The anuvi incident, p.1
The Anuvi Incident, page 1
The Anuvi Incident
A Hominin Union Novel
James Vincett
Copyright © 2015 by James Vincett
All rights reserved
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover credit to Filip Velkovski
www.homininunion.com
E-book ISBN: 978-1-943846-59-7
On this mountain’s brutish forehead with terror of space
I stir of the changeless night and the stark ranges
of nothing pulsing down from beyond and between
the fragile planets this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness
how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress
will never in the range of her microscope file it? Our Phoebus
himself is a bubble that dries on Her slide while the Nubian
Wears for an evening’s whim a necklace of nebulae
From Vancouver Lights
Earl Birney, 1941
Part I: A Knife’s Edge
The ability to understand a question from all sides meant one was totally unfit for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of the real man.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
Freedman
The small spacecraft, two hours out of Tranquility Base, crossed the imaginary line on the Moon that separated the near side from the far.
The pilot looked at the coordinates floating on the HUD before him, then turned to the co-pilot. “Where is this place?”
“Volkov crater,” came the reply, but not from the co-pilot. Bacchus Freedman stood in the small doorway leading to the main cabin. Most people had to stoop to enter the cockpit, but not Freedman; he stood his full height. He wore snug-fitting dull black armor with no badge or insignia. A large holster hung from his belt.
The pilot looked forward and kept his eyes fixed on the HUD and the lunar horizon. “Looks like it’ll be twenty minutes.”
“Let me know when we get there,” Freedman said and sat. Five other men sat in the main cabin; four chatted quietly while the fifth sat a few rows away, scanning his pockcomp. They all wore the same dull black armor and weapons holsters, their helmets placed on the rack above the seats. Five blaster rifles stood secured in a wall rack.
He considered these men. All had passed the requisite physical and intellectual examinations to become field agents, but each had a psychological quirk that flagged him for more intensive testing. Management considered personnel so flagged to have a tendency to overstep the bounds of “decent” conduct, and so assigned the personnel to administrative duties, or discharged them from the General Intelligence Directorate altogether. Freedman, however, looked for just such men. He didn’t see these psychological quirks as limiting; indeed, for this mission he required men that would go the extra kilometer, as it were. Still unsure about each man to one degree or another, Bacchus watched them closely.
“We’ve arrived at the coordinates,” the pilot said over the intercom.
Freedman walked forward and leaned into the cockpit. “Land at the bottom of the crater, there, by that antennae structure.” He turned and retrieved his own helmet. “I don’t know how long it has been since someone entered this installation,” he said to his team. “It is unlikely there is any power, so bring the toolkits and your flashlights. Remain alert.” He closed and sealed the door to the cockpit, then put on and sealed his helmet. His team followed his lead.
“What about weapons?” Pederson asked over the suit communicator; he had a long face and a shock of blonde hair.
Good question. “Bring your pistols; the rifles probably aren’t necessary.”
“We’re down,” the pilot said over the suit communicator.
Using the keypad beside the exit hatch, Freedman cycled the air out of the cabin. He pressed another button and the door soundlessly lifted upward. A small staircase appeared and extended down to the lunar surface. The stars, like millions of gems, studded the black lunar sky; the Sun brightly lit the lunar surface. Freedman stepped down onto the gray soil and away from the ship. The pilot had set down several meters from an antennae complex, an oval platform perhaps twenty meters long covered with scores of dishes and aerials. Squat metal pillars elevated the platform two meters above the lunar surface. Behind the platform to the north loomed the sloping wall of the crater, more than twenty meters high; it extended to the east and west tens of kilometers and disappeared over the horizon. He saw several larger objects spread throughout the crater. The team’s chatter revealed they recognized the devices: railguns and laser batteries. Freedman knew the massive weapons hadn’t been fired in almost three centuries.
He beckoned his team to follow, and in the lunar gravity easily jumped the two meters up onto the antennae platform. His feet disturbed the dust as he stepped between the dishes and aerials and walked toward a small building at the center of the platform. He glanced behind to see if his team followed and then took the final few steps toward the obvious hatch on the side of the building. The access keypad had only nine number keys, arranged in the ancient pattern.
Freedman quickly tapped the code into the keypad, the code he had stumbled upon in an ancient database as he made his preparations. The code that had changed his entire plan for the better.
To his surprise, a green light appeared on the keypad and the hatch opened a few centimeters. He looked around the platform and spotted the solar panels.
So that’s where the power is coming from.
Happy he didn’t need to cut his way in, Freedman beckoned to his team and then pulled open the hatch and stepped inside. The small building covered no more than three meters square. Lights in the ceiling flickered to life. Tools, rolls of wire, and spare parts hung on the walls. An ancient space suit lay in one corner; it looked as if someone dropped it there in haste. A round floor hatch in the corner led downward, the cover open against the wall. Freedman walked across the room and looked down. A long ladder, the handles lit, led downward. Bacchus stepped on the ladder and swiftly descended. It took a few minutes to reach the bottom; Freedman figured the passage reached fifty meters below the surface.
At the bottom Freedman saw another round hatch, this one closed. He glanced upward to be sure his team followed, and knelt and typed a second code into the keypad beside the hatch. A green light appeared, and he pulled up on the handle.
Another ladder led down into an airlock; the lights in the ceiling flickered to life. Freedman immediately noticed the gravity had changed to Earth normal.
The environmental systems are still functioning.
A few old space suits hung on the wall racks; helmets rested on shelves above. The suits looked bulky, not snug like the suit he wore. He located the control panel for the airlock beside the main hatch, and then waited for his team.
Once Pederson closed the ceiling hatch, Freedman typed another code into the control panel. Another green light appeared, then after a moment, sound. Air cycled into the airlock. Freedman’s suit sensors displayed nominal environment readings. He unsealed and pulled off his helmet. His breath steamed in the cold air. He hooked the helmet to his belt.
The rest of his team pulled off their helmets. He pulled open the airlock door and stepped into the corridor beyond. As he walked he pulled a small tablet from his belt and opened up the installation blueprint files.
The door at the end of the corridor had a retinal scanner and a small computer terminal. Like the other systems encountered so far, both devices still had power.
Here is the true test.
Freedman pulled a small glass globe from a belt pouch. He typed a code into the terminal keyboard and held the glass ball up to the retinal scanner. Freedman chuckled at the message that appeared on the terminal screen “Welcome, Consul Jonas Kane.” Jonas Baakir Kane, Nineteenth Consul of United Earth, reviled tyrant, and father of the General Intelligence Directorate. The man had died at the hands of an assassin almost two hundred and eighty years previously.
Daddy’s come home.
It had taken a little digging, but Freedman had found Kane’s digitized retinal scan in the same ancient database he found the location, blueprints, and access key codes to this place, as if someone had assembled the needed information for the same purpose as Freedman, but just didn’t follow through.
Freedman pulled on the door latch and stepped into the large corridor beyond. Lights in the ceiling and walls gradually brightened to reveal a large open space, at least ten meters high. The men kicked up the fine dust covering the floor as they entered the corridor.
“What is this place?” Pederson asked.
“This is our history,” Freedman replied, “this is the Intelligence Research Installation, headquarters for the General Intelligence Directorate, built by Consul Jonas Kane and Prime Minister Markus Kleiner in 2330, almost three hundred years ago. Here the Directorate hatched plans to defeat the Secessionists and wipe out the Snirr. In the Imperial era the Directorate relocated to Earth, on the site of the old United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.”
“This is the IRI?” Antonovich asked. Freedman had almost not selected him; a bit too stupid, he thought. “I always thought it was on Mars.”
“Deliberate misinformation,” Freedman said.
Floor to ceiling windows revealed an even larger space beyond. There, Freedman saw a round landing pad at least twenty meters in diameter.
“Looks like the docking bay,” Pederson said.
T hey all stepped to the windows and looked up. A massive pair of closed double doors, fifty meters above the landing pad, protected the docking bay from the outside. Fueling booms and access gantries stood folded against the walls of the bay. A docking boom lay extended out to the landing pad, but no spacecraft occupied any part of the bay
“Why didn’t we see the doors on the surface?” Chen asked. Freedman thought him one of the best of the bunch, certainly the most disciplined.
“During the Battle of Earth in ‘54-‘55,” Fonesca replied, “several thousand kinetic weapons, both ours and the enemy’s, struck the surface of the Moon, both the near and far sides. The material ejected on impact must have covered the doors when it fell back to the surface.” Fonesca had almost not made the cut, either; Freedman thought him not quite fit enough.
“Nonsense,” Tapper said. Freedman thought Tapper smart and fit enough, but Tapper wasn’t as smart as Tapper thought. “This installation must have been used in the ensuing years,” Tapper continued, “Surely they would have cleaned the ejecta material off the doors? Besides, why aren’t the solar panels also covered? Where else is the power coming from?”
“Someone covered the doors,” Freedman said, “to hide them from casual observation.”
“Why?” Pederson asked.
“To be determined,” Freedman said. He had to admit the situation odd; what were the odds this place could still be operational more than two hundred years after the Directorate abandoned it?
Freedman and his men walked slowly to the end of the corridor and entered the operation center for the docking bay. The fine dust covered the flat screens, holoprojectors, keyboards and consoles. A large airlock door led to the landing pad’s docking bay. An archway led to another large corridor, this one perpendicular to the bay, leading away.
They walked slowly down the corridor, noting every detail. A powdery dust covered the smooth tile of the floor. Scores of holes and divots, some up to twenty-five centimeters across, revealed the rebar in the reinforced concrete walls. Freedman thought the walls composed of the same regolith that covered most of the moon’s surface.
“Looks like a firefight,” Tapper said, “but there is no carbon scoring from energy weapons.”
The powdery dust lay smooth on the floor; it rose over two meters high when disturbed, and within minutes the fine gray powder covered Freedman and his men. Archways branched off the main corridor, and open doors revealed empty rooms, office suites, and laboratories, the furniture in disarray, the contents of cabinets strewn across the floor.
The corridor ended at a large pillar with two sets of elevator doors, and a larger set that opened horizontally, probably for freight. Corridors extended to the right and left, as well as continued on past the elevators. A schematic on the wall showed a simplified layout of the installation. Four levels extended beneath them, numbered but not labeled on the schematic.
Freedman pulled out his tablet and looked at the blueprints. “We’re going down, to level three.” He pressed a button to summon the elevator car.
“What’s down there?” Tapper asked.
Freedman looked at him for a moment before answering. The man definitely had a pushy tone to his questions and statements. “The reactor chamber is off the third level. I thought we might see if it is salvageable.”
“Hmmph,” Tapper grunted.
At that moment something came flying around the corner of the pillar from one of the other corridors. The device, a saucer about thirty centimeters in diameter with a camera lens and flashing red light, whizzed by with a beep and a whirr, then hovered two meters off the floor more than ten meters down the corridor from where they came.
“Freeze!” Freedman hissed. “Stay absolutely still,” he whispered. His men complied; some had already begun to draw their weapons but remained motionless. The device hovered for a moment, then with a beep and a whirr flew away back around the corner.
“Someone’s here,” Chen said, always stating the obvious.
Someone or something. Is it possible it is still operating? If true, Freedman couldn’t believe his luck.
Without waiting to be ordered, his men pulled out their blaster pistols. A chime sounded and one of the elevator doors opened. Freedman stepped into the car and turned around. Reluctantly, his men followed. The doors slid closed.
“How is this shit still working after more than two hundred years?” Tapper asked.
Freedman turned and looked at him. “Regularly scheduled maintenance. Obviously.”
“Who? I thought this place was deserted?”
“We’re about to find out.”
The elevator doors slid open and Freedman stepped into the corridor. His men followed. “Spread out,” he commanded.
They stood in another large corridor, several meters across. The lights in the high ceiling flickered on and revealed long corridors that stretched out in four directions from the elevator. Freedman noticed tracks in the light dust on the floor, tracks that certainly didn’t look like boot tracks.
“Stand back,” Freedman said, “and keep a lookout.” He drew his blaster and pointed it at the elevator controls. He fired once and the control panel erupted in a shower of sparks.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Tapper cried.
Freedman paused for a moment and struggled to contain his displeasure. He looked directly at Tapper. “Wait and see. And be quiet.”
At first Freedman heard nothing but their own breathing, but after a minute he noticed an odd sound. Click-scrape, click. Click-scrape, click.
“What’s that?” Antonovich whispered.
“I’ll wager this is our maintenance man,” Freedman said quietly.
His men raised their weapons as the ‘bot rounded the corner.
“Don’t shoot it.”
The robot stood a meter tall, a yellow box with spindly arms and legs and a head of cameras and other sensors. It limped, and Freedman noticed it had two different legs. The machine ignored them and proceeded to the damaged elevator controls. With a flick of its limbs it pulled a drill out of its body and quickly removed the damaged controls. Just as fast it pulled replacement parts from the same space and finished the delicate wiring task in seconds. With a quick whirr of the drill the ‘bot fastened the control panel in place. It paused for a moment, beeped and growled, then pressed the button. A few moments later the elevator doors opened. The ‘bot limped down the corridor from where it came.
“Follow it.”
Doors and archways lined the hall; through them Freedman saw offices, labs, workshops, and assembly rooms. In some rooms the furniture, equipment and other contents looked orderly, while in others the contents lay about in disarray, even damaged and disassembled. The service ‘bot walked down the left side of the corridor, then abruptly entered a room through an archway.
Freedman slowly approached and looked through the archway into a workshop. Various models of robots hung on the walls above bins of parts. A system of cranes hung from the ceiling. The workshop, probably twenty meters square, had a ceiling at least ten meters high. The maintenance ‘bot climbed up onto a shelf and with a beep plugged itself into a power outlet.
Freedman entered the room and glanced at a rack on the wall. “Look at this,” he said.
This time Kruger, the fifth of his little party, entered the workshop right after Freedman. Kruger almost always stayed a little back. He spoke little, and did not socialize much with the others. The tallest of them, he had a shaved head and dark, brooding eyes. Freedman thought him the best of the recruits, the man with the fewest inhibitions about performing the necessary actions to reach the given goal.
The men looked at the rack of weapons as they entered the workshop. The rifles, black and gray, looked unused, each wrapped in a plastic sheath.
Kruger smiled, ever so slightly. “A piece of history.”
“What are they?” Chen asked.
“M-66 eight by sixty millimeter battle rifles,” he replied. He reached up and pulled one from the rack. “Looks like they’re in mint condition.” He pulled off the plastic sheath and hefted the weapon. “These beauties fire eight millimeter caseless with advanced armor-piercing electrically-ignited full-reactant explosive-polymer loads. You could fire this weapon in an inert atmosphere, heck, even in the vacuum of space.” Freedman never heard Kruger speak so many words at one time.
