The messier fold, p.9
The Messier Fold, page 9
The door emitted a low buzz and popped open an inch. Reminding each other how they did it in the movies, Ed and Andy stood either side of the door, while Andy pushed it open with his rifle barrel.
No shots, no sound, no laser-toting drones, just darkness and silence.
‘Can you smell food?’ asked Ed.
‘Yeah, like stale fried onions.’
‘The room’s clear,’ said Cleo, the nanos having swarmed inside once the door was cracked.
As they entered slowly, the faint glow from the nanos showed them a room roughly ten metres square, and when they swung their weapon lights around the room it became clear that a human race had indeed been responsible for the moon.
Several bedrolls were strewn around the floor, with two tables, eight chairs and a bunch of what looked like old food containers, stacked in one corner. The strangest thing was the walls were adorned with gold coloured sheets of a foil type material.
‘Did they see us coming?’ asked Andy. ’Have they just left?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Ed. ‘Everything’s cold and a bit dusty.’
‘Perhaps they’re in the control room, flying this thing?’
‘It all looks a little makeshift to me,’ said Ed. ‘If you had the technology to fly small planets, I think you’d have better facilities than this for the crew, and that stuff on the walls looks like a heat shield. Didn’t Rayl say those laser drones were heat-seeking?’
‘I think you might be right,’ said Andy, glancing around. ‘And look at the furniture, none of this stuff’s matching. It’s as if it all came from a charity shop.’
‘Whoever lived in here was avoiding the automated systems, just like we are.’
Leaving the makeshift dormitory, they continued down the passageway. The next door a few metres down was open and a bathroom.
‘Hey, Ed,’ called Andy, peering into one of the cubicles. ‘They’ve got those squatting toilet things.’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘Have you tried using one when you’ve had a few drinks?’
‘Yes, they had them at a cheap hotel I stayed at in Turkey when I was a student,’ said Ed, wrinkling his nose.’
‘Will you two get on with the job and stop conversing about toilet design,’ said Linda.
Ed heard Rayl and Tony chuckle in the background; he shook his head at Andy and continued up the corridor.
About fifty metres later, the passageway finally went around a bend to the right and ended abruptly with a bigger door blocking their path. Both Ed and Andy scanned the locking mechanism with their DOVI’s.
‘This one’s a bit more of a challenge,’ said Andy, scratching his head. ‘It seems to have some kind of double shielding.’
The now familiar twelve button panel was there, with the same animal icons as before, but a further small black screen sat above, lying flush with the wall.
‘Could be a palm or iris scanner,’ said Ed. ‘Whatever’s behind this door was more important to them.’
‘I have an idea,’ said Cleo. ‘If you each take one of the shield parameters out, I should be able to jury-rig the keypad.’
Twenty seconds later, the keypad buzzed in a similar way to the last one and the black screen illuminated with the outline of a small hand.
‘Well, that tells a story,’ said Andy. ‘Any suggestions, Cleo?’
‘Remove your right glove and hold out your hand,’ she said.
Andy tapped away on his wrist icon panel and held out his right hand. The glove dematerialised on his left hand.
‘Ah, bugger,’ he said, tapping away on the panel once more.
‘An aerospace engineer who doesn’t know his left from his right,’ chuckled Ed.
‘Says the physicist who thought chocolate milk came from brown cows.’
‘I was four.’
‘That was your IQ.’
‘Err, guys,’ said Linda. ‘Tick tock.’
Andy’s right glove vanished and he held his hand out. It slowly changed colour, from pink to a dark brown.
‘Are those nanos?’ asked Ed.
‘Yes,’ said Cleo. ‘And hold your hand still.’
‘I’m trying,’ said Andy. ‘They itch like mad.’
‘Now, hold your hand up to the panel and hold it there as still as you can.’
Andy pushed his itchy hand against the lit panel and waited, making weird faces at Ed.
‘That feels dead strange,’ he said. ‘Like my hand’s in a bucket of maggots.’
‘They’re going through around a million combinations a second,’ said Cleo. ‘Just grin and bear it.’
Ed could see Andy was getting to the stage of giving up, when the panel suddenly beeped and went green. The door disappeared upwards in a flash, leaving them staring into a large room full of workstations and control panels all set into neat rows. It reminded Ed of a visit he’d made to Houston years ago to see the original Apollo control centre.
Lighting panels in the ceiling previously emitting a dull glow brightened considerably, causing them both to squint.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Andy. ‘We need sunscreen in here.’
They cautiously entered and, once clear of the door, they both jumped as it slammed back down.
‘Fuck,’ said Ed. ‘You wouldn’t want to be loitering under that, would you?’
‘Look at the dust on all the work surfaces,’ said Andy. ‘They must have made these things autonomous a while ago.’
‘Then, why were they sleeping rough in there?’ said Ed, pointing back at the door. ‘And not coming in here?’
‘Cleo, are you able to gain control over this thing?’ asked Andy.
Silence ensued. They looked at each other.
‘The door’s cut us off from the Gabriel,’ said Ed. ‘See if you can find the door controls in here, because they’re not next to the door this time.’
While Andy was busy with that, Ed had a sweep about with his DOVI. He soon found all the usual suspects. Navigation, propulsion, jump drive, environmental and so on. Until he came upon a slightly more shielded unit.
He swung around and walked across to the far side of the control room, placing a hand on a cabinet that looked slightly out of place. Staring at it, he tried to work out what was different, until it struck him that this unit was cleaner than the rest in the room. The layer of dust was thin and it stood out because it was of a different design. It was an add-on and hadn’t been installed alongside the rest of the equipment.
He pulled over a chair, wiped the seat and sat staring at the unit. Finally he closed his eyes and set about the shielding with a vengeance.
Behind him, Andy had found the door override and it shot back up into its housing. This time he secured it open with a quad combination that only Cleo could crack.
‘Are you back in the room, Cleo?’ he asked.
‘Sure am, pardner,’ she said, in a Texan drawl.
‘Have you been talking to my dad?’
‘Shit,’ she said suddenly.
‘It’s not a drama,’ said Andy. ‘You can talk to him as much as you like.’
‘No, not that,’ she said. ‘It’s Ed, I’m having trouble sourcing him.’
Andy spun around.
‘He was sitting over there a moment ago,’ he said, pointing and then feeling foolish as there was no one else in the room to witness his indication.
He sprinted around the row of cabinets, to find Ed lying on the floor convulsing.
‘Fuck,’ he shouted. ‘He’s having some sort of fit. Ed, Ed, can you hear me?’
‘Get him back here now,’ said Cleo. ‘I’m prepping the autonurse.’
Andy got no response from Ed. He was just shaking and staring straight up, his eyes wide with a kind of shocked expression.
Remembering his fireman lift training as a scout twenty-five years ago. Andy lifted Ed up and across his shoulders, staggered a bit while repositioning his weight and ran as fast as he could for the door and corridor beyond.
‘Shit the bed,’ he said, as he thundered down the passage. ‘This isn’t as easy as it looks on the movies.’
‘Keep coming, Andy,’ called Linda. ‘The airlock’s open. Tony and Phil are waiting to help you get him down to the medical room.’
‘Okay,’ he grunted. ‘This corridor seems a lot fucking longer going this way.’
‘You doing great,’ said Cleo. ‘He’s close enough for me to detect his vitals now. ‘He’s alive but unconscious.’
‘I only took my eyes off him for a second,’ said Andy, sounding guilt-ridden.
He reached the airlock and without breaking step, hurled himself out the door, into the weightless environment and towards the Gabriel’s airlock.
His trajectory was good, with Phil reaching out, catching his leg and dragging him down and through the door. Andy collapsed as soon as they were in, handing Ed over to his father, who continued the sprint to the medical room.
The machine closed up around Ed as soon as Tony laid him down within it.
‘Do we do anything?’ asked Tony, staring between Phil and the autonurse’s control panel.
‘Cleo prepped the machine,’ said Phil. ‘It’s called an autonurse because it can go through thousands of tests and diagnoses every second.’
‘When will we know?’
‘It won’t take long,’ said Andy, staggering into the room and putting his hands on his knees. ‘He’s a heavy bastard.’
‘I seem to remember him saying the same thing about you, when you mislaid your hand,’ said Phil.
‘You lost a hand?’ asked Tony, inspecting the ends of Andy’s arms closely.
‘T’was but a scratch,’ said Andy, waving his hands in the air. ‘I grew another one.’
Tony wrinkled his brow and turned his gaze to Phil, who just shrugged and nodded.
The autonurse beeped; Phil leant over and frowned when he read the final diagnosis.
12
The Cutter, Planet Luzhou, Luzhou System, Messier 86 Galaxy
207 Revolution 3081, ZSpin-2 H-45
The pilot had brought the cutter down into the atmosphere slowly as it didn’t really have insertion capabilities, but if you used the antigrav drive carefully, it wasn’t too stressful on the ship and kept the temperatures down.
It was early morning on this side of planet Luzhou, which translated to Oasis.
Lake, being at least a foot taller than the hosts, had a panoramic view over everyone’s head as they descended. From the beautiful spectacle below, he could quite understand why the planet was called an oasis.
It was very like Earth, with deep blue oceans, large green continents and thousands of islands dotted randomly around the coastlines.
They swept down, levelled out and raced in over the ocean towards a coastal city, crammed with multi-coloured glass towers reaching kilometres into the sky. Small flying craft swarmed like flies in every direction and seemed to be able to land at any level within the towers.
Lake watched, absorbed by the spectacle and beauty of the vista visible through the front screen.
‘Why aren’t they bumping into each other?’ asked Aranjuez, his face similarly exhibiting an expression of awe.
‘Central computer system,’ said Lei, overhearing the question. ‘It controls everything moving on the ground and airborne. If you look, the pilot is no longer in command of our ship.’
Lake dropped his gaze as they approached the city and mingled in with the local traffic; he could see the pilot had his hands in his lap and was leaning back talking to Ginin.
‘I take it you’ve been a little more careful with the programming of this computer system?’ said Herez, giving Lei a sideways glance.
‘Yes, we have,’ he said. ‘Up there,’ he pointed at the sky. ‘The Hexin, as it’s now known, was originally an experiment into sentient control systems. It was only supposed to be operating the four space debris collection and eradication spheres. Which it did perfectly for over a revolution, until just over five hundred revolutions ago it suddenly gained the ability to disable and dismantle ships.’
‘How?’ asked Herez. ‘Did it reprogram itself?’
‘Well, that’s just the crux of it,’ said Lei. ‘We’ve never been able to get near the space station that controlled them. Eight thousand people died on the station when all the airlocks suddenly opened to space in the middle of a working day. So we have no idea what happened or why.’
‘So, since that day, you’ve been unable to venture into space?’ said Lake.
‘Apart from this ship carrying that xishou field unit, yes,’ said Lei, pointing at a grey box sitting in the corner. ‘And we’ve only had that for a short while.’
Lake eyed the box for a moment and upon lifting his gaze, he found Herez staring at it also.
‘How’s my ship faring?’ he asked.
The pilot, obviously hearing what Lake said, turned and shouted across the cabin.
‘You will need to go across and lower your landing struts,’ he said. ‘I will keep it off the ground until then.’
Turning back to the controls, the pilot waited until the ship made its final approach to a landing pad on top of one of the shorter buildings. He retook control and slowly brought Lake’s ship around to the front where he could see it.
Some deep score marks were evident on top of the main fuselage, but apart from that it seemed reasonably intact.
Clunking down onto the circular pad, he made sure the tractor beam kept Lake’s ship about a metre off the ground. Opening the airlock, he glanced back over his shoulder at Lake and nodded towards the open door.
Lake pushed through and was first down the extending steps. He kept his head down as the screaming turbines kicked up quite a dust storm; he noticed the gravity was lighter on this world too, as he trotted over to his ship and clambered up into the still open airlock.
‘Fuck,’ he said, as the inner door hissed open. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here,’ forgetting that the ship’s atmosphere would’ve vented into space out of the laser holes as soon as they left the sphere and then sucked fresh freezing atmosphere in at high altitude.
He noticed a pile of loose items underneath both holes as he entered the cockpit. Anything untethered around the ship had been sucked out of the holes, and solid items bigger than the holes had dropped below as the pressure equalised.
Sitting tentatively on the edge of a very cold seat, he slipped on the ship’s POK, fired up the ship’s systems and lowered the struts. As the ship dropped onto the pad, he initiated a full systems diagnostic and apart from a belated hull breach warning for the laser holes in the cockpit, everything seemed operational.
Wiping the condensation off the inside of the cockpit window with his hand, he noticed for the first time that the landing pad was surrounded by armed personnel.
‘Ah, shit,’ he mumbled. ‘I don’t suppose they’re for an honour guard.’
Walking back to the airlock, he gave the ship’s computer a few instructions before cycling the doors again to find a dozen armed men pointing laser rifles at him.
‘Something I said?’ he shouted at Lei, who was pushing through the group.
‘There are a few more to convince yet,’ he replied, as he reached the base of the steps. ‘You must come with me.’
‘Are we under arrest?’
‘Let’s just say, you’re in protective custody. You wouldn’t survive the day, if we let you roam free.’
‘Paranoid about tall strangers, eh?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe and I think you’d better hand that over,’ said Lei, pointing at Lake’s right pocket.
He voice-commanded the airlock to seal, descended the steps and removed the pistol slowly, handing it to Lei. Two guards stood either side of him and escorted him over to an awaiting pod-like vehicle. Lei instructed him that these were called jias and could take them anywhere in the city.
Herez and Aranjuez were already inside seated with their armed escorts. He looked back over his shoulder and indicated his ship to Lei.
‘Will you ensure no one goes near that? It’s damaged enough.’
Lei spoke to one of the armed guards, who nodded and strode off towards the ship.
‘It’s a government building,’ he said, alighting from the jia and relaxing into a seat next to Lake. ‘The public can’t get anywhere near it.’
‘It’s not the public I’m worried about,’ said Lake, staring out the window as the small craft lifted and zipped upwards, quickly joining in the cacophony of airborne traffic.
13
Medical Suite, Starship Gabriel, Gateway System, Messier 86 Galaxy
Spin 210, Revolution 3081, W-6 H-69
Andy sat exhausted in the corner of the medical suite as Linda and Rayl sprinted into the room and joined Tony and Phil staring at Ed, unconscious and enclosed in the autonurse. His head was encased in a cocoon of thin blue laser light.
‘Well?’ exclaimed Linda, glaring at everyone in turn. ‘Someone tell me the prognosis.’
Andy looked up and wiping a tear from his eye, spoke quietly.
‘He’s in an induced coma –– possibility of brain damage.’
‘Oh no,’ she whispered, her body slumping at the news. ‘When will we know?’
‘Impossible to gauge,’ said Cleo. ‘His DOVI connected with the semi-sentient computer core that runs the moon. Luckily for him it was isolated from the galactic core that I originally tried messing with. Otherwise it could be far worse. The good news is, when I designed your DOVI’s, I included an overwhelm trip switch that seems to have deployed and hopefully saved his life.’
‘Only, hopefully,’ she said, laying a hand on the invisible shield enclosing Ed in the machine.
‘I have isolated the moon’s semi-sentient core with a containment field,’ Cleo continued. ‘And I now have complete control over its systems, so it poses a threat no longer.’
‘Do we abort the mission?’ asked Phil.
‘No,’ said Andy, standing up. ‘Ed definitely wouldn’t want that — and we still have an arsehole to catch.’
