Escape (9 page)

His buoy was transmitting. Kieran selected the transmission and punched in a request for details. The signal was very weak; it would never make it back to the gate. If he weren't so close to the asteroid, he would've never detected it. Perhaps the same thing
—
whatever that was
—
had happened to his last buoy.
But if that's the case, then there should be two transmissions
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

And there was only one; the signal appeared to be coming from deep within the asteroid, which should have been impossible.
Mining buoys don’t burrow that deep
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
Kieran sighed and ran a hand through his short, blond hair. Something very strange was going on.

Well, let's at least check the data.
Kieran sent a request to download the data the buoy was transmitting. It took a few seconds for the download to complete, but then Kieran found himself looking at another puzzling phenomenon. Preliminary scans showed exactly what he had seen yesterday: 9.6% of the asteroid's considerable mass was tetrillium ore. But the rock samples taken by the buoy (wherever it was) contained no traces of tetrillium. Kieran brought up the results of the gravitic and seismic imaging scans for a more detailed look.

Kieran blinked stupidly at the images. Instead of running through the asteroid in veins like it should, the tetrillium was all concentrated in the center of the asteroid. Suddenly, he understood and his heart sank. There was no tetrillium
ore
in the asteroid. His sensors, and the buoy's were detecting a whole space station’s worth of tetrillium plating.

Someone had built a secret facility at the core of an enormous and depressingly useless rock.
Which explains why this belt is uncharted. Someone didn't want it to be found.

Kieran pounded the armrest of his flight chair in frustration.
Kefick!
He'd spent 1000 tokens, and 1000 more he didn't even have to spend
—
for what? To find a base that no one wanted to be found
—
and a whole belt of more than likely useless rocks.

Probably an outlaw base
 
.
 
.
 
.

No. That wouldn't explain why
this entire area of space is uncharted.
Outlaws don't have the kind of resources to prevent that data from surfacing.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Kieran brought his flitter around again. As he came in for another pass over the area where his buoy had disappeared, Kieran slowed to nearly a dead stop, and hovered a few hundred micró-astroms above the pebbly, gray surface of the asteroid. According to his sensors, the entire asteroid was devoid of any irregular, overly symmetrical features on the surface
—
nothing that could be part of a space station. And according to the scans his buoy had taken, there was no tetrillium anywhere close to the surface.
Which means anyone not looking past the surface of this rock, isn't going to see anything
but
rock.

Surely there must be a tunnel, then? How else do they get to the station?

Kieran keyed his sensors for a detailed scan, but he couldn't get a clear image beyond the surface topography. There were a few particularly deep craters, but nothing that looked like a tunnel.
Something must be jamming my scanners.
Kieran shrugged.
Either that, or it's solid rock straight through to a tetrillium core
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
unlikely.

Kieran smiled, suddenly realizing what he was missing. The signal from his buoy was coming from dead ahead, yet there was nothing but solid rock in front of him. Remembering how his buoy had mysteriously disappeared earlier, rather than making physical impact like he'd expected, Kieran fired his flitter's thrusters at 25% thrust, and hoped his eyes hadn't been playing tricks on him.

Proximity alarms began to blare, and Kieran watched the red, point-of-no-return number begin blinking on his rangefinder again. At current speed and acceleration, 93 micró-astroms was the point of no return.

He'd just passed it. Right or wrong, there was no turning back now. Kieran winced as the surface rushed up to greet him. For a split second, he had a moment of utter clarity. He'd made a horrible mistake.

He could actually count the pebbles and grains of sand as they came crashing through his transpiranium cockpit canopy. Then he knew he was dead, because he couldn't see a thing
—

Except the blinking lights and instrument panels in his cockpit. Awareness dawned just in time, and Kieran yanked the throttle into full reverse. His velocity quickly ran backward to zero, and Kieran laughed at himself. Even though he had been expecting it, he had somehow mistaken the hologram at the entrance of the tunnel for solid rock.

Kieran flicked a switch, turning on his flitter's bow lights. He found himself staring down a fathomlessly wide and deep hole. His flitter's bow lights lanced uselessly through the darkness, finding nothing to illuminate. A quick look at his sensors dispelled the illusion of nothingness. He was surrounded by solid rock
—
floating in the entrance of a tunnel that was approximately a milé-astrom in diameter, and an indeterminate depth. About 100 milé-astroms away, the tunnel curved out of sensor range. Whatever elements the asteroid was made up of, it was playing havoc with his sensors.

Well, even if it's only 100 mA down
—
and based on his buoy’s gravitic imaging scan he doubted it
—
that's one keficking deep hole. Why would anyone put a station that far beneath the surface?

Kieran frowned.
Whatever is hidden at the core of this rock, someone went to a lot of expense and trouble to hide it.
He should turn around and pretend he hadn’t found anything
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
Kieran jammed the throttle forward. He wasn't going back having spent over 2000 tokens for nothing.
If I'm lucky, whatever is hidden at the center of this rock, will be valuable to someone
—
even if the only value is in my silence.
Someone might pay him to keep his mouth shut. Maybe.

Unable to see anything visually, Kieran was stuck with IFO
—
instrument flight only. He kept a keen eye on his sensor display, making gradual adjustments to his course in order to stay in the center of the tunnel. For whatever reason, the tunnel had been dug in a long, twisting curve.

Curious.

Kieran felt his heart pounding insistently in his chest. He kept his velocity low
—
hovering around 0.2 mAps, just in case there were undetected obstacles in the tunnel. The deeper he went, the more length his sensors added to the tunnel.

After a couple minutes, Kieran passed through a hazy cloud of dust, and his sensors found a mining buoy about a milé-astrom to port (left).
There's one. So where's the one I fired yesterday?

It would be a bit of a coincidence for both of them to have gone jetting down the tunnel.
Maybe the first one was malfunctioning.

After 10 minutes of flying down the tunnel, Kieran sighed. For every milé-astrom he went, his sensors added another to the end of the tunnel. There was still no detectable end to it. Kieran was starting to get a really bad feeling. The list of possible groups who might have had the resources to put a station that far beneath the surface of asteroid was growing shorter. Someone who would spend that much money to keep this place a secret wouldn't have any qualms about burying him along with it.

Another 10 minutes passed. And another. Kieran was just about to configure his autopilot so he could give his cramping hands a break when the sensor display showed something new. Radiation levels were spiking. He was detecting an energy signature at about 150 milé-astroms that was consistent with a massive starship. After a few more minutes of flying, a bright haze began illuminating the rocky, gray-brown walls of the tunnel. Kieran frowned, unable to decide what he was seeing.

Then he caught his first glimpse of it. Peeking around the distant corner of the tunnel was a swirling, multi-colored vortex
—
a wormhole, surrounded by a smaller ring than what was standard for a TLS gate.
So that explains the energy signature.

As rest of the ring came into view, Kieran shut off his external lights. The illumination inside the tunnel was dazzling. He found himself gaping at the wormhole.

It's a gate! Why would anyone bury a gate
—
Kieran checked his navcomp to see how far he'd traveled
—
over 300 milé-astroms beneath the surface of an asteroid?!
Technically, it was less than that to the surface, because the tunnel whorled it’s way through the asteroid in a slow corkscrew, but still!

Then Kieran remembered that he hadn't been able to detect the gate from the surface. The energy signature hadn't been able to bleed through all that solid rock. It was naturally shielded from both passive and active scans.

But that still left the question of why the gate was hidden in the first place. Something definitely wasn't adding up.

As he drew closer, Kieran noticed that the ring around the wormhole wasn't strictly circular. There was a boxy protrusion on the upper right side with a control tower rising out of it. At the top of the tower was the usual bubble of blue-tinted transpiranium which contained the gate control center.

In front of the boxy protrusion a handful of ships were docked to long, spindly airlocks. A few of the airlocks appeared to be free for docking, so Kieran aimed for them. At 20 milé-astroms from the station, he lost control of his flitter and his ship reversed thrust. Kieran frowned: how did they do that?

Obviously he had reached the station's drone zone, but he'd never heard of someone being able to take control of a ship without first receiving the access codes.

An automated query appeared on his comm, asking him for his
UBER Access Code.

UBER? What would they be doing with a hidden TLS gate? No one cares if they are exploring the galaxy. That's what they're meant to be doing.

Kieran stubbornly tried to override the autopilot which had summarily taken control of his flitter. His efforts were met by a repeat of the earlier comm query, asking for his UBER Access Code.

Well, I don't have one you stupid docking computer.
Kieran typed a random code into the comm.

Access denied (2 tries remaining).

Surprise surprise. Looks like I came all this way for nothing.

Kieran tried turning his ship around, but even basic controls were locked. He was effectively dead in space.

A cold tendril of fear wormed into his gut. He was stuck at a top-secret UBER facility, far beneath the surface of an asteroid, impossibly shielded from the sensors of any passing ships. He couldn't go back, and he couldn't go forward.
Well, they're just going to have to let me go.

Switching to an open comm band, Kieran spoke aloud: “This is Kieran Hawker, FMG prospector 567, out of Outpost 110. Your station has taken control of my vessel and I can neither approach nor leave. Please advise.”

Silence
 
.
 
.
 
.

Kieran bit his lip
—
hard. The fact that there were ships docked to the station meant that someone was there. So why weren't they answering?

“Unknown UBER facility, this is Kieran Hawker, FMG prospector 567. Please respond
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
”

Chapter 5

A
crisp crackle of static came rattling through the comm.

“Prospector Hawker. Please board the station.”

Kieran's brow furrowed. “Ah, control
 
.
 
.
 
.
perhaps you didn't hear me the first time. Your station has locked me out of my flight controls. I can't approach to
—
”

Suddenly the flight yoke came alive in his hands. He tested the controls, and his flitter began drifting left, right, up, and down in response to his tests. “Never mind, control. Beginning my approach.”

There was no response from the station, but none was really called for. As Kieran drew nearer to the airlocks, he began to make out the details of the other ships docked with the station. Since those ships were powered down, his sensors were practically useless to detect and classify them, but Kieran could classify them with the naked eye.