Chapter 38: Great Balls of Fire
All the biomes were fitted with flier ports. Flier shuttles were used to transfer persons and small items to and from the spavator and then down to the HUB. These ports were totally sealed off from the biome proper. Security protocols were strict. Nothing entered or left a biome without the proper clearance, and therein lay the rub. Clearance. The last few decades of the biomes’ existence had resulted in a number of changes to biome security protocols. Most of the changes tightened security. This made it more difficult for the black marketers unless you had clearance. Clearance was always granted for the right price. The rich and powerful were routinely granted the required clearance.
Joseph dropped off Jayne at Biome Central. She walked to her office, glad to be back in Earth normal gravity. She flexed her leg muscles and bounced up and down on her toes. Out in the biome, that kind of leg jump would have taken her a lot higher. Here, she was only a few cm from the ground.
Joseph headed back to the crime scene. He felt he would be more useful there and would report to her later in the day. He was her eyes on the ground. He was fitted with body cameras that would transmit everything he saw and heard, and even a few things he could not see or hear, to Jayne’s office monitors.
Jayne whispered, even though no one could possibly hear her, “Suit override – thirteen – suggest LO standard.” Her suit turned into a dark green skirt and jacket. She looked down at her feet and saw that she was wearing her gym sneakers. That is what she had on her feet when she left for the gym earlier today. They were fine with the fixer suit but they looked very odd with her work suit. She kicked them off and found a pair of heeled pumps behind the door. She slipped them on and slid behind her desk. The monitors came on and she watched scenes from a floater; front, back and to the sides. It was travelling at top speed. Joseph had obviously used her bypass code to increase the speed of the floater.
Joseph’s voice filled her office. “I see you are up and watching. I will arrive in a few minutes. We have two-way.”
“Great,” responded Jayne.
Joseph got off the floater and walked up the hill to the lift entrance. The fixer crew had erected a large tent over the original hole leading to the room filled with corpses. Jayne’s views were Joseph’s views and more. She could see behind him. The tent flap opened and a body bag was lifted onto a waiting floater and whisked away.
As Joseph was about to enter the tent, Jayne heard a whooshing sound through the microphone. She saw the tent over the hole burst into flame. Suddenly, the camera switched. Joseph had turned around. He was quickly retreating from the intense heat. Jayne watched as two flaming fixer med techs ran out of the flaming tent. They were trained for accidents of this kind and rolled in the dry dirt in an effort to extinguish themselves. A floater had just arrived and the driver grabbed a folded body bag, flapped it open and tried to smother the flames on the first fixer who came out of the tent. It was a horror to watch. The flame was infectious. It spread from person to person through touch. Jayne suspected it was a highly flammable gel that stuck and continued to burn whatever or whomever touched it. The ‘would be’ rescuer was also engulfed in flames and suffocation of the fire seemed impossible.
Jayne noticed she was quickly getting a closer view of the fire and she realized that Joseph was running towards the screaming, burning men in an effort to help. Jayne screamed at the communication microphone, “Joseph NO! Joseph stop! You can’t help.” She saw the picture in front of her stop its rush to zoom into the flaming bodies and burning ground smeared with flaming gel.
“What the hell is that stuff?” Joseph yelled through the speakers.
“The gel will completely incinerate you. I’ve read about it. The chemical reaction with flesh causes an incredibly hot flame that consumes a body completely. Nothing is left but ash. Once you have even a little on your body and the reaction has started, there is no stopping it. Please don’t go near or touch any of it. Warn others.”
The screaming soon stopped as the flames burned the bodies like they were logs of wood. The tent was gone, leaving only metal skeletons of equipment. The ground continued to smolder around the expanded hole that lead to the cache of gutted bodies that were now surely piles of smoldering ash.
There was another whoosh and again Jayne could see flames through the camera pointing behind Joseph. A number of trees were spattered by flaming gel that had spewed from the stairway that led to down to the rooms below. The flames were growing and threatening to spread the conflagration to adjacent areas. Jayne imagined Joseph standing over the stairwell when the gel exploded from the opening. She imagined him burning and helpless to save him. She closed her eyes and squeezed the thought from her consciousness. Again, Joseph turned around and the camera focus shifted. Jayne watched as fire retardant spewed from nozzles hidden in the stone structure of the biome base. There could be no large fires in a biome. The designers realized that fire could easily destroy all life support systems, no matter how redundant. A few trees continued to smolder but the fire retardant was soon replaced by a heavy mist of water. The flames were soon extinguished and the smoke suctioned away, leaving behind the charred bodies of humans and trees.
Suddenly there was a rumble. The entire biome shook to the core of the asteroid that supported it. Alarms sounded everywhere, from every speaker and horn. One of the monitors was completely obscured. The others had become blurred with mist.
Jayne cried out, “Joseph! Joseph, are you alright? Joseph!”
He did not reply, but she could see motion as if he was running. She could hear his rapid breathing.
“It has all been destroyed. I don’t think anyone could have survived that fire gel. We have to assume that everyone down there is dead,” puffed Joseph, as he continued to run.
“What about the explosion? We felt a huge rumble and, as you can hear, the alarms are going crazy,” she yelled over the cacophony of alarms and recorded warnings that blared around her.
The cameras showed Joseph running and suddenly stopping. He reached for his VID but it had been shattered. He tore one of the cameras from his lapel and held it out in front of himself at arm’s length. “Are you OK?”
“I am fine,” she said, but an odd feeling seeped into the moment. She felt exposed. She didn’t want to worry Joseph so she said nothing of her feelings. “How are you and what caused that explosion?” She looked at his face covered with mud and saw fear in his eyes.
“I think the explosion was set off by us. Banks and the others must have ventured into a booby trap. The fire gel would destroy any evidence and I suspect the explosion closed off all of the tunnels. I bet one of those tunnels led to the underside of this rock and to a secret ship port. How else would they get those body parts out of here?” he said. “They really didn’t want anyone exploring their super-secret hideaway and slaughterhouse. Look!” He turned the camera facing the scene and zoomed in on the original hole he had crawled into earlier that day.
Jayne could see a dark grey foam-like mass oozing from the hole. It shimmered for a moment and then stopped moving. After a few seconds, it lightened in color to an off-white.
“What is that?” Jayne asked.
“Concrete foam. It dries instantly and is harder than stone. It will be a very long time before anyone gets back into those tunnels, if ever. The good thing is, it will stabilize the entire asteroid. There were plans in the works to use it to fill any underworld caves and tunnels but the expense was deemed prohibitive and the danger to the biome was not critical until the biomes were ready to leave Earth orbit. The departure is still years in the future,” he said, pointing the camera back at his face.
As a signal that things had stabilized, the alarms and announcements stopped. “It is over. I’m coming to get you,” said Jayne.
“No, you are not. Stay right where you are. It is my job to look after you and not the other way around,” he yelled, but it was too late. Jayne had already left the office carrying her sneakers.
Her VID beeped. She glanced at it, expecting Joseph to yell at her and tell her to stay where she was. It was Professor Greenway. It was Poppy. Jayne relaxed as she always did when he contacted her. She had never had a father or a grandfather and he was as close as she was ever going to get to family. He was her protector. “Not that I need one,” she thought to herself sarcastically.
“Poppy?” she queried.
“Jayne, thank god. I just got a very disconcerting message. You need—” he said, as Jayne cut him off.
“I’m alright. I have some things to tell you but this is not a good time. I will call you tonight. I will use encryption,” she said quickly. She snapped the VID closed. A floater zipped into the transition zone. Jayne ran to it but it was not Joseph. She called to the driver, “Have you seen Kane?”
The young fixer responded with a question. “Are you the LO?” His face was flushed and his eyes were wild.
“Yeah,” answered Jayne. She looked into his eyes and asked, “Where is Joseph Kane?”
“He went back. We heard some moans from the woods and he went to check while I was sent here,” he said, as he got off the floater and walked over to her. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Jayne felt a surge of fear. Something was wrong. The fear she felt was not focused. She was blind to everything but this fixer reaching into his inside pocket. He was reaching for something dangerous. She could feel it. She was weighing options when the bubble swelled over her. Again, time slowed and the fixer’s hand stopped in mid-reach. Her mind cast a net into the infinite stream of possibilities and snagged a few of the bigger ones; the more likely ones; the ones that did not slip through the holes of her net. There were a number of options whose outcomes she did not like and, like old rubber boots cluttering up her net, she tossed them back into the flow. One grew and filled her consciousness. She did not like it but it was the safest. She was hoping she could control it as the bubble collapsed and, like before in the spaceship, a solid ball of air formed. This time it was about the half the size of a grav ball.
What happened next was almost simultaneous. The ball came into existence. The slip of scribe the fixer was retrieving from his jacket came into view. The ball was fired. She realized the fixer was not reaching for a weapon. It was too late to stop the solid ball of air. All she could do was slow it down. She pushed and the ‘ball’ slowed. It hit the fixer in the chest. The fixer fell. The scribe slip fluttered and landed on the chest of the now unconscious young man.
Jayne’s eyes opened wide. She had been wrong. He had been reaching for a slip of magnetic scribe, not a weapon. She knelt down. The fixer was young and still breathing. Jayne sighed with relief. She placed her index finger on the corner of the scribe slip, her fingerprint was scanned and confirmed and a single word formed.
“Hide!” it said.
Jayne stood up and looked around. She realized the danger she had sensed had not come from the young man at her feet. The danger was building again but she could not find the focus. The origin was not clear. She spun in a circle. The potential of danger swelled but the origin was completely blurred. Hide? But where? There was no place to hide. Panic brought on the bubble again, and again time slowed. It took a few micro-seconds for Jayne’s brain to look at the day’s events. One jumped up and begged to be analyzed. The DNA scraper on the door keypad in the underground gallery had taken a sample. Whoever had set up that house of horrors now had a sample of her DNA and had run an analysis. They knew she was here. She was sensing their purpose more clearly and, like a compass seeking the north pole, they were homing in on her. She had to do more than hide. She had to run and keep running until she could find a way of escape. The biome wilds was a dangerous place to hide but it was a lot safer that what she knew was coming.
Behind her, at the main platform, she heard the high pitch whine of a ship landing. It didn’t sound like a freight transport from the spavator port. The sound was not deep enough. It was a more like a passenger ship but not quite. Military. It was military. She had heard a million military ships fly over the nursery on their way back from somewhere. This was that same sound. A military ship was landing and she knew none were scheduled. She knew they were coming for her.
She jumped on the floater on which the now unconscious fixer had arrived and set it to top speed. She headed across the lowlands in an Earth-north direction. If they were going to kidnap her, she was not about to make it easy. All the biomes had sensors set into the very rock of the asteroids from which they were built. The military would have access to them. They would detect her body heat or her motion or her mass and she would be discovered and captured. They could also track her VID. Her heart raced and she tossed Cassie Kai’s VID into a small pond as she flew by. That would make her harder to find but she would also be without any form of communication. She would be cut off from all help. She was really on her own.
She was headed to the ‘edge of the world’, as the omies called it. That place where the sky met the ground. You could not touch the sky, for it was out of reach. The sky met the asteroid at the top of a high smooth rock face. The face was impossible to climb and a floater was restricted from rising more than a metre or so from the ground. The ‘sky’ consisted of the dome proper. It was impossible to touch, as it was protected by a negative gravity field and repelled anything that came near.
The northern most point of this particular biome was unique. There was a canyon with a small opening between two large boulders. The sensor array had been terminated in front of the canyon and so anyone inside was invisible to the sensors. If you pushed your floater to maximum height, you could pass between the boulders and hide inside. Jayne had studied some Biome 7 lore in her search for the source of the murders and came upon this little tidbit of information. It just might save her from capture.
Once inside she scanned her surroundings. The walls were covered with graffiti but the area was relatively clean. Any debris from the last party had been cleaned up. This struck Jayne as odd. She explored further and discovered an extension power source set up near a series of flat rocks set in a circle. Someone had hacked a node on a sensor array and run power to the inside of the canyon. Someone was planning a party soon. But not tonight. It was too late for anyone to travel out this far. Jayne shivered and the Sergio Partelli she was wearing displayed a flashing indicator at her wrist. It was light pink. That was a request for verbal communication.
She pressed the light and the suit spoke. “There has been a heavy and constant load on the power source of the suit. Please connect to an external power source to recharge.”
Jayne picked up the connector at her feet and clipped it to the Sergio Partelli. She snuggled down between a couple of rocks and rested. Sergio kept her warm while it charged and she soon fell into a fitful sleep.
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