by Dani Kollin
Justin, Sergeant Clark, and one of the TDC’s made their way to the storage unit in the fourth disk while the other two miners stayed behind to protect the shuttle. Justin noted the interior of the station was more like that of a ship, whereas most asteroid station interiors were a complex mélange of rock, walled tunnels, and lined, clean interiors, some with thoroughfares so large the “ceiling” could be lost in mist. As the boarding party took a lift to the storage area in the higher-gravity level of disk four Justin reviewed the report he’d read and committed to memory for the hundredth time. It had been found underwater off the coast of California near the shore of Half Moon Bay about a century after the Grand Collapse. Which meant it had been hanging around in deep space for roughly two hundred years prior to Justin’s emergence onto the scene. It had been located by virtue of its signaling beacons timed to go off every hundred years. The discoverers had found twenty such beacons, with only the one ever having been used. Justin regarded the beacons with a grudging respect. Whoever had designed them was giving humanity a long time to recover from the Grand Collapse.
The discovery was made by a small company that would later merge with a few other larger companies to form GCI. The find was understood to be valuable, but it was felt that it should be kept under wraps until the maximum profit could be extracted. It was made a very hush-hush project that only three people in the company knew about. When the GCI merger took place the find was combined with other “dark” projects. So dark, in fact, that within ten years no one was left in a position of authority who actually knew what it was. Then, in one of the many cleanup and storage directives that defined large corporations, the find was moved to the Nereid station and, once again, forgotten. Nobody asked about it, because nobody knew about it, because nobody cared. It also didn’t help that GCI Special Operations took a dim view of people inventorying restricted and sealed storage areas. Hildegard Rhunsfeld had worked at the Nereid station for years in many highly scientific and administrative posts and she’d never been allowed into nine-tenths of the storage area.
It was only when the war broke out that the situation changed. Hildegard had been ordered by the GCI board to destroy the station before allowing it to fall into “rebel” hands. But Mosh had been able to convince her that there was a better way. In the end it had been her curiosity that tipped the scales. Like every other administrator before her, she’d desperately wanted to know what troves existed within the restricted areas, and by not destroying the facility she’d be the first one in decades who had a chance to find out. When she came to Ceres she began work at Gedretar’s research department but had made sure to bring the encrypted files with her. It had taken years, but she’d finally cracked the code, thanks to Kirk Olmstead’s help and experience as a former head of GCI Special Operations. They weren’t able to crack all the files at once. The program could only hack a few a day safely, but that was all Hildegard had time to review anyway. The overwhelming amount of it was junk: old discoveries and prototypes that had been made obsolete by advances in varying fields of science. Some of it was so scary that she’d gotten approval to send teams back to the old job site just to have the stuff destroyed. But the rare gem had led to major breakthroughs for the Alliance, including a model prototype of the currently running G-way system now revolutionizing the belt. But then something truly astonishing had emerged from the depths of the encrypted code. Hildegard had found “it” only yesterday and now Justin, standing in front of room D4-3E40, was about to confirm its existence.
Over the back shoulder of Sergeant Clark, Justin saw it from the outside corridor as soon as the door slid open. It was sitting alone in the middle of a large square room and was still levitating on the magnetic loading pallet it had been placed on all those centuries ago. It wasn’t even covered up with a tarp. All this time, mused Justin, and I thought I was the only one.
He could see, even from a distance, that this sarcophagus was smaller than his, but not by much. It was made from a ceramic material and was ebony in color. Like his, it had writing covering the surface that appeared to have been carved into the material and then filled in with a dull metallic compound. Unlike Justin’s, which had had crimson red enamel, this unit’s writing was dark green. Justin had to admit that the look was as striking as his had been, but it wasn’t nearly as menacing. He was about to enter the room when Sergeant Clark held up her hand. She entered first, studied the space, and then took out a diagnostic scanner. Only when it beeped and lit up did she return to the door and allow Justin to enter. The other TDC’s was about to enter too, but the sergeant halted him. It was obvious their boss wanted a moment.
Justin entered the storage room and approached the sarcophagus from the left side. Written in four languages and near the top in very clear letters he saw:
THIS IS A LIFE POD. A PERSON LIES SUSPENDED WITHIN.
Justin shook his head in disbelief as a wide smile formed at the corners of his mouth. It was, he realized, one of the happiest moments he had ever experienced.
“I have no idea who you are,” he said, putting his hand on the suspension unit, “but I sure am glad you made it.”
Then the door to the storage unit slammed shut and it seemed every alarm in the station went off at once.
Sebastian’s plan was about to come to fruition. He’d hacked into the shuttle’s control and been patiently waiting for everyone in Justin’s boarding party to enter the storage room together. They hadn’t yet, but it was only a matter of time. Justin would not be able to move the unit by himself, so they’d have to enter eventually. Justin had gone into the room alone to savor, realized Sebastian, what must have been a remarkable moment for him. Sebastian hoped it was a pleasurable one. Then he watched as Sergeant Clark patched into the station’s computer network from an access terminal just outside the storage room. The sergeant looked over the diagnostic reports of the facility just as she’d done when they first left the safety of the shuttle. After a cursory glance she seemed satisfied and began to log out but then stopped suddenly. Sebastian checked to see what could be bothering her but couldn’t figure it out. With all his many inveterate skills, mind reading wasn’t one of them. The sergeant rescanned the diagnostics and then toggled the shuttle.
“Alliance One, Alliance One, this is Clark, do you copy?” The centuries-old tradition still held that what ever ship the President was on automatically assumed the official moniker.
“We read you loud and clear,” came back the crisp reply. “What’s your status?”
“The President just got his lifeday present early. Do me a favor: Check the internal and external station scans and compare them to our first entry.”
Sebastian was trying to figure out what he’d done wrong. He’d created false scan rec ords to hide the massive gray bomb presence in the main docking port, but he knew those faked scans were perfect. Every time they checked they’d get the same perfect picture. And it was that very thought that made him realize the stupid mistake he’d made. He’d warned his colleagues repeatedly never to underestimate the human ability for surprise or the avatars’ narcissistic belief in their considerable abilities. He’d just broken his own rule—twice—and now truly regretted having to kill the other people. It hadn’t been planned that way and, he could see, the others too were truly remarkable.
The shuttle pilot finished his scan. “Hey, Sarge, you’re right, they’re exactly the same. There should have been some variance … internal temperature fluctuation, external heat shield cooling as we orbited … something … but these numbers haven’t moved at all. Strange.”
It was the last thing the pilot ever said or thought. At that moment three things happened at once. The reactor powering the shuttle’s containment field “failed,” destroying the shuttle and everyone inside it. The gray bombs exploded, coating disks one and two in a massive deluge of destructive nanites. And finally the door separating storage room D4-3E40 from the corridor slammed shut, cutting Justin off from his security detail. Simultaneously eve
ry other door in the complex opened up, allowing the attacking nanites clear passage through the doomed facility. A split second later the alarms went off.
Sergeant Clark had a bad feeling about the whole operation from the beginning. But this was bad in ways even she would’ve had a tough time imagining. First she lost contact with her shuttle and then watched on her DijAssist as the pilot’s life signs and the grunt who’d been with him went flatline. That was followed by a unique alarm sound known to send shivers down the spines of the most hardened vet—a nanite alert. The rarely, if ever, heard sound alone was enough to make her normally fearless demeanor falter. But after every door in the place opened when by protocol they should’ve slammed shut she knew she’d been trapped. Worse still, the room that did seal itself off had within it the one person in the solar system she’d been sworn to protect. She needed to get it open. Without thinking she tore a package out of her mech suit, ripped it open, and began applying its explosive cording to the door. Clark actually carried enough to blow a small opening, but she had to be careful with the amount. The President was on the other side, and who knew what condition he was in or where, for that matter, he was situated? All communications with him had been cut off. She added a pellet to the explosive cording and changed its composition. It would, with activation, now burn a hole large enough to expose the locking mechanism.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” said her friend of many battles.
Despite his pessimistic outlook, she was glad to see he was doing his job. He had a scanner out and was checking for nanites.
“Pretty much, Mike,” she answered with a wry, upturned lip. They both gave each other a knowing look. They were professionals and had a job to do—even if it was to be their last.
“’K,” he said, no regrets evident in his voice. “What’s the plan, boss?”
“This,” she said, indicating the small vapor trail searing its way around the lock, “should burn through in about three minutes. I figure if the bomb was set at the landing dock and all the doors are open, at best we have ten minutes before the bugs get here.”
“More like five,” said Mike.
Clark nodded, accepting. “Yeah, alright. I don’t think that’s enough time to get the President out and into an air lock.”
Mike nodded. Suddenly the entire facility shuddered. They both grabbed onto what ever they could.
“Destabilizing already,” said Clark, intently watching the vapor trail as it slowly made its way around the door’s locking mechanism.
“What if we close the main access port from section three to section four?” asked Mike. “Everything’s gotta go through that main tube in the center. If we close that up, the bugs’ll have to eat through some very thick blast armor … buy us some time.”
Clark smiled. “You should’ve been a sergeant, Mike.”
“Hey, I’m not dead yet,” he said with a wink.
“OK, by the time we get back… if we get back, this’ll be done and we can yank open the door and get the Prez out to the emergency air lock. Spray your defensive nanites all over the door,” she ordered, indicating the room the President was trapped in, “and inflate your helmet.” She then took out a small tube and sprayed its full contents onto the door while Mike did the same. That would buy the President at least five more minutes, she reasoned, should the nanites get that far. Simultaneously her and Mike’s helmets inflated around their heads while the rest of their armor sealed itself off and began to use internal air. Their battle armor had become, in effect, limited-use space garb. Right about when both cans were empty she heard a banging coming from the other side of the storage room door. She tried her comm link, but it was still being jammed, so she banged on the door deliberately three times, with a two-second delay between each knock. It was a universal spacer signal for communications out but help was on the way. Then she and Mike ran as hard as they could around the loop of disk four and finally back to the opening of the central access tube.
It was only then that she realized how very screwed they both were. She looked far down the tube and could already see that there was nothing but black space and quickly dissolving infrastructure where the docking port had once been. By the increasing tremors she felt beneath her feet she could tell that the substation’s slow dissolve was already causing sections two and three massive destabilization. Gravity was also mostly gone—their magnetized boots and the long corridor still intact before them were the only things preventing them from floating away. It wouldn’t be long until the structural deterioration caused shattered pieces of the remaining disks to break apart and fly off into space. Not that it would matter. Each section would end up as nothing more than floating particles of dust as they carried their ravenous nanites with them into the void.
To slow the replicating horde down and buy their President even a modicum of time the soldiers knew they’d have to find some way of closing off section three from section four. It was a simple procedure. Emergency levers in each section had to be activated, and those levers could be found on either side of the sections’ door. First they’d have to activate one, then go to the other side and activate the other, making sure to be on the correct side of the door when it sealed shut. Sergeant Clark went to the section three lever first, already thinking that nanites were destroying her suit, getting into her bloodstream, and dissolving her from the inside out. She knew it was all in her head, but it still creeped her out. When Mike was at his lever on the section four side she started to pull down on her lever. It didn’t move.
It had been simplicity for Sebastian to jam the levers, making it almost impossible for ten humans to move, let alone one. As he watched Melissa Clark struggle he discovered that he really liked this woman. A quick scan of her vitals showed just how agitated she was, but she was not letting it interfere with her thinking. Since the war with Al, Sebastian knew that many avatars could not make the same claim. Many of them panicked in dangerous situations just like many humans had—just like he had with the data wraith. But this Sergeant Clark was special. She had true courage. He knew she had time to run to the air lock and blow it open. She’d be sucked out into space and would be picked up. True, Justin was still trapped in storage and would have to be left behind, but she could’ve saved herself.
But Sebastian was not surprised when she ordered her comrade to pull his lever and come help her. Even if her audacious plan worked, she was dooming them both by putting herself and the other soldier on the wrong side of the wall and directly into the path of the oncoming nanites. They both had to know that Justin was still going to die; it would just take longer. But without hesitation the soldier pulled the disk four lever and came through the opening to help Sergeant Clark pull on the one for disk three. Together they slowly managed to pull it down. Sebastian didn’t have to allow it, but he relented. There was nothing that could be done anyhow, and since they were acting like heroes they deserved a last act of heroism.
The heavy door came down hard and fast. It was thick and strong and would give Justin at least another twenty minutes. The two trapped soldiers did not stand in place, waiting to die. They slowly made their way up the now-closed blast doors until they were standing in its very center, perpendicular to the slowly dissolving central tube. They interlocked their arms, gave each other a final look, and then, with what ever strength they had left, crouched down and kicked out. They started floating down the middle of the central tube hoping either that the structure would fall away and they’d be released into space with the detritus or that they’d make it far enough down the tube and into open space that they’d be untouched by the nanite cloud busily devouring every micron of the walls around them. It was a futile effort. Had this been one of those holo-adventures, thought Sebastian, they might have made it; they deserved to make it. He’d even tried to manipulate what was left of the environmental controls to help them stay drifting in the center and away from the infested walls. But his control of those sections was no longer effective, as the nanites wer
e destroying everything, including control circuitry.
By the time they’d floated from section three to the remnants of section two their suits had been breached. By the time they’d made it to the structural remains of section one, they were dead, though whether from exposure or internal organ disintegration Sebastian couldn’t tell. He never had a moment of greater self-loathing as he watched their disintegrating corpses drift aimlessly out into the cold, black recesses of space.
Justin anxiously paced the room. He tried banging on the door again, but unlike before there was no response. Now he and the encased stranger who’d come so close to making it out alive were both going to die, and it was his fault. If he’d just listened to, well, everyone, the suspension chamber, and whoever resided in it, would’ve been safely removed. But no, he had to indulge his curiosity. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got at himself. He knew he’d been a constant target for assassination, but this time he’d made it easy. Hektor had baited a trap and he’d walked right in. He didn’t know how it had actually been planned, but he was sure Kirk would be able to piece it together after Justin was dead. He was upset about dying, but what made it far worse was that his stupid, selfish actions were getting people killed who would’ve been alive if he’d just let them do their jobs. And worst of all, he’d condemned to death this unknown person from his own time. His impulsive, predictable action had cost all of them their future. To add salt to the wound, it was very likely that the sarcophagus was just a prop created to trap him. The emotional torment was so bad as to be an almost physical hurt. He was just at the point of banging his head against the door when his DijAssist chirped to life.