Read Scourge: Book Two of the Starcrown Chronicles Page 38
* * *
Bobby pushed himself upright in his seat and readjusted his hold on the control grips of his scooter as he noticed a glow coming from up ahead. By the infrared setting of his visor he saw a reddish incandescence shining from around the bend in the tunnel in front of them. As they approached the turn he slowed the scooter and edged them forward at a crawl. This was the first time they had encountered evidence of a power source other than the wash of their own infrared ‘headlights’. According to his memory, they should be approaching the final turn which led to the tunnel entrance. If so, then the glow he was seeing had to be coming from the control bunker for the gigantic guns that guarded the base.
As the nose of the scooter edged around the turn Bobby could see the entrance to the tunnel several hundred meters away. On infrared, the mouth of the tunnel appeared as a black void, while the guns and the control bunker glowed with an eerie inner light. The immense guns were retracted into their niches on either side of the passage with the control bunker carving an arc between them along the roof of the tunnel.
Now that the bunker was in view Bobby felt his stomach muscles begin to unclench. Although he had been fairly certain that he remembered the way back, until he actually saw the bunker there was still a small, nagging worry in the back of his mind that he might end up getting them lost.
Once they had navigated the turn Bobby started them forward slowly. For the first hundred meters or so he kept them tucked in close to the tunnel floor as he watched for any activity from the bunker. His eyes darted about nervously as he searched for a sign that their presence had been detected, but everything remained quiet. It soon became apparent that they had not been spotted and he forced himself to relax as they drew closer to their objective. When they had almost reached the bunker he pulled back on the control grips and started them up toward the broad arc of the complex overhead. A minute later he slowed them to a crawl once more as they approached a rectangular viewport in the side of the bunker. Although he knew not to bring them in too close because they might been seen by someone inside, Bobby wanted to sneak a quick look to get an idea what the internal layout of the bunker was like. As they drifted close enough for him to see through the port however all he saw at first was a confusing view of a dull gray surface. At first he thought that he was looking at the room’s ceiling. It was only when he saw a pair of feet walk by moments later that he realized that what he was actually looking at was the floor of the bunker. The control center was inverted relative to their orientation, making it appear that people were walking upside down.
Carefully manipulating the scooter controls, he rolled them over until the bunker was now underneath them. As they hung suspended above the control bunker he took a moment to look both ways, noting how the installation curved up in both directions as it followed the contour of the tunnel. It reminded Bobby of a section from one of those huge wheels on an old fashioned space station that relied on centrifugal force to generate a sense of gravity. Modern grav plating would provide gravity for the personnel inside this bunker, but the perspective of a floor that was curving up in both directions would take some getting used to.
Unfortunately they couldn’t get any closer to the viewport without making themselves obvious to the people inside. Instead, Bobby turned his scooter and started along the curve of the bunker as they studied it to learn what they could from the exterior. Apart from its novel shape however the bunker appeared no different from any other deep space habitat and they learned nothing about the interior layout.
They followed the arc of the bunker until they reached the gun on the left side of the tunnel. The immense weapon was the length of their ship. It gave Bobby a chill to be this close to the monstrous cannon, but he kept his fear in check and led them along the body of the gun so that Clive and the others could inspect it. When they reached the end of the weapon he flew them in a tight arc around the muzzle of the gun and stopped for a moment so they could take a look inside the barrel. The bore of the gun ran out of sight into the distance and was wide enough to admit both of their scooters with room to spare. The only features they could see from this perspective were a series of magnetic induction rings spaced at regular distances along the length of the barrel. The rings were to focus the plasma blast generated by the weapon. A shiver ran up his spine again as Bobby thought about what would happen to them if the weapon were fired now. If they were in this position when the gun discharged, their molecules would literally be torn apart until they were reduced to a drifting cloud of disassociated atoms.
Although the gaping barrel made him nervous, Bobby would have preferred to fly straight inside the guns to sabotage them rather than what they were planning to do. Unfortunately they were not carrying enough explosives to seriously damage the weapons directly. Bruce Stone was their demolitions expert and he had been adamant that there was nothing aboard their ship that they could transport manually which would be able to put guns this size out of commission. The small pouches of charges that he and Jimmy were carrying at their belts were not enough to even put a dent in these massive barrels or damage more than a few of the induction rings, which would not stop the guns from being fired anyway. But Bruce was convinced that they could put the weapons out of service permanently by destroying the generators that powered them. He had told Jason that the explosives they had with them were more than enough to accomplish this, as long as they were placed properly. The problem was that in order to do what Bruce had in mind they needed to enter the installation.
When he figured they had seen enough, Bobby led them back over the ‘roof’ of the bunker then brought them down carefully until they contacted the surface. Dismounting, they turned the scooters upside down so that the seats and steering controls were hidden, then used magnetic ties to lash them in place amid a confusion of exposed machinery that seemed to be part of the mechanism for raising the guns into firing position. Wedged among the various clusters of coolant tanks and power relay junctions, the scooters should be hidden from casual notice.
Once they had secured their transportation, they crept to the edge of the structure on foot, using the magnetic soles of their boots to keep them in contact with the building. When they were close to the edge, Clive removed a small drone from an equipment pouch on his belt. The disk shaped body of the drone was the size of a man’s palm and was painted with the same ablative coating as their ship. From another pouch he withdrew a small control pad. Releasing the drone so that it remained floating in front of him, Clive activated the control pad. A line of tiny blue lights illuminated the edge of the drone and then faded away as it powered up. A moment later it moved away from them as it dropped closer to the surface of the bunker and began skimming the exterior of the structure. Soon it disappeared over the edge of the roof as it made its way toward a viewport beneath them. The miniature spy stole right up to the lip of the viewport and extended a hair fine fiber-op camera to peer into the window.
The four men crowded together to see the image that was being picked up by the drone. On the screen of Clive’s control pad they could see that the viewport opened into a wide hallway which curved upward out of sight in one direction and ended at a wall full of black faced monitor panels in the other. Bobby watched as complex patterns of indicator lights blinked on and off in the shiny black surfaces, relaying the status of unknown systems going through their mysterious functions within the bunker complex. A wall prevented them from seeing all the way across to the other side of the building, but they noted several doors spaced along it that would open into other rooms. Although they continued to watch the screen for several minutes, in that time they didn’t see anyone moving through the hallway. It was hardly definitive proof but it seemed to confirm their suspicion that the bunker was not heavily manned.
There had been some concern that the intense power fields this close to the guns might interfere with the drones, but Clive hadn’t experienced any dif
ficulty operating the robot camera. Satisfied that the drones would perform as needed, he gave a signal to the others. They spread out to deploy their own drones to begin the process of mapping the bunker. The structure was large, more than two hundred and fifty meters from end to end. To cover the installation as quickly as possible each of them would use their drones to map a different part of the bunker. Clive and Jimmy used their drones to record what they could through the viewports and along the sides of the bunker while Bruce and Bobby guided theirs along the wide roof of the complex, each scanning one half of that surface. Even with the four of them working together it took them several minutes to scan the entire thing.
Eventually the mapping was done and the miniature robots zipped directly back to where their operators were waiting. As they returned, each had their recordings downloaded to Clive’s pad which used a special program to integrate the different scans into a single, three dimensional model of the bunker. Once the model was complete Clive activated the projector. The four of them stood in a circle as a miniature holographic model of the bunker flashed into existence before them. Clive made an adjustment to his pad and the exterior faded away to reveal the interior sections of the bunker. Areas outlined in white were those spaces the drones had been able to observe directly through viewports. Red areas, of which there were at least twice as many as white, represented sections the program had created based on extrapolations made from what could be seen. There were also several areas that were blank voids, where the program did not have enough data to even extrapolate what might be there. The number of blank spaces far outnumbered both the red and white areas together. Had they been able to use the full array of sensors the drones possessed they could have collected much more data and been able to put together a far more complete model of the bunker, but the risk of having their scans detected was too great and they were forced to rely on limited visual scans only.
Bobby had been staring at the image and trying to make sense of what he was seeing when a tap on his shoulder caused him to twist around. Beside him Clive was pointing at something off to their right. Bobby looked in the direction indicated but didn’t understand what Clive was trying to tell him. After a moment Clive made an adjustment to the control pad and changed the hologram back to the exterior view of the bunker. He made the image grow and expand until he had zoomed in on a specific place about one third of the way along the bunker from where they were standing. Bobby studied the image for a moment then realized that Clive was pointing out an airlock. He felt his heartbeat start to race when he understood they were going to try and enter the bunker, but he put on a smile and gave Clive a thumbs-up.
Clive turned off the control pad, deactivated the magnetic soles of his boots and pushed off from the surface of the bunker. The others joined him and soon they were using their suit thrusters to move toward the airlock. They reached the area quickly and halted at the edge of the roof while Clive sent his drone out once more to check the area. He followed the drone’s progress on the screen of his pad, seeing what it saw through its visual scanners. Wide viewports were positioned on either side of the airlock hatch. The ports revealed the interior of a staging area with environment suits lining both side walls and equipment cabinets arranged along the far wall. The compartment was empty of people however.
At Clive’s signal, Jimmy came forward and maneuvered himself over the edge of the roof. He descended toward the sealed hatch while the rest of them held their positions. From a small kit at his waist he selected a tool and quickly removed the cover to the control panel. Jimmy used a probe wand to study the circuitry for a few moments, then gave a thumbs-up to the rest of the team. He would have no trouble bypassing the control system and opening the hatch door.
It only took a minute for Jimmy to complete his task but to Bobby the time seemed to drag by. He was once again feeling exposed and vulnerable as they hung suspended above the bunker. With nothing to do at the moment his imagination started to wander. He began to speculate what would happen if Jimmy were discovered attempting to override the hatch controls, or if they were seen hovering above the complex, or if their presence inside the bunker were discovered. None of the scenarios he imagined ended well for them. After a while he forced himself not to think about what he could not control.
His breathing. If he focused on his breathing he would be fine. He concentrated on taking deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. It was a technique Jason had shown him some time ago to help relieve stress. In and out. In and out. As he continued to focus on his breathing he felt himself starting to relax. By the time Jimmy was finished running the bypass he was almost breathing normally.
As the airlock doors slid open, Bobby and the others joined Jimmy and maneuvered themselves inside. The interior of the airlock was empty and there was no one visible through the inner hatch window. As soon as they were all inside the lock, Jimmy worked the controls to close the outer doors and pressurize the compartment. As the pressure in the airlock rose they felt themselves settle to the floor of the compartment as a sensation of gravity began to pull at them as well. The feeling slowly intensified as the grav plating in the deck gradually increased to a full g. Soon the wall panel indicated that standard air pressure and gravity had been achieved. Jimmy pressed the control to open the inner door.
They kept their helmets on as they stepped into the staging area to hide their features in case they encountered anyone who might recognize them as strangers. They moved carefully into the room, stepping as quietly as the bulky suits would allow. But space armor was built for power and protection not stealth and their feet thudded against the flooring in spite of their attempts to quiet their footfalls.
Directly opposite the airlock was another doorway, the only other exit from the room. Having no other choice they strode to the door. As they stepped into the range of the sensor, the door slid open. They tried to remain as nonchalant as possible as they stepped through into the next room.
They found themselves in a barracks. Around them were rows of stacked bunks where a number of men were reclining. At a glance Bobby figured that there were close to two dozen men staring at them. He felt the bottom drop out of his stomach when he caught sight of the weapon racks on the walls between the bunks and the blaster rifles that were stored there. As they came to an abrupt stop one of the men looked at them and frowned.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “Shift change isn’t for another ten hours.”
Bobby felt his heart begin hammering within his chest.