Noriama: Chapter 19
“Sughouri?”
A passing fancy flit through Sughouri’s mind. She didn’t have to answer Kristiana when she called. What would that do to them, to be cut off? How would they react?
“Yes?” she answered, the moment past.
“What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be up for another two hours.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Sughouri shrugged. “Things to do today, so might as well get started.”
“Such as?” Victoria now. They all suspected. They had to have suspected for days now. They were watching her vitals every second of every hour. For all her naivete about space and the sciences, Victoria wasn’t stupid about people. Besides, they could see where she was heading.
She might as well tell them. “I’m going to take the Device off of the generator.”
“That is an incredibly dangerous idea,” Kristiana managed to say it first. Such a smart woman. “We still don’t know what it is, or what tampering with it might do.”
“We might never know,” Sughouri said as she walked. “Besides, all we have left is the room-by-room search, and what have we found? It’s all empty. If I dismantle the device, we might get some answers about what it is and why it was put on the generator.”
“Or you might destroy half the colony.”
“Or I might save half the colony. Or I might open a doorway to Hamēstagān. There’s only one way to find out, and I’m going to do it.”
It was almost a minute before the Croatoan spoke again. They were probably trying to think of ways to stop her. But there weren’t any ways. It felt like she was moving through mud, but she would keep moving.
“Assuming we could do that safely,” Kristiana said, “which I’m not convinced we could, there’s still a lot of safety measures that —”
“Zuri,” Sughouri interrupted, “does the computer show any signs of instability in the colony? All the sensors show everything running smoothly?”
“Its an incomplete picture,” Zuri insisted, “but no, as far as Lemon is concerned, there are no red-flags. That doesn’t mean it’s safe.”
“Safe enough, though?” Victoria asked. “Look, why doesn’t Sughouri at least take a hands-on look around, and get a better idea of what we’re looking at. We’ve only looked at the thing through Churji’s camera. She might even be able to learn something about what the Device actually does.”
“Fine,” Kristiana relented at last. “But Zuri, I want you spending the rest of your time with Lemon putting every inch of the computer through its paces.”
“I won’t be able to work on repairing the database if I do that.”
“I know, but if the main generator explodes, we’re not getting the rest of the database either. I’m not giving a green-light to this until I’m positive we’ve mitigated the danger as much as possible.”
Sughouri was sweating.
When was the last time she had sweated? Her suit kept her temperature steady, and while walking across Noriama was taxing, it rarely made her perspire like this.
It couldn’t be nerves. The team had spent three hours total running every test they could think of on the main reactor and the attached Device. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Nor was it excitement; there was no indication that this lump of metal could even do anything. The chances that an examination of the machine would provide any answers about Noriama or its former inhabitants were slim, to say the least.
But she was sweating.
“Will Churji be there?” She asked.
“If you’d like,” Victoria answered. “It’s letting its drones peek in a doors at the moment, but it can follow you if you want.”
“Sure,” she said. “I don’t have as strong a sensor suite in my suit. Better to get good info, yeah?”
“Wolf is on its way to you,” Zuri said. “It’s at the other end of the colony at the moment, so —”
Sughouri didn’t hear the rest of Zuri’s digital response. On instinct, her arms flung out to the sides, a superfluous movement, considering the shear number of gyros and servos in her legs to keep her standing, no matter her balance.
At last the shaking stopped. Sughouri didn’t move, waiting for communication from Noriama.
“Sughouri, you alright?” Victoria asked.
“How big was that one?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.
“Pretty big. We lost the feed for a second. Both Churji and Noriama’s sensors put the epicenter as six kilometers north of Noriama.”
Sughouri lowered her arms. “Six kilometers…wasn’t the last one ten kilometers?”
“At least all the sensors agree this time,” Kristiana continued. “And it wasn’t an aftershock. Either the first quake was a foreshock, or this one…it was a significantly higher magnitude than the first.”
“It certainly felt bigger,” Sughouri said. “You’re saying not just because it was closer?”
“That’s right. And I’m still not getting any other seismic vibrations. I’m not positive these are quakes. Quakes follow specific physical patterns. These vibrations, whatever they are, aren’t behaving like quakes.”
“What else could they be?”
“I don’t know,” Kristiana muttered. Then: “Explosions?”
The com fell silent.
“Right.” Sughouri fought the urge to wipe her forehead. “Well, it’s gone now. I’m moving on.”
Her pace was slow as she moved down the long corridor that separated Noriama from the main generator. Slower than she had ever walked before.
“Sughouri, take three breaths for me, please?”
Sughouri breathed. “How am I doing, doc?”
“Pretty shaky. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard these past few hikes.”
“Well, it’s either that or you go back empty handed.”
There was a pause, longer than two seconds.
“You didn’t fail, Sughouri.”
Were she feeling better, Sughouri would have said something clever. Now, she didn’t have it in her. Breathing was getting harder, she was feeling dizzy more and more often, and her vision was clouding up.
“I’m half an hour out from the generator,” she said, her mechanical legs marching away beneath her. “Hey, can I get a system’s check? Anything going on with the colony’s lighting system?”
“Nothing I can see,” Zuri answered. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, they look…I don’t know, greener?”
“Green?” There was a pause. “No, the CHR-3’s light sensor is registering the same wavelength of visible light.”
“Must be my eyes, then.” Reflexively, Sughouri raised a hand to her face before remembering that she was wearing a helmet.
She had to remember, coming to Noriama hadn’t been a waste of time. Even if they hadn’t found answers, they had certainly found a lot of clues. The more they had searched, the more signs of life they discovered. They had even found a kitchen, with two pots and a fry-pan that hadn’t been cleaned. Three samples of dried and rotten food now sat patiently in the Hut, ready to travel back to the Croatoan for study.
But they couldn’t go back now. The contamination was real.
There had even been a cookbook; a white binder full of loose and crumpled pages. An oddity, as paper should have been foreign to Noriama. It was too much of a waste, Kristiana had explained. Electronic communication only used power, and they had plenty of that. Paper required a whole industry and used limited and valuable resources.
Sughouri blinked hard. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with the lighting?”
“Wolf isn’t registering any change,” Kristiana answered.
“Okay then, I’ll just–damn!”
Sughouri stumbled, reaching out to grab at the smooth wall. A stab of pain shot through her hips as her leg slid out from under her, sending her crashing to the ground.
A moment of fear blinded Sughouri. Falling was dangerous enough, but if she somehow managed to tear her suit, she would be unprotected from the airless colony.
Clarity came quickly. Her suit showed no drop in pressure, no alarms were sounding. She was fine.
“Sughouri! You okay?” the two second delay had been minutes in her panic.
Sughouri took a deep breath. “I’m fine. Just tripped. I…oh…oh damn.” Sughouri stumbled again as she tried to stand. Her left leg was completely inert, while her right leg was quivering with spasms instead of helping to push her upright. “I think my legs are out of juice. They’re not working right. Damn!”
“It’s alright,” Kristiana’s voice was calm. “I’m returning Churji to your position. You can climb on and ride it back. Just sit tight, I’m only a few minutes ahead of you.”
“Great,” Sughouri bit her tongue. “I don’t get it, I charged them the same as usual. There might be something wrong with the —”
A sudden alarm cut her off. Symbols flashed on her suit’s screen, each one gripping her heart with terror.
“Radiation,” she gasped as she struggled to twist her body. “Damn it! Fuck! My legs didn’t loose their batteries, they got fried!” Frantically she scrabbled at the floor with her gloves, trying to drag herself away. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Holy — where did that come from?” Victoria’s two-second delayed voice finally caught up with her. “Sughouri we just got a — okay, calm down Sughouri. Sughouri! You need to calm down!”
She was too heavy. She couldn’t get away fast enough. Where was away? Was she crawling into the radiation? Twisting around again, scraping her suit on the floor, Sughouri reached for her thighs, struggling to find the release catch for her thick metal legs. Without them, she might be light enough to save herself.
“Sughouri! Please listen, you need to keep breathing and calm down. You’re in danger of hyperventilating!”
“I’m in danger of rad poisoning!” she shouted. The alarm blared in her ears. Her limbs were too heavy, her fingers too clumsy. She was going to die.
“No, you’re not, Sughouri, listen to me!” Kristiana’s voice cut in. “Your suit is protecting you. You know the specs, Sughouri. Your suit has plenty of shielding. Wolf is heading straight towards you. It’s only a few minutes away. Sit calmly, wait for Churji, and we can get you out of there safely.”
With a snap, Sughouri’s left leg popped away from her thigh. The feeling of freedom soothed her for a second, long enough for Kristiana’s words to register.
She reached for her other leg. “How long do I have?”
“According to your suit sensors,” Kristiana said, “you’re only getting half a Gray an hour. That’s well outside any dangerous level. But if you panic and tear your suit, we won’t be able to get to you in time.”
“If you sat around for a couple hours,” Victoria said, “you’d feel sick for a week, and that’s it. Breathe calmly, Sughouri. You’re going to be fine.”
It was easy enough for them to say. They weren’t sitting in the middle of a sudden radioactive cloud, strong enough to tear apart the silicon chips in her legs. But she forced herself to breathe anyway. They were right; panicking was always dangerous.
She decided to remain sitting. If she levered herself any more upright, or leaned against the wall, there was a greater chance of harming her suit. This was nonsense, of course; the suit was made from a modified Kevlar and carbon nano-tube blend. She had seen bullets fail to tear this fabric. Even then, the thick shielding that was behind the fabric wouldn’t necessarily have been damaged.
None of that mattered in an emergency. Even Kristiana, with all of the Croatoan database in her skull, had cautioned Sughouri against tearing. What was it in the human mind that made them think first and foremost about all the ways in which something could go wrong?
It was a strange darkness under every human spirit. Failures and errors called to humans, somehow. It drew them like moths to flame, and burned them if they became too obsessed.
“That’s it,” Victoria’s voice was soothing. “Slow and steady.”
It was almost fifteen minutes before Churji rolled down the corridor towards Sughouri. The CHR-3 drones were well shielded from all kinds of radiation, and so Churji was able to pull up next to Sughouri without incident.
Climbing on top of the thick drone was more complicated for her, but with a bit of support from Churji’s arm, she managed to prop herself on its back for the ride back to Hut.
“I’ve overridden wolf, and am going to use the arm to keep you stable, okay?,” Kristiana said as Churji’s arm moved to embrace Sughouri in a strange backwards hug. “Just sit tight, and I’ll get you home.”
“Some home,” Sughouri said. Her voice sounded higher pitched than she expected. Poor Victoria, she was likely panicking at the sight of Sughouri’s heart rate.
“Head to corridor B2,” Victoria said. “It’s the fastest way back to the Hut. We need to get Sughouri back to safety immediately. The sooner she’s in comfortable surroundings, the better for her mental and physical health.”
“I feel fine, now,” Sughouri protested. “I’m just a little shaken.”
“Just because you feel fine doesn’t mean you’re fire,” Victoria answered. “You leave the diagnosis to me.”
“Hold tight, Sughouri,” Kristiana said. “I’m about to speed Churji up a bit. There. How are you doing?”
“So far so good. I think Churji could use a tune up, though.”
“That’s not Churji,” Kristiana spoke. “That’s Proxima. We’re picking up minor seismic activity again.”
Churji didn’t stop. When anything happened, it was vital procedure for the CHR-3 to stop, in case the two second delay were to cause catastrophic error. Once the disaster had passed, then the pilot could reassess the situation and proceed as planned. Wolf would most likely have stopped. It had the entire book on drone protocol at its very core, and no desire other than to be good.
But Kristiana wasn’t stopping. She was likely panicking too, as much as the stoic Netter ever panicked about anything.
“I’m turning down corridor B2.” She should have stopped before she turned. There had been seismic activity, any number of things could have changed without their knowledge.
Two seconds. Sughouri had gotten used to the delay. One second for anything she said to reach the Croatoan, and one second for their reply to return to her ears. They were living in her past, reacting to a world Sughouri had already been through, just as she was reacting to theirs.
It had never been a problem. In fact, the only time it would be a problem would be in an emergency.
“Stop!” Sughouri shouted. It was instinct, a primal belief that when she said the word, Kristiana would hear it.
But she didn’t. Churji drove onward down the hallway, towards the torn open hole in the floor. Too late. Churji would stop too late.
With strength born of panic, Sughouri drew herself up as tall as she could, gripped Churji’s back with her thighs, and threw her weight against the arm that held her in place, leaning with all of her weight.
Sughouri wasn’t particularly tall, but every meter helped when it came to centers of gravity. Heaving as hard as she could, she tipped Churji to the side, lifting the drone off its left wheels. Her weight urged the drone to the right, closer to the undamaged wall, the part of the floor that remained stable.
Churji whined as it tipped, its course turning ever so slightly. For two seconds — an hour to Sughouri — the drone moved forward, veering to the right just far enough to keep its wheels from the hole.
“Shit!” Kristiana’s voice.
With a thud, Churji rocked back to the ground, its wheels still.
Sughouri slumped over Churji’s back, centimeters away from the gaping hole.
In the seconds of peace that follow any escaped catastrophe, Sughouri stared into the ominous darkness.
It looked, for all the world, like some gargantuan mouth had taken a bite out of the hallway. A whole corner of the corridor had vanished, reaching halfway along the floor and two thirds of the way up the left wall. The edges were ragged and torn, almost warped. Along the wall were tell-tale signs of burning, while the edges on the floor had none. Instantly, her mind ran through the engineering specs of Noriama colony. She knew the tensile strength of the metal and plastics used to shape the hallways.
Beneath the torn floor was not dirt, like Sughouri expected, but darkness. Rather than resting on solid ground, the hallway was suspended over a cavern of indeterminate size.
How big of a cavern? How far did it reach? How stable was the entire colony of Noriama in the first place? How sturdy were the struts that kept the hallway straight and suspended in the air? How likely was the very floor to collapse under Churji’s wheels?
Louder still in her mind was a single thought; the hole was dark. Sughouri reached for her LEDs. She needed to see what was there, beneath the colony. She needed to cast light into the darkness. The same effect that had struck her when she floated over Proxima b during her space walk hit her again. An emptiness that was devouring. Consuming.
She felt Churji quiver underneath her, like a nervous horse. Beneath Churji’s wheels, the edge of the hole bent, and tore away.
Silently, Sughouri and Churji fell together into the emptiness.
The first thing Sughouri saw was the crack.
Cracks mean death in space. She was already dead.
But she wasn’t dead, not yet; there was too much pain. Her head throbbed, her chest ached, her ears were ringing so she couldn’t hear if her suit alarms were going off or not.
Her head was spinning so fast she couldn’t tell which way was down. Her stomach churned, and she dry-heaved, a small spray of sickly yellow bile splattering against her face-plate.
Her body contorting as she gasped, she felt the bile slide off the glass and burn against her left ear.
So, that’s down.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Sughouri lifted her head. A whirring in her ears grew louder. The bile, which would have been a dangerous hazard in any other suit, was drawn away by the ventilation tube that ringed her neck to be filtered and stored in the suit’s DBF tank. She couldn’t remember what the letters really stood for, she could only remember the slang acronym; ‘Disgusting Bodily Fluids.’
This same ring released breathable atmosphere into her helmet. The same helmet which had a crack just over her right eye.
She was going to die.
No sooner had the thought registered in her mind than its contrary answered back. She was still breathing, and the pain in her head and chest was slowly ebbing. There was no alarm sounding in her ear. Her suit was silent, but still functional, else the bile would still be covering her ear. The crack must not have reached all the way through the face-plate. She had a chance.
Still, the crack in her helmet was dangerous. She had to be careful to not make it bigger or risk breaking it and condemning herself to painful suffocation.
Where was she? What had happened? These questions were shoved aside. She could answer questions later. Now, she needed to act.
First, slowly, she used her free arm to feel around her body. It was rough and unstable, gritty almost. It felt like gravel through her gloves. She could feel several large stable objects near her, possibly crates or pieces of metal.
Gently, she stretched above her head. Nothing.
Carefully, Sughouri sat up, all the while reaching out with her hand to stop herself if she neared anything hard.
When she was sitting up, she felt for her kit. First thing was first: she needed to repair the crack.
Her heart sank when she found her supply kit was missing. Fallen off in the fall, probably. Well, that wasn’t necessarily fatal. If she hadn’t broken her helmet yet, she could last until she found her sealant.
Second thing second, she counted off. Reaching for her arm unit, she tapped it with her finger. She almost laughed when the screen glowed; her suit computer was still functional.
She turned on her suit’s LED lights, and beheld majesty.
She was sitting on the dirt of Proxima, surrounded by rocks and debris. Above her, she could see what had once been the intact hallway of Noriama colony, now collapsed into the dark cavern. As she turned her head, her LEDs lit upon small helical pillars of rock, biting the air like stalagmites.
She kept turning her head, slowly and carefully, until she saw the dull metal glint of her supply kit. It had fallen several meters away and rolled deeper into the cavern.
Third thing third: Her broken legs were now lying on the ground somewhere in B section of Noriama. She needed to move without them, and that meant risking damage to her suit.
Moving as slowly as she could, she shifted her weight forward and began to crawl towards her supply kit. It took her almost five minutes to cross the cavern floor. Once her kit was within reach, she flipped the small latch, and was relieved to feel it open smoothly. With the kit open, she lifted the trays out until she found the spray-sealant.
She had sealed cracks and micro-fissures before on any number of machines and structures, but she had never tried to use sealant on a helmet she was wearing.
Carefully, she raised the canister to her face, and pointed the applicator nozzle directly at the top of the crack. As gently as she could, she squeezed the sealant out as she dragged it across her helmet, leaving a thick gray line behind. When she had finished, she pulled a thin brush from her kit and spread the thick gray about, thickening the line and making sure the entire crack was covered.
Now came the tricky bit. Ordinarily, the sealant was made solid with the application of heat. She had an emergency VHLT — variable power handheld laser torch — in her kit, but applying intense heat to a cracked helmet was incredibly dangerous. The heat could weaken the face-plate, and heat up the air inside her suit, increasing the pressure. Both in tandem could cause the crack to worsen before the sealant had done its job.
But leaving the crack alone was just as dangerous an option, so she pulled the torch from her kit and adjusted the dials until she had the widest aperture and only 100°C heat-point.
Now she moved quickly, brushing the laser back and forth along the dark-gray sealant, pausing periodically to allow any excess heat to bleed off from her suit. Her suit sensor gave no alarm, but Sughouri knew better than to wholly rely on a suit system that could easily have been damaged in the fall.
It took her almost an hour before she was finished. The gray line had hardened into a solid black. Breathing a gentle sigh of relief, she put her laser torch away, and turned back to her suit’s computer.
Pressure was steady, radiation absent. Sughouri didn’t know if she believed it, her suit’s sensors could have been damaged in the fall, and radiation didn’t just vanish like that. Of course, if her sensors had been faulty in the first place, there might never have been any radiation at all. Then again, her legs had still failed — but that could have been a simple software failure. They had been supplied by the EU military, but that didn’t mean they were perfect.
But if one of her sensors were faulty, then all of them could be, so she had nothing else to do but trust in her suit. If she started doubting, there was no coming back. She’d die in the dark, alone, afraid to move.
Connection to the Croatoan had been lost. No surprise there. Checking her suit clock, she had fallen…twenty minutes ago.
A quick bit of math gave her the bad news. She had only ten minutes left before she needed to be in her chamber at the Hut, or else she would start to suffer serious and possibly permanent damage.
She forced herself to not think about that, and moved on to her oxygen levels, which were currently within safety margins. She didn’t have much oxygen left, unfortunately. Only half an hour or so, just enough to get back to the Hut if she started walking now — only her legs weren’t working. She would need to crawl back, or ride Churji, and neither of those options were particularly viable at the moment.
She turned her gaze to the overturned nexus. It had hit the rocks hard in the fall. It had been built to withstand incredible punishment, but even if there wasn’t any serious damage, getting Churji back up into Noriama would take more than she had on her. Sughouri wouldn’t be able to do it on her own.
That didn’t mean Churji couldn’t be useful. Picking up her kit in one hand, she crawled over to the overturned nexus, and braced herself against its side. Heaving as hard as she could, she tipped the nexus over, setting it upright again with a silent thud.
Pulling out her tools again, Sughouri set to work removing Churji’s outer shell, opening its inner mechanisms to her questing fingers. Before long she had torn the metal and plastic shielding away, revealing the treasure trove of electronic devices.
First, Sughouri focused on the radio. If it still worked, she could use its more advanced communication system and powerful battery to boost her signal to the Croatoan, and re-establish contact. She worked as quickly as she dared, linking the two systems together and tying the power system to Churji’s battery.
Finally, she was finished. Clearing her throat, she spoke into her com. “Hello? Croatoan, come in. This is Sughouri, obviously. Are you there?”
Nothing.
She tried twice more. Still nothing.
Too far away. The thick earth of Proxima was blocking Churji’s signal.
Perhaps the drones? They could connect to Churji to communicate with Wolf, could they be used as relays? Or were they too far away? Had they all come to a halt once Churji had fallen into the hole?
She would have to reprogram Churji to use the drones as relays, and that would be difficult enough; could she do it with Wolf still in its hardware? Would Wolf fight back? Or was she thinking too much of Wolf like a living thing, again. What would Zuri say?
She wouldn’t say anything. She was too far away. They couldn’t talk. Sughouri couldn’t tell her team that she was alive. She couldn’t tell them to wait for her. Would they call up the elevator and leave? Or would they send someone down to look for her?
It would take four days for them to reach her. She would be dead by then. She was all alone.
Sughouri forced herself to breathe calmly. They would come back. Sughouri wasn’t alone. She was not going to die in a cavern on an alien planet forty trillion miles from Earth.
Sughouri looked around herself again. The cavern was not just an open hole in the ground, but it extended off further into the distance. A tunnel, more than a cave.
The tunnel wasn’t particularly large, all things considered, but it felt gigantic after the small corridors and rooms of Noriama. It was ten meters wide, she estimated, and four or five meters deep. Twisting pillars of rock dotted the ground, giving the room a strange and unnatural atmosphere. She thought they were stalagmites at first, but she couldn’t see any mirrored stalactites on the ceiling. Perhaps her eyes were too weak?
Sughouri checked to make sure her camera was still active, and began to take pictures. Someone would be able to tell her if these pillars were the results of natural erosion — perhaps currents or eddies in some underground water that had since been drained by the Noriamans — or something else.
Even the act of raising the camera hurt her arms.
Looking back at the inert Churji, she felt a dull pang of guilt. She was leaving behind a friend, in a way. She didn’t want to die alone, but neither could she simply sit still and wait to die. She needed to do something, even if the something was pointless.
In a moment of delirious black humor, she wondered if that was all she had been doing for the past decade.
Her spirits lifted with her macabre self-awareness, she crawled onward, the tunnel starting to spin around her.