Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR}

“When are you going to tell them this place wasn’t made by humans?” Staff Sergeant Kurin had piles of supplies stacked along the walls, supplies that—it was now obvious—could not be carried by the eighteen survivors. Eight days until they expected the enemy to arrive: eight days of water, eight days of food, plus weapons, ammunition for the weapons, and communications gear—they were fit, but not that fit.

“When we’re not trying to evade an invasion force,” Ky said. She felt like kicking the nonexistent tires of the vehicles they were working on. Trying to work on. “Besides, it was modified by humans, right here on the planet, or it wouldn’t have been full of clothes for us to wear, food we can eat, and beds to sleep in. And for all we know, the terraformers are human.”

“This is not a human-designed machine.”

“Unless the humans who designed it wanted to frustrate all who came after.”

“It’s got to be driverless,” Inyatta said, sticking her head out from under one of the vehicles. “Some planets use them. One of my cousins tried to modify his father’s field unit so he could nap while plowing.”

“How did that work?” Betange asked.

“Not very well. He didn’t think about having it slow down before turning at the end of a row. But the thing is, they exist. We’ve all seen them in vids from the older worlds.”

“There’s got to be some way of turning them on and programming them, then,” Ky said. “I don’t see any standard input slot.”

“If they were made by another culture,” Inyatta said. Before anyone else could speak she put out a hand. “Wait—hear me out. As the Admiral’s said, we’ve seen things we don’t recognize at all. Not the new stuff—the old stuff, like those marks on the controls under the labels we can read. So if this was made earlier—by some culture that came before the colonists we know about, and then moved on—”

“Why would they leave?”

“I don’t know,” Inyatta said. She pushed herself the rest of the way out from under the vehicle. “But that’s not the point. The point is, if this—all the parts of this we don’t understand—was made by another culture, we have to recognize it could be very, very different.”

Ky nodded. “That’s true… but if we’re not the same, can we use any of it, or is this a waste of time?”

“I’m thinking of what I know about driverless things. Inventory robots. Delivery units. Some use a sort of electronic map in the vehicle; others use a guideline.”

Ky remembered something she hadn’t seen in years, her first visit to Vatta’s semi-automated warehouse at Port Major. “So we need to know how to give these things a destination—but we have no idea what destinations are possible. There’s got to be a map and some kind of control surface somewhere.”

“I’d say tear one down and look, but if it’s a completely different culture their software might be so different it’d take years to figure out.”

“Humans figured out the controls for power and communications—”

“I think the communications we see were built into gap space by the people who occupied this place,” Betange said. “And they may not have done anything to the power supply, just retrofitted standard Slotter Key stuff so they could use it easily. Did you notice that the light fixtures are much newer than the openings for them?”

“No,” Ky said. It had never occurred to her to wonder if the age of the fixtures matched the age of the building. Tech thinking—and, in the circumstances, she was glad she had techs to notice what she ignored. “So… what in this space looks new? Is it possible that the humans using the facility never made it this far? And if so… maybe that could be useful to us?”

“We could hide out here? Bring food and water and some mattresses—”

“It’s ventilated—the air’s not stuffy—so I’d worry about gas.”

“We’ve been so focused on the vehicles,” Gossin said, “that we haven’t searched for more things these rods will open. Or where on vehicles such dimples might be.”

“One day,” Ky said. “Today, look for any hidden doors, controls, anything on the vehicles or in the rooms. Anything you find, or any other ideas you have, let someone else know, and pass it up to me. Betange, come with me and let’s see if the newcomers modified anything in the power control room other than putting stickers over the original labels.”

By suppertime, they had discovered that no sign of modern—“newcomer”—change existed beyond the door Inyatta had found. Access hatches had been cut to intercept power cables, and there were what looked like master switches—though not common usage ones—behind some of the hatches. Next to those were clearly newer control boxes using the types of switches and labels common on Slotter Key. Betange explained all this to Ky.

“It would’ve taken an experienced electrician—probably a team of them, and plenty of money—to convert the output to something our appliances could use. What do we call whoever did the original installation, oldtimers?”

“Good enough,” Ky said.

“I wish I had a crew and time to really study it.” Betange—completely focused and interested—was a different man from the anxious, depressed one she’d seen for so long. “I don’t quite get it—the complexity of it, the reasoning—but it would be great to know. Were they even human?”

Ky blinked. “Do you really think they weren’t?”

“Admiral!” That call came from somewhere back down the passage. “We got one running.”

Ky hurried back that way; Betange followed.

The vehicle was a twin to the one Ky had launched through the roof exit. Instead of up, it went forward and back, and wove an accurate path through the other parked vehicles as Droshinski tapped the control cylinder.

“How did you do that?”

“Cautious experimentation,” Chok said, grinning. “Turns out there’s a dimple inside this back end we’ve been calling the cargo area and one inside the cab. If you push a rod into one of those, the rod extrudes little textured buttons—show her, Droshinski.”

Droshinski held out the rod. Ky could see the buttons. “This one at the bottom is stop. The others are away, to me, and turn.” Ky nodded, repressing a desire to grab the rod and start pushing buttons. “It won’t hit another vehicle,” Droshinski said. “It won’t hit a wall. It turns whichever way there’s more room.”

“We think we’ve found guide paths, though,” Hazarika put in. “When it goes between parked vehicles, it always stays on the same path, and the path is not equidistant from adjoining vehicles. And one guide path leads straight to that wall—” He pointed. “It’ll go close, but then back up and turn around.”

“I think that wall’s not a wall,” Droshinski said. “I think it’s a big door.”

“There’s a dimple over here,” Lakhani said. “But we didn’t try it yet.”

The same control that opened the other doors did not open this one—if it was a door and not a wall—but it did generate a sound, a rising and falling tone.

“A warning,” Sergeant Cosper said. “Like a siren, but not so loud.”

“Droshinski, try driving that vehicle toward it; let’s see what happens.”

A startled look from Droshinski and Cosper both. Then the vehicle rolled forward, turned, and straightened out as it approached the wall. A wide section of wall—wide enough for any of the vehicles—slid sideways, opening onto a gently sloping passage where lights blinked on, one after another. The vehicle rolled through.

“Stop it,” Ky said. “Back it up—we don’t want that door to close again with it on the other side.” Droshinski stopped the vehicle and backed it until it was in the new entrance.

“I could ride it through, and then bring it back,” Droshinski said.

“I hope you can, but I’d like to find out without your getting stuck on the other side. We do need to know what’s down that corridor.” If it came out somewhere useful—if it could be blocked from intrusion by the enemy—if there were multiple entrances by which the enemy could penetrate—if, if, if.

“Now she’s got it open, I can head down that way on foot,” Cosper said. “Get some idea of what’s there.”

“Try it,” Ky said. “But not past any doors—and not farther than a kilometer, if it goes that far.”

Without any ifs at all, the passage, plus a working vehicle, gave them mobility. Just one vehicle could carry more than all her people combined. “Get another working. As many as you can,” Ky said. “Wherever we go is better than staying here, and now we have supply carriers.”

By the end of the day, they knew all the vehicles would respond to commands, and Cosper had made a second foray down the tunnel, leaving his pack as a marker at ten kilometers, the farthest distance Ky would let him go.