Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER THIRTY}

Ky watched the lowest-qualifying group line up in their places on the range. Even they now handled their weapons with confidence and, just as important, absolute adherence to correct procedures. The best group was excellent—not surprisingly, all those had grown up in rural areas and hunted for the table. But the others were catching up fast. These—the worst six—might be reliable at shorter ranges by the time they’d have to use their skills. She was sure they’d need them. Her late-night calls to Rafe, and what he told her about Grace’s investigations, made it clear that her guess had been right.

She still hoped to find a way out of the complex. In less than a hundred days, the enemy might come storming down the ramps—or chase them across the snow-covered landscape topside. Neither option appealed. Yet so far, though they were all sure there were void spaces that should open into this complex, they had not found any entrances. They’d tapped the walls, pushed and tugged at anything that protruded anywhere, attempted to lift the floor covering, without success. Rafe had used a variety of satellite scans that suggested underground passages kilometers long that led away to the west, north, and south, multiple chambers, vertical shafts… but none of these were any use if they couldn’t get in.

When that day’s firing session was done, she let Staff Sergeant Gossin supervise this group’s cleaning and stowage of their weapons, hung her earmuffs on their peg, and left the armory.

When she opened the armory door, Kamat said, “Sir, Ennisay and Inyatta have found something they’re excited about. Past the power control room, they said, left-hand side. It’s open now.”

“Good.” She hoped it was good. “I’ll go now. Come with me; let’s see what they’ve got.”

“Inyatta thinks she’s found what might be a back door,” Kamat said. “When you weren’t available, she told me.”

A back door would be helpful, but not enough; surely the enemy already knew about it. They’d put someone there to watch it, see what came out. But it was an option. If they could get out first, if they had someplace to go, a way to survive on the surface without being immediately detected… could they ambush those who came to ambush them… her thoughts raced on, not so much making plans as marking possible plans to be made.

When they came to the opening, she saw that it was not a door, but a section of wall that slid aside, revealing a much thicker panel than she had suspected. No wonder tapping hadn’t found it. Ennisay had been posted there, waiting for her. He was grinning from ear to ear. “We found it, Admiral,” he said. “You were right—it was here all the time.”

Of course it had been there all the time. “How did you find it? How did you get it to open?”

“Corporal Inyatta thought it might respond to one of those bar things we found in the power center, Admiral. We took two of them. I had one side of the passage and she had the other. She insisted we try every centimeter of the walls, top to bottom, both sides, punching every control on the bar. And it worked. It actually worked.”

“Good for you,” Ky said. She ran her hand down the near side of the opening. “What’s this little dimple?”

“Corporal Inyatta felt that, too.” Ennisay sounded surprised. “She thought it might be a switch or something. I didn’t notice it.”

That was no surprise. “Can you feel it now?”

“Yes, sir. She made me. She said maybe it had been painted over.”

“Or maybe people who needed it would know where it was. Good work anyway. Where is Corporal Inyatta?”

“Exploring. She even got lights on. She went left.”

The temptation to head right, just to see another branch, did not quite overwhelm the need to catch up with Inyatta, in case of trouble. “We’re heading left, too,” she told Ennisay. “Stay here, let anyone else know where we’re going.”

Inside the gap, the space was large enough for eight to ten people abreast, with ramps leading down to the left and right to a passage visible below. Ky and Kamat went left. At the foot of the ramp, the passage led straight on for another hundred meters. Inyatta had found other entrances—openings gaped on either side—but left a bright arrow of marker on the wall to indicate she had gone on. Ky glanced into each room briefly. Several were empty of anything but a table or two; some looked vaguely like laboratories, though she didn’t recognize any of the equipment. At the end of the straight stretch, the passage curved to the left, straightened again, and she saw Inyatta coming back toward them.

“Admiral! Glad you’re here; I’ve something to show you.” She turned back the way she’d come, waving for them to follow.

When they caught up, Inyatta had stopped before a blank wall, in a space wider than the passage. “It’s a lookout. See?” The wall blurred, then an image formed on the screen. They were looking out, as if the wall did not exist, over the shore where they had once camped. A tattered remnant of a life raft showed above the snow; the bay was still frozen solid under a leaden sky. “We can zoom,” Inyatta said. She ran her hand along the lower edge of the image and the image jumped toward them, now showing the bay’s opening to the ocean beyond. Something moved, yellowish against the pure blue-shadowed white of ice.

“An animal,” Ky said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think some kind of bear,” Inyatta said. “Look how it walks. And look—I can use infrared.” Now the bear was a moving flame in shades of orange and purple against a near-black background. “Or lots of other settings—any wavelength, polarization…”

“I’ve never seen a bear of any kind,” Ky said. “Except in the zoo, and it was black with a white mark on its chest. What can it possibly find to eat out there? What if it falls through? Have you recorded it?”

“I’ve got some images, yes. It can’t be native, can it? It has to be part of the terraforming, doesn’t it?”

“How big is it?” Ky asked. Bears, she vaguely remembered, were omnivores. At least that’s what the label on the bear exhibit in that zoo had said.

Inyatta zoomed the image again, reverting to visual wavelengths. They had nothing to reference the bear’s size, if it was a bear. Big, yellow-white fur, long black claws, black eyes, black nose.

“What do you think of those rooms we passed?” Ky ran her own hand over the control panel to see what other controls she could find. The image split between the zoomed one of the animal lying motionless on the ice and the wider view from the top of the cliff overlooking the bay. She had a choice of filters, wavelengths, optical effects.

“I can’t be sure, but I think two are labs of some kind. I did go into one of them—jugs of chemicals, though I don’t know what the labels mean. I had only basic chem in school. And I think there’s a lot more to find. These control rods don’t open anything unless you press them onto the right spot, and you have to feel for the spots. Takes time.”

Time they didn’t have. “We need to find as much as we can as fast as we can. Either more ways to defend ourselves in here, or a way to survive and hide outside. Now that we know more exists, I can assign more people to it. How many control rods were in the power room?”

Inyatta gave her a startled look, didn’t ask questions. “A cabinetful, plus three lying out on consoles. Enough to give one to each of us.”

“Good. Come back with me; mark an X back at the main corridor so no one else wastes time on this. We may need to station someone here—wait—are you sure there’s no exit?”

“Yes, sir. Not on the walls, anyway. I haven’t explored the floor or ceiling.”

“We’ll leave that for later. The vid feed’s coming in from somewhere on the cliff; an exit’s not likely to be much use.” And would give pursuers high ground. She never wanted to see that beach again, except looking down on it from the air as they flew away.

As they walked back to the entrance to this new set of passages, Ky explained to Inyatta and Kamat what she knew of the coming threat. “So you understand what we need—we’ll take all day today looking for resources—a few hundred ground-to-air missiles and manuals for them wouldn’t come amiss, for instance, or some kind of tracked vehicle that would take us with all our supplies for three or four tendays far enough away to give us a chance of escape—anything of that sort. Empty labs we don’t understand, just a look, mark ’em as seen, and go on. Though if any of the techs recognize something, I want to know it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll have the mess crew today pack lunches. I’m going back to get things started. Kamat, everyone needs one of the control rods. Bring a dozen of them to the entrance. Ennisay can hand them out as people come in.”

Back in the familiar area, Ky told everyone she encountered to go help explore the discovery. In the kitchen, the cooks were eager to join in and quickly made sandwiches, piling them in a roasting pan and carrying that down to the new opening. Ky went to her quarters for her logbook and stylus, considered contacting Rafe, but decided to wait until she had more information. She met Betange in the main passage.

“Sir—you have to see this!” Betange looked more excited and even happy than she’d ever seen him. “It’s amazing!”

“What?”

“We found this big room—huge, like a really big hangar—and it’s full of machines. I think they’re vehicles. And Sergeant Chok found a big cold room full of glass tubes with things in them. Animals and other things.”

That sounded more interesting than the empty rooms they’d found, but not immediately useful. “Let’s see the machines first.” Ky picked up one of the control rods from Ennisay and followed Betange into the right-hand passage, past several branches. It was a long way; she lost track of the turns, but knew her implant had recorded them. She was sure they were outside the footprint of the spaces above where they had been living all this time.

Finally, the passage opened into a vast space, lit by panels far overhead. Arrayed in neat lines on the floor were machines, clearly mobile, some with wheels and some with cleated tracks. About a third were painted pale cream and light gray in a camouflage pattern that would, Ky realized, be hard to see in snow. They looked like other machines she’d seen on Slotter Key and elsewhere, and she climbed up on one to look inside.

“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Betange said. “No seats. None of them have seats.”

“Driven standing up, I suppose,” Ky said, squinting to see if she could spot brackets for installing seats. No. The floor of the cab was plain, smooth, painted gray. Moreover, the front below the windshield was also plain, smooth, painted gray. No instruments. No control surfaces: wheel, joystick, anything.

“So far we haven’t gotten one to move. I’m not sure how.”

“Does any part of it open up?”

“There’s a hatch in the back we can get open, and the side door on the off side opens. There’s nothing in the back, but it would hold about half of us. Not that it does any good if we can’t get it outside.”

Ky walked around to other vehicles, examining the floor and the vehicles both. “They’re all parked on a marked area, did you notice?”

“Yes. Very military, I thought.”

“Hmmm.” Ky leaned down and ran her hand along the incised strip. At the off front corner she found a slight dimple. “Feel this, Betange.”

“It’s… just a little sort of dip.”

“Like the one beside the door that Inyatta found.”

“There was one beside the door to this.”

“So this will do something if I push the command rod into it, don’t you think?”

“You don’t know what it will do.” Now Betange looked worried.

“We need a way to get these things working, and then get them outside. This might open another door, or start an engine or whatever the motive power is. And if I do it, it can’t be anyone else’s fault, can it?” He still looked worried. “Go tell the others to get over by that back wall,” Ky said. “I have an idea.”

Betange moved off with suspicious quickness. When the others were clustered with him, Ky crouched outside the marked space and pushed the rod into the dimple. Without sound or warning, the outlined rectangle rose up, and far above icy air, snow, and light poured in as the overhead opened. Ky got a pile of snow on her head, shook it off, and saw the ceiling close around the rectangle below the vehicle. Which was now up there, wherever “there” was, being snowed on. Where it had been, a rectangular hole half a meter deep, edges sharp as if cut with a knife, gaped before her. Its floor was smooth, glossy black with a faint pattern of grid lines on it.

“That may not have been the smartest thing I ever did.” Ky shivered; the whole space felt cold and now her hair was wet, snow melting on her head.

“What did you think would happen?” Chok asked. “What if you’d been standing closer to it?”

Ky laughed. “Sorry, Sergeant, but you sound like my father used to when I tried something stupid. I thought maybe the power would come on and maybe if I got in the cab there’d be another dimple and some controls would appear. I did not expect that.” She gestured at the snow, now melting.

“Do you think that thing, whatever it is, is outside?”

“Yes. And I have no idea how to get it back. But it does mean we can move these outside without having to push them or start them and drive them along passages we don’t even know about yet.”

“But we can’t get them to move.”

“Yet,” Ky said. “I’ll bet we can get them to move in time. We have very smart people here, including you, and strong motivation to become mobile—an enemy intending to kill us all if we don’t evade them. Or kill them.”

“How many, do you think?”

“Enemies? The data my aunt’s been able to collect says transport’s being requisitioned for supplies for combat troops to Pingats. At least a hundred. She’s not sure which troops yet.”

“That many? And no idea who’s doing it?”

“She’s trying to find out without alerting whoever it is. And at the same time assemble a relief force ready to jump as soon as the weather allows.”

“So that’s why you’re so eager to get moving.” Chok nodded. “A hundred to eighteen isn’t good odds.”

“Exactly.” Ky checked her implant’s time stamp. “It’s almost time for a meal. Take a break, then finish cataloging the vehicles, check for this-level exits from the place, and work on getting some control of these things. Be back at the barracks by 2200; we’re all going to be working long days. I’m going to see if I can spot the escaped whatever-it-is outside.”

“Might be best to wait for daylight.”

Ky shook her head. “You are definitely acting like my father, Sergeant. Which means sensibly, so yes, I will wait until tomorrow.”