Red Sun Bleeding (8 page)

‘As long as it isn’t drown us in sand or start the walls moving towards us, I’ll be happy.’

‘Sure isn’t an intercom to above ground,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s no wireless connection available.’ His little finger broke open and a cable snaked out, interfacing with a port at the bottom of the metal. As soon as the connection was made a screen in its centre started rapidly scrolling with moving numbers, blinking green against black. ‘I think this is a lock.’

What to?
‘Can you break it?’

‘Not as such. But give me a second and I can trick its memory into playing back the last code entered. From the time stamp it would have been a couple of hours ago. You might want to get ready to tear back to the shaft, you know, in case a large granite sphere starts rolling down the corridor.’

‘I was joking about drowning in sand.’

‘Let’s hope whoever installed this panel feels the same,’ said Zeno. ‘Three, two, one…’

Lana leap back as the wall started to shimmer. It disappeared, revealing a long horizontal tunnel stretching ahead. This tunnel was different, though. Its walls seemed to be made of a shiny black substance, slightly wet, and the ceiling was glowing green as though the rock had just been nuked. ‘Hey, I thought you said that wall was solid rock, not a hologram?’

‘It was
solid
rock,’ said Zeno. ‘Jeez. Abracadabra… now you see it, now you don’t.

Lana ran her hand where the wall had been. ‘It
had
to be a hologram!’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Zeno. ‘The operations I sensed within the panel were too complex for that. I think they were activating a smart matter sequence.’

‘Programmable matter?’ laughed Lana. ‘That’s science fiction. Doesn’t exist.’

‘Not quite,’ said Zeno. ‘There’s one species that’s believed to have made extensive use of smart matter. The
Heezy
.’

Lana’s eyes narrowed. ‘They’ve been extinct for billions of years.’

Zeno pointed to the passage behind them. ‘Careful tunnelling with water-knives and no explosives. That’s not mining. That’s
archaeology
.’

Lana’s heart sank. Nobody knew much about the Heezy. But that was only because every time one of their artefacts, fossilized ships or long-abandoned settlements was discovered, the alliance moved in shut everything down and classified every rumour and report about the find within a light year exclusion zone. The one thing Lana did know was the same history that every spacer had on file. How the Triple Alliance had been fighting the Skein in a war seven-hundred years ago, and humanity and its two allied species had been badly losing against their nearly indestructible virtual enemy. Until a human colony dome had found something – a very nasty Heezy something – buried under the ice of Neptune. And whatever it was had given the alliance the capability to turn Skein systems into smouldering ruins, one by one, until the Skeins had finally had to acknowledge defeat. An uneasy peace that had lasted to the current day.

‘Every time,’ snarled Lana. ‘Every time we have anything to do with Dollar-sign Dillard…’

Zeno shut his eyes, the same way he always did when consulting the compressed copy of the ship’s database he carried around in his head. ‘And Professor Sebba’s original PhD on Mars? The one area of study you’re almost guaranteed not to find practical work in unless you’re on a highly classified government secondment.’

‘Let me guess… the Heezy.’

‘Give the starship captain a cigar.’

‘It’s not too late,’ said Zeno. ‘We can turn back now. We don’t have to see what’s down there. The best thing that’s going to happen is the alliance fleet catches us and wipes our memories. The worse is that they stick everyone on the
Gravity
Rose
in orange jump-suits and lock us up on asteroid-max in some system that doesn’t officially exist on any star chart.’

‘I haven’t got enough memories left I can afford to lose any more,’ sighed Lana. Not after the cursed cold-sleep accident had left her as a perpetual amnesiac when it came to her past. ‘But I’m damned if I’m heading back to the surface without knowing what Dollar-sign’s got his tame academic tunnelling into this dying world for.’

‘We’re playing with fire, Lana. I was around during the original alliance-skein war… making my last will and testament, given how the skein are not big on any machine life except their own existing in that perfect little post-singularity future they’ve got planned for everyone. This is universe-changing doodie they’ve drilled into this time.’

‘And the professor and Dollar-sign were planning to have us acting as the mules transporting it out to their buyers,’ said Lana. ‘No doubt well concealed under a couple of hundred tonnes of minerals.’

‘Yeah, they were,’ said Zeno.

Lana felt like kicking the wall in rage. And the worse part of it all was how badly they were being short-changed. She’d thought that Dollar-sign was being generous with the amount he had paid them to make this run. But the kind of material you could drag out of a Heezy settlement – even half-fossilized and unoperational – you could trade for a small stellar empire in the Edge and think yourself hard done in that deal. And how the hell were they going to get out of this one? ‘Walking away would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it? Find Calder. Get back to the ship. Jump out as fast as possible and let Dollar-sign find some other sap to run his interdicted antiques across the Edge.’

‘You read my mind, sister.’

Hell
. ‘Let’s go and see what’s down here, then.’

They advanced down the newly formed passage, Lana trying to get a grip on her trepidation. A species that set-up shop deep under the world and only called corridors into being when they required them. That was a hell of a keep-out sign. Did she really want to go poking around their legacy? Except that Dollar-sign had got here before them and made the decision for her.  She found herself on the ledge of a cavern when the corridor ended, no barriers to protect mere mortals tumbling into the colossal space which lay beyond. Lana and the android carefully advanced, glancing over the edge. It was a circular shaft the width of a small inland sea narrowing to a distant vanishing point, maybe to the centre of the very world, no end in sight. But the chute wasn’t empty. Giant amorphous shapes moved up and down the shaft, changing shape as they drifted, sometimes merging with each other before breaking apart into squadrons of smaller objects. It was as though she was watching the universe’s biggest lava lamp. One of the shapes drifted past and she watched intently, both shocked and fascinated. Bright orange, the blob was covered in a circuit-like tracery of glowing yellow lines. Machines seemed to form around its skin, existing for brief seconds before being absorbed back into the surface. This one globule must have been as big as a zeppelin. What purpose it served, she didn’t know. More programmable matter, that was for sure. This was far from being a fossilised archaeology dig.

‘We’re
really
in trouble,’ said Lana.

‘This is the kind of swag that species go to war over,’ said Zeno. 

The narrow ledge they stood on ran to corridors at either end. Passages left in their open position, both with the miner’s interface panels riveted crudely into each wall. The professor had been busy down here, getting to grips with the mother lode.

‘How did they know this was down here?’ Lana mused aloud. ‘It’s not like there’s any sign of the Heezy above ground?’

‘I figure that missing colony ship,’ said Zeno. ‘Maybe not everyone was quite as missing as the records suggest. Dollar-sign’s an expert at ferreting out obscure reports that might lead to a quick buck. He practically lives in the data-sphere.’

‘I feel like an ant that’s accidently crawled into the chief’s anti-matter drive,’ said Lana. ‘Looking around in astonishment and whispering “Well, this ain’t no ant hill” to myself.’

‘And that ant better be on the lookout for the chief’s size ten boots landing on it,’ muttered Zeno.

With that cheery thought, Lana and her robot gang-boss crept through the passage to the left, more cold inky black walls, glistening like the veins of an unpleasant beast. A hangar-sized chamber at the end. This one contained a collection of holding equipment – obviously human – pitted ceramic tubes standing on tripods, transparent panels revealing globules of the Heezy’s programmable matter captured inside, tiny balls of it drifting around the tubes. Might be weapons. Might be computers. Might be data-nodes containing the extinct alien’s music collection. Nothing larger than the size the humans could comfortably squeeze through the narrow access shaft.
Yet
, Lana reminded herself. When the base drilled the main shaft using the tech she had helpfully shipped to the mine, the looting would really begin apace.

Zeno crossed to an active screen the miners had unrolled and left standing in the middle of the chamber, marking the details of their explorations to date. ‘The professor’s people have covered hundreds of miles of this complex.’

So, how were they getting about? Lana walked towards the one object in the room that was definitely not of human origin. Built into the wall at the far end sat a dark egg-shaped object the size of a small house. It was hollow with a raised dais built inside, like a throne for a mountain giant. The outside of the egg had another human interface panel drilled into it, which meant whatever this was, the professor had hacked into it. Lana lifted a silver tool case from the floor and flung it inside the monster egg. As soon as the case touched the ground, the floor seemed to rise up like an angry sea, enveloping the container, and then the object was absorbed into the back wall and vanished.

‘That’s how they’re moving around on this map,’ said Zeno. ‘Transport bubbles flowing through the rock, travelling between levels and chambers.’

And she had thought that dropping down the access shaft was claustrophobic. ‘I’ll leave the pleasures of the Heezy subway system to the professor and her people. Let’s jump out of here.’

‘The cat’s scratched out all of her curiosity?’

‘This tabby’s going home,’ said Lana. ‘Sebba’s got a good few centuries’ head-start on my aching noggin understanding any of this alien magic. She can keep it. All I need is an iron-cast method of anonymously tipping off fleet intelligence about Abracadabra without them tracing the information back to the
Gravity Rose
. After that, I figure Dollar-sign and his grubby friends will either vanish off the grid or suddenly develop acute memory loss. And all of this—’ she waved her hand around the chamber— ‘will be some highly covert science team’s problem, not mine.’

‘S.E.P.,’ grinned Zeno. ‘Somebody else’s problem. My favourite kind. Now you’re cooking with antimatter.’

They retraced their steps, sealing the corridor that led off the access shaft, before riding their chutes all the way up to the surface chamber. Lana and Zero racked the expensive levitation devices back in position, nothing out of place, and headed down the tunnel carved below the mountain. She was half-way down the tunnel when her phone received enough signal-boost to make a connection, vibrating into life. She checked her screen. It was a high-priority call from Polter. The navigator was running the signal through their makeshift satellite net.  Lana flipped it into life.

‘Tell me that you’ve found Calder?’ said Lana, hardly allowing herself to hope.

She could barely hear the reply. Their depth under the mountain or the dying world’s weird atmosphere? ‘Skrat—investigating. Withdrawing to largest—moon. Found—cavern—there—to hide.’

‘Hide? Hide the hell from what?’

‘Inbound vessel,’ squawked Polter. ‘Silhouette on—scan matches—ship—previous dealings.’

‘What ship, Polter?’

‘The
Doubtful Quasar
.’

Zeno groaned. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

Pirates were always bad news. And when it was a pirate crew that Lana had tricked once before and made their rough cybernetic-armed captain look a prize fool, she just knew they weren’t cruising through the system looking for stray liners to ransom.

‘It is—confirmed, revered captain.’

The comms line was becoming slightly clearer the closer they got to the entrance. ‘That’s no coincidence. I knew we were being followed when we left Transference system.’

‘The chief has found—tracking beacon—in cargo hold,’ said Polter. ‘Unusually advanced. Must have been concealed—on station. I have welded it onto satellite—now inserted into orbit.’

A decoy signal should buy her ship time to slip away. ‘Good work,’ said Lana. ‘We’ll get back to Skrat’s shuttle and rendezvous with you on that moon. Send Zeno the coordinates for him to memorize. Stay hidden on silent running and full stealth as best you can. I don’t want Steel-arm Bowen getting his hands on the
Rose
. Update Skrat on the situation and send him flying back here towards the mountains, ASAP. What did you say his shuttle was investigating?’

There was no answer from the phone, just static. ‘Polter, can you read me?’

‘Maybe out of range, if he’s running for the moon?’ said Zeno. ‘This lousy damn atmospheric soup. Or the satellite might have passed over the horizon?’

‘I hope so,’ said Lana. The alternative was too painful to contemplate. Surely he’d be able to keep on broadcasting if he was being boarded.
Unless the pirates have upgraded their jamming gear after last time.

‘Are you sure it’s just the
Gravity Rose
that Steel-arm Bowen wants?’ said Zeno. ‘You did promise the mope that you’d marry him.’

‘Only to get us out of that mess on Gliese 832,’ said Lana.

Zeno forlornly shook his head. ‘Is there anyone in this sector of void you
haven’t
indulged in fleshie relations with?’

‘Yeah, your dad.’

‘Probably an android designer in a Japanese
Kabushiki Kaisha
who died sometime in the last millennium.’

‘You know, I thought he looked a little peaky.’ And now she faced the starkest of choices. A quick exit and abandon Calder to the hostile jungle, or stay put to continue the search and put both Skrat and Zeno in danger. Maybe lose the
Gravity Rose
, too. No good answer either way.