Below Mercury (36 page)

That’s odd, he thought. The login was successful, but all that came up was a small box in the centre of the screen with a COMMAND? prompt and a blinking cursor next to it. Well, it was a special login after all; if you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t need to ask. He tapped in the command name that Helligan had given them, the command that would automatically restart the reactor and restore power.

Although he had come this far, his finger hesitated over the ENTER key. Some voice at the back of his mind was whispering something. He frowned, trying to understand the worm of fear that twisted inside his mind. Then the voice became Crawford’s, and it was telling him not to trust Helligan, or PMI.

That settled it. He thrust the thought aside, leaned forward, and pressed the key with a decisive stab of his finger.

Crawford was a fool.

Abrams was in the shower when the lights came on, a sudden white glare after the blood-red glow of the emergency lighting. He spun round in surprise, and nearly slipped on the shower base.

Towelling himself down, he hurried to the bedroom and tugged on the clothes he had left out on the bed. His face was grim as he sat down and pulled his boots on. If Elliott was responsible for this, the stupid little shit had put all their lives in danger. There was no knowing what condition the reactor was in; they should have talked this through with Bergman and Crawford first.

Abrams got up and headed out of the apartment, into the corridor outside, towards the pressure doors and the fire stairs. The lights dimmed suddenly, and then brightened again. Large loads going onto the power circuits, Abrams thought, quickening his pace. What the hell was happening?

He went up the fire stairs at a run. The stairs uncoiled before him as he went up flight after flight, past the next level, where the other living quarters were, and on up towards the control centre level. His heart pounded in his chest with the exertion, and he thought grimly of what he was going to say to Elliott when he got there. Why couldn’t he have listened, and just waited?

Abrams rounded the last corner, went up the final flight of stairs, and burst through the fire doors into the control centre lobby.

He knew instantly that it was bad. He could hear the alarms sounding as he ran through the open pressure doors and down the corridor that led to towards the control centre. He ducked past the immobile form of Bob Five by the control centre doors, and into a room filled with the piercing sound of emergency alarms.

A red light swept round the ceiling. He saw Elliott, white-faced, sitting at a console on the upper command deck.

‘What the fuck’s happening!’ Abrams yelled above the noise of the alarms, leaping up the stairs. ‘What have you done?’

‘I – I ran the commands Helligan gave us,’ Elliott stammered, turning round in his seat to face him, ‘and it was all going fine at first, but now—’ he gestured helplessly around him. ‘I just don’t know what’s happening!’

In a sudden flash of anger, Abrams hauled Elliott out of the seat, and threw him sprawling across the floor of the command deck. Abrams turned his back on him, and went back to the console. The noise of the alarms made it almost impossible to figure out what was happening. One window of the display was full of warnings in red text, scrolling upwards off the screen, and another window appeared to be executing a series of automatic commands.

Abrams couldn’t take it in for a moment, then realisation rushed up on him, drenching him with fear.

He wasn’t a reactor design expert, but he knew how they worked, and the main features of their operation, and the safety interlocks that prevented what was being done now.

The control rods were being withdrawn, one by one, while the reactor ran up to full power, in defiance of every safeguard he knew.

The voice of the master warning system started up, adding its terrifying words.

‘
Danger – uncontrolled reactor power increase. Danger – low feedwater supply. Danger – insufficient control rods in reactor. Danger—’

The warnings continued as Abrams tried in vain to shut down the command script, but nothing he did had any effect. The console was completely locked out. All the control rods were out now; this was never supposed to happen – it
couldn’t happen!
He pounded the screen in frustration.

The command script paused for a moment, and then in a new dawning of horror, Abrams saw a fresh series of commands start up. Having done its work on the reactor, the script turned to the airlock doors on the hangar levels.

‘Oh my God, no,’ he whispered.

The lights dimmed again, as the master warning system carried on: ‘
Danger – airlock control malfunction. Danger – mine integrity failure.’

Below them, back in the main hangar, the latches opened on the main doors to the mine. Just as it had happened nine years ago, the doors started to open, and a hurricane of escaping air burst out through the widening slit, racing out over the crater floor.

Elliott slithered away from the console, pushing himself backward across the floor, shaking his head in denial at what he had done.

Then, the final, terrible announcement, that the crew of the mine had heard all those years ago, and had looked up in fear, not understanding what it meant:

‘
Warning – mine robot startup sequence initiated. Danger – safety protocol malfunction.’

Elliott stood up, and staggered down the stairs to the lower deck, just as the full fury of the escaping air reached the control centre. Paper and rubbish whirled around him. He grabbed a handrail, and clung on, as the gale tried to tear him away.

Standing solid, barring the main doorway, Bob Five’s head swivelled round to look at Elliott. The ring of green LEDs round the robot’s eyes went out, and came on again, in a baleful red. The air roared round the robot, but it stood unperturbed, an immovable pillar against the gale.

The rush of air started to fade, as pressure in the command centre dropped. Elliott saw his chance, and ran across the lower deck to where he had left his helmet. Bob Five moved with terrifying speed to cut him off, catching up with Elliott just as he reached his helmet, lying on one of the consoles.

The robot’s pincer smashed down on the console, shattering the helmet to fragments.

Elliott looked up at the robot in disbelief, and tried to speak, but no sound came out; there was no air. He fell to his knees. His lungs laboured, trying to breathe, but there was nothing, and suddenly he felt deadly cold. The robot’s eyes glared down at Elliott, and it raised its arm one more time.

On the upper deck, Abrams saw the robot’s arm swing down on Elliott like an executioner’s axe, and the sudden spray of blood that erupted over the ceiling.

Abrams fell back in his seat. His legs had turned to water. He knew he should run, but he felt so weak. Black specks exploded in his vision. He had to warn the others, he had to tell them that the robots were coming for them, but it was too late, too late.

He slipped off the seat and onto the floor. He saw the robot mount the stairs and advance until it loomed over him, one pincer covered in blood. Abrams tried to crawl away, but anoxia had taken hold of him, and he could only manage a couple of metres before he fell onto his side.

In his last few moments, everything became very quiet and still. Abrams looked up, and saw the robot’s eyes, staring down at him as he lay there on the floor. The edges of his vision faded to black, closing inwards on him, until all that he could see were the twin red circles, boring into him, watching him die.

As consciousness failed, the eyes seemed to swoop after him, following him down into darkness as the robot’s arm lifted, and swung down one last time.

Clare was in the commander’s seat in the shuttlecraft, trying to raise Abrams on her comlink, when the main power in the mine came back on. Across the silo in the control room, she saw Wilson look around in surprise. He looked down at the console, then back up at Clare, concern written on his face.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said softly to herself.

Wilson’s voice came over her headset.

‘Captain, I think you’d better take a look at this.’

Clare sensed that something was terribly wrong. She tore off her headset and ran out of the cabin, along the docking corridor, and back round to the control room.

Wilson swivelled in his seat, and pointed at a display that had started up. They appeared to be showing warnings of some kind.

‘I don’t like the look of this,’ he said. ‘The reactor’s just started up, but the power levels are climbing out of control.’

Clare leaned closer, and her mouth fell open as she saw the warning messages.

‘I think we’d better try to get hold of—’

She didn’t get any further. Her words were lost behind a klaxon that blared out in the control room, followed by the strident warning: ‘
Danger – pressure loss. Danger – pressure loss.’

Trained to act instantly at the sound of such a warning, both of them dived for the emergency close button, which would slam the pressure doors shut and isolate the silo from the rest of the mine.

‘They’re not responding!’ Wilson yelled, above the rising roar of air in the passage outside. The security camera confirmed the truth; the pressure doors at the entrance to the silo complex remained stubbornly open, no matter how many times he hit the emergency button.

The full force of the escaping atmosphere reached them a moment later; a tornado of air tore round the silo complex, scattering debris and dust into the air. Clare and Wilson dived for cover, grabbing the heavy leg supports of the control console to stop themselves from being sucked out and into the passage.

Outside, in the rest of the mine, a huge river of air coursed up and out of the mine, swirling along the empty passages, emptying out into space through the opening hangar doors.

Suddenly, a sound like a crack of thunder exploded in the passage outside, and a long, low rumble shook the complex. On the security camera displays, the view of the open pressure doors vanished behind a grey curtain. The rush of air faded, and a dense cloud of grey dust erupted into the control room, covering Clare and Wilson where they sheltered under the console.

A faint pattering of falling debris faded, and Clare looked up in amazement. The mine had vented, but incredibly they were still alive; what had happened?

Wilson stood up and blew dust off the monitors, and whistled. ‘Shit. The passage collapsed, look.’ He pointed to where, a few moments before, a view of the main airway had stretched off into the distance. Now, all that remained was a vast pile of broken rock where the roof fall had been. The roof had collapsed completely, sealing the passage.

‘What’s the O2 partial pressure?’ Clare demanded as she stood up. It could already be too low to sustain them, and they could black out without warning.

‘Uhh, it’s just above the red line – point one six bar.’

Just enough to survive on, Clare thought. She tried to piece together what had happened, and crossed to the display that had been showing warnings before the mine breached. To her horror, she watched as the air pressure outside the silo continued to fall; in moments, there would be nothing left. The huge mine was emptying completely; every scrap of air exhausting through the open hangar doors, and the open pressure doors throughout the mine.

So this was how they did it, she thought, this was how the Company had killed all the—

Her eyes flew wide.

She grabbed her comlink, and pressed the emergency broadcast key.

‘Crawford, Bergman – please respond. Abrams, Elliott, if you can hear me, respond. If anyone can hear this message, please respond!’ Clare’s face contorted into a mask of despair, as she realised all of them were out there, in the mine, in the emptiness and the quiet.

She repeated the message again after a few seconds, but her voice had faded to a whisper. She could feel her legs giving way, and she backed up against the wall and slid down to the floor, the comlink falling from her shaking fingers.

‘I should have trusted him,’ she said to herself. ‘Why didn’t I listen to him, when he warned me? And now he’s – he’s dead, and all the others. Oh, Matt, why didn’t I trust you …’ her voice tailed off, and she turned to face Wilson, her face stricken.

‘I don’t understand – what’s happened?’ Wilson’s eyes frantically searched her face.

She didn’t answer at first; she just looked at him, shaking her head. After a few moments, she spoke again, her voice unsteady.

‘The Company did it, when the mine stopped making money. It wasn’t profitable any more, so they just – opened the main doors and let the air out.’

She took a gulping breath.

‘They opened all the doors in the mine, to kill everyone they could, and sent the robots to finish off the survivors. That’s why they didn’t want anyone coming back here. We were never meant to have got this far, we were meant to have been – to have been killed in the crash.’

Wilson was shaking his head in disbelief as he listened. His eyes were wide with fright.

‘And Helligan, and Helligan – he gave us the commands – and Matt tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t – fucking –
listen!’
She pounded on the floor with her clenched fists as she yelled out the words.