Bastion Saturn (8 page)

Jennifer, with a drying bloody gash on her forehead, opened the inner door and said, “There’s no air in here, dude!”

Caleb pointed behind him. “There ain’t any out there, either! I see you breathing!”

“Not for long. Why didn’t you go for help?”

“How about, ‘Holy shit, Mister Day! How did you survive crashing on the surface of a moon wearing only your exosuit?’ I went for help, but I found dead bodies and an open outer airlock door—not even a welcome mat. Two ships out there. One of them a cop’s, but they’re locked. I figured trying to save you was better than nothing.”

Jennifer stood awkwardly on the angled deck. “So save me.”

Caleb pointed at the hibernating passengers, who were still miraculously strapped to the wall. “Are they alive?”

“I can’t tell.”

“And they stayed like that through the crash?”

“Dave and Rob were ripped free. I strapped them back.”

Caleb stepped over to Rob and looked inside his visor. “Jesus.”

“What?”

Caleb popped the clasp on Rob’s helmet.

“What are you doing?”

Caleb pulled off the helmet, and Rob’s head gently fell back on his neck at an impossible angle. Unfazed, Caleb opened up the dead man’s life support pack.

“God. Rob.” Jennifer took an awkward step back. “Now what are you doing?”

“Unlucky Rob. Lucky me.” He glanced at the stats inside Rob’s discarded helmet. “While he’s been hibernating, taking little sips of air, he left me with a bit still in the tank.” He pointed at her suit, which she had cast off in a corner. “Put that back on. We have to make another go at the station. Something is really wrong there, but we have no other options.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged, pointed at the suit, and said, “I released my air from there so there would be air in here. The airlock was sealed shut, so I figured I’d wait for a rescue. When I saw you coming in alone, I knew I was screwed.”

Caleb pulled the air pack from Rob’s suit. “Check David.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“It’s ghoulish.”

“Seriously?”

“If he’s dead, I don’t want to know.”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “We should check all of them.” He pulled David’s helmet off. The man appeared to be peacefully comatose, but his pallor was whitish blue. Caleb lifted one of his eyelids. The eye was a deep color of red, full of blood. The other the same. Jennifer only mildly protested when he gently unzipped David’s suit. The chest cavity was crushed inward. Jennifer let out a soft whimper. Caleb said, “I’m sorry. Were you close?”

“Close enough.”

“Good thing you were strapped in. These others really rode it out strapped to the wall?”

Jennifer nodded, tears and snot getting ready to let loose.

Caleb did a quick inspection of the others while Jennifer pulled the air pack from David’s suit and installed it into her own. He said, “Incredible luck that two died.”

“Luck,” she said as if uttering a curse.

Ignoring this, Caleb said, “I’m sure there’s only one shot at this. Gravity’s almost nothing. A little extra weight will help you walk. We drag the living with us and beg for mercy.” He strapped his nerve disrupter and his laser pistol to his hip and thought about what little effect they would have on a hardened airlock door. The disrupter was little more than a fancy Taser, and the laser was designed, for safety reasons, to only fire at living flesh. Then he remembered the breaker. It was a standard issue piece that he had been given five minutes of training to learn how to use. The device defeated lower security door locks. He dug around in several lockers while Jennifer moved the hibernating survivors to the airlock. He was just about to give up when he found the prize still in the manufacturer’s box. He discarded the box and turned the small handheld thing on. The battery indicator blinked one bar. He quickly shut it off. “Does everything have to be on the edge of depletion?”

Caleb dragged Monty and the now-widowed Bob across the lunar surface with one hand, hauling Stephanie’s draped body over his shoulder. Jennifer dragged Saanvi and the whiny teenager, Trey, while leaving a curious track in the dust behind them.

“So does the station seem operational?” asked Jennifer.

“I don’t know. Like I said, the motion detectors were off.”

“No light on the inside? Past the airlock I mean?”

“What did I just say? There were dead people. And like someone turned the lights off on the way out. Scared the piss out of me: literally. I’m man enough to own it.”

“Did you knock?”

“You’re wasting air.”

They continued to walk in silence until coming to a stop ten meters from the entrance. Jennifer looked at the cracked open door and asked “Who leaves an airlock door open?”

“Again, more air, wasted.”

“So don’t waste your breath being a turd.”

“Touché.” Caleb hesitated twice, then, “No time like the present.”

“And you’re sure your door opener thingy won’t work on one of those ships?”

He sighed with frustration. “I told you, didn’t give me one of those. Only sergeants and above. Chances are this one won’t open an airlock, either. It’s for busting into an apartment or a locker or whatever. Either way, I don’t dare waste what little charge there is on a ship I know I can’t enter.”

Caleb stepped in first with Stephanie and then struggled pulling in the rest while Jennifer pushed.

“Oh, gosh,” gasped Jennifer when her helmet light lit up one side. There were far more bodies than Caleb had made out in his panicked state. Most seemed to be simply asleep, nothing like the surprised terror on the two dead cops, no panic in the final resting gesture of their limbs. The secondary door that led into the station recorded a more graphic tale. Bloody fingerprints from torn nails betrayed a profound change of heart. Several bodies huddled against one another up against the door, their faces anguished with last breath.

“I count twenty-eight,” said Jennifer, her voice wavering. “That has got to be most of the researchers.”

Caleb’s light paused over the two cops again. “And look. They still have their nerve disrupters. They came out here by choice. No way their weapons would be holstered otherwise.”

The oxygen warning lights flashed in each other’s helmets. Caleb said, “Whatever drove these people out is likely still inside.” He pulled a weapon out of one of the cop’s holsters and handed it to Jennifer. “If we get in, we gas up asap. Leave your helmet on.”

“Why?”

Caleb looked at all of the unprotected bodies. Not one bothered to suit up, except the cops who had taken their helmets off. “Just a gut feeling.” He pointed at their hibernating friends. “We leave these guys out here.” He turned and punched the red close button on the far wall. The giant wheel rolled shut. A good start.

They wasted precious oxygen pulling the stricken bodies away from the inner door, and when they finally had it cleared, Caleb took the packing plastic off the door breaker and turned it on. He held his breath and pointed the device at the badge scanner that acted as a backup to the standard keypad lock. There was a long pause, then the battery died on the breaker. Caleb was at the edge of an epic stream of curses when the red light on the badge scanner turned green. A fog billowed into the airlock from the nozzles that surrounded the door. The warmer air instantly condensed as it filled the space. Sound suddenly moved around the room filled with breathable molecules, and they heard the door lock thump into the open position. Caleb readied the nerve disrupter and nodded to Jennifer to do the same—as if she really needed prompting. Caleb pushed the door in. It only took a light touch to open, and his shove swung it so hard that it banged against the inside wall and bounced back toward him.

“Bang a gong, why don’t you,” snapped Jennifer.

They stepped inside, Caleb first, and she closed the door behind her, hitting the lock button. A vacuum array sucked the air out of the chamber outside, once again making it feel like a ruined mausoleum. The prep room proved to be the first good thing that had happened all day, with exosuits and assorted gear for external exploration, maintenance and whatnot. It remained in perfect order. A rack held air packs would fit into the insulated slot that was standard on all exosuit breathing apparatus connectors. Caleb checked that two were full and grabbed one while Jennifer turned her back to him to swap hers out. She did the same for him and they simultaneously took in big gulps of air before they sighed with relief as the beeping in their helmets abruptly stopped.

Jennifer pointed a thumb at the porthole behind her. “Those people walked out there on their own two feet, past all this gear. Why?”

“You really do have an uncanny knack for wasting breath. I bet you talk the whole time you watch a movie.”

Jennifer was about to offer a sharp reply, then caught herself. He was right, she chattered at the movies. She preferred to watch them alone, just so.

The station lighting worked via motion detectors. The hallway beyond was dark. But when they reached it, Caleb was relieved to see the ceiling light up with LEDs.

Jennifer said, “I thought we’re just getting gas.”

“To go where? We need the key or the code for that shuttle.”

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. Obviously we were being short-sighted idiots. We need that ship, so we can be anywhere but here.”

The hall ran roughly thirty meters, ending in a large dark junction. Doors on either side offered no suggestion beyond simple numbers of what they may hold. Each had an observation window, beyond it dark. He wasn’t going to check every door, instead pushed forward until he found an area with the lights turned on. Lights on, meant someone in a room—as often as not.

The junction acted as a common area with a snack kitchen and chairs for lounging. A bit messy, a space for gathering and kicking back but no evidence of disarray, much less of the kind of panic that residents of the station to walk out the door and die. Three other hallways led out from the common area, making the layout one big cross of sorts. To Caleb’s frustration, beyond a dull glow that was casting across all of the floors, none of the remaining three hallways showed any light. He waived at the three choices and said, “You pick.”

“Right. Always start with right.”

“You always start with right?”

“Always.”

Caleb chose to leave it at that. “Right then.”

The hallway lit up, and the one behind them clicked off. The shifts in light were startling in their instantaneousness. Caleb felt his nerves jump each time.

Caleb sighed. “OK. Let’s open the doors as we go.”

“If we want to be thorough, we should go back.”

“What’s the difference?” He opened a door to his left. The room lit up. An office with furniture—nondescript space travel stuff—ultra-light-weight and utilitarian. They probably weren’t set up to print big stuff like furniture. In fact, Caleb was pretty sure Phoebe lacked the raw materials to bother with industrial printing array. This was the kind of place where everything got trucked in. Food was likely printed; almost everyone ate printed food in the Saturn System—heck, everyone ate printed food back on Earth. No, not even that anymore; just those cubes. Douches, thought Caleb.

The occupants had a knack for art or one of the scientists had been an artist. The walls were mural representations of Earthly nature. Caleb stepped back into the hall and felt his nerves jump as Jennifer opened the opposite door and the lights snapped on in another office. They kept this up until they reached the end of the hall and a double door marked with the word, LAB.

Similar to the airlock, an outer door led to a secondary door. Both were open. Caleb felt Jennifer’s hand on his back as he entered and the lights came on.

The room was an orderly space filled with lab tables, electronics, and sundry biological sampling equipment. They stepped inside. There were signs that professionals had made use of the space but nothing to indicate that these experts fled for their lives. Jennifer paused at a table with a portable isolation unit. Inside, she noted a child’s broken stuffed bear. It lay between the open halves of a cryogenic canister with bio hazard warnings boldly displayed on both sides. One of the rubber gloves that was used by a handler to manipulate the items within was pulled inside out and hung limply off the edge of the table. The finger tips had eroded, bits of rubber scattered on the floor.

“Wise choice to keep your helmets on,” said a voice.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Caleb nearly jumped on a stool, and he and Jennifer bashed into each other in surprise. The exosuits were suddenly awkward as they searched around them for the source of the voice, both gazes settling on a solitary figure sitting on a stool in the corner. Something about the arrangement of the stool made the immediate impression that this was the figure’s usual spot, that it was meant to sit there until called upon. It was a robot, human looking, but albino white, like all others. This one had effete African male features. It wore the rugged outerwear of a lab bot, a machine that was designed to put itself into hazardous conditions. The bot’s expression remained neutral as it said with a cheery voice, “The air is full of toxic nanos. You are wise to keep your helmets on. Though I must warn you that the nanos contain active solvents, which will create a breach in the seals of your suits within less than an hour after exposure.” It nodded at the isolation unit with the teddy bear inside. “Note scientist Romano’s iso-glove, which gave entrance to the pathogen.”

Caleb found robots very unsettling. Even the entertainment models (which to him were like overzealous clowns at a baby party). The thing had been sitting perfectly still and therefor the lights had remained off. Caleb felt the blood pressure in his ears diminishing, the sound of his own heartbeat fading, and he cleared his throat. “What . . . what happened here?”

“A stage five breach. Containment protocols failed because of near instant transmission to all researcher’s neocortexes. The lab door was opened by one of the infected scientists, infecting the remainder of the occupants. Based on their behavior, my analysis indicates that once settled into the victim’s orbitofrontal, frontopolar cortexes and parietal lobe, the nano-virus set off a self-destruct program, which caused my fellow occupants to involuntarily commit mass suicide.”