feet dangling. The dizzying view of the massive, vertical disc left her feeling like the world had shifted, with gravity now pulling sideways instead of down. She drew herself up, hooking an elbow over the edge of the blade.
The enormous disc continued its course, slowly flipping until it was almost completely upside-down, with Clem hanging in darkness from the edge of the blade beneath it. Eventually, it flattened out enough for her to lift a leg up over the edge and pull herself onto the blade’s bumpy inner surface. The loud mechanical rumbling quieted as the disc settled into place.
Clem lay there in the darkness. Her heart still pounded and she shook from the adrenaline coursing through her veins. How close had she come to electrocution? Falling to her death? A shiver ran down her spine and she reminded herself that she wasn’t out of this yet.
The inner surface of the arm was rough and uneven. There must be hundreds of thousands…no, millions of PDUs on this thing. It dawned on her that the system she shorted out would likely have a backup that could restart at any time. She sat up, pulled a glow-tube from her backpack and uncapped it. The blue light illuminated the space between the blade and the vast black disc above her head. There’s got to be some way to the top side from here.
There was enough space between the blade and the disc for her to stand, and she did so, painfully. Her shoulder was throbbing, and now that she had a moment to breathe, the pain had become even more pronounced. She turned and walked back to the central pillar. I need to get to the top-side of this pillar before it extends back up to the service bridge. There’s gotta be a way through this thing. She ran her hand along the smooth metallic surface.
“Aha!” Clem crouched down and slid her fingers along the seam of an access panel. Should be large enough to crawl through. She found a depression along the top, reached her hand behind it and pulled. The panel resisted at first, and then popped off, sending Clem onto her backside. She cursed and lifted the glow-tube to see what the panel was hiding. A maintenance shaft! It led directly inside, toward the center of the pillar.
Clem got down on all fours and made her way through the tight metal shaft. The blue light of her glow-tube reflected off the steel walls. She crawled past the occasional breaker panel, and at one point had to remove her backpack to fit beneath a switch box. The next few feet were painted orange with black stripes, marking the intersection of a vertical maintenance shaft. Clem held her glow-tube into it and looked up. A ladder climbed into the darkness above. This should lead up through the disc.
Clem estimated the disc itself to be at least a couple hundred feet thick. It would be a long climb. She gripped the rungs of the ladder and began to ascend. After what felt like hours, the ladder finally ended and Clem found herself in another cramped, horizontal passage. She entered, it and continued crawling. Eventually, the shaft ended with a panel much like the one she had removed below.
She braced herself against the tunnel with her arms and kicked; the panel popped open and fell with a loud CLANG. She quickly climbed out onto another huge fan blade and looked around. The top side of the disc…I made it!
The surface of the central pillar was within reach. There was suddenly a mechanical whirring coming from within it. And that would be the backup generator. She felt the flat mechanical blade moving underfoot. Clem quickly leapt and pulled herself up onto the central pillar, and the hum and crackle of electricity sprung to life behind her. She ran toward the cylindrical control bank ahead. It was a mirror of the one below. Moments later, the pillar rose beneath her as it extended upwards. She lay down on her back and rested as she was carried high above the disc.
The pillar came to a halt with a clunk, and soon after, the service bridge clinked into place on either side of the round platform. She sat up and looked toward the exit at the other side of the canyon. Wasting no time, Clem stood and jogged toward it. By the time she neared the other side, she could clearly see the way out. It was a rectangular tunnel, cut into the rocky wall. She stepped off the service bridge and into the tunnel with relief.
At the end of the short passage was a dull metal door with a round doorknob. Clem gripped it an
d turned. The door didn’t budge. Of course it’s locked. She took a deep breath and bit her lip, studying the door. There was no keyhole, or opening of any kind. She hammered on it with her fist, producing a dull thud. Solid metal. Clem walked back toward the entrance to the passage. There didn’t appear to be any other way through.
She sat down cross-legged before the doorway, exhausted. After everything she’d been through, to be defeated by a dead end? All the events of the past day caught up with her, and her emotions shoved their way into the foreground.
How am I ever going to get out of here? Why would Hatch send me down a dead end? It hit her again that he was gone. No one would ever call her Blackbird again. No one would secretly let her win at chaupar and lie about it. A tear trickled from the corner of her eye. As she wiped it away, she felt a drop of water fall onto her hand.
Water? Down here? She stood and looked up. There was condensation on the ceiling. Clem cocked her head, listening. She heard the faint sound of running water. It was nearly drowned out by the electro-mechanical hum of the discharger below. She walked out onto the catwalk that encircled the canyon, and looked down through the grate deck. Several feet below her boots, water flowed swiftly, rushing along a wide channel. Must be some kind of condensation removal system. She followed the water, watching as it eventually curved into a hole in the wall.
Clem laid down on her stomach, peering over the edge of the deck. She grinned in spite of herself. The hole was easily large enough for her to fit through. She got up onto her hands and knees and rotated, then slowly backed over the edge. She hung from the catwalk and looked down to gauge the jump. There was nothing but open air beneath her boots. She would have to swing in under the catwalk to keep from falling to her death.
Clem swung her legs forward and backward until she had some momentum, then let go. She landed in the channel with a splash and cold water soaked her calves. I made it! She walked through the shallow water to the opening in the rock face and held up her glow-tube, peering in. The tunnel appeared to slope downward at a steep angle. Hmmm, she thought, leaning in. I might be able to—
“Waaah!” Her foot slipped out from under her and she slid down into the tunnel on her backside. It twisted and turned, sending her sliding up the tunnel walls. Water rushed down around her, and her speed increased. She tried grabbing at the walls, but she was too wet and going far too fast. Suddenly the tunnel beneath her disappeared, and she flew through the air.
Clem landed with a splash, submerged in a dark pool of water. She spun frantically, fighting the weight of her backpack and trying to locate the surface. She was reaching over her shoulder to pull off her pack when she caught sight of a light blue glow several feet away. She stopped struggling with the pack and started swimming toward it. Moments later her head breached the surface and she gasped for air, taking several deep breaths. She snatched the glow-tube as it floated by, and held it over her head. The blue light glistened on the wet, rocky walls of the small reservoir.
Clementine swam toward a rock ledge and pulled herself up onto the cool, flat surface. She lay there panting, silently cursing herself for being so careless. Once she’d regained her calm, she stood and studied her surroundings. The ledge marked the beginning of another tunnel. There was nowhere else to go, so she followed it, shivering with her glow-tube in hand.
The tunnel widened, and opened before her, revealing an unimaginably vast vista. Her jaw dropped. A swathe of crystal clear stars adorned the sky, just like in her dream. She walked numbly to the edge of the opening. A crescent moon lit the rocky landscape below, and shadowy stone structures jutted up toward the sky. Clem looked down and saw the desert floor at least sixty feet below. Fifteen of those would be open air, where New Arcadia hovered above the ground.
Clem took a moment to explore the tunnel, and found several large bins pushed up against the wall. She pulled open one of them and found enough dried rations and water to last for months. Another contained clothing – lightweight breeches, and several shirts of the same style. There were headscarves, durable gloves, and boots. She opened another bin and found practical survival supplies: large packs, water filters, matches, and electrolyte replacement capsules. It was clear that this stuff was meant to supply others as well. Hatch must have helped a lot of people escape the city this way.
The long journey ahead meant Clem would need to pack a lot of supplies. She was determined to hold onto her mag-suit, despite the fact that it, and any other piece of geo-tech wouldn’t function beyond the electromagnetic fields of New Arcadia.
The night air wafted through the tunnel, chilling her bones. Her clothes were still wet, and whatever warmth from the day had long since dissipated. Clem changed into a long-sleeved linen tunic and breeches. She spotted a stack of dry wood, paper and kindling beside the supplies. Thank you, Hatch…or whoever put this stuff here.
Clem built a small fire and rolled out one of the sleeping bags from the supply heap. She stretched out and munched on a piece of dried fruit while staring into the fire. Everything she knew told her she should be terrified of traveling beyond the walls of New Arcadia, but seeing it now for the first time imbued her with a sense of peace.
I will find Masada, and I will deliver the schematics to Magdalene…or die trying. It was a promise she intended on keeping.
9
Eurig’s Veld
A cold wind swept across craggy rocks and over the precipitous cliffs of the Shattered Peak Mountains. It raced down, warmed by the lower altitude, and rustled the treetops at the mountain’s base. Continuing its journey east, the flowing air rushed over the rapids of the River Crete, and across the expansive Wyrewood Forests that stretched for miles to the north and south. It passed beyond the wood and into the grasslands, where it wound around boulders and made temporary patterns in the tall grass.
Oren grabbed the end of his sandy brown scarf and tucked it back into his jacket. The last thing he needed was an impromptu blindfold. His legs ached from crouching for so long. He leaned against a low boulder, hidden in its shadow amidst a sea of waist-high green and brown grass. Judging by the boulder’s weathered grooves, he guessed it had been part of a large statue built some time before the Aeternum Wars. Oren spent the idle time studying it and imagining what it might have been all those years ago.
Hmmm. Could be it was a fist, holding the hilt of a sword. Or…maybe a shoulder. That part kind of looks like armor. Oren ran his palm along a worn pattern in the stone. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been whole in a very long time. He wished he could get a bird’s eye view. Maybe then he could make out some other pieces.
The sound of rustling grass interrupted his thoughts. He peeked around the boulder.
A large shape was moving swiftly, several hundred feet out. Its only tell was the motion of the grass, but even without seeing it Oren could tell it was big…bigger than they anticipated. Regardless, he followed the plan, and pulled himself up onto the boulder. Oren’s sword slid smoothly from its sheath, flashing in the mid-day sun. He stabbed it toward the blue sky and shouted, “COME AND GET ME YOU BIG UGLY GRUB!”
The shape immediately changed course toward him, picking up speed. Oren sheathed his sword and shifted nervously from one foot to the other. It wasn’t just big, it was enormous; and it was getting closer…he’d have to time this perfectly. When it was about fifty feet away, Oren began counting down. Three. His heart pounded in his chest. Two. He crouched down, legs tensed like springs. One.
A massive segmented body, all spines, shell and pincers launched up at him from the grass. At the same time, Oren sprung forward, flipping into the air above it. The beast twisted its carapace mid-air, facing up to attack Oren as he sailed overhead. He rotated mid-flip, just in time to see a razor sharp pincer CLACK shut inches from his nose. They flew past each other and the creature crashed onto the boulder, tumbling over the far edge. Oren landed and slid to a stop in the tall grass, facing the large stone from several feet away. He sprinted back toward the boulder and leapt, vaul
ting over it. He drew his sword mid-air and located the beast before hitting the ground on the other side.
Few would have registered the subtle surprise on Khalil’s face. He’s as shocked as I am at the size of the thing, Oren thought with a grin. In the time it took him to clear the boulder, Khalil had already deflected three rapid attacks from the creature’s pincers and mandibles. It reared up, towering over him. Khalil’s sword was dark along the leading edge. He must have already landed a blow, Oren thought. In the past, that was all it took, but this chitin only looked angry. It emitted several rapid, high-pitched chirps, clacking its pincers rhythmically.
Oren crouched, using his free hand to brace himself, then sprung forward to attack the tail. It curved up out of the grass, thrashing with each attack of the head. His first priority would be to cut off the stingers, which were dripping wet with venom. The chitin searched for an opening, testing Khalil’s defenses with rapid strikes. Oren leapt forward, gripping his sword with both hands. The Forms had become muscle memory, and he moved as he was taught, letting his body guide him toward the most effective stance. He glided into mountain wind ascending, then seamlessly flowed into stone through the water, slicing horizontally toward the base of the stingers.
The chitin thrashed just as his blade connected, and his sword ricocheted off the rock hard shell instead of taking the stinger off at the base. Oren’s attack drew its attention, and Khalil took advantage of the diversion. As if performing an intricate dance, Khalil moved his body and blade as one. He spun low, sword behind his back, then brought the blade back around and up, effortlessly separating the chitin’s pincer from one of its segmented arms.
Recreance (The Aeternum Chronicles Book 1) Page 12