Binary Cycle - (Part 1: Disruption) (7 page)

Jonathas nodded. “Thanks Fletcher,” he said. “I guess we have to do the most we can with whatever chances they give us, right? For the colony.”

“For the colony.” Fletcher repeated. He patted Jonathas on the arm, with respect this time, the malevolent look gone from his eyes. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

As they started walking, the ground suddenly erupted beneath their feet. Jonathas felt his knees give out and he collapsed. Cracks formed in the rock walls and ceiling, and great stones broke loose and rained down on them, knocked free by the tumultuous vibrations.

Fletcher and Jonathas both rolled out of the way as the ceiling came crashing down. 

Jonathas jumped to his feet and scrambled down the the corridor, away from the cave-in. He tripped over his feet but managed to absorb the fall and used the downward momentum to roll himself down the sloped hallway. He skidded hard and banged into a wall. He was dizzy, and the world still convulsed as he squinted his eyes, peering back up the hall. Fletcher lay pinned under a pile of rocks some twenty paces up.

“Jonathas!” Fletcher cried out, trapped beneath the rubble.

The cavern lurched again and more boulders broke loose from the ceiling, burying Fletcher alive. The stones completely blocked the upward path and the cave-in muffled the sounds of Fletcher’s frantic death throes.

No!

Jonathas scrambled to his feet and ran back toward the rock pile, desperately trying to clear the debris.

The stones were too heavy.

He called to Fletcher but received no response. After another feeble attempt to move the rocks, he gave up and slumped onto the ground.

Poor Fletcher.

He didn’t deserve to die like that.

Jonathas couldn’t believe his luck today. He shook his head and stood up, performing a quick diagnostic of his body. When satisfied he wasn’t injured, he continued down the dark hallway.

Please, let her be safe.

Men in black suits met Reggie outside his condominium complex. The glow of Evening lit up the mountains of Alexendia in the distance. The men’s dark clothes matched their eyes and demeanor. They wore identical uniforms: crisp collars, tight black pants, and military grade body armour. Their hair was cropped short, and both stood stiffly at ease. These were the kind of hardened soldiers that would put themselves into any amount of danger for the right price. 

Reggie’s production manager had assured him that he would be able to trust these men with his life. It was their job to protect him at all costs, and one look at their stern faces and the glossy black guns at their hips suggested they took their warding duties very seriously.

“Good morning,” the taller man said, extending a hand. “My name is Magnus, and this is my partner, Stevens.” 

Reggie greeted both men.

“You ready to go?” Stevens asked.

Reggie shrugged, “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

A service droid loaded his hefty packs into the lev-car the men had arrived in. Condensation glistened on the magnetic tracks beneath the car, and swirling mist added depth to an already atmospheric moment. 

Stevens heaved the last crate into the trunk of the lev-car and gestured for Reggie to take the backseat. Reggie stepped into the glass car and pressurized doors hissed shut behind him. Magnus got in the driver’s seat and activated the electromagnets. The car rose a meter above the tracks and they sped off toward the train station.

Reggie wrung his hands together in his lap as he gazed out the window. The bases of white towers whipped by, the streets still quiet at this hour. Gray clouds moved across the sky like a rising tide, the two suns shimmering behind a misty curtain.

They were catching a train bound for New Angelis, where they’d begin filming at the Spindex research center, hidden in the mountains. The bio-dome contained live Spindroth, and they would be provided with weapons used for fighting them, which they would take with them into the jungle. The sophisticated light-fire rifles were illegal for civilians to possess, so special arrangements had been made. Reggie didn’t know how much money had been exchanged or whose hands his producers had needed to shake for all this to come together smoothly. That wasn’t his job, and it was best if he didn’t ask questions about what special permissions he and his team were being granted.

Magnus brushed a finger over the touch controls and the lev-car slowed down and turned into the train station’s loading area. He guided their car toward the passenger drop-off platform. A light rain sprinkled against the glass roof of the car, adding more humidity to the thick air. 

When the car came to rest, Reggie stepped out into the heat of the day, sweat beading on his brow. A service droid appeared from a hatch behind a potted fern and helped unload their packs, stacking them neatly onto a trolley.

“Hot as hell out here, even with the rain.” Stevens commented as they followed the droid and trolley into the station.

Reggie grunted a quick reply. With all the things he wanted to do, say, and film in order to make this documentary a success running through his mind, he wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat.

Sensing an opportunity, he grabbed a small holo-cam from his pack and fastened it to his shoulder. The 3D holomatrix would capture anything within a hundred meters of him, and he could use the train station footage as a quick transitional scene in his film.

A small army of shiny metallic service drones scuttled around them, laden with luggage and pulling trolleys around. The whooshing sound they made, mixed with the gentle patter of rain gave the impression of flowing water. Robots and people rushed through the station like a river. Everyone had somewhere to go, someone to meet. The station bustled with comings and goings, beginnings and endings, anticipations and conclusions.

Reggie took a deep breath as he stepped through the central archway. He liked beginnings, and this seemed as good a one as any.

Scientists maintain that orbital disruptions cause disorientation. But Jonathas had been disoriented even before the event had taken place: before the planet beneath his feet had started to shake and stutter upon it’s axis.

He felt the lingering effects of the nano-DNA coursing through his system, and wasn’t looking forward to traversing these ill-lit hallways with what seemed like only half of his mental capacities intact. His temples throbbed and it felt as though his body had been dragged naked through a thicket of rosebushes.

Jonathas reminded himself that he had a missing girlfriend to find. He wouldn’t let a little pain stand between him and the woman he now suspected he was in love with.

He closed his eyes—they didn’t do much good in the gloom anyway—and pictured his location in the facility. Blueprints of the tunnels flashed through his mind and he tried to imagine where Linsya might have gone looking for help. The supply room for a radio? The sickbay for medical supplies?

Where did she go?

Jonathas decided to head back to the supply depot. It was closest, and besides, he wouldn’t mind grabbing a few items to assist with his search—like a flashlight for starters.

The orange emergency lights wore on his nerves and his work boots bit the dirt as he jogged down the corridor. Jonathas thought of Fletcher, and how every action begat another action, and so on. How it was dumb luck that he had escaped the calamity unharmed, while Fletcher had perished. 
So it goes.
 

He wondered what would have happened had he not met Fletcher there. Would he have been standing in that exact stretch of hall when the disruption knocked the rocks off the ceiling and walls? He pictured Fletcher alive, laughing. Then Fletcher crushed beneath rock, lifeless. All because of the planet.

Our home is killing us.

Taran had baited the original colonists with life and survival, and now it was destroying them. Such a cruel mistress. Jonathas couldn’t help but think that humans were nothing but pawns in some incomprehensible game played by the creators of the universe.

Here we are, carving out lives for ourselves, even as our own home threatens to rip that life away. So fickle is our existence on Taran, how tenuous our hold on survival…

As he neared the supply depot, Jonathas picked up the pace, sprinting the last five hundred meters. He ignored the aches in his body and pushed through the discomfort. The explorers he saw in the holo-vids were always running tirelessly toward their goals. Where their strength came from, Jonathas didn't know. He wasn’t sure if he could find that force within himself. But he would have to.

Nearing his destination, he felt a gust of hot air rush through the hall. The warmth was a sharp contrast to the frigid zephyrs that usually haunted these forsaken corridors.

Something must be wrong with the heat sinks, he thought. They normally did an efficient job of removing excess heat from the air. Too efficient, considering how many nights he’d gone to bed shivering.

Jonathas passed a small door marked
sensory equipment
. This was where the delicate gyroscopes and optical sensors used by the mining drones were stored. He tried the door but it was electronically locked.

No way Linsya could have gotten in there.

He forged ahead, praying that access to the supply depot wasn’t similarly barred.

When Jonathas arrived at the supply depot, he found the door wide open. On the wall, where the door’s control panel should have been, was a jagged crack through the rock. Perhaps the disruption was good for something after all. 

Wires and bits of metal lay destroyed in a heap on the floor among rocks and other debris. The door must have sprung open when the panel was shattered.
A lucky break.
Without tools, he might not have been able to bypass the security locks.

Jonathas stepped into the gloomy chamber. It was hard to believe it had only been a few hours since he had received the nano-DNA injections here in this very space. Ironic that he should end up right back in the room that he was sure he would never see again. He shuddered when he saw the table where he’d lost consciousness during the injection, not wanting to relive that nauseating experience.

He scanned the room for any indication that Linsya had been here. He called her name but there was no response. The chamber was small, only a dozen meters square, so he was able to take it all in in a few seconds. It was empty except for the steel table, a stack of large storage bins, and a dusty old mining drone which had been lying discarded in a corner ever since he started working down here. 

Other than that, there was nothing. There was no sign of Linsya, and what little hope he’d felt vanished into the shadows. He had been certain Linsya would be in here. There was nowhere else for her to go. Horrible thoughts crashed through his mind, images of Linsya lying trapped beneath a pile of rubble, calling for help with no one to hear her screams.

Just like poor old Fletcher.

Feeling a panic coming on, Jonathas took a deep breath, calming himself. Linsya
had
to be ok. It would take more than a little planetary turbulence to derail such a determined woman.

Resigned, Jonathas looked around for something he could use to help him out of this mess. Just beyond the table in a forgotten corner of the room lay a bin which he knew contained a collection of tools. He grabbed a crow bar and pried off the lid, revealing a small handle resting on a flat surface. He twisted the handle and a compartment sprung up out of the box, revealing previously hidden shelves and containers. The sections were labeled, and he quickly found what he was looking for. He jammed a screwdriver set and laser tool into the cavernous pouches in his tunic, sparked up a flashlight, and continued searching the room. 

The silence was eerie and the heat was increasing. Sweat gathered on his forehead as he pawed through a pile of bins, looking for more supplies. He could use an energy bar right about now: it had been many hours since he’d last eaten.

Then he saw something that gave him pause. One of the bins had been pulled aside and when he shone his flashlight into the shadows behind the crate, his heart leapt. The cone of light revealed a hole in the wall. A vent cover lay discarded on the floor beside it.

He whooped in delight and wiped sweat from his eyes—or were they tears? Smiling at his good fortune, Jonathas got down on hands and knees and peered into the dark ventilation shaft. Linsya must have gone through here. He pulled some elastics from his pocket and strapped the torch-light to his head—now he was hands free. 

The light illuminated the narrow walls of the shaft, but ahead he saw only inky blackness. He took a breath and entered the small tunnel. The walls squeezed tight against both his sides and he felt more than a little claustrophobic. Despite what his work required him to do, and the confined spaces he found himself in everyday, he had never gotten used to small, dark spaces. 

Jonathas experienced a moment of panic when the walls seemed to grow narrower, but he continued onward, blocking out all thoughts except Linsya’s beautiful face, that shining beacon of hope inspiring his body to move forward through the narrow shaft. 

He called her name again, hoping his voice would carry through the length of the vent, but he was met with nothing but suffocating silence.

A small hatch hissed open and MiLO emerged from his maintenance chamber, rubber treads softly humming as he glided toward Skyia. His steel cylindrical body was more shiny and reflective than usual, as if all his parts had recently received a good buffing.

“MiLO, you look fabulous!” she beamed at him.

The lights on the small robot’s chest display blinked happily. “Don’t I always?” He turned and wheeled toward the main door of the control room.

She skipped after him. “Of course. But today, I swear you look more…
polished
than usual.”

“Thanks for noticing,” he said. “I had the system apply an extra coat of synthetic polymer to my body casing and all my lights have been re-ionized.” Indeed, she noticed the lights on his front panel flickered with additional vigor.