Disclaimer in previous chapter
- . -
She cried out a little when they shoved her to the floor, accidentally biting her tongue when her knees jarred against the – rock. Maybe cement? It was harder than hard-packed sand, and it didn't feel gritty.
Weight on her shoulders forced her to sit on her legs, and the cloth bag they'd thrown over her head was suddenly torn away. Some of her hair got caught with it, and the rest had been doing nothing besides collecting static, so the sudden rush of cooler air was quickly muffled as her hair suddenly gravitated directly for her face.
Millie Thompson sputtered, shaking her head in an attempt to get it out of her eyes. Her arms were bound quite tightly behind her back, and she wished for the umpteenth time that this was first time this had happened to her. Or second. Or third. Or even fourth.
These knots were quite a bit tighter than the last, though. And her luggage and stun gun were nowhere to be seen. Then again, neither was a sand steamer, so she supposed she'd have to think of another way out of this mess.
Once she'd managed to maneuver her hair out of her eyes, she opened them to find herself staring at a wall. It was cement beneath her knees, clean-swept and wide. She had the feeling she was underground; the air was sweet-smelling and while she didn't remember being forced down stairs, there had been a long ramp involved. Wooden crates were neatly stacked against every available square inch of wall, and what wasn't covered by them displayed large maps.
She shifted her eyes slightly, taking in the maps with her peripheral vision while appearing to stare at the door across from her. One was New Phoenix, one looked a little like Hondelic, and the others she couldn't recognize. She studied the door, knowing it was the one they'd taken her into the room with. She remembered being spun 180 degrees before being forced to her knees. Whoever shoved her into the room was behind her, hand still heavily resting on her right shoulder.
She wasn't gagged, and her head still ached from the blow she must have received. She didn't remember much before the drive ended, and had no idea how she'd ended up in a truck anyway, so the headache meant that someone had hit her. Or maybe drugged her? She didn't know if there was a bump on the back of her head and until she got her hands free she supposed she'd just have to wonder.
She'd waved down the teller just as he was about to step outside for a smoke, cheerfully handed him the letter, backed up a step and considered buying some juice on her way back to -
Meryl!
"I'm sorry, but I can't allow you to see us just yet," a voice spoke, so suddenly she flinched. The hand on her shoulder tightened considerably, and even several moments of stillness from her didn't loosen it.
"W-who are you?"
"You're Millie Thompson, right?"
Millie hesitated, then squared her shoulders despite the painful pressure. "Yes I am! And I don't appreciate being kidnapped when-"
"I'm sorry about that," the voice interrupted smoothly. It sounded quite friendly, and honestly apologetic. "That was the only safe option to get you out of harm's way."
Millie stopped mid-sentence, her angry outburst melting like a banana split in the afternoon suns. Get out of harm's . . . ?
"What do you mean?"
She heard footsteps behind her, very soft. Maybe a light rubber sole? It would wear out terribly fast in the desert. The chief back at the Bernardelli main office wore shoes like that.
"I'm very much afraid there's a killer after you."
Her brain ground to a complete halt.
"Me?" Then, "Maybe you have the wrong Millie Thompson. I-I'm just an insurance investigator for Bernarde-"
"There's no mistake," the voice continued. It sounded a little sad. "We understand you have regular communication with a man called Mr. Knives. Is this correct?"
Knives. They knew about Knives? Or maybe just because she'd mailed the letter, and they opened and read it –
No!
Millie fought back a sudden rush of tears at the thought that they might have resealed the letter and sent it on. Knives would know that it wasn't her! He would think something awful, he wouldn't forward it on to Vash. And then poor Mr. Vash wouldn't get the letter he was expecting, and she wouldn't be allowed to send him any letters anymore –
"I-I don't know what you're talking about!" She heard the lie catch in her voice, but she didn't care. If they read the letter they knew – they knew about the sisters! She bit her lip to keep silent as the footsteps seemed to come closer.
"It's okay," the voice soothed. "We're friends. I know it doesn't seem like it, but you must trust us." There was a thoughtful pause. "Of course, I can't let you see us just yet." It definitely sounded self-deprecating. "And I can't tell you where you are. It wouldn't be safe for you to know."
How could being there be any more safe than knowing exactly where she was?
"I don't blame you for being hesitant," the voice said softly, and seemed suddenly to make a decision. "I'm just going to tell you outright. Ms. Thompson, Knives is planning to kill you."
Millie gasped involuntarily, but bit down harder on her lip as questions threatened to pour out. How did they know? If he were going to kill her he certainly wouldn't do it himself, he'd send someone – and they knew that someone was after her? But if they were after her, and they couldn't find her, the first place they'd look would be –
"Where's Meryl?" She tried to steel her voice, but when she heard the echo all that came back was a mocking tone of desperation.
"Meryl? Oh – you mean Meryl Stryfe?" The tone indicated more than the words that they didn't have her. Nor did they seem to think she was important. How could they be concerned that Knives was coming to kill her and not be worried about Meryl?
What . . . ?
Millie felt her back stiffen as indignation fought down her fear. There was something not at all right about this situation.
"We have a man watching your hotel room, just in case," the voice reassured. "Your partner will be safe. She's not his target."
"Don't you touch her!" Millie almost hollered. "You're lying, and I'm not saying another word!"
The voice sighed. "Listen, Ms. Thompson." It was more authoritative. "I know we've given you no reason to trust us. We snatched you off the street and scared you quite badly, and for that I'm truly sorry. But you must understand, we did this to save your life. If Knives knew you were helping us . . . I don't dare contemplate what he would do to you."
She tried not to shake, and stared at the door again. 4.72 yarz from her current position. The hand on her shoulder was applying about fifteen pounds of pressure. The voice put the second person about 1 yarz behind her, maybe a little closer. But she was sure there were three other people in the room besides her. Where was the third person?
"I know you're intimately familiar with the Plant replacement project, and I know you've been writing letters to him and his brother, known as Vash the Stampede, for the last six months." The voice sounded almost sorry to be calling her a liar. "What I need from you is Knives' location. You were sending this last letter to April, but you sent the previous one to Sweetwater."
Millie held her breath to prevent herself from giving anything away. How had he known . . .? How long had they been following her? And if they were reading the letters, then why did Knives forward the last one on to Vash?
Who was he? Who were these people that knew so much and yet didn't know the very basics?
"Those two towns are hundreds of iles apart." The footsteps ceased, and she realized the speaker was quite close to her. "Is he on the move? Where is he now, Ms. Thompson. You have to tell us."
Millie didn't answer, and after a long pause she heard a sigh. "Please, Ms. Thompson. Now that the Plant replacement project has been proven a success, he doesn't need you anymore. Any Bernardelli agent can negotiate the contracts with the other cities. He can leave it to your partner, Meryl." The voice became very gentle. "I know this is shocking, Ms. Thompson, but he never loved you."
Millie's brain ground back to a halt again.
He never loved you.
Surely now the voice was talking . . . about Mr. Priest? How did he know about Nicholas? Why would he say something like that if he wanted her to tell him where Knives was?
She started to turn her head incredulously, and the hand on her shoulder shoved her roughly forward, snapping her head back sharply.
"There's no need for that," the voice admonished its partner sharply. "She's a victim, not an enemy."
Millie was now half-bent over her knees, and she froze there as if afraid to lean back up. "I-I'm not saying another word!" she repeated tremulously. Maybe he'd lean in, and she could headbutt him. When he stumbled back, she could roll forward and kick out the shoulder-leaner's legs, but the third person. These two had been in the truck. These two had walked her down the ramp. But she knew it in her bones there was another person in the room. If they'd just move or speak or something –
"I'm sorry about that," the voice apologized, and it sounded sincere. "Please, please help us, Ms. Thompson. For all our sakes."
"Who are you?" she repeated, though less demanding this time. The voice didn't sound like it belonged to a bad man.
A hesitation. "I can't tell you that. Just trust me when I tell you that I am a friend, and I don't want to see you hurt. Especially not by a – by a guy like Knives."
There was a muffled sound of joints popping. He was crouching down.
"It is imperative we find him, Ms. Thompson. He won't stop with just your death. Every human aligned with this project is in danger –"
Millie weighed her position. He did seem nice, but he had hit her. And if it was for her own good they could have untied her when they saw she was calm. She might not get another chance to overpower them, and she'd just have to bank on luck that the third person was somewhere close to where the voice had started talking from.
She hurled herself backwards, wincing as her head glanced off something hard. Not a direct hit, she thought with a sinking feeling, shifting to her left hip and rolling slightly so she could get her feet out from underneath her –
Something hot splashed into her face and eyes, and almost immediately they began to burn. She kicked out anyway, this time solidly striking braced legs. She shook her head hard, trying to sling the blinding fluid out of them, and started scooting herself towards the door. There was the heavy sound of the shoulder-pusher's body hitting the floor, and then footsteps, to her right and at least ten yarz away.
The far back corner of the room. They weren't running, so they must have a gun. She'd never get to the door before they shot her, never –
She yanked her arm up as far as it would come, frantically rubbing her eyes on her shoulder. She couldn't really get them but it was better than nothing, and finally she was able to squint the left one open –
Her vision was too blurred. The second one, the voice she'd head-butted, was still crouched down where she'd left him. She stopped scooting, frantically struggling to her feet and blinking furiously, trying to find the third shape.
She heard long strides, unhurried but quickly drawing closer. They were male, and tall, six feet at least. She cracked the other eye open as she danced backwards and made out a desk and a couple folding chairs, which had been behind where they'd forced her to kneel, and more boxes. It was a supply warehouse of some kind, and the ramp must have been so they could wheel carts or small vehicles down here to move the crates.
There was a lamp on the long table, and the light put the approaching figure into too much shadow to make out. All she could see of him was the beginning of his left ankle to the bottom of his jaw. But the shape –
That was a Vash-shape. Almost.
Her back slammed into the door and she groped around for the doorknob even as she heard herself say "Mr. Vash?"
Wouldn't he have said something by now?
Her straining fingers found the knob, and she turned it, the weight of her throwing it open and making her stumble backwards –
A hand snaked out and caught the collar of her coat, and in the soft light coming from the ramped hallway, she realized her mistake.
Of course, she thought quite calmly. He had been the third person in the room. The other two hadn't realized that he was standing in the corner the entire time.
The kneeling body – she realized now that the voice she had headbutted was quite dead – finally pitched forward, landing with a rather wet and heavy sound, and she flinched again.
The hand hauled her back into the room, and while she was grateful that he hadn't let her fall, the knife he held in his left hand didn't seem to be cutting the ropes that bound her.
It didn't seem to be cutting her, either. It looked like it was contemplating what it should be doing.
"Mr. Knives?" she whispered.
- . -
Meryl burst through the door, eyes trained on the tarnished brass coathooks by the room entrance. She willed the yellow traveling coat to be there, dusty and smoky from a night of carousing and needlessly worrying her partner –
But the two hooks were empty and forlorn. Not so much as a thread clung to the cool metal.
She glanced at her watch, though she knew well what time it was. The very last second she could remain in this hotel room and still make the sand steamer to Inepral City. Another minute's hesitation and she might as well write off the meeting she had scheduled at 5 pm.
Her gritty brain coughed on the question again. Assume Millie would catch up to her in Inepral City? Stay in New Phoenix and keep looking for her? Run to the sand steamer in case Millie was waiting for her there? Wait and do nothing?
She took a deep, calming breath. It was almost six am. Millie had gone out around seven-thirty. She'd been missing for almost twelve hours. Meryl had checked every bar in the city, including some places she were sure were not real, licensed bars. She'd blown $$80 on attempts to buy information. No one had seen her. Millie had walked out of the hotel and just disappeared.
She'd checked the gutters. She'd checked other hotels on the street, just to be sure Millie hadn't stumbled into the wrong one in a drunken stupor. She'd even checked the halls, since Millie's key wouldn't have fit any of the hotel doors but that might not have stopped her from deciding that 104 was her room anyway and just camping outside it.
If Mille had been arrested, the hotel manager would have come knocking on their door for bail money. If she had been shot, there would have been a body in the street.
There was always the chance that she was hungry, and was standing in a grocery shop with a pudding cup or in a restaurant having breakfast. There were only thirty or so places to buy food, so chances were it would be 5 pm before she'd even finished searching them all.
Meryl growled under her breath, slammed the door shut, locked it, and palmed the key as she stormed down the hallway. She was going to go back to that mail teller and find out exactly when Millie had been there and which direction she had headed off, and start there.
It was almost like old times. Except instead of following a pencil-headed moron she was following a brightly beaming one.
The hotel clerk was still hiding behind his newspaper from their last encounter, and didn't so much as flip the corner of the newspaper down to watch her stomp out of the lobby. The two blocks to the post office passed in relative quiet, as the drunks were passed out but it was still too early for the working stiffs to be doing more besides peeling their eyes open and washing up.
Millie would still be in bed, usually, though the rest of her family was probably up hours ago, hitting the fields.
Sometimes she wondered if the quiet life wasn't the better choice.
The suns were just starting to peek over the horizon, as if they remembered her mood from sunset last night and were afraid to find out if it had improved. It hasn't, she growled at them, and jumped up the two stairs to the wooden patio of the post office.
"Hello!" she bellowed, without the usual cheer or curiosity the word normally held. The teller window, which had been completely and utterly empty, was suddenly filled with a very surprised young man.
"Hello," he greeted, a little uncertainly. "I was right here, you don't have to yell –"
"Sorry," she managed, and toned her voice down just a notch. "Last night there was a woman here, who dropped off a letter about seven-thirty last night-"
The teller was a very young man, maybe eighteen, with fair hair and sandy brown eyes that were almost hidden by a multitude of freckles. He held up his hand until she stopped, his expression one of sudden understanding.
"I know, I know. The teller wasn't here. We don't know where he went, or when, but I can tell you he'll be fired if he ever reports for work again."
Meryl stopped, blinking and then looking past him as she continued talking. "Actually, I think he was here then, because he put her letter into the bag for April –"
The filthy sack that was nowhere to be seen.
The young man leaned back a little, following her eyes. "Oh, all the outgoing mail was put on the sand steamer this morning. Inepral City gets more traffic than we do, so we transfer a lot of the long distance mail to their facilities for sorting. It's probably leaving . . . " He glanced at his watch, and Meryl just sighed and waited for it.
". . . right about now."
"I know. I was supposed to be on it," she growled, surprised to find her teeth clenched and a muscle twitching in her lower left eyelid. "And so was my partner, who dropped off a letter here at 7:30. Are you telling me you have no idea where your coworker went?"
The boy shook his head. "All I know is, I was supposed to take over for him at 5:30 and he wasn't here. If you say he was here at . . ." He scratched the back of his neck in a mannerism that made her heart hurt. "How do you know the letter got dropped off if you didn't drop it off?"
So Millie and the teller were both missing.
Maybe around the same time.
And it wasn't a robbery, because no one took the mail.
"I came looking for my partner last night, and I saw her letter in the bin bound for April," she muttered. "Look, it doesn't matter. Has the local sheriff been alerted that there are two missing people?"
The kid stared at her as though she'd sprouted another head. "Look, everyone's getting out of town since they're saying the Humanoid Typhoon's going to take our Plant down. I wouldn't be surprised if he just split. The lockbox was still in the back, so I'm sure he just took the opportunity to go gambling to get a ticket out of here on that steamer."
She resisted the urge to rattle the windowbars at him. Like Millie would have split . . .
Meryl shook her head and shot a quick 'Thanks,' over her shoulder, walking out past the outcroppings of the credit union to look down the street. She'd seen a sheriff's office down another couple buildings, but he had a point. She had no motive. She had no suspects. All she had was a partner who hadn't come back to her hotel room. And it was six am. Since most drunks didn't wake till noon, she'd get laughed right out of the station if she approached them any earlier.
Idly, Meryl kicked at a clot of sand in the street, almost smiling at the far-off echo of the steamer horn as it blew its farewell to New Phoenix.
"You better be on that steamer, Millie, or so help me . . ."
The clot shot to her right, bouncing and shedding pieces of itself as it rolled back to the post office porch. Her tired, grainy eyes seemed glued to it, even after it eventually settled by a criss-crossing of faux wood support beams. How ironic would it be that Millie was sitting, bright-eyed in a reasonably comfortable cabin, maybe a little worried that her Sempai didn't seem to have made the steamer. A glint of silver caught her eye, just where the post office porch met the hard-packed earth, and she stared at it blankly for several seconds before it occurred to her what it was.
She darted over, noting the freckled face in the barred window watching her but not caring. It was half-covered in dust, but as she snapped it up and hastily brushed it off, there was no mistaking what it was.
A lighter, half-filled.
On the bottom were the initials NDW.
- . -
"Well, will you look at that."
She smirked a little at his assumed sarcasm, adjusting the switch ever so slightly to see if she could get that extra percent . . .
Ahh, and there it was.
"The coupling replacement has officially completed," she announced, more for the voice-activated recorder than anything else. They needed to document each and every quirk of these projects to give the town engineers some training. While they'd eventually be swapping out these solar plants for real reactors, until then she couldn't stretch her team to monitor every one of these power stations.
Elizabeth relaxed into the chair, rolling her head stiffly on her shoulders before slouching back, eyes closed. It had been a long time since she'd actually, personally, had to pull an all-nighter. But with one cracked coupling, there was no telling how many more could have been damaged. While she wasn't about to crawl all over the plant with an imaging device, she was the only person qualified to watch the images and determine what was acceptable wear and tear and what wasn't.
But the rest had come back clean, much to the relief of her exhausted crew, and as the suns had come up over the horizon, their dangerously depleted battery cells had perked right back up.
Bless those moons. Even the holy one.
She smiled at their cheering, the sound of relief and the smell of coffee. She couldn't give them the day off, but she could cut the crew to a quarter. After all, all the work had been done. All that was left was to make sure the batteries charged properly during the day and discharged properly that evening. She could probably get everyone on a rented bus at 2 am if things were looking good.
After all, they'd just done an exhaustive search of the plant hardware. It wasn't as if anything else could really go wrong.
Almost as soon as the thought went through her mind she bit her tongue. She hadn't said it aloud, but she might as well have.
"First rule of engineering," she murmured wryly.
She waited for it, but there was no room-shaking explosion, and she was just starting to relax when a hand gently touched her shoulder.
"Miss Elizabeth?"
Oh god. She'd just had to think it, hadn't she.
"I don't care," she announced. "If the whole damn thing just sank into the sand, I don't care."
The room paused, decided that she was joking, and laughed appreciatively. But the silent presence by her side didn't vanish, and eventually she opened up her eyes and glared at him.
It was Lefferts, and he looked, if possible, worse than she felt. She really needed to give these guys a break. Maybe that coupling was a god-sent after all. They'd sleep the day away but at least it'd be sleeping.
"I have a message back from Collins."
Ah. The $$60,000,000,000 Child really had gone on ahead. That explained his absence, then.
"Glad he got it." She leaned forward wearily, flicking one of the hundreds of unlabeled toggle switches on the main board. "We're staying in town for the day, boys. Draw straws, I only need one man from every sub-team to remain. The rest of you guys, I'm begging you, please go take showers."
More laughter, and the scramble to find enough coffee stirrers to pull straws. She flicked the toggle back off and accepted the small slip of paper.
"You too, Lefferts. Get out of here."
His smile was genuine and almost cracked his face. "Thank you, ma'am!"
"Your job isn't as a messenger boy," she said softly at his departing back, and sat up properly. She'd gone soft on them, which meant tonight she'd have to crack the whip. They really hated it when she wore the scarlet dress, she'd have to dig that one out to remind them why.
"And what do you have to say for yourself?" she murmured at the paper, unfolding it and reading the single-line message.
Delay is fine – stay until it works, and be careful! – V
She allowed her eyes to close and threaten delicious sleep, tempting herself for almost thirty seconds before pushing it away. It was a good way to steel her resolve.
"Who's staying up here?"
No one answered, and she swiveled in the chair to find the massive form of John staring sadly at a tiny piece of plastic.
"Change of plans. I'm heading out to Collins."
His big form didn't budge, but she was starting to figure out that it really never did, and it wasn't meant as an insult to her. "I thought –"
"I'll go alone. Apparently there's a small pre-production problem that requires my . . . expertise."
Sunjy, a small, olive-skinned man she'd known practically from the cradle, was wrapping himself around a cup of coffee and looking waspish. "I will not let you go without protection, Miss Elizabeth! You'll have to take one of those buses-"
Her smile would have lit up the room if she hadn't been too tired. As it was, she was pretty sure it was still devastating. "Thank you for the concern, but I can and will take care of this myself. Please don't let the other teams know I've departed. In fact, tell them that I'm in a terrible temper."
"You are," John observed rumblingly.
Terrible didn't even cover it, she thought, the piece of paper held gently in her fingers.
Since when had Vash dropped the name 'Spot' from their communications? She'd sent one of their newer advanced teams to Collins, and to think they had the nerve to send back a response like this was – was –
She was going to tear them apart.
And then she was going to find Vash, wherever that lunkhead had run off to.
And then she was going to remind him why he called her 'Master.' Unpleasantly.
Her chief of security and old-time playmate reluctantly put down the coffee. "I'll have our tickets in twenty minutes. Do try to pack light this time, Miss Elizabeth. I'm not a thomas."
She would have argued it if she hadn't been so tired. Maybe she was getting soft.
- . -
The report was brief.
Stimulant modifications successful. Application of inhibitors successful. Full manifestation of wings imminent, if you want to watch.
Terry forwarded it only a few seconds after it had arrived, and he leapt to his feet, desperately looking for his boots.
Of course, just a wing manifestation didn't mean the entire problem was solved. Not by a longshot. And he probably should have changed that plural, since it was going to be incorrect in a few minutes. Or maybe not, actually. He couldn't recall the last time a Plant that extremely damaged had been observed. Usually they went in pristine, and the ones that had been observed on the biological level had never been reintroduced to working bulbs.
He yanked on his issued boots as the nigh-silent rumble trembled against his eardrums. His notebook was by the door, and he snatched it up and put it between his teeth as he stuffed his shirt-tail into his pants. He made sure his recorder was in his front pocket, glanced at the mirror, spat out the notebook, and squared his shoulders.
His master allowed for certain imperfections in their casual communication, but this was a major event, and he needed to be as perfect as possible.
He marched to the door, watching the left side slide away in step with his master's back. He fell in a few paces behind, careful not to match strides but to keep his current distance. This was a very private report – the few officers still in the quarter halls didn't seem especially perturbed or excited, merely nodding to their superior respectfully. The new officers still saluted.
The trip from the quarters hall to the science hall was across more than half the ship, and compartment after compartment was eaten by his commander's purposeful strides. The records indicated he'd been an impeccable officer, and nothing about his presence indicated he was anything other than calm and collected, on a routine something or other.
He couldn't give this away, not at this stage, Terry realized. Too much rode on the success of this project in a set and ambiguous time limit. They didn't really know how much time they had, but they knew the window was closing fast. The longest they projected was seven days, and this was the fifth.
There was a 30 percent chance of discovery today, and that increased by 35 percent every consecutive day thereafter. Thirty was bad enough. He didn't know if he could handle the wait from sixty to ninety.
"Has the back-up team reported yet?" his master asked quietly, not even turning his head slightly but letting the wind of his passing carry the words back.
Terry checked his notebook. "No, sir. A cleanup team was dispatched, they should have arrived about ten minutes ago. Their next communication window is scheduled in twenty minutes."
In fact, that backup team had been incommunicado for hours now. He wasn't sure what that did to the odds, but it probably wasn't anything in their favor.
The halls echoed hollowly, their coldsleep tubes long gone and nothing replacing the space they had once taken up. It gave the air a chilly feel despite the heat of the rest of the planet, and made it one of the favorite places of their resident baritone, Tony McClinton, to practice his art.
Terry couldn't recall the last time he'd heard his friend sing.
He couldn't recall the last time he'd even heard one of the enlisted whistling.
Their passage through the massive hall was uneventful, and much to Terry's relief, the next airlock took them into the proper wing of the old ship. The technicians obviously had more of a clue what was about to happen, as most of them seemed as white as their biosuits. He wondered, briefly, if his master was going to be asked to don one, but no one had anything other than greetings for them, and they were ushered into the main control room without any offers of protective gear.
Terry entered after his master, choosing the back right corner as his station. His left ear was a little better than his right, and he needed to note the conversation without seeming to be a participant of it.
Dr. Greer was in his usual place, straight-backed and solemn in the attitude-adjusting machine. The thick polymer screen before him showed the same scene it had for the past five days – the cold generation room, dimmed, with a few spotlights on the bulb to detect structural damage.
Of course, all the precautions had been taken, the majority of them sitting creepily on the underlit lab bench on the far right wall. But they didn't want to take any chances that they'd missed something. As full of Plant inhibitors as the bulb material was, it really wasn't much more shatterproof than glass. It could absorb almost any type of energy, including kinetic, but only to a point. A careless technician with a wedding band could conceivably crack it.
"I understand you've made some progress, doctor." The voice was dry and calm.
"And so I have, Commander." The enormous chair that controlled the milli-degree attitude of both the outer and inner bulbs hummed as he made some tiny adjustment, and then the salt-and-pepper head poked out, followed shortly by the rest of the man. Their main Plant engineer, Dr. David Greer, was starting to go grey. He was second generation, obviously, but everyone said he was just as sharp as the real thing.
Luckily, they didn't have to wait for third generation science. It looked like the Apocalypse was well on its way. 30 percent chance of hitting that day, even.
Terry tried to squash his thoughts. Now was not the time to be wigging out.
"I see nothing," the commander noted.
"Yes, in a moment," Dr. Greer replied absently, staring at the ceiling. An entire collage of monitors had been placed there, so he could watch all the readouts while he was in the pilot simulation-like contraption that controlled so much of the efficiency of a Plant generator. It seemed a little inconvenient if you were standing on the floor, though.
"Josephine, transfer feed B-6 to the main screen, would you?"
The largest of the screens, currently lifeless, blinked with an audible hum, and slowly a shape began to take form.
"This is the most accurate screening we can get through the bulb material," Dr. Greer noted. "In the first day the Plant effectively destroyed the cameras we'd installed, and thereafter, even in biosuits, there was a danger in introducing humans to the generator."
That was before the technicians had gotten their act together, Terry thought darkly. The entire thing had almost blown up in their faces.
"It won't be a great picture," the doctor continued dryly, still staring at the ceiling though the display on the main screen was ten times bigger, "but we should be able to see some manifestation through it anyway."
"And energy output?"
"That's the idea. We think suppression of one is causing the other."
"You're certain there is no lingering awareness causing this suppression?"
An eventual shake of the head as Dr. Greer's ever-calculating brain caught up to the fact he'd been spoken to. "No, I shouldn't think so. You'd need to talk to Dr. Shrew about that. Certainly none of the responses we've observed have been anything like the first day."
Terry waited impatiently, staring at the screen, but all he could make out was the general outline of a bulb. And that was only because he knew he was looking for it.
"Currently the Plant is having a hard time even giving off heat energy," the doctor continued. "This spectrum just renders energy, but not reflected light, so we're not going to see much unless the latest modifications were successful."
Minutes ticked by, and the six people in the room remained motionless. Terry could hear the technicians breathing as they stared at their equipment, looking for any sign of success.
Imminent apparently had a different definition in science.
Terry glanced out the main window, staring again at the large bulb. It was one of only two still intact in their ship, affectionately called New Kennedy, after their supposed launch site. If anything happened to this bulb, they'd have to start swapping the resident Plant for the new ones, and they'd be in no better shape than all those cities.
It was too dark in the cold generation chamber to see anything. The spotlights hit from all sides, but they weren't particularly bright, and there was barely a silhouette of the inner bulb, let alone any indication there was actually a Plant inside. He stared a few more seconds before looking back at the main monitor.
"If we had to stop here, how do you rate the success of containment?"
Greer swallowed noisily, finally relaxing his neck and looking, a little reluctantly, at the main screen.
"Again, a question for Dr. Shrew. I suppose the inhibiting dosages have a reasonable range, and traditional suppressants would do in a pinch. We can sent those through modifications already made, so even if there was no positive result besides containment, we could at least maintain it indefinitely. But in that case, this would be no different from a very large, well-monitored sleep chamber. It would be a serious waste of resources, and in that case I'd suggest a coldsleep chamber."
He sounded a little affronted, and the commander laughed shortly.
"No offense intended, doctor."
"Aah. Aah aah aah . . ."
A tiny movement in the depths of the flatpanel monitor, possibly static.
"You can do it," the doctor crooned at the screen. "That's the way . . ."
Terry reminded himself to breathe.
Tiny pixilation in the monitor, so vague and undefined –
The door beside Terry slid open, and a few technicians entered the room reverently. "Dr. Greer-"
"I see it. I see it, come on . . ."
There was an unmistakable flash, almost like a scythe reaching out of the swirling void. It was gone almost as soon as it had been visible, and Terry watched one of the technicians start. The second one crowded the first, trying to get far enough into the control booth to let the door close behind him.
Not that the door would protect them if this all went awry. If things were looking too dangerous, they had already laid explosive charges at the base of the inner bulb. The Plant would be incinerated instantly, and everyone was hoping the external bulb could absorb most of that wave of energy. Even if it exploded as well, the control room was designed for that kind of thing.
Or at least, it had been about a hundred and fifty years ago.
Another flash of white, this one significantly brighter than the last.
"That's the way," Dr. Greer murmured, as though talking to a hesitantly approaching child. "Keep trying –"
Beside the main monitor, various red, flat bars were starting to respond. With every flash, yellow would jump across those bars. Terry knew, from being in the other generation room, that the bars were supposed to be green, but considering they'd seen no such activity from this Plant in the last five days, yellow probably meant success.
"I've never seen a manifestation take this long," the first technician whispered to the second. Terry casually moved a stride closer to them, as if trying to get a better view of the screen.
"This one's been fighting every step," the other breathed. "Guess it just didn't know any other way."
"I wish the library had more stock footage, so we had something to compare to –"
Another flash, this one taking up a full corner of the screen. It remained for several seconds, flickering –
And outside the clear polymer, the bulb buzzed gently, lightening ever so softly.
Terry looked back at the bars, noting they were still yellow, dipping and growing but never completely extinguishing. The round ball of white on the bottom of the screen slowly steadied, flickering dangerously but never disappearing.
"There you go," Dr. Greer congratulated softly. "There's my Angel."
The shape changed, a tiny triangle of light pushing out from the roundness. It remained quite narrow, but grew longer steadily, widening at the base until it seemed to flick out, and then it was readily obvious what it was.
"It'll never fly," Dr. Greer broke the silence, regretfully. "Just the one wing, so we won't be able to test the new elastics." His rapt expression crumbled into something more mournful. "My poor, poor Angel."
The meters were still in the yellow, but they were steadying out. The bulb was glowing softly but steadily. It looked about the same brightness as a Plant under sedation for maintenance.
The commander watched for several more minutes, but outside of a few flicks of that oddly-shaped wing, the Plant never moved.
"That feels much better, doesn't it," Dr. Greer continued, as though none of them were there. As if the Plant could hear him. "No more moving around, you're finally comfortable in there."
It seemed to Terry as though the stillness was unnatural, but the two technicians were finally starting to relax, and Dr. Greer didn't seem at all perturbed. In fact, he looked relieved.
"I would call this a success," he finally announced, turning to face the commander. "Let's give this one a little time to recuperate, and then I'll have a better idea of generation levels and sustaining times."
The commander nodded, still watching the image. "Well done, doctor."
- . -