Pirra felt pretty certain that they were lost.
Ever since escaping the humans that had been chasing them, they’d been trying to find their way back with very little luck. The tracking signal of the Hurricane was clearly wrong, off, or had been tampered with; it was leading them deeper into the asteroid.
Their comm signals couldn’t penetrate the rock to call for assistance; even if they could, anyone with half a brain would be listening in and be able to home in on their signal. It would stand out against the local chatter.
“I admit,” Cenz said, “That I severely underestimated their hostility to outsiders.”
“You and me both,” she whistled. “I’ve heard of xenophobia like this, but I always thought it had faded, just something from the early days of contact.”
Cenz seemed to focus on her a moment as they made their way along the tunnel; she felt like the science officer was attempting to discern her mood.
It was sour, she wanted to tell him.
Even besides the obvious, the colony had the worst layout Pirra had ever seen; half of the tunnels simply led to dead ends, and others branched off in random and almost inexplicable directions.
“It seems to me,” Cenz noted, apparently giving up on telling her mood, “that they did not create a centralized plan for the most efficient layout of tunnels.”
“I think that everyone with mining tools just took to walls whenever and wherever they felt like,” she replied. “Probably how they ended up with tunnels covered in holes.”
The one they’d escaped down hadn’t been the only one; they’d found five others and taken as random a path as they could, their only hope of losing pursuit in a place their enemy would know better than they.
That had been some time ago, though. Looking down a corridor, it looked the same to her as the last dozen; a squarish tunnel of semi-smoothed rock, that slowly meandered off at an angle. Like the miner couldn’t even keep his equipment moving straight – or just didn’t care to bother.
“We must be really deep inside this rock by now,” she added.
“Not to be contrary, but I believe we are actually close to the surface. It concerns me somewhat, as this section does not have the same structural stability as many others.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. Technically, Cenz could withstand the pressure fairly well, his suit being rated for even explosive decompression. As was hers – except she didn’t have a helmet on.
“Perhaps we should double-back,” she suggested. “They won’t expect that, and there’s a lot of places to hide if we hear them approaching. Plus we might see something we recognize.”
Cenz agreed, and they began to reverse their course. Unfortunately, the haphazard nature of the tunnels made it difficult, and despite normally having a keen sense of direction, Pirra soon found herself feeling lost.
“I’ve never seen this corridor before,” she noted. There was a crudely-painted number four on the wall – she’d have noticed that.
“I’m sure this is new,” Cenz agreed. “But I do not know where we took our wrong turn. Should we re-trace our steps again?”
“No,” she said. “At least this suggests people live near here, if they marked it. If we find someone, we can find out where we are.”
Theoretically, at least. If they’d talk to her or Cenz without being threatened. She really didn’t want to have to do that.
“I’m going to turn on my sensor systems to keep a chart of our path,” she decided. “We can start to get a layout of the place.”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” Cenz said. “The rules that the colonists laid out for us forbids the use of such sensors.”
“Wait, seriously?” That was a bizarre decision, and she’d never heard of a colony preventing that. It was only ever an issue if . . .
They were hiding something.
Cenz continued to speak. “Apparently some of their equipment is very old, and active sensor mapping can interfere with it. I’m not entirely certain of the specs of very old equipment design from Earth, but I suppose it’s possible . . .”
“Passive only, then. Even if that’s against their rules they won’t know. I can’t imagine attacking us like that was in their rules, either.”
“Ah, yes,” Cenz agreed. “Probably not.”
The tunnel seemed like it was more built up than most; there were metal plates over particularly rough sections with handholds on them, allowing them to move through the area easily.
“Is that a window?” Cenz asked.
Pirra looked up; she’d been keeping her eyes on her path rather than what lay further ahead. Down the tunnel, though, there seemed to be a door that was surrounded by glass. It looked as if it led directly into space.
But that wasn’t possible – they weren’t that close to the surface. She may have gotten lost, but she felt confident about that!
And who would build a window on a space station around a door? Windows were just a weak spot, and cheap monitor could provide a view that few biological beings could tell apart from the real thing.
“It is a window,” she realized as they moved closer. “Look, out there – it’s not space we’re seeing. It’s more rock.”
Cenz moved to the window and nearly pressed against the glass. “I see,” he muttered. “This is a fissure in the asteroid. It looks nearly solid from the outside, but internally it’s cracking apart.”
He turned his screen to look at her. “What did they do? This doesn’t look natural.”
“I have no idea,” she muttered. “And why a door here? Is there a tunnel to the other side?”
“Ah, that . . . No, I think I can answer that now. They took advantage of the opening to put some kind of tram in. Actually quite a reasonable thing, I suppose. Better than having to carve out all the rock.”
Pirra pressed her face to the glass, too. Yes, she could see it now. It wasn’t a large thing, but it was clearly something akin to an elevator.
“Is it pressurized?”
“The system says it is.” The eyebrows on his electronic screen arched. “Care to give it a whirl?”
“Beats floating,” she agreed.
“It has an AI that is asking me my business, but it’s a very simple mind. I have parsed the data in my response in such a way that the AI should not think to report this incident to anyone. I cannot be sure, though, that some other part of the system will not make note of it.”
Pirra accepted that – he was the commanding officer, anyway.
She had a feeling, though, that he suspected that something was going on just as much as she did. This went deeper than local hostility to aliens, there was something going on with the colony itself.
Despite Cenz being in charge, she felt a measure of responsibility for him. She was the one with survival training, he . . . well, he was a science officer. Capable, but not trained to the same level as her in this.
“Let’s use it,” she said. “At the very least we can get back to an occupied area. Maybe they’ll get pissed, but we can deal with it.”
Cenz popped the door, and they both floated in.
“It moves in four directions,” he noted. “But gives us no information on where we are – given time I believe I could calculate what direction would take us nearer the surface, but I’d rather move quickly and not dawdle.”
“Agreed,” she said. “Take us up.” She realized there was no proper up, and pointed upwards above her head. “That way.”
“Why?” Cenz asked.
“I have a better sense of three-dimensional places than humans,” she said. “I have a feeling about that way.”
The screen on Cenz’s suit put on a wry smile. “With respects, Pirra, I’m not a human and my kind live in the water. We, too, have a very good sense of three dimensions.”
She realized her faux pas. “Oh . . . Cenz, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking-“
“It’s fine,” he said, letting out a laugh. Again she saw the flashes of light from deeper in his suit. “But I think we should move what you would consider down.”
“You’re the ranking officer, sir.”
He chuckled again. “Just keep calling me Cenz. But Pirra – do you trust me?”
She blinked and considered. But she only had to think on it a moment.
“Yes, Cenz.”
“Then down we go.”
Other Terrestrial 