The passage went straight for a while and they passed open side rooms which didn’t appear on the map. Conway peered into each, wondering if they might find something useful, though he didn’t know exactly what.
“Looks like stores,” he said, after checking out the fourth near-identical room.
“Crates and shit,” added Kemp.
It was possible that some of these crates would hold something useful, since the Ravok had gone to the trouble of sealing them with computerized locks. This facility was surely a treasure trove of new knowledge and tech, if only it wasn’t infested with enough Sekar to make exploring and cataloguing somewhat less than practical.
At the next intersection, Conway went to the right. They crossed another room, this one smaller than the others and with a single-operator console in every corner. Again, they were powered off, though the humming air made Conway think they could be brought online with little effort. He refused the opportunity. Each second made it more likely the Sekar would detect the presence of the squad and come looking for them.
“The next room is called Stasis Control,” said Corporal Barron. “Sounds important.”
“It does sound important,” Conway agreed. “That means everyone keeps their hands to themselves.”
The passage joined with another. Conway paused for a moment and looked in both directions. The darkness stopped him seeing too far and he learned nothing. Fending off his ongoing frustration, Conway went to the right. Fifty meters later, they came to the open double-doors of what he believed was the stasis room.
Over the threshold he went. The head pressure was still absent, but Conway was too much of an old hand to lower his rifle. Using gestures and concise orders, he brought his squad deeper into the room.
“Big place,” said Kemp.
“Yeah.”
Neither the side nor the far walls were visible and even the ceiling was at the furthest extent of visibility. Once again, Conway felt vulnerable, like enemies just out of sight were observing his movements.
Angular shapes loomed up ahead and Conway hurried towards them. The shapes turned out to be consoles, larger than most others and different in appearance. Each was covered in screens and the usual array of input methods. Even though he’d never seen this type of equipment before, Conway now recognized the features of the Ravok tech well enough that he could distinguish it from other types of alien hardware.
Aisles ran between the consoles and Conway stepped along one. The consoles came to his chin and he could see over the top. To the left and right he saw more of the same hardware and caught glimpses of other consoles closer to the opposite wall. He got the impression they formed a square.
He emerged from the gap between the consoles and headed across the floor, taking care not to make too much noise. Without warning, a prompt appeared on his HUD.
Activate?
Conway stopped dead and looked around, wondering what he was being asked to activate. He was suspicious of things he didn’t understand, especially when in hostile territory, and he didn’t respond to the prompt.
“Anyone else getting that request on their HUD?”
“Getting what, sir?” asked Kemp.
Nobody else saw the prompt, so Conway ignored it and took another two paces. The HUD message disappeared.
“It’s gone,” he said.
“Auto defenses?” said Lockhart. He tipped his head and stared towards the ceiling. It was too dark to see a chain gun up there, let alone the thin seams of a protective hatch.
“Screw it, we don’t need them yet,” said Conway. In truth, he didn’t know what would happen if he accepted the invitation. Perhaps the defenses would see him as a threat and cut down his whole squad. The Refuge 9 control entity had clearly installed more onto his suit computer than it had let on. He shrugged it off and continued his advance.
A little way further, an object became visible in the gloom, in what Conway thought was the dead center of the square.
When he approached, he found that the object was a sphere. This sphere had a diameter of two meters and was made from a clear, polished material. It floated in the air, a few inches above the ground and when he peered closely at it, Conway saw nothing unexpected.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
The predictable mixture of closed mouths and shrugged shoulders answered the question.
“What’s it made from?” asked Berg, reaching out automatically to touch the sphere.
“Don’t!” warned Conway.
It was too late and Berg’s fingertips came into contact with the sphere. A moment later, it lit up in a yellow that seemed resistant to the light suppression. It cast a glow which touched the consoles, as well as casting long shadows behind each of the soldiers.
Shapes were visible in the sphere which had not been there before and Conway leaned in closely to see what they were. It took a few seconds for him to understand.
“Spaceships,” he said.
“Tiny spaceships,” said Kemp. “It’s like they’re in a fishbowl or something.”
“Not a fishbowl. This must be a viewscreen into the tharniol sphere.”
Conway couldn’t take his eyes away. Each of the spaceships was perfect in its detail and most of them were about the length of his finger. He didn’t recognize the individual members of Attack Fleet 1, but saw heavy cruisers, light cruisers, as well as a ULAF carrier and a couple of Fangrin battleships. That wasn’t all – the tharniol sphere contained dozens of Ragger warships.
One spaceship dwarfed them all. This one was an endless black, so pure it seemed to draw in the light. This vessel’s shape and color made Conway think of a jagged shard of obsidian, not completely regular and not entirely random.
By comparing it to one of the ULAF heavy cruisers, he estimated that it measured four thousand meters from nose to tail and about fifteen hundred across the beam at its widest point.
“Crap,” said Barron. “How did that get in there?”
“Refuge 9 said nothing about a Sekar warship,” said Conway.
“We cannot trust the guardian entity - its motives are not yet proven,” said Rembra. He gave a low growl. “On the other hand, perhaps this Sekar ship became trapped in stasis after we exited the room containing Refuge 9.”
“Looks like we’re going to have our hands full when the tharniol sphere gets purged.”
“Perhaps it would be wiser for those warships to remain where they are,” said Rembra.
The Fangrin were ferociously loyal and Conway knew that they didn’t talk lightly about abandoning their own.
“What if there’s a way to destroy individual ships in the tharniol sphere?” said Barron.
“Refuge 9 gave no indication it had that capability,” Conway replied. “If there’s one thing I’m sure about – the entity does not want the Sekar to succeed.”
“There’s the Iron Cell,” said Private Lester, his fingertip millimeters from touching the sphere.
Conway only glanced at the transport in order to confirm what Lester said was correct. Since he was first made aware of the tharniol sphere, he’d never doubted the Iron Cell would be in there. And so it was, a little way from the inner surface and not too far from the Sekar warship.
Reluctantly, Conway stepped back from the viewing sphere. It was strangely hypnotic to see so many warships clustered this heavily. When the tharniol sphere was purged, the shit was definitely going to hit the fan, since the members of AF1 didn’t know about the truce. As soon as they came out of stasis, the fireworks would start. The realization struck Conway hard and he didn’t know what to make of it.
“If we succeed, all those ships are going to start blowing each other to pieces when they get out of the sphere,” he said.
“It will be interesting,” said Rembra.
“And it’ll break the truce. Plus, we have no idea what that Sekar warship is capable of.”
“The truce would never hold,” said the Fangrin. “Better that it fails before the stakes become too hig
h.”
“Is that a common view amongst your species?”
“I do not know. Enough of our governors decided that a truce was a chance worth taking. Remember that this mission began with low stakes and a seemingly low possibility of failure.”
“Now it’s the opposite,” said Conway. He gave a short laugh. The maelstrom of chaos whirled around him and his squad, threatening to sweep them away. The storm offered hope and promises of failure in equal measures. On top of it all was the certainty that people – perhaps billions of people – would die if the worst possible outcome from this mission was achieved.
The idea of it threatened to overwhelm Conway and it took every ounce of his inner strength to hold up under the burden. He reminded himself of his earlier determination to take maximum advantage of the opportunities in the Refuge 9 facility.
Conway put his head down and got on with it.
Chapter Eighteen
The exit door from the stasis control room was open. On the short journey towards it, the Activate? message came up again on Conway’s HUD. He couldn’t resist a look upwards, in hope that the light from the viewing sphere would reach the ceiling overhead. It did not and any sign of automatic defenses was tantalizingly out of sight.
“We’ve got to go through another couple of teleporters and then we’ll be close to the stores,” he said.
“After that, a short run to the teleport hardware,” said Lockhart.
“Does anyone believe that it’ll be as easy as pulling out the old part and plugging in the new one?” asked Kemp doubtfully. “I mean, if it was that easy, even I could do it.”
“Maybe you’ll get your chance to prove it,” said Freeman, giving him a clap on the back.
“We’ll do whatever we have to do,” said Conway. “Same as always.”
“Yeah, don’t overthink it,” added Torres.
They came to a junction and Conway looked both ways. He wanted to go left, but spotted something a little way to the right. He squinted, unsure what he was looking at. Then, he realized what it was – a tiny Sekar rift, less than a foot in length, hung in the air a few meters away. He’d seen similar ones on Qali-5 and he wondered if the creation of a major rift produced these smaller rifts as a side-effect. The moment the thought formed, a tingling sensation of pressure materialized behind his eyes. He swore.
“Sekar incoming,” said Lockhart, picking up on the same thing. He raised his voice on the open comms channel. “Stay alert!”
Conway hurried left. Last time the Sekar had come, he remembered a period of several minutes between the first sensation of pressure and the appearance of the enemy. He didn’t know how it worked – perhaps all the tharniol in the Ravok base interfered with whatever ability the Sekar possessed to cause the physical discomfort. It was one of those times when he really did want to know the answer.
“Maybe going through the teleporter will buy us some time,” said Kemp.
“I don’t think so,” said Conway. “We’re going down deeper and closer to the hardware that’s allowing the Sekar to come through in the first place.”
“Good job I’ve got three full mags and no spares, huh?”
“That’s about what we’ve all got, soldier.”
The first teleporter wasn’t much further – midway along a corridor that was nondescript in an alien kind of way. Conway made use of the HUD prompt to open the outer door and then waved the squad inside. The humming started and Kemp cracked a bad joke, like he usually did when he was getting nervous.
At the end of the transport cycle, the door opened. The map had given Conway advance warning that they would come straight to another room and so it was. He had no idea how far beneath the surface of Glesia they’d travelled, since the map didn’t say, but Conway had the sense that he was a long way underground.
They entered the new room with trepidation. The pressure hadn’t gone away during the transit and it remained at a constant level in Conway’s head. A sound pervaded the air - a droning along with a much deeper note which reminded him of a warship’s propulsion. The temperature was even colder than elsewhere and, though the combat suit kept him warm, Conway shivered at the inhospitableness of the universe.
“Something big nearby,” he said, looking around. “Maybe a power supply.”
In his limited field of visibility, Conway noted the shapes of Ravok consoles. The second teleporter was across this room and he walked away from the cubicle which had brought him here. He didn’t stop for longer than a few seconds at the first console. It was standard alien tech and probably served a dozen different purposes, none of which it could fulfill without power. Conway didn’t want to find out if it was active or not and he walked past it.
A little way further, the Activate? prompt came up and this time the ceiling was low enough that Conway could make out the square hatch that marked the position of the Refuge 9 automated defenses. He didn’t send the activation command but was at least content that the question was answered.
With the exit still out of sight, the sound pressure in the air increased suddenly. It was different to the head pressure in that it was carried in the air like normal sound. The bass increased in volume and Conway felt it against his skin and through the soles of his feet. It became so loud that the microphone in his suit helmet shut down to protect his ears. Still he could feel the air pressure and he looked around, asking himself if there was some way to shut it off.
Conversation on the comms was impossible and he could see the agitation in the soldiers. Conway gave urgent hand signals and pointed across the room towards the place he hoped to find the exit. The Fangrin were in a bad way, clearly feeling it more than the humans and each had their head bowed, while Nixil dropped to his haunches.
The Fangrin were tough and they moved after the others. Conway hadn’t covered more than five or six paces when the resonance expired with a final, different sound that he could only describe as a grinding rumble like two incomprehensibly heavy pieces of stone scraping together.
In a split second, the volume dropped away to its background level once more, leaving Conway and the human soldiers filled with relief. The Fangrin growled and it was the most anyone had seen them suffer. Torres peered through Gundro’s visor to check if he was all right and Corporal Brice unslung her medical pack and began hunting for painkillers or some other kind of drugs.
“We will be fine,” said Nixil. “That was difficult to endure.”
“I’ve got a feeling we’ll hear it again,” said Conway. “That experience reminds me of what happened on Qali-5 when the teleporter was picking things up at random.”
“And the teleporter here is also malfunctioning,” said Rembra. “We should go.”
The note of urgency was plain in the Fangrin’s voice. He didn’t want to feel that pain again and Conway didn’t want to find his chain gun carriers incapacitated in the middle of a firefight with the Sekar. He urged the squad to action and they filtered through the gaps in the consoles towards the opposite wall.
“Everything in this place is screwed up,” Conway said angrily.
“You are a man who benefits from order and chaos, yet you fear the latter,” said Rembra. “You should embrace both, Captain Conway.”
It was something to discuss after six cold beers, rather than in the middle of an alien facility. Conway didn’t reply and he purposefully didn’t dwell on the matter.
The squad exited the room and the droning noise didn’t go away. Conway stamped hard on the floor and it was solid like everywhere else. Similarly, the alloy sheets on the walls gave every impression they were fixed directly onto rock. Whatever tech was generating a resonance capable of penetrating so much dense material, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see it close up.
“Our guts will be turned to sludge if we have to swap out the damaged teleport module anywhere near the cause of this droning,” he said.
“The map is not clear on the source of the noise,” said Rembra. “Perhaps the map itself is incomplete - purp
osely or otherwise.”
“We’ve got another teleporter to go through,” Conway replied, keeping one eye on the HUD map of Refuge 9.
The passage entered a smaller room with a total of four exits. A pair of food stations, visible on the opposite wall, gave away the likely purpose of this area. The sight of them reminded Conway’s body that the sustenance pumped into his veins by the combat suit was no substitute for the real deal and his stomach rumbled unexpectedly. The idea of consuming alien nutrition vended by a six-hundred-year-old Ravok food station didn’t appeal too much and Conway headed along the right-hand passage.
“The teleporter should be close,” he said, peering ahead. As ever, the gloom was impenetrable, giving him no clue as to what lay beyond the sphere of his vision.
A short time later, they entered a room which was big enough for the walls to be indistinct. The Ravok had installed consoles and one of the walls was covered in different sized viewscreens. Everything was turned off, though Conway spotted a standby light on the nearest console, letting him know it was just in deep sleep.
“That looks like a teleporter,” said Kemp.
Conway had seen it as well and he walked towards the door which sealed the cubicle. The Activate? message came up on his HUD while he was crossing the room and he glanced upwards at the concealed hatch for the chain gun. He wondered if he should activate every one he came across just for the hell of it, yet he refrained. The Refuge 9 entity could have done the same thing, but it hadn’t. Maybe there was a good reason which Conway didn’t recognize.
The teleport door opened and it was a tight fit for the entire squad to get inside. Conway was reluctantly about to order several people to stay behind for a second transit when the head pressure rose from an underlying presence to one that was noticeably unpleasant. Suddenly, the teleport cubicle had more than enough room for every soldier and Conway was able to get the door closed.
A few seconds afterwards, the usual sound of the teleportation network began. Midway through its cycle, the thrumming of activation was joined by the much louder enervating bass pressure they’d suffered only a few minutes ago. One of the Fangrin made a sound that was something between a growl and a groan.
Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5) Page 15