Cold Welcome

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE}

The next morning, their meeting had a different tone. “We have supplies. We have small-arms weapons, enough for everyone,” Ky said. “And now we have transportation. Time to leave.”

“But we don’t know where that goes! What if we’re trapped?” Corporal Barash’s voice rose.

“Admiral’s led us well so far. Why not trust her?” Yamini glared at Barash.

“Easy for you to say!” Barash glared back.

“What d’you mean by that?”

Ky thumped the table. “No personalities. Thinking. Barash, what do you think will happen if we just stay here?”

“You say there’s a force coming that will kill us.”

“I asked what you thought.”

“I—I don’t know. They might be on our side, the ones who land first. Rescuers. You said you’d been in contact… why wouldn’t they come? Or we could hide until they do. We could—we could hide in that part the others never found.”

“That we think the others never found. We can’t be sure. If they do know, or if they have some kind of detection that can find more voids, this is a nice big open trap. Clearly this secret—the whole continent, this base, whatever else they’re keeping down here—is important to whoever it is—a family, a corporation, even a foreign government. They might even be willing to drop a bomb that would blow the top off this to get us.”

“But they couldn’t hide that.”

“They’ve been able to hide everything up to now. I think they’re desperate to keep their hold on this continent and its contents—this base and whatever else. Our side can’t be certain of getting here first; they don’t know how much opposition they’ll face. They’re trying to move fast, and secretly, but they know the opposition is aware of them.”

“Your aunt is the Rector; surely she can have whatever she wants. Troops, transport, weapons—” Gossin, this time.

“Apparently not.” Ky looked around. Faces now were sober; some were once more scared. “You remember when Vatta was attacked?” Most nodded. “There’s still opposition to her, as a Vatta, within Spaceforce and the Defense Department; she had a row with Air-Sea Rescue when the shuttle went down. She’s not sure she can trust all the senior commanders.”

Ky paused, but no one said anything. She went on. “There are troops on our side, but they’re not in position yet. Another few days, but we may not have another few days. What we can do here—improvise blockages, create killzones—is not enough. We can’t protect against heavy weapons, and we don’t have enough of us—or weapons or ammunition—to fight a prolonged battle. Sure, I would prefer to know where every branch of that tunnel goes, how deep it is, what’s on the surface, but we don’t have the time. We’re leaving as soon as we’ve loaded the vehicles.”

“We should take all the control rods we can find,” Inyatta said. “That will keep them from opening the secret doors or operating any vehicles we leave behind if they blow them open.”

“Good thought,” Ky said. “Now—since we have vehicles and aren’t limited to what we can carry—”

“Food,” Gurton said. “How much should we take?”

“Everything we can get into a vehicle,” Ky said. “Concentrates first, but if we can take every scrap, all the better. Then they’ll have to use their own supplies, and that will delay them, at least a little. Staff Sergeant Gossin, you’re in charge of assigning work parties to strip this place of everything we need or they might use against us. Staff Sergeant Kurin, you’re in charge of getting the vehicles loaded, making sure they can move with what you pack inside them, with room for personnel as well. Pick your four; you’ll get more help when all the supplies have arrived here.”

Gossin began assigning work parties for the rest of it. Ky went back to Greyhaus’ office and dug through his desk for anything of possible use to Grace. She had to use a chisel and hammer to break the lock on one drawer, but what she found was worth the delay. A list of contact numbers, some with names—officers in various military units, all the way up to very high ranks—and some with initials only and code numbers after. Journals, like Greyhaus’, from previous commanders of this facility, dating back… over two hundred years. And more.

She had brought a duffel from Supply, and loaded all that, along with the flight recorder from the shuttle, into it, then carried it down to the hangar. Here Kurin was already ticking off incoming supplies, while Kamat, Betange, and Barash were arranging them in vehicles by weight and bulk, and Hazarika was stacking ammunition.

“We’ve got all the weapons down here; I found more ammunition in Stores, heavy locked crates. Do you want it?”

“Yes,” Ky said. “If they make it into the tunnels, I want them to think we will shoot back. It should slow them down a little, anticipating ambushes.”

“Right,” Hazarika said.

Packing proceeded well as the hours rolled by. All the control rods they’d found, all the food—surely more than they would need—medical supplies, water, the most useful sizes of pots and pans, tools, firearms and ammunition, clothes including extra protective suits, powerpaks to recharge batteries, all the outdoor survival gear they’d found in Stores (two tents, four small portable stoves, four water purifiers, ten sleeping bags, folding seats and one folding table, two fishing rods and a tackle box of lures, extra line, and hooks).

“Clearly somebody was out wandering the countryside,” Sergeant McLenard said.

“Probably the officers,” muttered Lakhani. “Hunting and fishing.”

“Very good,” Ky said. “We’re almost ready to leave; do a final check of the rooms and see if you find anything left behind, and be ready to guide the others back down.”

“We could eat here tonight, couldn’t we? Even sleep here? They can’t get here before late tomorrow at the earliest—” Gurton said.

“If we’re right about their plans and the weather where they’re starting from. We can’t be sure of that. It’s too close. We need to be farther away when they arrive.”

The little caravan moved almost silently through the hangar door into the tunnel. When the last had passed, they all stopped on signal, and Ky walked back to shut the door using the control rod and the dimple on the tunnel side. She hoped that meant it would stay closed even if the enemy found the hangar and figured out which wall might be a door.

The first few kilometers of their journey counted, to Ky, as known territory; Sergeant Cosper had walked ten kilometers out and back, noting every marking he saw, every light fixture, even (using a level they’d found with the tools) the slope of the passage floor. The tunnel tended downward so gently that the view behind was obscured only when they went around turns. The first two of those were at right angles, but the next was a gentle arc. Ahead of them, lights in the overhead came on—not the familiar lights of any Slotter Key office building, but sections of the overhead that had looked the same plain gray as everything else flicking on to a greenish-white glow. Behind them, the lights went off again.

Droshinski had discovered that the vehicles would not move faster than fifteen kilometers an hour in the tunnel. So it wasn’t long before they saw the pack Cosper had left to mark his most distant point. Ahead the tunnel seemed straight and level, vanishing in darkness. Another hour passed, and another. Ky, in the lead vehicle, heard a loud shout from behind. She signaled a halt and when all had halted, walked back to see that a wall had cut off the tunnel behind them, ten meters from the back of the rearmost vehicle.

“It just slid out—no warning, nothing!” Sergeant Chok, tasked with being rear guard, looked as upset as he sounded.

“Have you tried opening it with a control rod?” Ky asked.

“No, Admiral. I didn’t know if you wanted—what it might mean—”

“Try it.”

Chok walked over to the new wall and felt around the margins for a dimple. “It’s not here.”

“Try the middle of the space,” Ky said.

“Aha. Here—” He touched the rod to it and fingered the sequence that had opened other doors. Nothing happened.

“Are we trapped?” That was Droshinski, who should have stayed with the vehicle she was controlling. “What if there’s another—?”

“Put this one in reverse, Droshinski. See if the door opens when traffic approaches.” It would make sense, Ky thought, to have safety doors at intervals that protected others from… whatever those who’d built this place feared.

With the usual dramatic toss of her head, Droshinski climbed into the back of that vehicle while Chok and Ky moved to the side of the tunnel. As it reversed, the door slid aside.

“Forward now,” Ky said.

And as the vehicle once more cleared ten meters between itself and the door, the door slid shut again.

“Whoever they were, we share some ways of thinking,” Ky said as Droshinski climbed out of the vehicle. She looked forward to see clusters of her team outside their vehicles. As she walked back to the front of the line, she said the same thing to each cluster: “Not a problem; the door reacts to vehicles just like the one in the hangar. We’re going on.”

In another hour, the tunnel opened out into another room, not quite as large as the hangar but large enough to park the vehicles side by side and walk around outside them. Six doors on one side and two on the other. “Try them all,” Ky said. Inside one was a room with obvious water fixtures, though they did not look like standard Slotter Key versions.

“Rest stop,” said Ennisay. “Like it’s an ordinary road trip.”

The fixtures worked; water came out of faucets, flushed through toilets, and even (Ennisay got wet trying this out) rained down in abundance in what was afterward obvious as a shower. “I thought it was just part of the floor,” he said, dripping. “And I found the dimple and wondered what it did so I pushed—”

“You didn’t see the grille in the overhead?” Cosper asked.

“I didn’t look up.”

“Bet you will next time,” Cosper said. Ennisay just grinned.

Ky looked into the space behind the next door—four tables, each with six stools around it, all the same gray as the walls and overhead. What might be a serving line of some sort along one side. Or something else entirely. Gurton said, “Since we’re experimenting—” and sat down on one of the stools, only to jump up when the table opened a seam at her place and extruded a bowl with some dry gray-green substance in it. “That can’t be food…” She picked up the bowl and sniffed at it. “Somebody didn’t wash the dishes?”

“Or freeze-dried food that only needs water?” Betange said.

“I’m hungry,” Ennisay said. “It’s been four hours—couldn’t we have a meal?”

“A snack,” Ky said. “And not food that we find down here. Food we know is safe for us.”

“I could just try wetting it,” Gurton said. “Just to see what happens.”

“Food from our own stores,” Ky said. “A snack. We’re not going to stay here long.”

Others came and sat down; when all the stools at one table were full, the table extruded a central cluster of… something that might be containers. One looked like salt. The rest were unfamiliar.

“Condiments,” Betange said. “The aliens have condiments and they sit around during meals. More and more like us.”

“They might be us,” Yamini said. “Ancestors.”

“Or not,” Ky said. She bit into one of the chewy snack bars Gurton had packed, feeling the day’s strain weighing on her. The others looked tired, too, but they hadn’t gone far enough to risk stopping here for the rest of the night. She finished eating, drank some water, and used the facility while the others finished their snacks. Then she looked into the other spaces. Two had shelves jutting from the walls that looked rather like spaceship bunks, twelve in each of the rooms. She felt the surface of the lowest. Though it looked all of a piece with the walls and floor, it felt soft, like a thin mattress.

Across the passage, one room was full of opaque canisters almost waist-high, stacked three wide on either side, with an aisle between them. They were labeled, but not in a script she knew. On the walls above hung the same kinds of cleaning equipment familiar to humans everywhere. Brushes, mops, a shelf of something that looked like small balls of moss but felt like something to scrub pots with.

The other room looked, at first glance, like a laboratory or laboratory supply room. Tall transparent containers of different-colored liquid and a faintly tangy odor. Ky moved closer; the room’s light brightened. Inside the jars she could now see shapes—translucent, taking the color of the liquid. A long string of little bags, each with a dark dot in it. A sinuous line of… bones? segments of one thing?… with feathery fronds extending to either side. Each jar bore a yellow label with a single symbol on it—again, she could not understand it, but when she reached out to trace the symbol, it flashed a bright blue light at her.

That had to mean Don’t touch. She looked around once more, forced herself to ignore what wasn’t going to solve their problems, and went out, closing that door.

Kurin came out to join her in closing all the doors, and the others climbed aboard the vehicles. They left the area as they’d found it, all doors closed.

“I think they’re a lot like us,” Kurin said. She was in the first vehicle with Ky.

“They eat, they drink, they excrete, they must lie down on those shelf things because what else would you use a soft-halfway-down shelf for? And cleaning supplies.”

And whatever that was in the last room. Nobody’d mentioned that, and Ky wasn’t going to.

After another three hours of travel, they passed another portal that closed behind them. Ky signaled to keep going. If they found another rest stop, they might as well stop for the night. An hour later, there it was: the same as the last except somewhat larger.

“We need to loosen up,” Ky said before Cosper could start in on fitness training; he looked pleased that she’d mentioned it. “Ten minutes,” Ky said. “Then we set up for the night.”

Nobody complained about the vigorous calisthenics and stretches. Afterward, when they discovered four rooms, not just two, with beds, they each claimed a bed, clustering in two of the rooms, leaving the rest for Ky to choose from.

Gurton investigated the kitchen/dining room, discovering a cooking surface behind the plain counter, and set to work on a hot meal. Some were dozing by the time she served, and immediately after Ky sent them all to bed.

The room she chose for herself had two electrical outlets on the wall without bunks. What would the mystery people have used for voltage? She checked with her implant cable; the green light came on. How likely was it that a different race or culture, or humans from before electricity was used on Old Earth, would choose a compatible voltage to… whichever side of Old Earth it was that used 110 instead of 220?

But safe. Except—she didn’t need to call Rafe now. They were out of the old base, doors locked behind them, and he wouldn’t be expecting to hear from her tonight anyway. It would be smarter to wait a few days, until they were farther away—maybe even had found another route to the outside—and she could tell him where she was, a long way from any enemy. She put away her special cable and went peacefully to sleep.

Despite her confidence in the obscurity of the hidden doors, and the fact that they had all the power rods they’d been able to find, Ky woke early and chivvied the others into action. “We can do twelve hours,” she said. “Fifteen minutes at the rest stops; half an hour for lunch. Twelve hours will get us 180 more kilometers.” If everything worked as well and no better than the day before. If the enemy hadn’t figured out where the entrance to the rest of the facility was, and how to get their own vehicles into the tunnel. Because their vehicles would not be self-driving and would go much faster, she was sure.

The day ground on, hour after hour of rolling almost silently along in a traveling bubble of light, doors opening in front of them, closing behind them. She was stiff every time she got out of the vehicle, less and less glad to be climbing back aboard. Finally they came to the opening where Ky had planned to stop for the night, and everyone climbed down, groaning and muttering.

“Exercise period?” Cosper asked.

“Definitely,” Ky said, over the groans. “Including you, Gurton—I’m sure you’re stiff, too.”

An hour later, she agreed when Droshinski said, “At least we can shower and change clothes—but I wish we had a ’fresher cabinet for the dirty ones.”

While the others continued to clean up, Ky wandered through the other rooms, similar to those she’d seen before. What were those shapes in jars? And what were they for? How old?

“Sir? Gurton’s serving supper.”

“Coming.” Ky closed the door as she left the mystery behind and set her mind firmly on the present and future. Everyone bedded down early, making up for the night before. Again, Ky thought of contacting Rafe, but decided that they hadn’t traveled far enough yet and she had nothing really to say.

In the next two days they covered 360 kilometers of gray tunnel, most of it straight, with interruptions at the same regular intervals. Although the tunnel never seemed stuffy, and the lights and water continued to work, Ky felt certain that no one had been down this way for centuries. The silence was oppressive, once they stopped for a meal or a night’s rest. Conversation lagged. They went through the exercises Cosper insisted on without enthusiasm; Ky, focused on what might be happening outside, didn’t try to rouse them to any.

On the second night, she contacted Rafe. He sounded exhausted and distracted when he answered.

“Where are you?”

“Out of the main complex. Our vehicles can only go fifteen kilometers an hour, but we run them twelve hours a day.”

“So you’re well away, that’s good. Supplies?”

“Ample food and water for two or three tendays, if we can use the vehicles the whole way; if we have to go on foot, it’ll be tighter.”

“And where exactly are you now?”

“There’s a passage—the only one that we found—leading from the main complex. You should be able to do a void-scan and see it. It started out heading north, but we’ve had some curves and I’m not sure now.”

“That’s good—sorry, Ky, I’ve got to go. Teague’s calling me.”

Ky shook her head, shrugged, and lay down wondering if he’d actually heard everything she’d said. Where were their enemies? And their friends?