Chapter 243: Tunnel Rat

Chapter 243: Tunnel Rat

The drone flitted back and forth slowly at the end of the tunnel. No active scanning was detected. Milo moved along the side of the tunnel, taking his time and not moving fast. He was much harder to detect with slow, steady movement. Anyone that constructed an installation of this size and expense had to have some type of detection system running on their entrances, but he was picking up nothing.

The area at the end of the tunnel was a small area to unload cargo and people. The main doors would only be opened for very large and important shipments, for security purposes. Normal cargo and passengers would be handled through a smaller door. Normal steel doors sealed off a small warehouse next to the wide platform where cargo from the maglev would be unloaded. To the side of the doors was a call box and keypad, neither of which seemed to have power. Within five minutes, he had the front panels off and was tracing wires and trying to find out if any of the system was live. It wasn't. Moving to the doors themselves, he saw that the locking mechanism was electromagnetic. With enough power, the lock would hold even if the doors were blown off their hinges. But he detected no power.

Feeling silly, he forced his claws into the crack between the doors and heaved. It opened easily, taking him by surprise. He fell over, rolled, and returned to a standing position, waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened. He shrugged and walked into the small warehouse. On one side were modern electric pallet movers and forklifts designed to handle encapsulated material. A stack of empty cargo capsules was taking up one corner. The smallest was 24'' in diameter and 72" long, designed for pneumatic delivery systems similar to what was used in the Habitat. The large cargo capsules were 72" in diameter and 144" long, designed for heavier loads or large machinery. Loaded capsules would arrive on the maglev and be brought to this area, checked carefully, and then put on ramps that would push them into the pneumatic system to cargo areas within the facility. All of the machinery was electric but was uncharged. Charging outlets were dead.

There was a small waiting room for people, with a scanning booth and then a set of collapsium doors that would open to let people in one at a time. He carefully investigated every inch of the area around the scanning booth, finding nothing active. There was no power running to anything. Also, no way to open the heavy doors. As before, he began taking things apart, testing circuits, and looking for anything that would give a clue about what the facility was and how to get inside or access its security system. After two hours, he gave up on getting in through the doors and investigated the pneumatic system.

He didn't bother trying to work with the computer terminals. They were dead and a waste of time with no power. He needed to go into the complex. None of his sensors were picking up any sound. Moving to the interior steel doors, he found he could insert his saw, cut the lock at the top and bottom, and force them open. Before him was a long hallway, twenty feet square, that would be well-lit if there were power. Doorways on either side were numbered and had lists of what was stored inside. The first was so mundane that it made him pause: Sixty-seven pallets of toilet paper. That at least confirmed the obvious guess that this facility had once had inhabitants. Curious, he checked the floor for dust and found nothing; it was swept clean. He advanced down the corridor, sometimes noting the contents of rooms but increasingly looking for an area dedicated to control systems, engineering, power, or anything but household goods, food, and mundane items. He was forced to make right turns three times but found no cross corridors. He finally came to a second set of doors and, after opening them, found he was back in the cargo area he had first broken into, with a drone waiting to give him two bottles of compressed air.

Sighing, he opened the other two sets of doors. One led to an area set up as living quarters. It reminded him of what a Habitat must have looked like in the early days, with clean walls and floors and apartments opening off large hallways. There were several large kitchens and dining areas, a gymnasium, and a large room that confused the hell out of him until he recognized it as an athletic field complete with a quarter-mile track around a large, empty swimming pool. Whoever had lived here had done so in style!

Or had they? There was no wear on the track, no scratches on the basketball court floor, and no evidence there had ever been water in the swimming pool. The facility might never have been used. He was wondering how this had all been powered. The last doorway led into a smaller area that showed wear on the floors. Wooden office doors were open, and marks on the floor showed where furniture had been. Meeting rooms, projection rooms, and rooms with nothing but several whiteboards and a stack of aging Post-it notes were quickly passed by. At the far end was a non-descript wooden door with a missing nameplate. From underneath the door, Milo saw a glimmer of light. Carefully moving forward, he listened at the door and, hearing nothing, checked the doorknob. It turned. The room beyond was beautiful. There were a dozen computer workstations. Each station had six monitors, and more were on the main wall, or they could combine to make one large viewing screen. A plastic popcorn maker seemed very out of place on a side table.

Light was coming from one monitor at one station. Milo sat in the comfortable chair in front of the screen, not breathing, pondering his next move. This was the first powered machinery he had seen in the entire complex. A lone prompt blinked on the otherwise black screen, and then a word appeared.

[Hello?]