The Lost Colony

Chapter 47

At dawn, the probe emerged yet again. It slowed briefly, its scanners attentive to the new rock that had appeared. Shortly however, the machine lost interest and began a new circuit. Again, Sparr darted forward to loosen more rocks. Following the same pattern as before, he left a few small stones just outside the doors while lugging several heavier rocks to the ledge.

Twice more the drone appeared. Its afternoon circuits were spaced farther apart, and the machine seemed to fly closer to the ground. No doubt, thought Sparr, whoever had programmed it was concerned with it attracting too much attention during daylight hours. The longer gaps gave him time to pile more rocks above the door. By nightfall he was ready.

Radio waves at twenty-five meters, his implant said. Fifteen.

Sparr readied himself. Crouched above the door, he braced his back against the hill, while his feet rested against the pile of rocks. Nervous energy spiked within him. His plan would either work or put him in great peril.

Five meters.

The shrill whine of thrusters poured from the open doors. Right on schedule, the drone was beginning another circuit of the island. Sparr took a deep breath, and as the drone emerged, kicked with all of his strength. A landslide rained down upon the machine.

A cacophonous, metallic shriek tore out across the clearing. Sparr heard one electric hiss after another, the machine's stunwires firing uselessly against the rocks. The thrusters howled and sputtered. Somewhere beneath him, the machine was dying. He peered over the ledge. To his dismay, the crippled drone was almost free of the rock pile. He couldn't let it get free, couldn't take the risk that it might detect him.

Desperately, Sparr jumped, landing with a painful grunt atop the pile of rock and metal. As the drone shuddered and lurched beneath him, he grabbed a stone. Sparr bashed it into the drone's housing, raised the stone, and struck again. Spittle flew from his lip. He sucked in a ragged lung full of air and struck again. A gout of sparks shot from the drone.

Again and again he raised the stone.

***

The facility doors spread like arms, embracing the pile of rubble, machine, and destruction. Half numb, Sparr walked through them, into a world of noise and light.

The stairs down swirled with the same thick, humid mist that Sparr had first noticed above. Carefully gripping a rail that had been built four hundred years earlier, he descended. To one side, corrugated ventilation shafts bore toward the surface. To the other, a hollow shaft dropped farther than he cared to consider. Whatever the original colonists had built here, it probed deep into the planet.

A rhythmic tapping filled the chamber, the sound growing stronger as Sparr descended, tiny but powerful recessed lights guiding his way. Though coated with grime, the ancient facility seemed completely operational. Dust, no doubt kicked up by the recent passage of the drone, slowly settled back to the floor. After dropping three flights, he came upon a small landing. Here a sign, still legible, had been bolted to the rough-hewn stone.

INGOT FABRICATION 17

Below the sign was a panel which had been violently gutted. From it, two sets of wires had been pulled free, both leading out into the room. One set was a heavy gauge suitable for power, the other had been attached to a small device which Sparr recognized as a short-range data reader. This, he surmised, was where the drone recharged between patrols. There was nothing else of interest on the landing.

Two more flights down led Sparr to the functioning core of the facility. On the left, a massive, ridged cylinder hummed and glowed, issuing forth a steady gout of the steam which filled the facility. It narrowed at the base, ending in a chute. The tapping sound came from within it. Farther along the wall, a touch-panel displayed progress.

Ingot batch 1: 3.05% complete

Ingot batch 2: 0.00% complete (ore(s) unavailable)

Ingot batch 3: 0.00% complete (ore(s) unavailable)

As Sparr struggled to understand, the cylinder clicked, then shuddered with a much louder ringing sound. A rectangular ingot of dull, silver metal dropped from the chute into a hopper.

Ingot batch 1: 3.06% complete

"What the f**k?" Sparr muttered, peering into the hopper. He picked up the newly-fabricated ingot. Still warm, the chunk of metal seemed to Sparr completely ordinary. What about the production of the metal made it so important? Something occurred to him. He fished a token from his pocket and pressed it against the ingot. Although impossible to tell for sure, the two metals seemed identical. Was someone preparing to mint new tokens? Why? Each was only as valuable as the information coded within it.

[click]

Sparr spun, startled. To his horror, another drone hovered less than three meters away.

[click]

The thing was taking his photo. Unlike the military drone, the service model that now confronted him would be unarmed. That wouldn't stop it from giving him away. As Sparr gawked, the machine began to float up the stairs. He couldn't let it reach the surface.

Sparr flung himself after the machine, half running, half throwing himself against the stairs. He was fast, but the drone was faster. The device pulled away, up, and toward the open doors above. As Sparr chased after it, he groped for a pistol.

He would be too late. Already the drone had pulled away from him, spoiling any chance at a clear shot. The machine raced past the next landing, then through the last few flights before the surface. Once clear, it could broadcast his photo. Sparr chased it desperately.

"Rwrrrrf!"

Just within sight of the doors, the drone encountered Bogg. The beast, no doubt remembering its encounter with the other drone, rose on his hind legs. The service drone tilted right, then left, but couldn't get past in the tight confines of the upper landing. Sparr took advantage of the delay, charging up the last few flights. He flung himself toward the drone, slamming it against the stone wall. Before the device could recover he kicked it away and shot it with his pistol. Unlike the military drones, the service drones were unarmored. Sparr's first shot tore a hole in the outer casing, the second shot hit the power cell. The drone crashed, the whine of its thrusters slowly fading.

"Urmfff," Bogg groaned. He rolled back onto his haunches, seemingly pleased with his role in the elimination of the threat.

Sparr drew in one ragged breath after another, trying to calm himself. Just outside the facility the battered military drone lay in the center of the rock pile. Ignoring it for the moment, he went to inspect the service drone. His shot had gutted the machine, exposing a tangle of burnt wires and the ruptured power cell. The drone's articulated arms hung limp.

Still panting with exertion, Sparr flipped the drone over. The machine's back was undamaged. Like its armored brethren, the service drone had a port for recharging, and one for wireless data transfer. He remembered the data transfer station on the next landing. Perhaps he could read the drone's memory.

Sparr half dragged, half kicked the inert drone down several flights of stairs to the next landing. He rolled the machine to the gutted panel and attached the reader. There was no screen on the landing. With a sigh, he walked to the lower level.

Ingot batch 1: 3.07% complete the display read. Sparr touched the screen, found a menu, and began to explore. In less than a minute he found a promising option.

Ingot 17, Reader 1

Sparr touched it.

Onboard storage detected. Corrupt.

"s**t!" Sparr cursed. He must have fried the memory when he shot the drone. For every piece of the mystery that he exposed, he ran into two dead ends. The facility was a mine, its shaft piercing deep into the planet, liquifying and extracting metal, and stamping it into ingots. But to what end? Who aboard the Odysseus was behind the operation? Sparr was tired. By now it was well past sunset. He had spent the day piling rocks, battling drones, and exploring the mining facility. Sleep would soon take him.

The Shong drone. Through the fog of disappointment and fatigue, Sparr remembered pulling its processor. He dug in his pack and located the module, a featureless black rectangle. "Why not?" he asked himself. One final time he trudged up the stairs and replaced the service drone's damaged processor with the one he had pried loose in Shong. He returned to the lower landing, little more than an ember of hope remaining within him.

Onboard storage detected. Two data clusters:

- Geographic overlay

- List data

He touched "Geographic overlay."

Sparr watched in wonder as the display transformed, replacing the text menu with a radiantly colorful map of Kaybe. Seas, continents, islands, forests, mountains, rivers, and lakes appeared in intricate detail. What he was seeing wasn't the remote scans the Alliance had shown during the months of preparation for the mission. The Odysseus itself had taken these images from orbit.

The controls were unfamiliar to Sparr, relics of technology hundreds of years old. Only after trial and error could he figure out the basics of navigating across the map, zooming in, and exploring locations. The map was sprinkled with dots. Most were unmarked, but a few were labeled with icons or short names. By consulting the map legend, Sparr identified towns, fabrication sites, mines, and other places of interest. He dug at his memories, trying to match what he had seen from orbit with the map at his fingers. After several frustrating minutes of inspection he located first Shong, then Santi. Horn Island lay just to the north, unnamed, but with a symbol confirming it to be a mine.

He would continue his journey to Santi. On the map, the town was marked by a red triangle which, according to the legend, indicated a fabrication site. As astounding as it was to find a functioning colonist-era mine, it was of little use to him. He couldn't build anything here, just stockpile ingots that to his knowledge were useless. Worse, he had no idea how long he would be safe. The point of planting rocks outside the facility door, and of using the landslide against the military drone, was to make it appear that natural events had destroyed it. But the service drone was a different matter. Bogg had blocked it from exiting the facility, but Sparr had to acknowledge the possibility that it had sent a distress call, possibly containing his photo, to whoever had sent it. And in either event, whoever he or she was, they might investigate regardless. He couldn't risk staying any longer than necessary.

***

"You Alain?"

Sparr and Bogg stood on the spit, watching the skiff approach through the unpredictable surf. Beyond, a heavy barge wallowed, stacks of crates lashed to its flat deck. It was from the barge that the skiff had been sent.

"Yes," Sparr said. "Jance told you to look for me here?"

"Not Jance, but word got out." A man and a woman worked the skiff. He rowed, while she eyed Sparr suspiciously, her hand resting on a wicked blade at her side. "We're headed to Santi."

"You have room for us?"

"Yeah," she said, sizing him up. The little skiff tossed in the waves, just off the beach. "Ten tokens."

"Five is fair," Sparr countered. "You're not even a day out."

They settled on seven. Later, Sparr and Bogg huddled under a leather tarp, trying to avoid a stinging rain. Before them, Santi began to emerge from the mist.

Sparr reflected on what he had learned on Horn Island. With some experimentation with the control panel, he had been able to shut down production, listening with satisfaction as the mechanical sounds subsided. He had disabled the lights and ventilation, leaving the facility, and Horn Island itself, quiet. Sparr grabbed several of the ingots and departed the facility, doing his best to seal the door behind him. The Precipice should be pleased, and with what he had learned from the map he hoped to find a fabrication site in Santi.

But it was the other piece of data in the drone's memory that troubled him. The data cluster called 'List data' had contained three files. The first, labeled 'Track', contained the names of the Odysseus crew, starting with Captain Fowler and ending with the most junior technicians. The second, labeled 'Whitelist', held only two names: Kevin Happner, and Calista Brandt.

Before Sparr opened the file labeled 'Contain' he already knew that it would hold but a single name.