Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 34

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  Bobby watched the interior hatch close, sealing them off from the rest of the ship, then settled himself on his scooter and powered it up. As the air was evacuated from the compartment, he ran through a last check of the controls. Barney had made the controls as simple as possible. All Bobby had to worry about was finding his way back through that labyrinth of pitch black tunnels.

  Although the compartment they were in was the smallest of all the storage bays, it still took some time for the atmosphere to be completely evacuated. Once all of the air had been removed from the bay the lights went out. A moment later, the outer hatch began to open. A bar of light painted itself across the back wall of the compartment as the door slid aside until the four of them were spotlighted in the pale glow coming from outside. Booby glanced up at the indicator panel above the hatch, waited until the artificial gravity monitor glowed red, then fired a short burst from the scooter’s thrusters. They rose smoothly off the floor of the bay and headed out.

  Since the cargo bay was on the ship’s starboard side they had the bulk of the ship between them and anyone who might be watching from a nearby viewport. Bobby headed them directly away from the ship to keep the Prometheus behind them as a shield for as long as possible. Following close behind them Bruce and Jimmy matched their trajectory.

  Only when the ship had dwindled to a small fraction of its normal size did Bobby turn them toward the tunnel entrance. Now that they were far out into the middle of the cavern he increased their velocity, accelerating them toward the tunnel entrance, although he kept their speed well below the maximum acceleration the torpedo engine could produce. Even though they were shielded from sensor scans someone might notice the engine trails of two small objects racing across the middle of the cavern and he did not want to draw attention to their presence. Once they had reached what Bobby felt was a reasonable speed he cut their thrust to allow them to coast the rest of the way.

  At the rate they were traveling it would be a few minutes before they reached the mouth of the tunnel. Although he had spent several years in space as the pilot of the Prometheus, Bobby had little experience using an environment suit, and no experience at all with armor. He felt strangely isolated within the confines of his artificial enclosure and found his senses playing tricks on him. In particular, although he knew they were moving through vacuum, his mind kept insisting that he should be hearing the rush of the wind or at least feel the pressure of it blowing against him. The only thing he heard however was the rasp of his own breathing within his helmet, an oddly hollow sound that lent a surreal feeling to the experience. Because they wanted to avoid detection they had to maintain radio silence so they couldn’t even talk to each other. For a time he just watched the mouth of the tunnel as it slowly grew before them. Now that they were outside of the ship, the opening seemed many times larger than it had before. The black entrance appeared foreboding as it loomed larger and larger ahead of them. As he stared into that gigantic opening a shiver raced up his spine. He suddenly felt very vulnerable out in the open like they were.

  After a while he twisted around, eventually managing to turn himself enough so that he could see Clive sitting directly behind him. The tactical team leader seemed to be perfectly relaxed as he sat astride their makeshift transportation, although he realized that it was hard to tell much through the rigid suit. Slightly above and off to their right he could see Bruce and Jimmy paralleling their course.

  Clive gestured to him. At first Bobby didn’t understand what he wanted. Then he realized that Clive was motioning for him to lean toward him. Shifting in his saddle, Bobby leaned back while Clive leaned toward him until their helmets were touching.

  “Something wrong?” Clive asked.

  Bobby was surprised that he could hear him. Then he realized that the sound vibrations were being transmitted through the connected helmets.

  “Just feeling a little spooked,” Bobby admitted. “We’re so exposed out here.”

  “You’ll get used to it. If you haven’t peed your suit by now you won’t. To tell you the truth, I’m impressed by how well you’re handling it. A lot of people have real trouble their first time doing EVA. Try to keep your attention focused on a fixed point. That usually helps.”

  “Thanks.” He wanted to say more to keep the conversation going but he couldn’t think of anything to talk about.

  Clive sensed his unease. He decided to keep Bobby talking for a while to keep his mind focused on something other than where they were. “How far apart do you think we should plant the tracking beacons?” he asked.

  Hanging from the side of their scooter in a small cargo net were several dozen tracking beacons. The baseball sized objects would emit an electronic pulse on a specific microwave frequency once they were activated. The bursts given off by the beacons would show up on the bridge screen and act like electronic flairs, showing the path they had taken. They planned to plant the beacons along their path through the tunnels as a way for the Prometheus to follow them in case they were not able to get back to the ship before it had to leave. Barney had called the trackers electronic breadcrumbs.

  “I figure we should drop one every five hundred meters or so as well as right before each turn,” Bobby said after thinking about it for a moment. “As long as they have good line-of-sight between the markers they shouldn’t have any trouble finding their way.”

  “Five hundred meters it is. What about finding your way through the tunnels? Have you tried the infrared setting in your helmet yet?”

  “Actually, I haven’t,” Bobby said, suddenly remembering. “I’ll give it a try now.”

  One of the upgrades Clive’s team had made to the battle armor was to add a range of visual spectrum settings to the helmet face plates. Since the tunnels were not lighted, they needed a way to navigate through the twisted passages without drawing attention to themselves. Barney had replaced the torpedo warheads with powerful infrared spotlights. With their faceplates set to infrared they should be able to see the interior of the tunnel in a kind of murky twilight.

  Sitting upright in his seat, Bobby chinned the control switch in his helmet to activate the heads-up display on his faceplate. A row of function tiles appeared across the top edge of his visor while a number of suit status monitors flashed into existence along the bottom edge. Focusing on the tile for the visual settings, Bobby blinked twice in rapid succession to bring up the sub menu and made his selection. His view instantly changed. The lights that had been shining at him from the numerous habitat modules suddenly shifted into various shades of reddish orange, depending on the amount of heat being emitted. Unlike before however, he could not only see the lighted viewports but each module was visible now as well, appearing as differing shapes of deep red which faded to purple at the edges. He even saw a number of larger structures throughout the cavern that he hadn’t noticed before. Although they had no viewports they appeared as gently pulsating blobs in the darkness. These he assumed to be power generators or other machines that maintained critical functions for the inhabited modules. It took him a few moments to adjust to the different way everything looked in the infrared spectrum, but once he did he was confident that he would be able to see well enough to find his way through the tunnels.

  After a while he double blinked his visor back to the standard setting. He leaned back toward Clive who met him halfway to touch helmets again.

  “What do you think?” Clive asked.

  “It takes a little getting used to but I should be able to see well enough to keep us going in the right direction.”

  “Excellent.” Clive paused as he pulled a tracking beacon out of the net. “We’re almost there. I’m getting the first beacon ready.”

  Bobby sat up and looked forward. They were rapidly approaching the tunnel entrance. Less than a minute later they were passing into the mouth of the tunnel. Bobby had to fight down the feeling that they were being s
wallowed whole by some behemoth monster.

  As they passed out of the light in the cavern, Bobby switched on the infrared spotlight on his scooter and changed his visor setting. Since there were no heat sources inside the tunnel there were no bright spots of light around them. Instead he could see the rocky walls of the tunnel outlined in a murky, rust colored light. Barney had used the most powerful infrared lights he could scrounge up aboard the ship and Bobby found that he could see along the tunnel for nearly a hundred meters. Up ahead the tunnel took a sharp turn to the right. As they approached the turn Clive depressed the activation switch on the beacon he was holding and tossed it at the nearest wall. A number of specially hardened points studded the surface of the beacon. Proximity sensors inside the beacon registered when the device was within a meter of the wall and activated the spike which was most directly facing the wall. The tiny piton was then fired off to imbed itself firmly into the rock. A microfilament wire trailed behind the piton which the beacon used to reel itself down into position.

  Clive reached for another beacon as Bobby was preparing to make the first turn. Using the scooter’s thrusters he spun them to the right until they were drifting sideways and facing the tunnel wall. Moments later they passed the lip of the turn and Bobby fired the main engine to start them forward. As they passed the edge of the turn and the light from the underground base faded away, Bobby pictured the tunnel in his mind’s eye, recalling the twists and turns they had negotiated aboard the Prometheus. The next turn should be up ahead on the left. They would also have to negotiate their way around a jagged spike of rock that should be projecting up from what would be the floor of the tunnel given their present orientation. Playing the thrusters gently, he turned the scooter back to the left and started them across the broad width of the tunnel at an angle, aiming for where he thought the entrance to the correct branching passage should be.

  As Bobby concentrated on finding their way, Clive launched the second beacon at the tunnel wall and reached for the next one.