The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(48)

“Yes?”

“I hope you find something good in there. Something we can use to save us all.”

*

Dalasysla was dead, which meant that all the mechanisms to open the service airlocks to the habitat’s surface were dead as well. Opening them up was going to take time and effort by someone, probably PFC Gamis, who was the mechanical specialist in the marine detachment. The Bransid had the tools for the job—they had known they would probably need them, so they brought them—but then Laure’s people discovered an open service airlock, not too far from where they wanted to be anyway. Suddenly Marce and his team had one less thing to worry about.

“Don’t get too excited,” Sergeant Sherrill said as she and Marce suited up with the rest of the mission team. “It just means a closed bulkhead further in. No matter what, we’re slogging our way to that network operations room.”

The suits on the mission were the latest design and tech, light and flexible, puncture-and tear-and vacuum-resistant, self-resealing (up to a point, and if you reached that point you were probably already screwed), and featured magnetized feet and an oxygen rebreather efficient enough to make the oxygen canister they went out with last for an average of fifteen hours. You could relieve yourself in them, also up to a point. Marce was hoping they would not be away long enough for that to be an issue. The helmets had full recording suites; everything they saw and heard would be recorded.

For this mission the team was small—Marce and Gennety Hanton, a navy computer scientist and historian who specialized in ancient computing systems like the ones on Dalasysla, Sergeant Sherrill and PFCs Gamis and Lyton. No one was expecting to reach the network operations room on this trip. This trip was mostly about making a path to it, through as many sealed bulkheads as it took.

Except that sometime in the last eight hundred years someone had done most of the work for them.

“Take a look at this,” Gamis said. The recon team, all in their suits, crowded around the display the private sat at. From the display Gamis was navigating a drone into the service areas past the airlocks. The drone’s-eye view could see the bulkheads beyond and farther into the habitat had been pried into, pulled up or out, and sometimes entirely destroyed.

“Someone really wanted to get in there,” Hanton said.

“Or get out,” Lyton said.

“How far in can you get?” Sherrill asked Gamis.

Gamis paused, pulled up a three-dimensional map of the section of Dalasysla the drone was in, and floated it alongside the drone’s view. “Birdie’s here.” Gamis motioned to a corridor on the map. “And where we want to go is here, about a klick and a half away.” Gamis went back to the drone and pushed it forward, zooming it through the corridor. “Honestly, Sarge, after the first few bulkheads it’s looking like a straight shot. It doesn’t look like this part of Dalasysla had been sealed off for pressure loss.”

“Which means the habitat lost power before this particular area bled out its air,” Hanton said.

“Maybe,” Gamis said, still navigating the drone. The drone’s view was a combination of several wavelengths of light—above, below and within the normal human range—all merged down into a monochrome report. “Or there was a malfunction. Or a hundred different other things. Whoops.” Gamis maneuvered the drone around some floating debris. “Should have put on the auto collision detect.”

“No gravity,” Marce said.

“No, there wouldn’t be, would there?” Gamis said. “The habitat’s not spinning anymore.”

“More like tidally locked at this point.”

“Well, fine, all right, if you want to get technical about it, sir.”

“No bodies,” Sherrill said.

“What, Sergeant?” Gamis turned to look at his superior.

Sherrill pointed at the monitor. “You’ve driven a klick into the structure and I don’t see any bodies yet.”

“We’re still in the service areas, Sarge,” Gamis said. “People are down there only if they have work to do on the structure itself. I would guess most of whatever bodies there are would be in the habitat proper.”

“It’s still weird.”

“I’m fine not seeing any eight-hundred-year-old frozen mummies before I have to.” Gamis maneuvered the drone some more and then stopped at a door. “This is it,” he said. “Your network ops room for Dalasysla. One of them, anyway. And all we have to do is walk to it slowly in our magnetized boots.”

“So we brought all that bulkhead-prying hardware for nothing,” Sherrill said.

“I wouldn’t say for nothing,” Gamis replied. “This is just one small section of the habitat. Other areas are probably sealed off. We’ll have to see. But at least for this, we got lucky.”

“Well, enjoy it,” Hanton said. “Once we get in there I’ll have to see if I can power up any part of that network center. We may have blown all our luck already.”

*

Marce decided he didn’t like the suits. His nose started to itch pretty much the second he put on his helmet, and he’d already subconsciously tried to scratch his nose three times, smashing his fingers against the helmet each time. After the third time, he gave out a frustrated grunt, which Hanton noticed over the communication circuit.