Still Falling: Book 1: Solstice 31 Saga (40 page)

Slowly, he descended the shuttle into the space, sending dust and leaves up in a great cloud. Turning on the shuttle’s floodlights revealed the great space. In the center of the floor, there was a mound of bones and carcasses, as if a great monster had been tossing his leavings there.

For hundreds of years, game of all kind had fallen to their deaths from above. The Redoubt was so well concealed now, after hundreds of years, that running animals leaped over what they thought was a simple outcrop of rock into thin air.

Even the pilings used for auto-landing had been removed. A quick search showed empty shops, galleries, barracks and room after empty room stripped. The battery banks also were gone. All of the tree-like solar collectors were gone as well.

There were far fewer cobwebs here than in the last one. There was nothing but shallow corners to make them in, no nests to speak of, likely due to the constant smell of rotting meat that filled the stagnant air.

They decided not to spend the night. They took off before full dark because it was easier for Barcus to navigate out with a bit of light remaining.

On the way back, Barcus taught them about instrument flying at night.

It was full dark when they returned to the Mining Redoubt. Barcus allowed Po to take it in on autopilot. They descended smoothly through the glowing maw and down onto the very same pilings where they had departed.

Po beamed as she exited the shuttle.

***

Grady had overseen an amazing amount of cleanup while they were gone. The main atrium was now completely clear. The dust the shuttle kicked up looked like it was being swept away into huge vents that surrounded the great chamber, which made Barcus realize that the ventilation system was on-line.

“I believe as the basic systems begin to power up, more and more will automatically come on-line,” Em reported. “In addition to ventilation, heat and humidity control has started up. They also say that there is hot water in the infirmary.”

“The Infirmary?” Barcus asked.

“That's what the door calls it,” Grady said.

“Why Grady, has no one mentioned that only Keepers can read?” Barcus smiled.

“By the way, the one thing we have not found here is an anvil,” Grady said, ignoring him.

“Olias, I plan on returning to The Abbey with Po tonight. I want Stu to remain here for now. Let me know if you need anything else. Keep your Plate handy so I can get updates.”

Grady wanted to go back himself. “I can't stand to be without the sky for much longer.”

During the return flight, Po flew the entire way. She landed  perfectly in the abbot’s garden with the autopilot landing sequence.

They went directly to the pub for some of the excellent wine. It had been a long day. They sat at one of the new tables, talking about the joys of being able to fly a shuttle or a ship when Ulric came up. He already had a mug of something, but seemed more sober than usual.

“I need to speak with you. May I sit?” Ulric asked formally, which was out of character. Barcus nodded.

“I have been lying to you,” he stated.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Ulric’s Ship

“The Emergency Module was collecting assets. Preparing for something.”

--Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Emergency Module Digital Forensics Report. Independent Tech Analysis Team.

<<<>>>

“What do you mean?” Barcus asked as he gestured for him to sit.

“I'm not really a Keeper,” Ulric confessed.

Barcus and Po tried not to smile as they looked at each other.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Barcus asked.

“The sky fall last autumn was you. You are like me.”

“Yes. He is a man of Earth,” Po said quietly.

Ulric was horrified by the term. His eyes shot from Po to Barcus.

“Don't say that. Don't ever say that.” Ulric was looking around to make sure no one heard it.

“Those Fuckers killed 2,000 of my people. Everyone I knew, everyone I loved, was on the ship. It was an unarmed survey ship. As soon as I am able, this man of Earth is going to make them pay. I don't care if I have to hunt down every Keeper there is. As soon as I gain control of all their systems, I will destroy this precious world they've made,” Barcus growled.

He let it sink in.

“I already have their comms traffic. Soon I will be inside their mainframes and have all their secrets. Did you know they have a moon based, interstellar communications array?”

“What?”

“Em and Stu have discovered many things since cracking their comms,” Barcus added.

“Yes, they have an old-school communication antenna array that might be capable of talking to Earth. The signal will take years to get there, but at least then they will know what happened here. If they send a ship, by then, I will have control of the orbital platforms if they remain. It may take me decades to get home, but what the hell. I have nothing but time...”

“You have had the longevity treatments?” Ulric asked.

“Yes.”

“How long will you live?”

“How long do any of us live? I will take their lives and their planet. And I will do it from my bench in the sun,” Barcus growled.

Ulric's jaw clenched. “Will you let me help?”

Barcus raised an eyebrow.

“My ship has an EMP cannon,” Ulric said.

“Really, why? After the last war, all the new tech has been made to be EMP resistant,” Barcus said.

“Everything made AFTER the last war. Not like plasma rifles. Or this kind of computers. My ship may not even fly anymore. After that last hop, I have never tried again.”

“Where is it? Let's have a look. I love the old Renalo class yachts, comfy,” Barcus said.

“It's in an abandoned Redoubt. But not either of the ones you have found.” He set his Plate down on the table and pointed. He indicated a spot that came up immediately in his HUD of one of the additional locations of potential Redoubts.

“When you said you had found the Mining Redoubt, I knew it wasn't this one. It lies in an area that does not have SAT coverage. It's destroyed and empty already. It is in an area of desolation.”

“We could be there in about four hours,” Po said. Barcus raised an eyebrow. She was right. How did she make that estimate so fast?

“Why are you telling me this now?” Barcus asked.

“I always thought I could become a Keeper and get close to the High Keeper. Close enough to kill him. But then I fell in love. We tried to build a life.” He paused, “I started to travel with Grady. I hated what I'd seen. And loved it. I never thought to go to it again. You might be able to salvage it.”

They sat in silence for a while. Listening to laughter around them. Finally, Barcus spoke.

“Tomorrow we will go to the Mining Redoubt. We will collect some tools to take with us. Em is already compiling schematics and tool lists for a Renalo class yacht.”

“I have something else to tell you. This place is haunted.” He gestured with his mug and then took a deep pull but didn't continue.

***

The next day, Smith was left in charge. He took it in stride. Po asked Barcus, “Who do you think really runs things around here when you leave Keeper Ulric in charge?”

Ulric was late. Barcus sent Ansel to fetch him.

Ansel returned a few minutes later, blushing slightly. “He'll be along in a few minutes.”

Stu came up then. “Barcus, I am now beginning a new phase of data infiltration. Before I begin, I wanted to get your permission. I have found not one, but twelve data centers so far, based on the comm traffic. The fastest way to gain access is to obtain a legitimate login and then work to escalate access once inside. I will take steps to conceal this access and eventually gain full admin authority.”

“Do it. Keep me informed.”

Barcus checked the AR72 before he stowed it in the trunk with the supplies for the trip. He had checked his handgun before he left the gatehouse that morning.

Ulric showed up disheveled, with two girls adjusting his garments as he moved. He was very self-conscious as he kissed them both, and they retreated holding hands.

***

Po got in and put on the helmet. The HUD came up straight away. She had already topped off the fuel and done a full preflight with Barcus.

“Manual or autopilot takeoff?” Po asked.

“Autopilot,” was the response she heard in her ears. But she knew he had not moved his mouth. She shook her head and made no comment. Auto-ascend was initiated. The engines began a smooth hum, and they went up to 3,000 feet, slowly turning, providing a view in every direction.

“Make your way to this point, over the ocean and then proceed south. We will cut inland here and proceed to the coordinates. Ulric, are you strapped in?”

Barcus turned and saw that he was asleep.

Po flew the shuttle almost the entire way. They stopped on the way, on a washed stone beach in a deserted area for a leg stretch and the call of nature. They were still an hour from the target location and Ulric was still asleep. They woke him up by giving Po another lesson with the AR72 without its suppressor attached.

Ulric stumbled out of the shuttle and walked around to the opposite side to pee beside one of the landing skids. Shading his eyes, he looked up and watched Po screwing on the suppressor to the rifle’s muzzle.

“Why the projectile weapons, anyway? I was expecting a LASER or plasma rifles.” Ulric punctuated the comment with a coughing spree.

“The last war,” Barcus answered.

When Ulric didn't respond with anything but confusion, Barcus continued. “The war was ended by returning to lower-tech, less expensive, EMP resistant technology. Research in that area led to many advances. Low power, mechanical technologies were discovered to be EMP resistant. Par and Ash for example. They don't have motors or power plants. They have chemical processing units, mechanical fiber tech. It's like synthetic muscles. And like people, very EMP resistant. Par requires less power to walk than this flashlight consumes. Combat tactics were so dependent on particle, plasma and nuclear weapons they had no idea what to do when the options were all denied to them. They tried to shield their devices, but it was too late.”

“Mechanical fiber, super-polymer armor, and caseless ammunition turned out to be very stealth as well. It ended the war fast and decisively,” Barcus said.

“There was another war?” Ulric said.

“Get back in the shuttle,” Barcus said, shaking his head.

Po wanted to take off manually, and very nearly crashed them into the nearby cliff before Barcus took the stick.

After another twenty minutes of practice, they turned inland. The coast was low and very rocky, with no vegetation at all. Great cracks were everywhere. It looked impossible to navigate on foot. It was completely dead for miles in every direction.

“Those cracks are deceptively deep and filled with violent, tidal, saltwater. It's as if the land was intentionally destroyed. The ship’s name is the Sedna. It’s in a ruin that is on the eastern face of a rocky outcropping. If you approach from the east, you can see it. But only from the east.”

“How did you find it? Out here?” Barcus asked.

“I didn't, the pilot did. He never told me.”

“That should be it just ahead,” Po said.

Barcus took the controls and slowed on his approach. The sun was past noon, so the exposed part of the Redoubt was covered in shadow now. Slowly, they crossed into the shadows and the Redoubt’s bones were revealed. An entire third of the dome was completely blown away. It was obvious that some kind of devastating explosion on the inside had blown this side of the Redoubt away.

“My god. What could do that to foamcrete?” Barcus asked.

“In the decades since I have been here, I have heard tales from Grady and other Trackers that the High Keeper once had a weapons research facility here. Away from prying eyes. There is no SAT coverage here. Why bother? I think it is a major reason why we managed to set down undetected.”

They hovered low and then landed on a flat expanse of bleached stone. As the ship wound down its engines, they exited the small craft. They could see an edge of the round, thick ship.

It was once white but was now dark gray on the top from decades of weather. The side facing out had actual windows that were dull mirrors looking across the desolation. These were on the main salon level, and the blast shield curtains were open. The blast shields were closed on the upper command deck.

They approached the starboard skid control panel, and it was dark and unresponsive. Barcus handed the AR to Po and said, “Keep watch while I access the manual hatch.”

He moved around to the back of the skid and slowly moved up the ladder rungs that were built in there. The maintenance hatch at the top was not locked. The seals were still tight, but it opened inward easily enough. A small swarm of BUGs passed into the space quickly and confirmed that the space was as described in the schematics, but the headroom was tight here.

Po climbed up halfway and paused so she could safely hand up the rifle, then pass the tools up from Ulric.

Moving along to the end of the access way, Barcus lit his way with a flashlight from his pouch and opened the interior hatch. It swung stiffly into the main engineering bay. The air was dry and stale.

He was already at the engineering console by the time Ulric entered the space. “Wujcik handled the shutdown. He was a good engineer.” There was a tone of regret in his voice.

Some lights came on at that point, and then a few more. A third of the panels began to power up. Barcus went from panel to panel, tapping screens and throwing toggles. A slight vibration could be felt in the air, and a few moments later, the air itself began to move as the life support came on-line.

Finally, he sat at the chief engineer’s station. Curved screens, a meter high, surrounded 300 degrees around the station. More and more screens were coming to life. The lights came full on at that point.

“How does it look?” Ulric asked.

“What the hell kind of ship is this?” Barcus glared at him a moment before going back to work. “How long were you here before you set out?”

“Four, maybe five months.”

“Your engineer was executing repairs that whole time. He was trying to make it spaceworthy again,” Barcus said as he scanned through screens.

“Yes. But he failed. There were too many hull breaches.” Ulric was staring at the past.

“How many people were on board when this damage happened?” Po asked.

“Seventy-one,” Ulric said as he dug out a flask.

The front half of the engineering level came up on the display as a schematic, showing the rips in the hull inside a large bunk room.

“Were they in the barracks?” Barcus asked.

“The hold. Yes.” Ulric turned and walked to a door marked LIFT. It opened and he stepped in. It had closed behind him before he turned around.

As Barcus worked on the ship, Po began to explore. There was a corridor that opened into engineering on one side, the lift on the other, a wide ramp that looked like it opened to the back of the ship leading to wide overhead doors. She palmed the pad like she had seen Ulric do.

The door opened up. Some of the lights came on, mostly the ones at the edge of the room. The air smelled metallic and dusty. Damage was heavy and evident in this room. Minimal attempts to clean it up had been made. While engineering was spotless, this room was covered in old stains of some kind, torn debris scattered everywhere. Dry dust had found its way in over the decades.

She then realized that the stains must have been old blood. Footprints and drag streaks were now obvious. She backed out slowly and closed the door.

Barcus came out of engineering just then, saying, “We need to get to the command level.”

They entered the elevator and selected Level 1. It opened on the back of the bridge. A command chair and three stations.

Barcus sat in the command chair, and it automatically slid up to the command consoles. Po was looking over his shoulder and actually recognized a few controls.