The Broken Cage (Solstice 31 Saga Book 2) (17 page)

Kuss tapped, again. “It will be about 128 hours.”

“We could insulate her tiny-ass suit with one of the damaged bigger suits,” Weston said.

“If she took the extra CO
2
scrubber packs, she could change them out every twenty hours,” Elkin added.

“She will only need a couple extra tanks of O
2
,” Ibenez said.

Hume looked at Jimbo, and said, “Remember how Barcus did those forty hour maintenance EVA's? He loaded an extra bladder of some high caloric liquid that he sipped, in addition to water.” Jimbo nodded.

“You’ll need a catheter,” Cook said, scratching his beard.

There was a long pause. Kuss caught up, typing in the pad.

Jimbo spoke, “Hume, you will have to fly on manual, for 130 hours, with no food, and without much movement. Then, while you’re crippled from stiffness and frozen from the cold, you will precision fly to a specific point, on grav-foils only, and do a high-speed barrel roll, over and over, as you pass through that point. And, finally, you will land on a hostile planet with almost no useful survival gear or supplies. Have I got that right?”

“Sounds like fun.” Hume smiled.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Salterkirk

“These people were not stupid. In fact, I began to get a feeling about them in Salterkirk. Hindsight is 20/20.”

--
Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Master Chief Nancy Randall, senior surviving security member of the Ventura's crew.

<<<>>>

They fell into a routine of days and nights, even though it was always dark in Salterkirk. They ate their morning and evening meals together and spent the time in between those meals working.

Tannhauser set up trap lines in the valley, below the entrance to the mine. He walked the lines every day and hunted while he was out and about. He trapped many, different kinds of small animals that made excellent additions to the stew pots. The furs collected were beautiful and soft. Tannhauser said they will be worth a lot in trade. One day, he shot a deer that was so big, he enlisted Poole to carry it back for him.

Long days were spent by the hearth, where Vi created leather goods like packs, purses and pouches from the abundant leather they had reclaimed but could not use, as it was so easily identifiable. Everyone got new boots and knife sheaths.

Rand explored the complex.

She was intrigued by the mysterious method used and reasoning behind why this place was cut into the hills. The salt mines themselves were extremely massive. Some of the tunnels and the chambers were cut into the solid rock with modern mining equipment. Yet, the extensive salt mines themselves looked like they were carved by hand.

The closed, upper galleries were a free-climb adventure to reach, but she managed. She forced the door open at the end of the gallery, finding an entirely new, modern-cut section inside. The galleries were connected all the way around the main cavern. A well-armed force could easily hold this section.

She found stairs that led down to a secret door in the back of the huge food pantry.

Going the other way led through to a series of large–thirty meters by fifty meters–rooms with high ceiling, connected by wide hallways. The last one looked like a giant hangar over 100 meters wide and longer still.

Rand recognized the foamcrete floor and vaulted ceiling with no pillars. At the far edge, the rock overhang hid the entrance, very well, and kept out the weather. Rand walked right up to the edge and looked down at the frozen lake forty meters below.

Any shuttle from the
Ventura
would fit in here. Even the captain's pinnace, the
Memphis,
would fit.

That made her think of Jimbo and Hume. Then, of Chen and Barcus. She even thought of that fat, old, drunken barkeep, Peck, with his missing tooth and his excellent bourbon. She sat down on the floor in the middle of the hangar deck and took off her helmet. The fog of her breath was heavy in the still room. She thought of Marton, Walther, Malinowski, Phelps, Myers, and Grazio. The sound of their laughter. She remembered running the entire loop of the flight deck’s outer ring all those times with Barcus and Jimbo. How they had pushed her, making her stronger, in body and in spirit. The heavy gravity on the outer ring was home.

The helmet sat in her lap. She crossed her arms on top of it, then rested her head on those arms.

Rand, finally, let herself mourn. She sobbed for her friends, her family. Her loss. Herself.

***

The light began to fade. The opening faced almost due north, and the sun was too far off to the left to be seen. Rand rose and put her helmet back on as it powered up. When she turned to exit the way she came in, she saw a door. She almost missed it. It was in the back wall, farther down to the right, on the opposite side from where she came in.

It was a blast door. An airlock door. The control panel on the right was dark. No power. When she tried to open the panel to access the manual control, the small ring handle that flipped up broke off in her hand.

She would come back tomorrow with tools and with Poole.

On the way back, she realized that these were a series of inner hangars. The wide corridors that connected them were big enough for cargo shuttles and fighters. A lot of them. The tactical map of the complex expanded as she reviewed it. It was 4.2 kilometers from the cottage in the cavern to the lake’s edge in the hangar.

Rand startled Vi as she walked out of the pantry. Vi almost dropped a tray with a water pitcher and mugs.

“Bloody anvils, Rand. You scared a year out of me,” Vi said.

“Bloody anvils?” Rand asked.

“
Rand, Tannhauser is back. He is on his way down to the cottage now,”
AI~Poole said, inside her head.

“Sorry, I know I shouldn't curse. But, how did you get in there?” Vi said, as she regained her composure and placed the pitcher and mugs on the table.

“There is a hidden door in the back of the pantry. I'll show you after dinner. There are more storerooms back there, mostly empty, but one of them is full of old blocks of wax. A few tons of it, I think,” Rand said, as she took off her cloak and then set the table.

“Wax? That's wonderful!” she exclaimed, and began to light every candle in the room. Eventually, it was brighter than they had ever seen it.

“What are you making? It smells wonderful,” Rand said, as she heard the door open in the front of the cottage.

“Rabbit pie. It's one of Tan's favorites,” Vi replied.

“I'm back,” called Tannhauser, from the front of the cottage. “The snow is getting really deep out there now.” He stamped his feet in front of the hearth in the front room, trying to dry off a bit.

“
Rand, someone has just entered the cavern,
” AI~Poole warned.

A window opened in Rand’s HUD that showed a man, lurking in the shadows, below Poole's position, up on the shelf in the darkness.

As Tannhauser walked into the dining room, Vi walked in from the kitchen. Rand said, “Tan, you were followed back here. Someone is in the cavern, watching the cottage. Poole is watching him.”

“The front door is bolted, can we eat our rabbit pies before they get cold?” Tannhauser rubbed his hands together.

“Shall I have Poole take care of him?” Tan’Vi froze. Rand had not expected that reaction.

It was Vi that spoke first, “Do you kill everyone you meet?”

Rand started to sit. “Usually. Seems to save time.”

Tannhauser looked at Vi wide-eyed. Vi laughed first, set down the pies and went back to get the cheese.

***

Poole kept watching the man while the three of them ate the excellent rabbit pies. Rand loved them. They were small, meaty pies with pulled rabbit and diced bacon. They had thick gravy with onions, potatoes, mushrooms, and the perfect peppery spice.

Rand watched, as the man slowly stalked his way down the small incline in the shadows. Poole had silently come down from the shelf and was not far behind him in the blackness. When the man lowered his hood and turned, for just a moment, Rand recognized him.

It was the tracker named Coff.

“Do you know a tracker named Coff?” she asked, over spicy stewed apples.

Tannhauser replied, “I know Coff. From the northern shelter logs and in person. He's alright. Good tracker. Never really applies himself. Just wants to be free. Why?”

“I didn't kill him, either.” Rand finished her apples. “It's him, out there.”

“Don't scare him. He might hurt you, by accident,” Vi added, knowing Rand would go out there.

“I won't hurt him.” Rand didn't say she wouldn't scare him.

***

Coff worked his way toward the cottage, slowly, quietly. He'd been there several times before, and he knew that this side path, running near the right wall by the stream, was there. The path was sandy, and was clear and easy to follow by just the light from the cottage. He heard voices in there. They had so many candles lit inside, even if they did come outside, they would never see him in the shadows.

He felt confident.

Rand stepped between Coff and the cottage, so she was seen even though she was less than two meters away.

“Nice to meet you again, Coff,” the sinister voice whispered from the faceless riot helmet.

Rand loved these ‘Social Voice’ settings. They were meant to be scary and intimidating. They worked.

“Bloody Hammer, it's you!” he cursed, and stepped back a bit.

“Relax, Coff. You have friends here that have already saved you from me.” Her fingers sparked in the darkness.

“From us,” she whispered.

Coff looked back, then. Was there a massive bit of movement there? A pebble dislodged, somewhere? It was too dark in the cavern to detect a greater darkness there.

When he turned back, she was gone.

A minute later, he saw a figure, dressed in black, walking into the light from the two lanterns in front of the cottage. The figure reached up and took off the black helmet, shook her hair free and looked over her shoulder directly at him, even though she should not have been able to see him in the shadows.

She entered the cottage, leaving the door wide open.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Signals

“It’s the only thing I regret. I should have noticed Hamilton was missing.”

--
Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Lieutenant Valerie Hume, the security chief on the Memphis.

<<<>>>

The probe team filed into the conference room the next morning. The team had grown overnight.

Hume, Cook, Beary, Muir, Tyrrell, Ibenez, Elkin, Kuss, and Dr. Shaw sat around the conference table. Dr. Bowen, Shea, Perry, Wood, and Edwards sat in the side chairs against the wall.

Hume was at one end and Worthington was at the head of the table.

“Okay, folks. Let’s hear it.” Jimbo knew it was all about the plan proposal.

Bowen jumped in first. “Can we move this meeting out into the hangar? You have the gravity set way too high in here,” she whined.

Worthington, and everyone else, ignored her.

Hume began. “We ran the test flights this morning. I can easily maintain the roll at the right velocity, while following the correct trajectory. We figured out how I could keep from freezing to death and/or roasting to death by adjusting my flight attitude, so I fly bottom up to the sun. The foils will shade the cockpit. If it gets too cold, I’ll roll the canopy into the sun for a bit to warm me up.”

Dr. Shaw spoke next. “As bad an idea as I believe this is, I think she can do it. We can keep her awake and alert for the entire flight, using this.” She held up a small device that was the size of a deck of cards. “It's an injector, salvaged from the autoDoc in the shuttle. It will hold several meds, including hunger and nausea suppressors, stims and antipsychotics. She will go nuts after the first three days without sleep, if we don't give her anything. She’s already off solid food, for obvious reasons I don't want to detail here, and we have already installed a two liter bladder into her pressure suit that will hold 10,000 calories of liquid nourishment. She will have to get a catheter. I have trained her as to how it's removed. We will inject her with a load of specialized nanites that may keep her from getting stiff.”

“Nausea suppressors?” Jim asked.

Hume replied, “Ever fly at high speeds on grav-foils only?”

“It will feel like a roller coaster ride for five days, Jim,”
AI~Ben said, in his head.

Elkin continued. “The pressure suit is equipped with extra water, food, puke evacuation, and tethering. She has alarms set in her HUD to remind her to change the CO
2
scrubbers. Extra O
2
tanks are strapped in and ready.”

“What do you mean by tethering?” Elkin looked at Hume to see if she would answer. She did.

“Once a day, I plan to power down for five minutes, open the canopy, exit the Hammerhead and stretch. We built this into the calculations, and Doc Shaw thinks it would be a good idea. But, only for five minutes every twenty hours, to keep the timetable,” Hume said. “The tether is a safety line that will stay attached the whole flight. They are worried I will not be thinking too clearly towards the end and, if I had to tie off each time, I might forget.”

Muir was next. “The sensor package is already loaded and powered up. We have a window to hit the hole on the planet’s next rotation. Hume will whip around the moon in the opposite direction from the sensor station, to gain maximum velocity, using the moon's gravity. She will be in a communications blackout for about thirty hours, until she gains line of sight for the laser comms. She will be able to securely communicate with us, daily, from the surface while the moon is in her sky. She will be able to transmit the probe telemetry as soon as she is on the ground.”

Hume added, “We will have some space in the foot well, just forward of the sensor case, where I can add my survival pack and some other food and gear.”

Worthington thought for a minute. “Let's say you get through the hole and down to the surface. Where will you go?”

“I can add some new information here, sir,” Muir added. “We have had the new dish online for twenty-four hours now and have already found some very interesting information.”

“Why wasn't I informed of this?” Bowen demanded.

“If we have a question for you, Bowen, we'll say your name or something,” Muir snapped, then continued. “The new dish has detected two Emergency Modules that are active on the surface. Ben confirmed that the high-entropy, encrypted traffic we have detected is between an Emergency Module and a personal HUD. If any other type of AI were looking at the data, we all would have missed it.”

“Two EMs? Other survivors?” Worthington asked.

“Yes, sir.” A tactical map of the planet opened on the conference room wall, showing the location of the two points. “This point, here, is near some type of war zone.” It zoomed in further. “There is a town in flames, here. Smoke plumes are visible. Heavy ground vegetation is obscuring the events, there.” The view zoomed out, and then in, on the other point. “This point of origin is intermittent, but is in a very isolated area near the southern tip of this large lake. There are no population centers, there. We think Hume should begin there.”

“Is there any way to contact them, directly?” Jim asked, knowing the answer already.

“Not without giving away our position, which is much more important now. We have also discovered that the weapons platforms have as many missiles pointed in, toward the planet, as out, into space,” Muir concluded. “No broadcast communications. Even tight beam, point-to-point laser communications may be a risk. That is why we’re going to transmit the sensor readings back first.”

“I will find the survivors and locate a suitable landing site for the
Memphis
, before it is ready to fly,” Hume said, with complete confidence.

“When do you leave?” Worthington asked, as if it was just a snack run.

“Tomorrow at 0800 hours,” Hume answered.

***

Hume departed, on schedule, and was out of comms range in less than two hours.

Jim was haunted by her silent departure. Just before she climbed into the Hammerhead, Hume paused and looked up at the camera she knew was there, the camera she knew Jim would be watching.

She gave a formal salute and held it for a long moment, before she closed her visor and climbed in.

That was thirty-four hours and twelve minutes ago.

“There she is,” Muir called out, from the tactical station. “Point-to-point channel open, Captain.”

Jim hesitated before speaking, “Hey, Hume. What's new?”

“Jimbo, can you do me a favor?” she asked.

“Name it.”

“Remind me to kick Shaw's ass when I get back.”

Jim smiled. “Roger that.”

“Oh, and remind me to take a nice relaxing vacation. Something medieval, like maybe a couple of weeks on the rack or a round of waterboarding,” Hume said.

“You're right on track. The perfect flight path. Really damn good, for full manual.”

“Tell Shaw I said, 'Fuck you.' Okay, Jimbo? Feels like the goddamn nanites are eating me alive. I’m so awake, so alert, I can't ignore them. And, whatever else she gave me isn’t suppressing the pain, I just don't give a shit.”

“That is only part of the plan,” Jimbo joked.

“Did I tell you I loaded up the collection of First Century Films into my HUD? You know those classic films Barcus loved so much, but I never watched. Movie nights in the back of Peck's Halfway. The 1G pub,” she said.

“Are you okay, Hume? Seriously?” Worthington asked.

“I just finished one called
It's a Wonderful Life
. Ever see it, Jimbo? The faces of those people. The way they lived. Happiness and despair.”

“Hume?” Jim asked. He muted the transmission and called out, “Ben! Get Dr. Shaw on the link. NOW!”

“I have watched thirteen films, so far. Have you ever seen a real horror film, Jimbo? I watched one called
Night of the Living Dead
. I'm glad I have a catheter because I would have pissed myself, otherwise,” Hume said.

“I thought you were fearless, Hume,” Jim said, trying to engage her.

“So did I! No more horror for me. I can't believe people just think that shit up.”

“Keep her talking. I'm monitoring her vitals,” Shaw said, on a side channel.

“What will you watch next, Hume?” Jim asked.

“One called
The Maltese Falcon
. I flew a Falcon-class deep space fighter craft once. Best inertia dampeners, ever. Want to watch it with me?” Hume asked.

“I'd like that, Hume. As long as I don't distract you,” Jim said, and then muted the connection. “She sounds drunk, Shaw. Is this what you expected?” he demanded.

A window opened in his personal HUD. An image of a lion roared.

“She is amazing, Captain. She is doing great. Don't worry. You won't distract her. I will keep monitoring. Just be with her,” Shaw said. She sounded optimistic.

***

They took turns. Hume never noticed the shift changes. She stopped noticing that the people speaking to her changed every four films or so.

Her HUD fed Hume navigation data that she never deviated from. Jim began to relax after the second scheduled ‘stretch’ where Hume left the cockpit and moved in free fall, to keep her limbs alive.

Jim started to worry, again, during the 111
th
hour.

Hume became quiet.

“Hume, we have time for a couple more films before the entry point. What's up next?” Jim asked. Jim and Cook were on the bridge of the
Memphis
now. The full tactical display was up on the main screen, showing the remaining flight path.

“Hume?” Jim repeated.

“Where's Sharon? I miss Sharon,” Hume said.

“What?” Jim asked, looking at Cook.

“Is Sharon Hamilton mad at me? You know, because I was following her?” she asked.

Something occurred to Worthington, just then. He muted Hume. “Ben, locate Sharon Hamilton.”

“Sharon Hamilton is currently off-line,” AI~Ben replied.

“When was the last time anyone saw Hamilton?” Jim received no response from the people on the bridge. “Cook, find her. NOW.”

Cook rose and left the bridge.

Jim spoke to Hume, “Hume, why were you following Sharon?”

“The weapons locker. I thought it might be her.” She seemed sleepy.

“Dr. Shaw. Status,” Jim demanded.

“Her heart rate is elevated. The nanites are really putting it to her. She has a fever that is higher than I’d like. She is also saving the last of the liquid nourishment for just before the insertion.”

“Sir, the sensor package is indicating the cockpit is running hot. She needs to roll away from the sun.”

“Hume, listen to me. You need to turn away from the sun, to cool off the cabin,” Jim said.

She didn't reply.

There was a delay now, of a few seconds, due to the distance.

“It’s beautiful you know…Tell Dr. Shaw I'm not feeling so good right now,” she said, slurring her words.

“Jim, she’s drifting off course,” Muir said.

On the tactical, the perfect green line separated into a blue and a red line, they were no longer synchronized.

“Hume, you are off course. Look at your display,” Jim said.

“So sorry...please...no...” Hume was choking, then they heard her vomit inside her helmet.

Dr. Shaw got on the comm. “Hume, use the evacuator for the vomit. Don't breathe it in!” Dr. Shaw frantically pressed controls. They heard more choking and coughing.

“Help. Me. God…No...” There was more vomiting.

Dr. Shaw typed, furiously.

“Dr. Shaw,” Jim said, calmly. “Talk as you work.”

“I activated the helmet suction, remotely, but there is a lag. If she breathes it in, there is no way to help her. I have applied the emergency meds we prepped. It's up to her, now.”

There was more coughing, and then, silence. The seconds dragged.

“Hume, talk to me, please,” Jimbo said.

There was a long pause.

“Just when I thought this hell couldn't get any worse, he fucking says ‘Please’,” Hume said, between spitting sounds. “I'm here, Jimbo. Tell Shaw I think I just started my period, to top off everything else.”

“Thank you, Hume,” Jim said.

“Just fucking great. Please and thank you? I must be in serious, goddamn trouble. The rest of this flight is really going to suck now,” Hume said, sounding more alert than she had in days.

“She has brought it back on track, Jim,” Muir said.             

“Jimbo, when was the last time anyone saw Hamilton?” Hume asked.