Blue Burn, page 20
“Were you there when it happened?” I asked tentatively.
Keep sighed mournfully. “Yeah. There was nothing I could do. The Royals didn’t know we were married. They didn’t know what she had done to me. The experimental treatment. I couldn’t stop it, and I would have been executed for treason if I had tried. That’s not why she gave me the sigils. That’s not what she wanted.” I glanced back at him, lifting my visor. His eyes were moist, expression dour. “Thanks for helping me relive that memory, kid.”
I clenched my teeth, taking the gut punch in stride. He was right. I shouldn’t have asked.
His eyes shifted from me to the viewport, the sadness dropping from his face so quickly I had to wonder if it was all an act. “I know those rocks. We’re close.”
I returned my eyes forward, lowering the visor again. “Alter, I’ve got the stick,” I said.
“You’ve got the stick,” she confirmed, passing control back to me.
The sensor grid lit up with red and something smacked into our shields. Three more hits followed in rapid succession.
“I thought you said this place was unguarded,” I snapped without looking at Keep.
“It’s supposed to be,” he replied. “Maybe somebody found it after all.”
CHAPTER 31
I hit the gas, opening the throttle and sending Head Case jumping ahead of the sudden barrage of fire. Energy blasts zipped past, smacking into the surrounding asteroids behind us as I used the sensor grid to locate the threats. Some appeared to be stationary, anchored to the asteroids around us, while others followed my maneuvers, closing in.
“Fixed batteries and drones,” Alter said, confirming my thoughts. “They’ve probably been waiting out here for someone to arrive.”
“That makes sense,” Matt said. “But for how long?”
“They could be Royal Guard inventory,” Keep suggested. “It’s possible they’ve been here since the Guard first arrived.”
“A thousand years ago?” I asked.
“Closer to nine hundred,” Keep corrected. “I’m nine-hundred eighty years old. Priya gave me the sigils at fifty-six. That’s—”
“I don’t really care about the math right now,” I interrupted, swinging Head Case toward one of the offending asteroids, close enough to see the offending turret. Large and round, it tried to follow our course while it continued firing, its mount giving it a wide range of motion. “Alter, do you have it?”
Ion blasts launched from our cannons, slamming the turret and the rock behind it, breaking chunks of the asteroid away from the surface and sending them spinning through space. This was just like the classic game after all.
“Got it,” she replied calmly. The ion cannons fired again, and another fixed turret went dark. “That one too.”
“Do you think the Royals found Omega Station?” David asked. “If they did, what we came for might be gone.”
“Not a chance,” Keep insisted. “They might have figured out a general location and booby-trapped it, hoping to prevent anyone on the Sashkur side from returning. Since the war ended soon after, nobody ever came back.”
“Why do you say that like you’re guessing?” Matt asked. “Weren’t you here?”
“With the main attack group. Which wasn’t equipped with automated batteries or drones. This must have come later.”
One of the shield nodes turned orange, hit with a pair of blasts from two drones trailing us. “It stinks no matter how you slice it,” I said, twisting the stick and spinning Head Case into a one-eighty. Alter didn’t waste any time blasting the drones with the cannons, blowing them to pieces that slammed against the shields and deflected away.
“Nice move,” Druck said, watching the combat. “Why didn’t you just rotate the cannons to the back?”
I swung Head Case back around. Alter quickly fired again, taking out another fixed battery.
“That’s why,” I replied.
Collision alerts blared over the flight deck’s speaker, and I slammed the throttle forward just in time to avoid an asteroid that had gotten close enough that the ion trail from the thrusters left a mark on it. Four more drones tried to flank us, and I dropped the ship toward a gathering of smaller asteroids circling more quickly around one another in the gravitational dance. Being drones, the opposing ships didn’t hesitate to follow.
“Roller coaster again,” Druck commented. “Great.”
I dove into the midst of the asteroids, ignoring my desire to cough to get more air as I guided Head Case around them, doing my best to get the drones behind me caught in the mess. Alter rotated the ear guns this time, firing backward at them as we passed through the rocky mess. A couple of the asteroids glanced off our shields, bumping us around a bit and throwing off her aim. She hit one of the other rocks instead, the force pushing it into one of the drones. It veered off course, smashing full-on into another in a lucky accident.
Alter caught a second a moment later, as I veered and twisted Head Case, bringing the ship scraping past a larger asteroid to regain the centerline of the belt. The quick turn threw off a third drone that fought futilely to adjust its course. “Gotcha!” I growled joyfully as it hit one of the rocks. Cutting the throttle, I fired the retro thrusters to reduce velocity while I made a quick hook around a larger asteroid.
The last drone flew right past us and into Alter’s line of fire. She blasted it easily, leaving the field clear of targets.
“That was easy,” Druck said while I guided Head Case through the field again, continuing the hunt for the camel.
“I just make it look easy,” I replied, though in all honesty the improved shield nodes and the Star of Caprum were the only reason we had a chance against the defenses. My need to cough expanded, and I signaled Alter to take over so I could cough again. It was worse this time. The heaving for more air hurt this time, pulling the iron taste of blood up to my mouth. I swallowed it back, relaxing my breathing as fast as I could.
Calmed again, I leaned my head back against the seat when the sensor grid lit up a second time, revealing more defenses among the asteroids. “Alter, I have the stick,” I said, picking my head up to resume the fight.
Round two went a lot like round one, with Alter and me teaming up to take out another series of drones and fixed batteries while we slowly progressed through the asteroid field. Keep had modeled a level of Star Squadron after this, and right now the waves of drones and guns certainly felt more like a video game than reality. Would there be a larger, more powerful starship guarding Omega Station too?
Assuming we ever found the damn place.
Another ten minutes through the field brought us to the third wave of defenses. The good news about the number of drones and batteries in the area was that it upped the odds that the Royals had never actually found the station. They had either made an educated guess about its location or had somehow determined a radius and planted their traps but had never landed on Mickey Mouse Rock itself. As it was, those traps were no match for Alter and me. We disabled and avoided them, guiding Head Case through the chaos.
“There!” Keep shouted, nearly an hour after our first encounter with the defenses.
My gaze shot to the asteroid he had thrust his index finger at, grinning widely as if he had known exactly where and when we would locate the station the whole time.
“That doesn’t look like a camel to me,” I said, staring at the asteroid.
“Or Mickey Mouse,” Matt agreed.
“It looks like a Milkbone,” David decided.
I could definitely see the shape in the asteroid, but even that was more a matter of perspective. The rocks were like clouds that way. “Are you sure that’s the right one?”
“Positivo,” Keep replied. “Not my first rodeo, kid.”
We still had a pair of drones pecking at us from the rear. I guided Head Case through a tight loop while Alter adjusted the cannons, quickly blasting them to oblivion.
“At least there’s no boss battle at the end of this one,” I said, thankful my fears about a more powerful starship hadn’t materialized. I adjusted course again, backing in toward the milkbone to slow our approach. “Where’s the hangar? It all looks like solid rock to me.”
“That’s the idea,” Keep replied. “Just get us in close.”
After dog fighting drones for the last hour, maneuvering Head Case to the asteroid’s surface was relatively simple. I brought us within a few miles of the terrain, which still appeared completely undisturbed. There was no sign of a base.
“Are you sure—” Matt started to ask again.
Keep raised his hand, sleeve glowing as he activated the sigils on it. The solid rock a little further ahead of us faded away, a pair of thick blast doors taking its place. Turning his wrist, he pushed on something that triggered the doors to slide open. He glanced at Matt. “Pretty sure.”
“Very nice,” David said. “So cool.”
That a swarm of drones didn’t come flying out of the hangar to blast us was a positive sign against the idea that the station had been compromised. Activating Head Case’s massive headlights, I brought the ship over the bay before rotating to face it. The beams swept into the open pit, revealing plenty of bare metal and little else.
“Looks like your secret base is still secret,” Druck said.
“Bring us in nice and easy,” Keep said. “We’ll be completely safe once we’re inside. Pretty much invisible to the rest of the universe.”
“What about our heat signature?” I asked.
“The bay doors and rock are too thick to penetrate with sensors, otherwise the Royals would have found this place a long time ago. When I say we’re good, I mean we’re good. Capiche?”
“Yup,” I replied. “Going in.”
As soon as Head Case cleared the hangar doors, Keep pushed them closed again. I killed the mains, guiding the ship across the empty hangar with vectoring thrusters. All of the ships that were once here had left during the evacuation many years earlier.
“The systems are all powered down, so we’ll have to go out in space suits,” Keep said. “We can bring the reactor back online from the command center.” He sounded eager to step foot in the base once more, though I could only guess at the memories surfacing in his mind. Even now, he stared at the hangar bulkhead, likely reliving his last moments here. “The primary entrance is against the rear bulkhead there. You might as well bring us in as close as you can get. The less time we spend with helmets on the better.”
“Okay, Team Hondo,” Matt said. “Let’s get a jump on things and head down to the armory while Ben brings us in.”
“We won’t need guns inside,” Keep said. “We’re the only living things on this rock.”
“Famous last words,” Matt answered. “I feel safer going in with a rifle.”
“Me too,” Druck agreed, turning his head toward Quasar. “Hey Zar? Are you going to wake up anytime soon or what?” He shouted it loud enough to draw her out of her slumber.
“Huh?” Quasar said, eyes fluttering open. “Oh, we’re here already?”
CHAPTER 32
We assembled at the smaller hangar bay door thirty minutes later, all of us save Alter outfitted in space suits. She had switched to her Enigma persona, remaining in her normal black outfit. It was a powerful reminder that she wasn’t human and didn’t need air to survive.
Only Keep had refused to carry any sort of weapon, not that he needed it. I had a simple blaster on my hip, comforted by the weight of the weapon despite the abandoned state of the facility. Shaq wasn’t with us. Without a space suit to fit his size and shape, he had to wait until we turned life support back on before he could join us.
“How far is the command center?” Matt asked.
“Not that far,” Keep replied. “Ten minutes, tops to get there. Another ten max to get everything up and running again. This place isn’t that big. A quarter the size of a Royal Sentry.”
“Got it. Let’s move out. Levi, open the minor hangar door.”
The smaller door slid open, the ramp descending to the metal floor of the station’s hangar. I could already see the blast door into the station proper straight ahead, about twenty feet away. We crossed from Head Case to it in no time. Keep pushed it open, releasing a blast of ancient air into the hangar. The short passageway had another door at the far end. The corridor didn’t have any lights, which wasn’t a problem thanks to the headlamps on our helmets. We piled over the threshold so he could close it again, preventing too much of the oxygen from leaking out into the airless space.
“Too thin to take the helmets off,” Quasar announced. “I guess some of it siphoned out of the rock after a thousand years.”
“The station has backup stores of air,” Keep said. “It’ll all work itself out when we get to the command center.”
We marched down a metal-clad corridor toward a second blast door, our pace slowed a little by the required gait in our maglocked boots. Pipes and wires covered the ceiling overhead. When Keep pushed the second door open, we were met with another corridor, this one carved directly into the asteroid. It traveled a short distance before curving, and we followed it to a junction. Keep guided us to the left, and we continued deeper into the old research lab, changing direction at a couple of junctions until we wound up at an open archway leading into a small room with a pair of workstations stuffed against the bulkhead.
“This is the command center?” I asked.
“Yuppers,” Keep replied. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know, something more like the flight deck, I guess.”
“This is a science lab, not a starship. The command center is primarily for system control and handling incoming and outgoing traffic. It doesn’t need much real estate.” He settled into one of the seats and reached for the keyboard. The whole system…the whole station was dead.
“The power’s totally out,” Druck said. “How are you going to—”
Keep tapped the enter key. A soft hum preceded the display flashing on. “The primary controller has a battery backup in hibernation mode,” he answered. “Rated to hold a charge for five thousand years. Give or take.”
“Did Sashkur expect he might need to abandon this place for a while?” I asked.
“A contingency, I suppose,” Keep replied. The display switched to a password screen. He typed too fast for me to see what he entered, but it allowed us into the system. He glanced back at me, smiling. “I’m not really supposed to know that.” A few more taps on the keyboard, and something deeper in the facility made a loud, echoing thud followed by a soft hum. The overhead lights flashed on, and even the terminal display grew brighter. “The reactor still works. That’s a good sign.” He continued entering keystrokes. A hiss from a nearby air vent suggested the ventilation had come back online. Sudden weight pressing down on me told me artificial gravity was restored as well. I released the maglock on my boots, happy to be able to walk normally again.
“That ought to do it,” Keep said, getting back to his feet. “The lab isn’t far from here.” He grabbed his helmet and pulled it off, breathing in. “A little musty, but better than the fishbowl.”
I glanced at Quasar, waiting for her go ahead before removing my helmet. “Air looks good,” she said, reaching for hers. We all removed our headgear, holding it in a free hand while we followed Keep down the hallway toward the lab. I also took the opportunity to use the comms back on Head Case to let Shaq know it was safe for him to leave the ship and find us by scent.
Keep wasn’t kidding when he said the lab was nearby. About thirty feet, a left turn, and another ten feet and we were there. The door slid aside as we approached, revealing a large atrium where a projector cast a faux blue sky onto the curved ceiling, giving the impression we were outside. A number of dried up plants filled the room, split by a walkway that broke in three other directions. I imagined this room had been colorful and beautiful once. Now it was brown and drab.
Each doorway had a placard over it to help guide visitors. Science straight ahead. Supplies on the left. Assembly on the right. We walked straight through the atrium to the Science door. It too opened ahead of us.
“Nice security,” Matt quipped.
“The security is outside the facility, Sherlock,” Keep replied calmly. “The people who worked here didn’t need to lock things away from one another.”
The lab was made up of multiple additional rooms, segmented by full-length glass. The ceilings were all lined with arrays of sensors and extra ventilation, as well as what I assumed was a fire suppression system. All of the rooms contained workstations and tables. A couple of the rooms held freezers that seemed to be operational now, but probably hadn’t been running for the last thousand years. One room sported a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office. Was that where Keep’s wife had cut open his skull and somehow moved his brain aside to etch his immortality sigil?
“What do you think, kid?” Keep asked when we reached the end of the central corridor between the rooms.
“I don’t know what to think,” I replied.
“I do,” David said. “Where do we start?”
“We need to get you hooked into the network. We can do that through the terminal in there.” He pointed at the display inside the room with the dentist chair. “That’ll get you online. Then we can see if Priya left anything behind. I doubt it, but you never know. After that, we’ll upload your software to the mainframe. Even though it's old, it was top of the line in its day, and still faster than Head Case’s suboptimal processing unit. That’ll help speed up your tests on the sigils.”
“Cool,” David answered.
“Gia, once that’s done, I’ll get you plugged into the network too. I know you’ve been working on the hunt for Prince Hiro. We don’t want to forget about that.”
