The Crimson Peril, page 7
part #3 of Star Rim Empire Series
“Hold up,” Kira said.
“What the hell is that?” I raked my hand lamp up and down what appeared to be a solid wall of thorns. Kind of like some malignant hedge of tightly clustered spikes. Some of them were a good thirty centimeters long and looked like jagged knives. A few had wicked barbed protrusions and others reminded me of the claws of that komorak we had seen yesterday.
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Yeah, how are we supposed to get through that?” I asked.
“With this.” Kira produced a compact plasma torch from her bag.
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It’s the only way.” She ignited the torch and began cutting a passage through the dense wall of thorns. “Once we get going, you guys need to stay right with me. They grow back pretty fast.”
“Great.”
As Kira carved a tunnel through the thorns, I stuck pretty close to her—with TenSix bringing up the rear. The little bot had a habit of talking to itself in a low mutter, keeping up a stream of worried self-talk.
And Kira was right. Seconds after burning the branches away I could see little green buds press out from the smoking edges. This plant had some crazy metabolism, that was for sure.
“Tell me we don’t have to do this all over again to get back,” I said.
“Fortunately, no. There’s another way out on the west end of the canyon.”
“Thank the Maker!” TenSix chirped.
“Really? Since when do bots believe in the Maker?”
“Professor Griffin had me upgraded with several humanization packages last year. Some of her co-workers appreciate such exclamations.”
“Yeah, well, you can save it when you’re around me. What about you, Kira?”
“Huh?” She was working on a particularly thick knot of thorns blocking our way, racing against their rapid regrowth. Complicating things was a blast of cool air which whooshed through the thorns, shaking everything.
“Are you religious?”
“Can we have this conversation a bit later? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Finally the knot fell to the ground with a thump. Another blast of wind blew the smoke away, but even the fresh air couldn’t dispel the burning stench. This whole place smelled like half-melted rubber.
As we advanced, Kira said, “To answer your question, I’m not sure if I’m religious or not. I guess it depends how you define religious.”
“I was just making conversation,” I said. A branch whipped back, almost taking out my left eye. That was close. From now on I’d be keeping my arms up in front of my face.
“I mean, if you are asking if I believe in the Maker or Dynark or even Klothar for that matter, I’d say no.”
“That’s what I thought. Me too. But I respect pretty much everyone’s belief system. Except for the Mayir.”
“Racists and bigots,” TenSix muttered.
“You really do have an opinion on everything, don’t you?”
“Again, upgrades. I was actually deeply programmed to discuss politics, religion, death, sex, race, money, and eleven other topics that sentients find controversial.”
“What was the thinking behind that?”
TenSix moved his shoulders in a little shrugging motion that was probably added during one of his ‘humanizing’ upgrades. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I believe my mistress felt that university researchers like her co-workers could handle more in-depth, intense conversations with bots.”
“Well, I’m looking forward to our journey to Ganga Kos, then. At least it won’t be boring.”
“Back to religion,” Kira said. “The thing I do believe is that there is a lot in this universe that is unexplained and unexplainable.”
“Yes, like what one plants to grow seedless grapes,” TenSix quipped. He had to increase the volume of his audio so I could hear him over the wind whistling through the thorns.
“Let me guess, that was your humor module,” I shouted.
“Wit, actually.”
“In that case, I think it needs to be updated!”
“Ah ha!” TenSix said. “I see what you did there! Wit of your own!”
I turned back to Kira. “I know what you mean. There are a lot of weird things out there.”
“And in here,” she said.
“What?” I could barely hear her.
“Check this out,” she yelled.
As we finally emerged from the wall of thorns a strong breeze battered my face. I followed Kira into an open clearing in the canyon. And saw the source of the breeze.
It was a powerful whirlwind—a spinning column of dirt and dust that rose from the floor of the canyon to the top of its cliff, fifty meters over our heads. The whirlwind wasn’t especially thick—only two or three meters in diameter—but it danced in front of me, showing no sign of abating.
Around us, the canyon had formed a mostly-enclosed space. It was like a tall oval room, twenty or thirty meters in diameter, bathed in bright sunlight. A curved vertical cliff face of weather-smoothed stone surrounded us. Dozens of small waterfalls cascaded down the cliffs and into cracks in the ground. Between the waterfalls and the whirlwind, this canyon was an amazing sight.
“This is something,” I said, raising my voice to a near shout. “Is that thing a dust devil?”
“The Manteans called it shakah-nua, the wind geyser,” TenSix said.
“Manteans?” I asked Kira. “Didn’t you say that they were extinct?”
“They are,” she said.
“Then how—”
“Shakah-nua has been active for an estimated three thousand years,” TenSix said. “Its history is well-documented.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You’d think so,” Kira said, kneeling down and opening up her pack. “Something about magnetically-charged particles, solar radiation, and a lava tube. You’d have to ask the geologists.”
I took a few steps closer to inspect the whirlwind. I couldn’t believe this thing had been spinning for thousands of years.
“So weird.” When I turned back towards Kira, she was wearing goggles and was in the process of pulling on a thin thermal-reflective jumpsuit.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“The last sample is in there.” She fastened a harness around her chest and then reached for a coil of CNT line.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Saved the best for last.”
“I don’t get it. The sample is swirling around in a whirlwind?”
“Not in the whirlwind, beneath it.”
“There is a network of lava tubes beneath the wind anomaly,” TenSix said. “If I am not mistaken, the heated air issuing from the lava tube is instrumental in creating the shakah-nua.”
“Oh, heated air. I see. That makes it better.”
“Relax.” Kira grinned at me. “I’ve done this dozens of times. It’s not that bad.”
The last thing she removed from her pack was the impact pistol she had used to get me off the broken bridge. Kira double-checked that a bolt was loaded and secured to a shorter length of CNT that was also rigged to the harness.
“Besides, this will be a lot easier with two people. Normally I just tie off on that rock.” She motioned to a nearby boulder with an eyebolt protruding from it.
“Tie off? What are you talking about?”
She handed me the longer line and explained that it was a back-up safety measure in case something went wrong with the pistol.
“Not that I’m expecting anything to go wrong,” she said. “I’m basically just going to dive in and anchor to the ground. Then I’ll pull myself into the shaft. You’re my belayer. Just keep feeding me line as I descend.”
“How far down?”
“Not far. A dozen meters, twenty at most. Once I’m done, I’ll give a little yank. That’s your signal to start pulling. Got it?”
“Yeah, I still think it’s crazy, but I’ve got it.”
“The only tricky part of the return is getting out of the whirlwind. I’m going to need you to pull really hard. I want to avoid getting sucked up too high into it.”
The whole maneuver seemed strange to me, but I couldn’t help but being impressed with Kira’s sense of adventure.
“Okay.” She checked her gear one more time, then flipped down her goggles and readied her impact pistol. “Here goes nothing.”
As she moved closer to the outer edge of the whirlwind, the swirling air tossed her hair around and flapped the fabric of her jumpsuit.
“One-two-three!” Kira dove into the whirlwind and let out a loud yeee-haaa!
Almost immediately she was lifted up into the whirlwind’s core, but she didn’t rise more than a few meters. Her anchoring procedure worked.
“You’d never catch me doing anything like that,” TenSix said.
I ignored him and watched as Kira was spun around by the whirlwind. But soon she got control of the line and I could see her pull herself down towards a dark spot in the ground. And then she was swallowed up by it.
“Looks like Dr. Lark made it into the lava tube,” TenSix said.
I tightened my grip on the line and made sure my feet were firmly planted on the ground. How long would it take her to collect the sample? I thought back to the other times I had witnessed Kira do her work. It seemed to vary. Maybe between three and five minutes, if I remember correctly.
“How long has she been underground?” I asked TenSix.
“I haven’t been timing her. What do you think, I’m always timing everything?”
“Some bots do.”
“Fine. I’ll start timing now.”
I carefully pulled the line—just barely. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any extra slack, but at the same time, I didn’t want to pull Kira off her feet just when she was collecting a valuable one-of-a-kind underground fungus sample or whatever.
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“Four minutes eighteen seconds.”
“Okay, she’s probably finishing up soon.”
“If you say so.”
I don’t know why I was so worried. I just had a bad feeling. But it was probably nothing. Like Kira said, she had done this dozens of times.
The CNT line remained slack in my hand.
Maybe she was having some trouble with the sample?
“Time check?” I asked TenSix.
“Six minutes, four seconds.”
Hmmm. Definitely on the outer range of what I was expecting.
At the ten-minute mark I began to get seriously worried. It was dumb that we didn’t have comm units to stay in touch, but Kira was so used to doing these collections solo, she only brought one — and left it on top of her pack.
“Are you getting concerned about Dr. Lark?” TenSix asked.
“A little. Should I be?”
“I’m not sure what type of collection units Oeri-USV uses, but my team rarely spent more than five minutes withdrawing a sample. Perhaps Dr. Lark has suffered a myocardial infarction.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“During breakfast I noticed that her heart rate was elevated and a bit erratic.”
“That’s just the effect of her leptics.”
“Filthy habit.”
“I know, but I’m sure her heart is fine.”
“Could be a blood clot then,” TenSix said.
“Why are you even speculating about health issues? You’re not a med bot.”
“It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”
“Tensors have hobbies?” I asked.
“It was an—”
“Let me guess. Another upgrade?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “Time?”
“Fourteen minutes, eleven seconds.”
That wasn’t good. “I’m going in,” I said. “I need to check on Kira.”
“How? You are not equipped for the descent.”
I looked through the pile of equipment Kira had left. It was probably too much to hope that there was a second impact pistol, goggles, and thermal suit. But I could use Kira’s expedition jacket. Even though it was way too small, it was better than nothing. I also grabbed a light stick, my hand lamp, and a medpak just in case.
I began fastening the end of the line to the eye bolt set into the rock. “How hard can this be? Kira said she soloed this before.”
“Yes, with protective gear and an impact gun. How are you going to counteract the force of the whirlwind and get down into the lava tube?”
“I’m heavier than her. I bet I can just kind of tuck and drift down.”
“Clearly you have no sense of the kinetic energy produced by the shakah-nua.”
“Yeah, and I’m not going to let you tell me either.”
“In that case, do you have a next of kin I should notify?”
“Very funny.” I had made up my mind. Kira was in trouble and she needed me. “Now, step aside. I’m going in.”
The little bot continued to block my way.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“I’m going with you.”
“What? You think I’ll be tossed around in there? You’ll probably be launched into orbit or something.”
“Not if you lash me to your body. I’ll add to your mass by twenty kilograms. That will increase your odds of accessing the shaft. Slightly.”
“I’ll take ‘slightly’. You sure about this?”
“Perfectly. I am programmed to help preserve human life if possible. Except for the Mayir of course. They can go to hell.”
I laughed.
“Okay, you’re on. And you just gave me another idea. Help me gather some rocks.” I showed TenSix my expedition belt with the individual pockets sewn around its length.
We filled it with enough rocks to increase my weight another fifteen kilograms. With Safadin’s lower gravity, I barely noticed it, but TenSix assured me that it would help.
I removed the straps from both my pack and Kira’s and used them to tether TenSix to my belt.
“This is either going to work or it won’t, so we might as well give it a try,” I said.
“Rather laissez-faire, but accurate.”
I snatched up TenSix, took a running start, and dove into the whirlwind.
7
TenSix was half right. My increased weight bought me time before the whirlwind sucked me skyward. But what really saved us was the fact that the bot’s arm and legs were able to grip onto the edge of the tube.
With the hot wind raging and spinning around my body, I let out a savage yell and threw my arm down towards the hole. My fingers closed around the stone lip of the lava tube and I pulled us down with all my might.
Once I managed to get part of my body down into the shaft, the force ripping at me decreased its hold and I was able to tumble down into the underground cavity—with twenty kilograms of bot crashing into my stomach. Thankfully, I didn’t have far to fall, and there was a thick layer of soft sand at the bottom of the tube.
I caught my breath for a few moments, hoping that the whooshing sound in my ears would go away soon. It was very hot down here as well.
“Are you injured?” TenSix said, as it righted itself and crawled off of me.
“Not sure. Something’s jabbing me in the side, though.”
It turned out to be my hand-lamp, which had broken during the fall. But better the hand-lamp than my ribs.
“I’m good,” I told TenSix.
“It’s a miracle. This really was an ill-conceived plan, Jannigan Beck.”
“Well, we made it, so it couldn’t have been that ill-conceived.” I sat up and looked around.
I could tell that the tube angled down at a gentle slope, but I couldn’t see more than a few meters, since the only light was a beam of filtered sunlight that shone in from the opening of the lava tube above my head. And now all I had was the light stick. I activated it and clipped it to my jacket, but the stick could only dimly illuminate a meter or so in every direction.
Fortunately, TenSix popped a panel open on his head and extended his small, but high-powered directional beam. It lit up the lava tube.
“I see Dr. Lark’s boot prints!” TenSix announced.
“Kira!” I shouted. “Kira, can you hear me?”
There was no response—only the low whistle of hot wind blowing up from somewhere deep underground.
“She did say that the collection unit was near the entrance, didn’t she?”
“Less than twenty meters away is what she said.” TenSix’s light illuminated a dozen meters down the lava tube, or close to it. And there was no sign of either Kira or a collection unit. It was a dead end.
“Let’s follow her boot prints,” I said.
We continued down the tube to the dead end, where we found another hole in the ground. When TenSix shined his light down the hole, I could see a rough shaft that dropped down three or four meters into another passage. A strong blast of hot air issued from the shaft.
“She must have come this way,” I said.
I eased myself down, half climbing and half jumping. It was no problem with the lesser gravity. Then I helped the small bot down, which was a little tougher, but we made it.
I called out Kira’s name again, and again there was no answer.
“Here’s the unit,” TenSix said, flashing his light on a small collection box set behind some lava boulders near a small pool of cave water.
This was very weird. The lava tube stretched out into the darkness ahead of us, but why would Kira go any farther in?
“Look at this!” TenSix directed his lamp’s beam to the sandy floor of the tube. “Dr. Lark didn’t walk out of this area. She was dragged.”
TenSix was right. Two parallel furrows in the sand led down into the darkness. They could have easily been made by Kira’s boots. This was not good.
A few meters away we found Kira’s collection kit. It was covered in sticky strands of ichor. Almost like the slime you might find on a dhalmon or an addle bug. There was more of the ichor in patches on parts of the lava tube.
“Do you know what this stuff is?” I asked TenSix.
“It is organic in nature, but beyond that I have no idea. I’m not really programmed for zoological identification.”
