Noriama: Chapter 16
“Section A,” Sughouri said as she dragged her LED across the sign. “This must be the place.” Sughouri glanced to make sure that Churji was still following along behind her. She was used to working in silence, hearing only the sounds of her suit, and periodic visual check-ins were vital to keep things moving smoothly. Her chest was beginning to hurt, but Victoria hadn’t said anything, so it was probably just her imagination.
“Hold up,” Zuri’s digital voice came over the comm. “Wolf just stopped. You’re close to where the drone broke down, and it doesn’t want to go further.”
Sughouri glanced back again. Churji was sitting a few paces back, camera steadily tracking her movements. She checked her suit and said; “I’m not getting any radiation, or environmental hazards from my suit. Can you tap it into my camera feed? I’ll go on ahead and it’ll see everything’s safe.”
“Is that right?” Victoria’s voice was delightfully confused. “Is Wolf that smart?”
“It certainly is,” Zuri answered. “I’m not sure its a good idea, though. AIs can learn wrong lessons very easily if you don’t carefully curate their input. Go on, Sughouri. I’ll turn off Wolf and have the nexus follow you.”
Sughouri kept walking. After a moment she spoke again. “The drone should be here, right? I can’t see it.”
“It might have kept moving after losing contact with the — wait, is that it up ahead?”
Sughouri grimaced to herself. She still couldn’t see anything, but the team had an advantage that she didn’t. They were looking at her camera-feed, which could see further then she could at the moment.
She kept walking until the blurry shape of the drone appeared in the distance. As she approached, she saw it sitting next to the wall, two of its arms extended out from its core, hanging limply in the air.
The drone was standing next to an open panel, sensor node exposed to open air. On the floor, a metal panel rested next to the wall, four small smudges marking what must have been the screws that had held it in place.
“Well,” Kristiana said as Sughouri approached, “It looks like the drone lost contact with the nexus and continued with its last command. Did it fix the sensor node?”
“Let me see,” Sughouri leaned forward, peering at the thick nest of piping, wiring, and electronics that was the primary sensor node for Section A. One short inspection later, she let out a small groan. “We’ve got a problem here. You see this?” Sughouri flared the bundle of wires on her gloved hand. “The pinching in the plastic cover? The straight edges? These are the sensor cables, and they’ve been cut.”
There was a gasp, though Sughouri couldn’t tell who from. “Cut?” Victoria said. “On purpose?”
Sughouri didn’t answer at first. Her mind was racing through the implications, or else she would have taken the time to joke with Victoria about how anyone could have done it accidentally.
“This was deliberate, yes,” Sughouri dropped the wires. “And that’s good news and bad news for us. Good news, because it’s an easy fix. Give me three minutes and I’ll be done. Bad news…” she let her voice trail off.
“Someone cut the cables,” Kristiana finished. “Why didn’t the drone fix them, if its such an easy fix?”
Sughouri glanced down at the dormant drone. “It was cut off from Churji, so it was working from its last orders. It knew to come here and take off the panel, but then it probably didn’t know what to do next, so it’s probably waiting to reconnect to Churji and ask how to fix it.”
It sounded good, but as Sughouri looked at the drone’s extended limbs, she was less certain. The limbs hadn’t withdrawn, and none of the manipulators were screw-extractors. There was the camera-limb, a single claw-manipulator, and a pair of wire-clips.
“Is reconnecting the wires dangerous in any way?”
“I doubt it,” Sughouri turned to the drone, “but let me fix this little guy first. There might be something in its log that’ll give us more information.” Shifting her weight forward and bending her spine, she felt her prosthetic’s actuators shift one by one, until she was kneeling next to the drone. She pulled her tool-kit from her side and set it on the ground.
Before her descent, Sughouri had spent a large amount of time studying the drone’s schematics. She had a good idea of what sort of things could have gone wrong to cause it to cut off connection with the nexus, and how to fix them. She opened the various panels and pried off the different casings, carefully inspecting each piece to check for obvious damage. The screw-extractor was nestled properly in the kit. Another claw sat retracted.
More for the record than herself, she narrated her every move.
When she had finished inspecting the mechanics, she pulled out her tiny console and plugged into the drone’s electronics. She ran checks on the software, the hardware, and double checked the logs from the drone, the nexus, and compared them to what the Croatoan had received.
“Okay,” she muttered at last. “The drone’s log is only so helpful. It seems I was right, that it lost contact with Churji, continued on its mission, and got confused after opening the panel. Looks like there was a glitch in its decision making process.”
She hoped they wouldn’t pry. It had to be a glitch. half of these log entries didn’t make sense. Why swap the screw-extrator for wire clips? It must have been confused by seeing clipped wires. But the request for instruction came after the command to swap manipulators…
“Is it a difficult fix?”
Sughouri pushed the uncertainty out of her head. Glitches didn’t have to make sense. “Not at all. There doesn’t seem to be any hardware damage, just a software problem. Just let me re-flash and reboot the system, and the drone should be able to connect to the nexus again.”
It only took a few minutes before she was finished. After a moment’s pause, the drone shuddered, then slowly spun in place as its manipulator arms retraced. After a moment it rolled away from Sughouri to connect itself to Churji. “There,” she said as she replaced her toolkit. “Now comes the hard part.”
“Slowly,” Victoria cautioned.
Sughouri reached out and pushed her hand against the nearby wall. Shifting her weight again, she felt the gentle push of her mechanical legs as she moved her hands up the wall, climbing upward until she was standing straight again.
She took a deep breath. Her head was barely spinning, but it was spinning enough. When she felt better, she pushed away from the wall. “Okay, let’s get this sensor node up and running.”
“If the cables were cut, is it safe to re-attach them?”
Sughouri grinned to herself. It was easy to forget that for all Kristiana’s intelligence, she still had to rely on expert opinion. “No, re-fitting the wires won’t cause an explosion. Well, unless someone specifically designed it to explode; remember the device on the reactor.”
“Which could be anything,” Zuri was insistent. “Let’s not get paranoid before we have reason.”
“Whomever cut the wires certainly thought they had reason,” Sughouri muttered. “I wonder if they were right?”
“We can’t figure that out from staring at wires,” Kristiana cut in, “Sughouri, go ahead and re-fit the wiring.”
“Okay, but if I explode, I’m blaming you.”
It only took two minutes, Sughouri noted with pride. “Okay, I’ve reconnected the wires. Get ready, Zuri, I’m switching the node over…now.”
Seconds later, the lights in the node blinked. Flickering gently, they returned to their steady glow as a series of indicators flared. All around Sughouri, the lights of Noriama flickered on.
“Hmm,” Sughouri checked her work. “Better than I’d feared, not as good as I hoped. How long before the smart-grid connects?”
“Already done,” Zuri responded. “I’ve updated our map with the new information.”
Squeezing the keyer at her side, Sughouri pulled up the map on her helmet and studied it for a few moments. “Okay, Most of Section A is now powered, and the sensor-network is active. I only hope the others are this easy.”
“I’m checking the newly connected sensor-nodes now,” Zuri’s answer popped onto Sughouri’s helmet. “Give me a minute and I’ll fill the active sensors.”
Sughouri watched as the new sensors flickered to life.
“Still quite a few nodes not functioning,” Kristiana said. “Any thoughts, Sughouri?”
“Well,” Sughouri resisted the urge to grip her helmeted chin in theatrical thought, “there’s either a problem in the wiring, or the sensors themselves. There’s any number of problems that could have damaged the sensors, from the mundane to the absurd. I won’t be able to say much more without taking a look.”
“Any ideas about why the cables were cut in the first place?”
Sughouri thought about mentioning the drone’s wire-clips and decided not to. “There are a couple of situations I can think of where cutting off the power to a section might be the right solution to an emergency situation, but they could have cut off the power with the computer. No, nothing leaps to mind without more information.”
“Why don’t you head back then,” Kristiana said, “and let the drones finish their repair work?”
“Or,” Sughouri glanced back at the nexus, “I could keep going, look at a few sensors and repair them if they need it.
“Sughouri, you only have another quarter hour before you need to be back in your rest-chamber,” Victoria said. “Can you even get to the closest sensor and make repairs before you need to head back?”
“If I ran,” Sughouri said as she stared at the map. “And I presume you’re going to say I shouldn’t do that, right?”
“You got it.”
“Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this medical stuff,” she said as she started to walk back. “Think we could switch jobs for a while?”
She could hear Victoria’s smile over the comm. “I don’t have the right attitude for engineering.”
“Oh, it’s just like medicine. Take it apart, put it back together, and then hit it with a hammer until it works again.”
“I’ll make sure to do that next time I need to run any tests on you.”
Where was Section D?
It was a simple question, and the biggest question on everyone’s mind. The drones had explored all the hallways, the power-grid and sensor-grid had both been repaired as completely as possible, their map of Noriama was as complete as it was going to get without taking the next obvious step. It felt drastic, but there were no other options.
Zuri coaxed Lemon into position, then told the AI to open all the doors in the colony.
As the team watched, lights flickered on their map as the doors responded.
“Okay,” Kristiana said once all the lights were lit. “We’ve got quite a few doors that opened, and quite a few that didn’t. Zuri, does Lemon know why?”
Zuri glanced away from Kristiana’s transcription to Lemon’s cognitive report. “Some are locked, Lemon’s asking if we want to unlock them. Some are resisting.”
“Resisting?” Sughouri asked from thousands of kilometers below. “Are the doors jammed, do you think?”
“Or sealed,” Kristiana said. “Go ahead and tell Lemon to unlock everything it can, and open those doors too. Then get Wolf to send out the drones again to”
The word hung on Zuri’s screen for a moment before a period finished the sentence — a mercy for Kristiana, who obviously hadn’t known how. Zuri shared her uncertainty. To find who? To do what, exactly? According to their map, there weren’t many places where the colonists could have hid themselves. Really, there was only one option, and Sughouri was on her way there right now.
“Steady as she goes, Sughouri,” Victoria said. “Just a little bit further and the door to the Mine is to your left.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just a little bit further.”
“Are you okay? You’re sounding a little winded.”
“What sense did it make to put the mine on the other side of the colony from the elevator? That was where the ore was going in the end, wasn’t it?”
Another good question. Zuri added it to her growing mental list. She liked puzzles, but her preference had always been for those that she knew had answers.
“You know something else that’s missing?” Sughouri piped up. “No carts. Electric cars. Wheeled shoes. No way to get around that’s not your own two feet. This is a big colony; why isn’t there any fast transit system?”
“It wasn’t designed to need one,” Kristiana answered. “It’s rare a colonist would have needed to leave their section, and motorized vehicles takes up space.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t help me, now does it? You think I could ride Churji? Wolf wouldn’t mind, would it?”
Zuri squeezed her keyer. “I can honestly say I didn’t train Wolf to carry people.” She kept squeezing. “Sughouri, can you take the next left instead of going forward?”
“I could. What’s up?”
“There’s a door that’s not unlocking a few meters away from you. I want to see what the problem is.”
“Sure,” Sughouri said. “I’m looking at my map right now, the residential block? Is that the one?”
“That’s it,” Zuri answered.
“Rodger that, I’m on my way. And you can’t even get mad at me, Kristiana, because it’s not me who’s adjusting the mission halfway through.”
“I’ve given up that battle,” Kristiana’s words flowed across the screen.
Zuri glanced up, catching Kristiana’s expression. She had appreciated Kristiana’s no nonsense mode of talking, but lately she had picked up some of the other’s annoying habits, like speaking ironically. Zuri had been forced to regularly check in with the girl’s face to see if she was being serious. Hard enough at the best of times; her placid visage betrayed her inner meanings so rarely.
“Huh.” Sughouri said after a pause. “Well, there’s your answer.”
On Sughouri’s camera feed, her glove was pointing at a thick metal box between the door and the doorway. “That’s a key-card reader. I thought there weren’t plans for locks on the residential sections?”
“Not on the outer doors,” Kristiana confirmed. “Only on the personal doorways. Can you open it?”
“Oh, sure, piece of cake,” Sughouri said. “It’ll take time, though. Do we want me to open the door or head on to the mine?”
“Could a drone get through?” Kristiana asked, “or does this require your personal touch?”
“Depends,” Sughouri said. “Assuming they didn’t change keycard protocols, a drone should be able to hack in. Even if they did, I could do it remotely though Churji.”
“Then go ahead to the mine. We’ll let the drone open the lock.”
“Drone 6 is nearby,” Zuri supplied. “I’ll tell Wolf to send it now.”
“Then I’ll get moving,” Sughouri’s radar ping resumed its movement. “Gotta say, it’s a really odd thing to do, isn’t it? Why would the colonists lock the residential areas? To keep people out, or in?”
“Maybe neither,” Victoria answered. “Maybe they decided to lock each residential block separately, and leave the personal doors without locks.”
“Do you think that’s likely?”
“I’d say inevitable,” Victoria said. “In any enclosed society there will be friction between its members. Minor conflicts that either have to be addressed or repressed. Small frictions can be repressed for extended periods of time before they are eventually forgotten, but this is only viable if the friction is not exacerbated or reinforced through repetition. There is very little room on Noriama, and yet two hundred people were supposed to live here. In such close quarters, it would be difficult for people with interpersonal conflicts to stay out of each other’s way. If friction is not addressed or allowed to fester, it builds and ultimately breaks in the form of aggression or violence.”
“A catastrophe in an enclosed colony like Noriama.”
“Exactly. The exception to this is family. As social creatures, we are able to forgive and work through conflict much easier when the irritant is a member of our in-group.”
“Okay, so how does this relate to locks on the residential block instead of their own doors?”
“In such a tight social climate, the more reliable option is a widening of the social fabric. Socially, the colonists would eventually need to define the in-group less by blood, ideology, or proclivity, and more by proximity. I wouldn’t be shocked if everyone who lived in this block thought of each other as siblings.”
“That doesn’t ring true to me. I personally have had some very vibrant talks with people I consider family. Are you saying this would be planned? Or would it happen naturally?”
“Probably planned, though it could have happened naturally.”
“Drone 6 is at the door,” Zuri said, interrupting their discourse. It wasn’t that it wasn’t interesting, just that they were talking beyond their heads. They didn’t know what drove the colonists to put locks on the doors any more than anyone else.
She watched as the drone’s logs and Wolf’s cognitive reports came in at a steady pace. The mechanical limbs were unfolding and lifting towards the lock. Fine manipulators extended and gripped the frame, while thicker and stronger fingers followed after. Amounts of torque pressure spun across the screen. With a soundless pop, the covering panel was pried off the lock.
The camera moved, getting a better view of the GPIO pins that were any electrician’s access to the inner workings of the lock. Moments later, the drone’s universal plug moved to connect itself.
“Sughouri,” Kristiana said, “are you alright?”
“Fine, fine,” Sughouri resumed walking. “Sorry. I got distracted watching the drone work.”
Typical. Humans had a difficult time leaving things to robots and AIs. It was hard not to see it as a kind of bigotry. Even though Wolf had been grown in an environment specifically designed to make it better at its job than any human, they still couldn’t accept that such a process could work. There was still a need to look for mistake, watch for errors. At best it was a lack of confidence. At worst, a desire to dethrone a superior.
Zuri watched as Wolf coordinated with its drone, gently picking its way through the lock until the system shut down. The seal broke, and the door slid open. There was a pause as they all stared.
Victoria spoke first. “Holy shit.”
Sughouri wasn’t moving. Her breath came shallowly. She stared as the drone’s video feed slowly panned the room, making sure its camera caught the entire panorama. Her heart was racing fast now, and not because she was delighted. Where she had expected to see tables, chairs, and doors that led to individual sleeping units, instead there were walkways, pools of dirt, and a recessed floor.
“Guys, tell me you’re seeing this too? I’m not hallucinating?”
“You’re not hallucinating,” Kristiana said after a harrowing two seconds. “We see it too. This is a Hydroponics section.”
Was this what it was like for the other three, watching Sughouri’s video feed as she rambled along poking around the colony, while they sat helpless in orbit?
“Sughouri, take a breath for me,” Victoria’s voice sounded tight.
Sughouri took a quick breath. “What is going on? Zuri, you have got to get Noriama’s computer working properly so we can see what they labeled their damn rooms. I don’t want to walk into the mine only to fall down a pit.”
“Okay,” Victoria said. “Let’s not lose ourselves here. So far we only have one missing hallway and one mislabeled room.”
“Only?” Sughouri snapped. “We’ve only explored a handful of hallways to begin with.”
Victoria continued. “The main reactor was in the right place, as was main computer. Noriama was designed to be modular, so swapping a residential block with Hydroponics isn’t that big a change.”
“You’re missing the point,” Sughouri said. “Why change at all?”
“They could have had any number of reasons. They had fifty years of travel from Earth to Proxima b to come up with better ideas than the mission plan.”
“Then we should be able to think of one, shouldn’t we?” Sughouri said.
“Sughouri, take three deep breaths. Doctor’s orders.”
Sughouri wanted to shout back, but she knew the doctor was right. She took three breaths before speaking again. “Okay, look. I don’t want to head to the mine like this. I’m turning back to see what the heck is going on in this room.”
“Please don’t,” Victoria said.
Sughouri paused. “Please?”
“Well, what can I do if you don’t? Look, you’re already so close to the mine that heading back could be an inefficient use of your time. If you get to the mine, you can look around and still have enough time to get back.”
Sughouri rocked back and forth on her legs, stopping quickly when her head started to spin. “Fine.”
“You don’t have that much time left,” Victoria cautioned. “Be careful. If something happens, you could get in real danger, real quick.”
Sughouri knew about margins, and she knew about being overly cautious as well. “I’ll be fine, as long as you’re around to nag me, right?”
“Right,” She could hear the nervous laugh in Victoria’s voice. She didn’t blame her.
The drone, ignorant of their anxiety, had moved deeper into the room, turning back and forth to ensure clean coverage of the whole section.
The Hydroponics sections were, without a doubt, the second most important sections in the entire colony, after the power station. Food, air, water, all manner of life support was supplied to the entire colony through Hydroponics. Fully functioning, the sections should have been like jungles, full of thin trees and flowering plants. Each of the ten sections of Noriama was supposed to have its own, specially designed and carefully crafted to ensure Noriama’s continued existence.
Every aspect of the room’s design had a specific purpose. It was a wider room than the others, and taller as well, to provide proper air-flow and room for small trees and other tall plants to grow. Long metal walkways crossing the room like a web, suspended over the recessed basin where algae, kelp, and other water-plants could thrive.
Everything was perfect, except for the basin. It should have been filled with water. Instead, it was filled with dirt. From one wall to the other, the recessed floor was covered with rough gray loam.
“Any ideas what this is all about?” Sughouri asked, as she walked. “Where’s the water?”
“This could have been some experiment,” Kristiana answered. “Related to terraforming the planet, perhaps? Or even just establishing suitable farming land?”
“Could be,” Zuri’s digital voice said. “The drone has flagged the dirt as an unexpected feature, and is going to take a sample.”
Sughouri watched the tiny arm extend out from the drone and push through the dirt before covering and sealing itself. The sample would be deposited in a small hatch in the drone’s innards, to be extracted later in the Hub. Sughouri wondered what the dirt would smell like. It had been years since she had smelled earth.
“Let me ask another question,” Kristiana’s voice said. “Where are the plants?”
“They could easily have rotted away,” Victoria began. Then: “No, there’s no residue. Zuri, can you tell the drone to take a sample or two from the trays? I want to see if there’s any bacteria or mold in there.”
When the drone had finished, it continued towards the back of the Hydroponics block, pausing at the rear of the room. “Hey,” Sughouri said, “there’s water in that recessed floor.”
“Still no plants, though,” Kristiana answered two seconds later. “I suppose this is more support for the lack-of-life-support theory.”
“How has the water not evaporated, yet?”
“With no atmosphere or higher temperatures, there’s no evaporation. The water could sit there for centuries.”
“So,” Sughouri said as the drone moved to collect the water, “of the four separate rooms, three have dirt in the recessed floor instead of water, and none of them have plants. There are four other Hydroponic sections, right?”
“The mission plan was for Noriama to have five, yes,” Kristiana answered. “One of them was supposed to be in Section D.”
“Could two hundred colonists have survived with just four functioning Hydroponic sections?” Victoria asked. “I mean, would four have provided enough life-support?”
“Enough? Not for two hundred colonists. If there were some disease, maybe? If fifty or more colonists died they would need to shut down at least one hydroponic section to keep the atmosphere balanced, or work out some method of pumping the excess out onto the planet’s surface.”
“Through the mine, perhaps?” Sughouri offered. “I’m almost there. That might give us some answers. Where’s the drone going now?” She asked only a second before she realized. In the center of the divided Hydroponics section was a laboratory section. The drone was heading straight for the door. “Clever little Wolf,” she admitted.
The door opened easily to the drone’s push. On the other side was a lab and storage room that was integral to any concerted horticultural effort. It was large enough for six scientists, if they were comfortable with each other. Machinery and scientific tools were carefully stowed away as if the scientists had cleaned up for the evening and gone home for dinner.
Victoria gave a hum as the drone panned its camera. “This lab barely looks used. Like they unpacked everything and then just forgot about it. No, wait! The specimen tank looks full. Tell the drone to open it, would you Zuri?”
“It can’t still be viable, can it?” Sughouri knew little of plants, but she knew about refrigeration. “There hasn’t been power here for years.”
“Oh, it’ll all be dead,” Victoria answered, “whatever it is, but we can still learn a lot. For example, what they considered important enough to save.”
With mechanical care, the drone opened the tank and pushed its camera inside, inspecting the contents.
Sughouri spoke first. “Looks like…dead bamboo? Is that what it is?”
“Probably,” Kristiana answered. “Bamboo would have been one of their primary efforts. You can’t find a better plant product for colonization. Proper preparation makes the shoots edible, it can make bio-ethanol, bamboo charcoal, it can make over four-hundred different organic chemical compounds, perfect for construction, textiles, paper, and in Earth gravity it grows four centimeters in an hour. It’s the perfect exo-planet crop.”
“Okay, well, these look long dead,” Sughouri said as the drone pulled a jar out with long metal fingers. “There’s, what, thirty jars of dead shoots there? Why so much bamboo? And if they shut down the section, then why keep bamboo there? And bamboo isn’t enough to survive on, is it? Where are the rest of the plants?”
“Perhaps in another Hydroponic section?” Zuri answered. “That’s my only guess.”
“It’ll have to do for now,” Victoria’s voice cut in. “You need to head back to the hut in less than half an hour, Sughouri. Please get a move on.”
“Right, right, I’m going,” Sughouri picked up her lagging pace. “But make sure you have the drone bring one of those jars to the Hut. I think it’ll look nice. Brighten it up a bit, yeah?”
Victoria rubbed her hands as she stared at Sughouri’s video feed.
They still hadn’t found the SLS.
Certainly, if the colonists wanted to hide somewhere, the mines were the obvious place. They couldn’t go onto the surface, and there wasn’t anywhere else worth going.
Besides…
“Do you think they might have sped up the train project?” She asked.
Kristiana looked up. “Why?”
“Well,” she forced her hands to keep still, “if they decided that Noriama wasn’t working, they could have used ground surveys from Noriama Station to find a more habitable location.”
“The plan,” Kristiana shook her head, “was for the KAP rockets to survey for the optimal location for colonization when they arrived. There isn’t supposed to be a more habitable location.”
“Until they needed to expand,” Zuri supplied. “When they ran out of material.”
“Is it possible,” Victoria asked, “that the first surveys were incorrect? They found fewer ore deposits than expected? If they ran out of important metals, they might have re-surveyed and found somewhere better. They might have built the transit trains early to get them to a new site.”
“I doubt it,” Kristiana rubbed her forehead, “but anything’s possible. Let’s see what the mining operation looks like.”
Not half a minute later, Sughouri reached the door. The mine entrance looked like any other warehouse door, to Victoria. She had seen plenty of warehouses in her time as a First Responder; If they were still standing, they tended to have the most available space during a catastrophe.
Thankfully, opening the door was a simple process; Lemon unlocked the blast door and opened it without a hitch.
The room itself was huge, compared to what they had seen elsewhere in the colony. It was easily two stories tall, and big enough to accommodate ten workers at least. Victoria didn’t recognize any of the machines that dotted the floor, but for all her ignorance, it certainly looked like an automated ore-refinery.
Sughouri walked slowly into the room. Victoria watched as she reached forward, her hands hovering like she was off balance. A quick look at the logs from her legs’ servos and the artificial muscles on her suit showed she wasn’t.
Her eyes are getting worse. Sure enough, Sughouri was leaning forward to peer at the machines as she drew closer.
Victoria studied Sughouri’s medical log. “How are you feeling, Sughouri?”
“I’m fine.” Her response was dry and clipped.
“You only have a few more minutes before you need to head back,” Victoria cleared her throat. “We can have the drones search the mine if we have to.”
“Not just yet,” Sughouri began walking towards the rear of the room. “I want to take a peek into the actual mine for a moment.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?”
“See how clean everything is? If they closed up shop here the same way they did in the station, there might be mining robots whose logs we could salvage. More data, more complete of a picture, right?”
It was frustratingly accurate logic. Victoria’s hands began to rub themselves. “Okay, but you have less than fifteen minutes. That’s all I can give you without logging a medical warning.”
“Sure. Zuri, can you handle this door?”
It was another airlock, about as complicated as the airlock at the elevator. On the other side lay the holding room. Lockers lay empty of the pressurized suits they should have contained. Sughouri moved around the benches and headed to the other side of the room, and waited while Lemon cycled the power once more. The airlock opened. Sughouri entered the mine.
It was pitch black. Even with Sughouri’s lights turned on full, the video feed could barely see the far wall. She moved forward, slowly, swinging her beams left and right, getting a full record with her camera.
There were thick tracks in the ground, metal and plastic. Carts as big as trucks sat like boulders, empty and waiting for something to come along and put them to use. There were several pickaxes leaning against one, dropped as if the miners had just stepped away for a coffee break.
Sughouri pointed the lights back at the pickaxes. “Yet another problem,” she muttered into her comm.
“The mines were supposed to be automated,” Victoria supplied. “What are pickaxes doing here?”
“This was automated,” Sughouri pointed her camera at the pertinent equipment. “There’s a robotic relay system, an intake hopper…it’s all here. Robotic drills and loaders would be plenty. Why would they suit up to come in here and swing pickaxes?”
“Maybe they got bored? Decided to take over from the robots for a bit, just to keep busy?”
“That’s a quick and easy way to tear a space-suit,” Kristiana said.
“And the obvious question,” Sughouri said, “where are the robots? If everything was shut down, the miners should be here, shouldn’t they?”
“They might be down at the far end of the mine.”
“Which would imply they ran until they were out of power,” Sughouri continued. “But the hopper is empty. There was no ore back in the refinery. Why aren’t there piles of unprocessed rock? Why is everything empty? It’s all so damn tidy.”
Victoria caught Kristiana’s eye and shook her head.
Kristiana licked her lips. “Well, we can worry about that later. You’ve seen the mine proper, so head on back to the Hut and lie down. We need you healthy down there.”
“On my way,” Sughouri gave a frustrated sigh, pausing to give one final glance down the mine’s twisting tunnels.
Long. Dark. Falling faces.
Victoria turned away from the video feed and forced herself to breathe slowly.
Beginner meditation always focused on the breathing. Focusing ones awareness on their breathing — turning a passive background reflex into an active conscious process — it was a valuable tool in both mental and physical therapies.
Here, right in front of her, Victoria had a real-time read on her own heart-rate, her breathing, her every biorhythm and vital sign. She could watch them rise and fall as she breathed in and out, slow and steady.
There was no possible way they could have escaped into the mine. They would have needed hundreds of space-suits. They would have had to seal and pressurize a shelter. They would have had to drag food and water along with them, like a covered wagon train of old Earth.
Dark and cold, they would have waited in silence. Waiting for help that would never come.
No, they hid in the SLS. The Security Lockdown was the emergency rendezvous for the colony should disaster strike. If there was any information that wasn’t in colony’s computer, it would be there. If there were bodies on Noriama, that was where they would be.
Victoria watched her pulse rate rise and lower.
They could have been trapped for hours. Days even. No food, the water runs out, power shuts down and they’re stuck in the darkness, crying, praying for their only hope; that their death will be swift.
This time, Victoria caught herself before her vitals caused an alert.
“Hey!”
Victoria looked up. An alarm was flashing at the top of her screen. Wolf wanted the team’s attention.
“Holy shit.”
Wolf had been piloting Churji and its drones through Noriama since Lemon had gotten the doors open. It had found kitchens, meeting halls, atmosphere recyclers, incinerators, everything they expected to find.
Now, Churji was sitting in a kitchen, staring at a wall. Wolf knew what to expect from the colony. It had been exploring for almost a week. It knew what blank walls and a stable floor looked like.
Wolf had found something unusual.
There, on the wall of Noriama, were scrawled three words in what looked like old paint:
Gone to Hamēstagān.