The teleporter activated, sending them elsewhere. At once, the bass disappeared completely. Conway couldn’t deny his relief and he opened the door as soon as it would accept the command from his suit computer. The teleporter was so full it was difficult to exit with style and the soldiers tumbled out into a cold passage.
Conway paused to feel for the presence of Sekar. It was quiet and still. At first, he thought the teleporter had taken them far enough away from the aliens, but then the head pressure came to the boundaries of his senses, like a tingling that was easy to overlook if you didn’t know what it represented. He swore once, while several other members of the squad showed less restraint.
Unwilling to delay, Conway got the squad moving. They followed a short passage which led to a much wider corridor, this one ten meters wide and with a similarly high ceiling. At the corner, Conway looked in both directions. To the left, he saw nothing, while to the right, he noticed a hulking shape against one of the walls. It was far enough away that he couldn’t be sure what it was and he dropped quietly out of sight.
“Take a look to the right,” Conway said, inviting Lieutenant Rembra to take his place at the corner.
The Fangrin stepped forward and leaned cautiously into the main passage.
“A vehicle,” he said.
Conway checked for a second time and now he saw it too. “Yes, a vehicle,” he agreed. With his helmet microphone on maximum sensitivity, Conway listened for an engine. “I think it’s switched off.”
The way to the stores was along the right turning. Now that he was reassured that this was only a vehicle and nothing more sinister, Conway exited the smaller passage and sprinted towards it. With each stride, more details were revealed. The vehicle was a flatbed truck, about three meters wide and eight or nine in length. Since it was offline, its underside gravity engine rested on the floor. Its load area was closest to Conway and the cabin was only dimly visible until he was within a few paces of the truck’s rear end.
“Move up,” he said, sticking close to the end of the truck. The load bed was about chest high and empty of cargo. Conway rested one hand on the metal and thought he detected vibration. If the engine was still running after all this time, it meant the Ravok knew how to build things properly.
“Big,” said Warner, amongst the first to arrive. “What do you reckon they needed something like this for all the way down here?”
“Beats me,” said Freeman.
“We’re heading for the hardware stores,” said Conway. “Could be they have some heavy stuff that can’t be moved by hand.”
He strode along the side of the truck. The cabin’s roof was three meters above and accessed by metal rungs leading to the interior. There were no doors and Conway was able to see the surprisingly advanced cockpit controls, which resembled something he would have expected to see on a transport shuttle rather than a ground hauler. The bucket seats were empty.
Once he was beyond the truck, Conway felt vulnerable in this overly large corridor. He picked up the pace and jogged for two hundred meters without seeing anything. The head pressure got slowly worse, though not so bad that he expected an immediate attack.
A little way further, they came across opposing doors, one in each wall. These doors were huge at ten meters wide and their support frames almost touched the ceiling. The corridor continued and another of the flatbed trucks was parked a short distance past the doors, this time with its cabin facing the squad.
“I think we have to go through these doors,” Conway said, indicating those to the left. “Lieutenant Rembra, I’d like a second opinion.”
“I believe this is an entrance to the stores,” said the Fangrin, nodding slowly.
“What’s this other door?” asked Kemp. “Not that it’s important.”
“I don’t know.”
As soon as Conway was satisfied the squad were ready for whatever might be waiting on the other side of the door, he searched for the access panel and gave the command. With hardly a sound, the immense door slid into its recess. A draft of colder air came silently through the opening.
“Ah crap,” said Kemp.
The breeze was enough to betray that which the darkness kept hidden – the hardware stores were huge and the only clue Conway had as to the location of the teleport module was a number overlay on his map. He’d assumed that the markers on his map would lead him right to the spot, rather than into an underground warehouse no doubt filled with all sorts of unidentifiable alien components. Now it seemed like he was required to hunt down a specific location within the stores in order to find the replacement module.
On top of that, the head pressure took a sudden step change for the worse, making him believe that the Sekar had detected the presence of the living and were coming fast.
“Let’s move,” he said. This time he found it impossible to keep the tension from his voice.
The squad crossed the threshold and entered the hardware stores.
Chapter Nineteen
Traversing the floor was an eerie and uncomfortable experience. The ceiling of the stores was somewhere out of sight and Conway suspected it was far beyond the limits of his visibility. Nor did he see anything at floor level and as soon as the entrance door was lost behind, Conway once again felt a peculiarly intense isolation. It was as though he and his fifteen soldiers were the only living things in the universe and this tiny pocket of visibility was a product of their conscious thought.
“Dammit,” Conway muttered, to draw his mind back to the present.
He glanced around – the soldiers were spread, though not too far. Each one was nervous - it was evident in the set of their shoulders and the too-rapid movements of their heads as they searched in the darkness for an enemy that could move fast and kill faster. So far, the head pressure was bad, but not increasing.
“Got something over here,” said Torres.
She was at the left of the squad and Conway changed course to see what it was she’d found.
“Another truck,” he said.
“And another one after that,” said Lockhart.
It was strangely encouraging to discover that other objects existed in this place. Conway followed Lockhart and they came to a third truck. After that, a larger vehicle which was almost identical to the forklifts used by the ULAF in their warehouses. This one was so massively counterweighted it looked as if it could carry hundreds of tons.
Conway kept on going past the forklift. The soldiers didn’t require specific orders to keep up and he heard their careful, measured footfall as they kept pace. A slab of metal, about two feet thick, lay across the floor. At first, Conway wasn’t sure what it was doing here and he stepped onto it. After a dozen paces, he came to the far side of the slab. At that moment, he realized it was probably a cargo lift, though with no obvious method of controlling it. Since the lift wasn’t adjacent to any storage units, he could only imagine it descended through the floor or up to something out of sight overhead.
Not far from the lift, they came to a storage rack made from huge, thick alloy posts, with enormous shelves capable of supporting immense weights. The lowest shelf contained neatly stacked crates, while the contents of the shelf above were hidden by darkness.
“The map says we’re looking for area 47756, item number 12017” said Conway. “There’s got to be signs somewhere in this place.”
“There’s nothing on this lower shelf,” said Berg. “Maybe we should go looking for a warehouse computer.”
It would have been a good idea in normal visibility. Right now, they only had guesswork to guide them and Conway didn’t want to put his trust in the whims of fortune. He led the soldiers the full hundred-meter length of the shelf. At the end, a wide aisle separated this shelf and the next one in the line. Conway advanced along the aisle and, as he suspected, caught sight of other rows, as well as another flatbed.
“I remember buying furniture in places like this,” said Corporal Barron. “And then wasting entire weekends putting it together.”
“That’s what happens when you buy flat-pack,” said Warner, with a tone which suggested he’d been there himself.
The memories were evidently all bad and neither soldier reminisced further, which saved Conway the effort of asking them to keep focus. He followed the central aisle to the second row. The left-hand storage shelves were filled with more crates. Unlike the previous shelf, this one was numbered.
“12591,” said Conway in disgust. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“Only twenty-five thousand shelves away from where we need to be,” said Barron. She turned, as if she had the ability to see the far ends of the row. “We could end up walking for hours.”
“Screw that,” said Conway.
He ran for the flatbed and used the ladders and a grab handle to haul himself into the cabin. The vibration of its gravity drive was more pronounced in here and he was hopeful the engine wouldn’t require an extended warmup period.
A pair of control sticks jutted from the floor in front of the left-hand seat and Conway sat himself there. The console was within easy reach and it had more buttons than Conway liked. Fortunately, these buttons were separated into different sections and labelled. He scanned the words, looking for an obvious clue. When he couldn’t find one, he began pushing buttons and switches with impatient stabs of his forefinger. Outside, the squad kept watch for Sekar.
“Anyone else think they’re coming soon?” asked Berg.
“Shut up,” said Lockhart.
Just when Conway thought he was doing something wrong, he managed to activate the gravity drive. With a grumbling whine, the flatbed lifted two feet from the ground. In the cockpit, everything shook with the vibration.
Most of the console’s functions relied on power from the engine to operate and with the drive active, the internal lights came on and the buttons illuminated in a comforting mixture of blues, reds, oranges and yellows.
“Climb onboard,” Conway said, thumbing over his shoulder towards the load bed. “Barron, Freeman, Kemp, you’re in here with me.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until you figure out how to drive it, sir?” asked Kemp.
“The captain’s a natural,” said Barron.
“Yeah – don’t you remember that smooth ride in the back of the Ragger truck on Reol?” asked Freeman.
“No, Corporal. I remember being shaken so hard that I thought half of my teeth were going to drop out,” said Kemp, pulling himself into the cabin.
Barron got the second seat, leaving Freeman and Kemp standing one at each door. Conway smiled inwardly at their death grips on the support handles.
“It’s going to be easy,” he reassured them.
“Whatever you say, sir,” said Barron.
A comms update from Lieutenant Rembra alerted Conway to the fact that everyone was onboard.
“Here we go,” he said with absolute confidence.
Conway grabbed both control sticks and pushed them forward. Without so much as a lurch, the flatbed gathered speed backwards, which was the opposite direction he was expecting. He quickly moved the controls to the center and the truck slowed without crashing into one of the storage shelves. The open channel became noisy with a variety of opinions on the standard of Conway’s driving.
“Good job there’s a bar on the back of the cabin to hold onto,” said Brice on the comms. “Otherwise I’d be regretting the fact I didn’t update my will last time I was on base.”
“What sort of dumbass makes their controls work like this?” Conway asked in disgust.
Barron shrugged and grinned. Kemp and Freeman kept their mouths shut. Having learned his lesson, Conway pulled the bars towards him and the truck moved off in the intended direction. A series of gentle adjustments reassured him that left and right worked as any sentient creature would expect.
Without a significant load to slow it down, the truck had plenty in reserve. However, the darkness was so overwhelming that Conway didn’t risk driving at much more than running speed.
“This button says lights,” said Barron. She aimed a finger at the button. “Want me to?”
“Do it.”
Barron pressed the button and a powerful yellow beam emerged from a place on top of the cabin. It shone in an arc ahead that dispersed some of the darkness and allowed Conway to see an additional thirty or forty meters, though everything seemed far more indistinct than in normal lighting. The light gave him the confidence he required to push the truck to ever-greater speeds and it hurtled along the aisle with its gravity drive almost purring in approval.
They passed other trucks and forklifts, as well as mobile cranes. This place was both utterly mundane in appearance and function, yet at the same time it was a technological wonder because the Ravok had constructed such a vast storage facility so far underground and on a planet as inhospitable as Glesia.
“Anyone counting rows?” asked Freeman.
“Nope,” said Kemp.
Conway wasn’t counting them either. He didn’t have the faintest idea how the Ravok numbered their warehouse shelves and he wasn’t interested in guessing. After what felt like a suitable amount of time, he brought the truck to a gentle stop.
“Private Kemp, get out and see where we are.”
Kemp sprang from the cabin and hared off, keeping himself within the arc of light.
“This one’s labelled 38212, sir.”
“Get back here.”
The moment Kemp had a grip on the support bar, Conway accelerated once more. He was desperate to get this over with and wanted to drive ever faster, but the soldiers on the load bed weren’t well secured and he didn’t want anyone falling off because he got impatient.
Two more stops brought them to shelf 47750. Conway had no idea if 47756 was left or right along the line and he decided on the former. Kemp and Freeman leaned out of the cabin and shouted what they saw.
“Shelf 47756,” said Kemp. “We’re here.”
Conway stopped the truck and clambered outside. The lowest shelf of this storage unit held eight identical console units of a type which he’d seen elsewhere in Refuge 9. He approached one, wondering if it had an asset tag he could read.
“Item 10953,” he said. The adjacent console was tagged with 10954.
“Where’s item 12017?” asked Lieutenant Rembra, dropping from the flatbed and loping across.
Conway didn’t know for certain, but he had a good idea. He pointed upwards. “That way.”
“There is no ladder,” said Rembra. “Therefore, the Ravok must have relied on other vehicles to load the flatbeds.”
“We passed a forklift at the entrance to this row, sir,” said Freeman.
“The masts on those might allow them to reach the next shelf up, but not the one above that,” said Conway. “Assuming more than two levels.”
“The cranes we saw had long booms.”
“We haven’t seen one of those near here,” said Conway. He didn’t much like the idea of trying to pluck a single object from a high shelf using a crane. It sounded like a recipe for frustration, failure and disaster all rolled into one.
Corporal Barron came up with the answer. She waved at Conway from the cabin and he ran to see what had got her interested.
“This section here on the console lets you enter an item number,” she said.
Conway understood at once. “The truck drivers can order what they require, rather than waiting for someone else to pick it up and load it for them.”
“I hope so,” said Barron with an uncertain smile. “Otherwise we’re screwed.”
She didn’t wait for Conway to give the order and entered the item number for the teleport replacement module.
“Done?” he asked.
“Looks like. Nothing here tells me if I’ve done it the right way or the wrong way.”
“We’ll soon find out.”
Conway jumped from the cabin and returned to Lieutenant Rembra. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect and he didn’t know how long he wanted to wait here if nothing h
appened. The Sekar hadn’t turned up, but the threat hadn’t gone away.
“What happens now?” asked Rembra.
“I don’t know. We’ve entered the item code into the truck’s console. Maybe a crane comes and picks it up.”
“A blunt instrument for what we believe to be a delicate object.”
“The Ravok built this place to work correctly.”
“I am sure they did exactly that.”
The delay wasn’t a long one. Rembra was the first to hear a sound and he alerted Conway to it.
“Something flies above us,” said the Fangrin.
Then Conway heard it too – a buzzing sound unlike any other propulsion system he’d come across.
“The Ravok use drones to collect the smaller parts from the upper shelves,” he said.
“An efficient method,” agreed Rembra.
The buzzing changed to a higher-pitched sound which made Conway think the drone was hovering. He guessed it might be in the region of a hundred meters above his head. The extent of the storage area seemed incredible until he remembered that Refuge 9 might well have been required to sustain millions of Ravok for perhaps hundreds of years.
A few seconds elapsed and then the buzzing sound deepened. It came closer and closer, and Conway watched to see what was coming. The drone appeared within range of his sight and he was faintly disappointed to discover it was no more than a rectangle with rounded edges. Below the drone and attached by invisible gravity chains, dangled item number 12017, which was a simple grey cube about ten inches in diameter. The drone placed the teleport module with absolute precision in the exact center of the load bed, severed the gravity chain and then rose vertically into the air. A few seconds later, it was gone.
“Anyone else feel guilty using a whole truck to carry that thing?” asked Kemp.
“Nope.”
“Someone pick it up and put it in the cabin,” said Conway, reluctant to have the module sliding around freely on the back of the vehicle.
Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5) Page 16