There were enthusiastic cheers from the members of team 5, who hated excavation work and planned careers as theoretical historians rather than archaeologists.
Working teams started shuffling sleds, while everyone else arranged themselves on transport sleds to watch. Since team 4 would be working shifts with us, they sat on the nearest transport with some of team 5. I noticed Steen and Petra glaring at each other.
Dalmora went to her enclosed sensor sled, Amalie and Krath to their bulky heavy lift sleds, and Fian to the slightly smaller tag support sled. I stood on the safe side of the red line and stared up at the building, planning my tactics. It was over twenty storeys high, with flexible joints connecting it to the neighbouring buildings on either side. A network of cracks ran through the front concraz wall, but the imbedded reinforcement mesh still held it together. I sighed, pulled up the hood of my impact suit and sealed the front, sentencing myself to the faint mustiness of the suit air system.
My team had their sleds in position now. I headed across to Fian’s tag support sled, put on a hover belt, and waited for a moment while he attached the lifeline beam to the tag point on the back of my impact suit. Beyond the red line, the perfectly smooth surface of the gap was littered with fragments of concraz. I used my hover belt to skim over them, and set up two special directional sensors next to the wall of the building.
‘Sensor net is active and green,’ said Dalmora on the team circuit.
I went across to join her on the sensor sled. The six peripheral hazard displays were all completely clear, so I concentrated on the central display. Dalmora played with the sensor controls, expanding the image upwards and rotating it.
‘You’ve got two intact floors right at the top of the building,’ she said. ‘The rest have collapsed.’
Playdon arrived to check the display himself. ‘Those two top floors will be highly unstable. You’ll have to work from outside the building and cut your way through the wall, Jarra.’
I nodded. Impact suits are amaz at protecting you, but I didn’t want to test mine by having a mass of concraz fall twenty floors and land on my head.
Playdon handed me a laser gun. ‘I’ll stay here while you do the cutting. I know I don’t need to tell you to be careful with the laser.’
‘No, sir. Lasers scare me to death.’ I checked the safety catch was on the evil thing, then headed towards the building. The front wall had a central gap where the door had been, so I just needed to extend the hole sideways in both directions to give us good access.
I carefully positioned myself to one side of the doorway, and turned off my hover belt so I could stand perfectly still. A large piece of concraz fell from somewhere high above, narrowly missing me.
‘Errr, you’re using laser cutters today?’ Raven asked on the team circuit.
‘Only the smaller laser guns,’ said Playdon.
‘Laser guns are just as lethal as full size cutters,’ said Raven. ‘They can cut through impact suits as easily as they cut through walls.’
‘I believe I’ve mentioned that to my class several times,’ said Playdon.
There was smothered laughter on the team circuit. Playdon reminded us of the safety issues every single time anyone used a laser.
‘It’s just … I didn’t realize your excavation work was so dangerous. Civilians shouldn’t be taking such risks.’
A chorus of voices instantly responded with the proud joke that had started when the dig teams at New York Main Dig Site rescued the Military from the wreck of Solar 5. ‘We aren’t civilians, we’re archaeologists!’
Raven’s resigned sigh was perfectly audible over the team circuit. ‘All right, but please be careful, Jarra.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Fian is taking care of me. He’s an amaz tag support.’
I waited a moment to make sure the building wasn’t going to shed more concraz on me, then switched the safety off the laser gun.
‘Laser on.’ I triggered the deceptively innocent looking, glittering beam.
‘Laser on,’ echoed Fian’s voice on the team circuit.
I cut horizontally across from the top of the doorway, and then vertically downwards, the beam of the laser slicing smoothly through the concraz wall and its reinforcing mesh. As the section of wall started toppling forward, I cut the laser and set the safety on.
‘Safety on,’ I said.
‘Safety on,’ echoed Fian’s voice.
As he spoke, the lifeline beam tugged at my back, pulling me upwards and away from the building. I dangled in midair as rubble cascaded through the newly widened hole. When things calmed down, Fian landed me gently on the ground again.
I cut out three more sections of wall, then started extending the hole on the other side of the original doorway. As I was making the first vertical cut, a whole area of wall broke under the weight of rubble behind it. Rocks tumbled towards me as I set the laser gun to safety and shouted the vital words. ‘Safety on!’
Fian’s lifeline beam snatched me upwards, but one large block of concraz hit my side. My impact suit instantly triggered, the material locking around me, knocking the breath out of me and freezing me rigid, right arm still outstretched with my hand gripping the laser gun. I hovered on the edge of impact suit blackout, dimly hearing voices over the team circuit. One of them was Fian.
‘Jarra, are you hurt? Jarra?’
I came back to full consciousness, breathless and still unable to move. ‘I’m fine.’
‘I hate having to wait to pull you out,’ said Fian.
‘Safety rules forbid moving someone holding an active laser for very good reasons,’ said Playdon. ‘The laser only has to waver to shear off an arm or worse. Everyone should understand that by now.’
Voices chorused on the team circuit. ‘We understand.’
Playdon groaned. ‘I wish you’d all stop parroting that like 2-year-olds. I should never have let Professor Kipkibor near one of my classes. Jarra, stop giggling!’
I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t me because everyone said I had a very distinctive giggle. ‘Sorry, sir. I’m unfrozen now, Fian, so you can put me down.’
Fian landed me on the ground near the building. The hole in the front wall was much bigger than I’d planned, but that would just make my job easier. I took the laser gun back to Playdon.
‘Thank you,’ said Playdon. ‘I’ll go and supervise team 2 doing their laser cutting now. Call me at once if you have any problems.’
‘I aged about fifty years in the last five minutes,’ said Raven in a plaintive voice. ‘Is it really worth taking all these risks just to find out about history?’
‘We find more than history,’ I said. ‘Just before Exodus century, human civilization was at its peak, building incredible places like Ark, Eden, and New Tokyo. Then everyone rushed off to new worlds, the Earth data net crashed, and we lost half of human knowledge. These ruins are full of clues to lost science, either preserved by pure chance or protected inside a stasis box.’
‘Lots of everyday items use ancient technology rediscovered by dig teams,’ added Fian. ‘Food dispensers, impact suits, even hover luggage.’
‘I’d no idea,’ said Raven.
I inspected the huge heap of rubble in front of the building. A small statue was glowing blue amongst the white and grey of concraz. I picked it up, admired the still perfect, glowplas figure of a dancing girl, then took out my tag gun and spent a couple of minutes firing electronic tags at the larger chunks of concraz.
‘Amalie, Krath, please shift that lot over to the left.’
The beams of the two heavy lift sleds came to life, swinging across to lock on to the electronic tags and lift the concraz out of the way. I left them working and headed back to the transport sled with the statue.
‘Raven, look at the fine detail on this. That means it was carved by hand, not manufactured in a mould. Back in the days before humanity reached Adonis, some artist spent ages lovingly creating this.’
‘Fascinate!’ Raven cradled it rev
erently in his hands for a moment, before handing it over to be packed away in a container.
As the heavy lifts moved away the larger debris, more came tumbling out of the front of the building. When it was stable, I searched through it, but found nothing except shards of glass. I tagged another batch of rubble for the heavy lifts, they shifted it, and the next rubbish cascade gave us the dented flexiplas case of some electrical item. Its contents were probably destroyed by time or already familiar to us, but we’d pack it and send it for examination by experts just in case.
‘Drag net, please,’ I said.
Amalie and Krath widened their heavy lift beams and used them to drag the smaller rubbish out of the way, while I indulged myself with a five-minute rest on the bench at the back of the tag support sled. When I stood up again, there was a nagging pain in my left side where the impact suit material had triggered to protect me from the block of rubble. I ignored it and headed back to the building. As a tag leader, I constantly suffered impact suit bruising from falling rubble and ricocheting tags, but my team always overreacted and blamed themselves when I got hurt.
We’d been working our way through rubble for at least another hour, when I saw a strange, fuzzy black object among a jumble of concraz lumps. ‘Hoo eee! We’ve got a stasis box!’ I yelled.
There was a chorus of cheers. Playdon must have been listening to us on the team circuit, because he came over to check the stasis box before we loaded it on to the transport sled.
‘What’s inside?’ asked Raven.
‘We won’t know until Lecturer Playdon opens it,’ I said. ‘It looks like a standard memorial stasis box. People were leaving Earth, never to return, and they left stasis boxes in their abandoned houses, preserving farewell messages and sentimental items like wedding dresses. If you’re lucky, the data chips include recordings of old newzie programmes and other precious data.’
‘If you find lost technology, you can get a small fortune in rewards,’ added Krath. ‘When we were working at Eden dig site, we found an ancient research lab and …’
Playdon interrupted him, speaking on the team circuit. ‘Team 1 will rest now. Team 4 continue the excavation.’
I groaned. Steen, tag leader of team 4, was already heading towards me. I went to meet him, and reluctantly handed over my hover belt and tag gun. The background hum of my comms changed note as Playdon spoke to me on a private channel.
‘Jarra, I can tell from the way you’re moving that you’re in pain.’
I set my comms to reply on the private channel. ‘Just impact suit bruising, sir.’
‘You’re quite sure you haven’t cracked a rib?’
‘I’m sure, sir.’
The rest of team 1 handed over their sleds to members of team 4, and we all went to sit with Raven on the transport sled. I set my comms to listen only, then unsealed my impact suit hood and opened it, savouring the moment when the fresh air hit my sweaty face. Blizz, pure blizz.
I watched Fian yank down his hood and struggle to sort out a tangle in his long blond hair using clumsy, fabric-enclosed fingers. I’d grown used to accepting the oddities of twenty different planets. Fian wouldn’t carry a comb around with him. Krath was scared of butterflies. Dalmora was horrified if she was late for something. Amalie held her shoes upside down and shook them before putting them on.
‘Fian, are those spots on your face?’ asked Krath.
Fian glared at him. ‘No! It’s a rash from the sun block irritating my skin. The doctors at Zulu base have sent me some better quality stuff that should fix the problem.’
‘It’s nice the Military worry about your spots,’ said Krath.
I heroically held back a giggle, used my Military lookup to send a message to my friend Issette, then displayed a holo image of a graph in midair.
‘I thought you’d finished that work on historical analysis theorems for Playdon,’ said Krath.
I sighed. ‘I have, but when Playdon saw it he said it showed I had deeper underlying problems. He’s started me on a remedial maths course.’
‘Can’t you get Fian to do it for you?’ asked Krath. ‘Playdon couldn’t tell the difference.’
‘I bet he could,’ said Fian.
‘Playdon’s right,’ I said. ‘I can’t spend my whole life dodging everything mathematical. The whole thing is my bullying school science teacher’s fault. She kept telling everyone I was stupid, and the maths teacher joined in because he didn’t like me.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t the easiest of pupils, Jarra,’ said Fian, ‘but those teachers sound very unprofessional.’
I shrugged. ‘Most Handicapped babies are abandoned at birth, so Hospital Earth has huge problems finding enough staff in all areas of childcare. The Nursery units must be properly staffed, because babies can’t feed themselves, so other residences and schools have to take anyone they can get. My history teacher was brilliant, he loved his subject, but my science teacher just wanted victims to bully.’
‘I’d always assumed Hospital Earth hired people from other worlds,’ said Raven. ‘I’m an idiot. If people won’t go to Earth to care for their own Handicapped babies …’
‘We were constantly lectured about it in the residences,’ I said. ‘We had to be mature and self-sufficient and help care for the younger ones. We should choose careers in childcare because it was our responsibility to raise the next generation of abandoned babies from other worlds.’
‘It surely isn’t all left to the people who grew up in residences themselves,’ said Raven. ‘Don’t some of the children of the Handicapped …?’
I shook my head. ‘Nine out of ten of the children of Handicapped couples are born norms and head off to live on other worlds when they grow up. Hospital Earth keep talking about solving the problem by passing a law to force all the Handicapped to work in childcare for five years after leaving school.’
‘Hospital Earth couldn’t force a law like that on people,’ said Fian.
‘The main board of Hospital Earth run this planet and they can do anything they like,’ I said. ‘They aren’t elected by us, they’re off-worlders appointed by the sectors.’
Raven frowned. ‘You can’t mean the citizens of Earth have no say in its laws.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ I said. ‘The only thing stopping the board members passing that law is they’re worried forcing people to work with children would increase the child abuse numbers. They don’t want to mess up their performance statistics and lose their precious Year End bonuses.’
The sensor sled alarm wailed, and we all turned to look at where team 4 were working. I saw the lifeline beam snatch Steen up into the air, and there was a crash of falling masonry from inside the building.
‘What the chaos was that?’ asked Raven.
‘The two remaining upper floors must have collapsed,’ I said. ‘That’s good. It’ll be safe to work inside the building now.’
Steen was lowered to the ground and went back to work. For the rest of the morning, I battled to make sense of mind-numbingly boring maths problems, occasionally asking Fian to explain something. Eventually, Playdon’s voice came over the team circuit and put an end to my suffering.
‘Cassandra 2 tell me they’re stopping work now, so we’ll pack up as well and head back to the domes with them. After we’ve eaten lunch, I’ll open the stasis box, and then we’ll start the afternoon lectures.’
A few minutes later, the sleds of Cassandra 2 drove past us, and our sleds started moving to follow them. By the time we reached the dome, I was wondering if I should put a fluid patch on my side. I didn’t usually bother to treat impact suit bruising, but this was especially painful.
We all hurried into the dome, hoods down, eager to strip off the rest of our burdensome impact suits and shower. Team 1 all had rooms close together near the store room, so we headed down the corridor as a group. Raven was in the lead, followed by me and Fian, then Krath, Amalie and Dalmora. We’d nearly reached our rooms when I heard a sudden shrill sound I di
dn’t recognize.
‘Down!’ Raven screamed the word.
I stared at him like an idiot for a split second, and he threw himself at me, knocking me to the floor. Another weight landed on top of me, which meant Fian was playing hero and protecting me too. The shrill sound must be coming from the tiny sensor Raven habitually carried. Fian and I had joked about the way he constantly scanned and rescanned the dome for threats but …
There was a deafening sound, and the flexiplas wall of the corridor flew straight at me.
I must have been unconscious for a few seconds after that. I woke to the sickening sight of Amalie lying on the floor next to me, her face slashed open to the bone and pouring blood. Krath was bending over her, seemingly unaware of the shard of metal that had stabbed right through his impact suit into his left arm.
Playdon’s voice shouted from somewhere close by. ‘Outside! Everyone, get back outside!’
I tried to sit up, but my head hurt like chaos. Arms grabbed me from either side, and Fian and Raven carried me back down the corridor, Fian’s voice softly cursing in my ear. ‘Nuke it, nuke it. Chaos typical that something would miss both of us and hit Jarra. She attracts trouble like …’
‘I’m all right,’ I said. ‘Help Amalie.’
‘Playdon and Krath are bringing Amalie,’ said Fian.
There was the sudden warmth of sunlight as we went outside, and I saw the shocked figures of my classmates, Dalmora at the front with tears streaming down her face. Members of the Cassandra 2 team were running towards us, with the unmistakable purple and silver impact suit of Rono in the lead.
‘What the chaos happened here?’ he asked. ‘Something lethal in your stasis box?’
‘No,’ said Raven. ‘It was a small-scale, proximity activated, explosive device. A Military Security team are already portalling in to secure this dome. We’ll use the portal in your dome to evacuate casualties to Zulu base for treatment.’
‘Explosive device,’ repeated Rono. ‘Someone planted a bomb?’