Interregnum (Children of Steel Book 2) Page 20

  "What's it smell like?" Dave asked.

  I came to the end of the corridor, the pressure door was open, which was unusual, normal procedure for pressure doors leading to exits were for them to be closed and sealed. There was a large brown stain at the opening to the door, it was dried, kind of crystallized looking, I ran my light up and found what I was looking for.

  "It smells like a dead body. A very ripe dead body," I said and looked at the corpse on the ground. There weren't any insects in space facilities, and if there were, they were usually killed pretty quickly by devices in the environmental systems designed solely for that purpose. So there weren't any maggots or other little beasties feasting on the body. But that hadn't stopped it from rotting, and it really wasn't a pretty sight.

  I swept the room with my flashlight, there were two more dead bodies, all were human, all appeared to have been shot, several times. Considering that there were weapons lying on the floor, I couldn't tell if they shot each other, or had been in a firefight.

  "Make that three bodies," I said.

  "What happened?" Cassandra asked, "Can you tell how they died?"

  "Three bodies, human, I think they were shot. There are weapons on the ground, and a lot of dried blood." I carefully moved into the room. I didn't want to slip, fall, and have to clean all that crap off of my gear. Bad enough my boots were going to get covered. I surveyed the room, there were signs on the walls thankfully, that made it easier.

  "I'm in the room between the Hanger and the Control Room. There are suit lockers and such here. The pressure door to the hanger is closed, and if I'm reading the telltale correctly, the hanger is in a vacuum." I moved to the door leading to the control room, it was sealed and I couldn't undog it.

  "The door to the control room is sealed. Mist, come up here with the door breaching charges, watch your step when you enter the room."

  "On my way," Mist replied.

  "What about the rest of us?" Dave asked.

  "Keep your eyes open. Are you picking up anything new, Cassy?"

  "Nope, still nothing on the microphones."

  "Well, let's see if we can't wake somebody up."

  Mist came into the room and we set the charges, then backed out of the room, back into the hallway.

  "Fire in the hole!" I called and hit the detonator. There was a muffled 'thump' and I moved into the room quickly, with my rifle leading the way.

  The doorway to the control room at the end of this corridor was closed, but it wasn't blocked, I pushed it open, again leading with my rifle, and looked around.

  "Nobody in the control center," I said and quickly moved into the room, sweeping it with the muzzle of my rifle. The lights were on in here, so it didn't take me long to clear it. "No bodies either, but there was a firefight in here," I said noticing the brown stains of blood at two of the command consoles, and what I guess were now rotted pieces of flesh. "From the looks of it, someone came up here and shot the watch team in the back of the head. Then I guess they cleaned up the bodies."

  I checked the security cameras, several of which were still functioning, though the displays were a bit messy, at least someone had wiped them off, probably whoever killed the watch standers.

  "Any signs of life?" Cassandra asked.

  "None that I can see, flipping through the security cameras, a couple aren't working, but I don't see anyone on the ones that are on. I do however see some more suspicious stains, probably blood."

  "We're coming in," Cassandra replied.

  "Sure. Close the outside hatch, leave your helmets on, and mind your step. Mist, come up to where I am, leave a few light sticks along the way."

  I checked the other exits from the control center, there were three more of them, and all of them were fine. I kept the door I entered closed, and when the others got there, I had them reseal it as well. I'd checked the air in here, and it didn't smell all that bad, but I could still smell dead people.

  Then again, I was tracking dried blood on my boots.

  When they all had come in, I noticed Cassandra was standing stock still, and her eyes were open wide, she was starring straight ahead.

  "Cassandra?" I said and got no response.

  I hit the release on my helmet and pulled it off, then quickly undid hers as well.

  "Cassy?" I said, "What's wrong?"

  "That," she said and pointed to the main entrance, the one that lead deeper inside. Someone had hand written a sign and put it over the doorway, it read 'Your work shall set you free.'

  I looked back at her and shook my head, "What? I don't get it."

  "I was held here," She said and looked at me in shock, "This is where they tortured us, and killed the others, I ... we built this place!"

  I swore and pulled her close and hugged her as the others looked on, I could feel her shaking, even through my armor and her suit.

  "I'm sorry, Hon, I'm sorry," I whispered to her, "Do you want to go back out to the shuttle? We can go right now. You don't need to be here for this."

  Cassandra clung to me a moment, I felt her sob quietly a couple of times, and then she stopped and sighed and rubbed her head against mine for a moment.

  "I'm... I'll be okay." She said and untangled herself from me, standing on her own. "It was a bit of a shock, that's all."

  "You sure?" I asked.

  Cassandra nodded, "Yes. Besides, I want to make sure that they're all dead," she growled.

  "What is with the sign?" Janice asked looking up at it.

  "It's from a very dark time in human history," Dave said. "It was something they put up on one of the death camps, where they sent undesirables to work until they killed them."

  "I didn't know that," Cassandra said, "I thought it was just some sick joke."

  "Well, let's see if we can't figure out what happened here," Mist said motioning to the blood stained consoles.

  I nodded, "Jerry, Janice, you two will stand watch up here, and guard. Cassandra, Wendy, Kyle, you three see what you can learn from here and the commander's office," I said and pointed to one of the exits. I'd already checked the room out; there were no bodies in it, or signs of violence.

  "Mist, Dave and I will search the rest of this level and make sure it's secure. After that, we'll decide how we want to tackle the rest of the facility."

  Everyone agreed and we went to work.

  Two hours later, we all met back up in the control room.

  "Okay," I said leading off. "We found lots of signs of violence; I counted indications of eighteen people being killed, including the two up front here. Access to the lower levels has been sealed off, from inside, though one of those was obviously breeched. What did you find?"

  "They were expecting a supply ship, six months ago, it never showed up. Three months ago a ship showed up, it was supposed to be a second supply ship, but when it tried to put in at Trieste, well, we had just taken it." Cassandra said, reading from her notes.

  "So it came here, with no supplies, and barely enough fuel."

  "And that's when it went to hell," Wendy said with a snicker.

  I looked at Wendy and then at Cassandra who had a rather nasty smirk on her face.

  "The ship that came in, could have taken thirty people out of here, and gotten to Iverly, maybe a handful of other places. But they were low on fuel, and would have had to take half of the rations that were left here."

  "How many people were here?" I asked.

  "One hundred and thirty-six."

  "Oh." I suddenly got the picture. "So they went around and killed all the people they couldn't take."

  Cassandra nodded, "That was how it started. The people in charge knew that the others would never let them take half of the remaining food and go, even if they promised to come back. Because honestly, they knew they couldn't go to Iverly, they'd be found out. So Commander Mueller, the base commander here, got his little toadies together and they started to slaughter everyone at the station."

  "So they had to kill what, one hundred and six?"
r />   "No, they were going to kill one hundred and twenty, leaving just the sixteen of them, safer that way, you know? And well, maybe they didn't need all of the crew on the ship that came here as well. Mueller left a few hints of that in his log too."

  "He recorded all of this?" I said shocked.

  Cassandra nodded, "Mueller was a pretty sick bastard who was very much in love with the sound of his own voice and loved to listen to his own brilliance. I got to know him very well," and she turned and spit on the floor.

  I got up, moved around the table, and sat down next to her. She gave me a questioning look, but I just patted her leg and stayed there. I don't know how bad those memories might be, but I was smart enough to know that moving away would have been a very bad thing, and not moving may have been seen as just as bad later on.

  "So what happened? I take it that little plan failed?"

  "Apparently, from what Wendy was able to pull out of the security archives, combined with what I have been able to figure out from recorded message traffic, one of the techs not on the survivors list apparently had Mueller's account bugged and warned their friends, they sealed off the next level, and moved all the remaining food to the lowest level, and then fought a war of attrition."

  "They held out for over a day," Wendy said. "And eventually it sounds like they made a deal."

  "Sounds? What does that mean?"

  "They blocked the security cameras, so they couldn't be seen, but they didn't mess the microphones up too badly."

  Cassandra picked back up, "Well, the deal turned out to be a trap, unsurprisingly, and Mueller shot the techs, but one of them had rigged a trap, and that destroyed most of the food."

  "And it gets even better," Wendy snickered.

  "Let me guess, they all turned on each other?"

  "Oh, Mueller started talking about cannibalism, I think he had lost it mentally at that point, and well, I guess someone shot him, because we heard another bunch of gun fire. When it was all over, there were eight left, and they decided to go out to the ship, and take their chances at Iverly."

  "And the three we found dead?"

  "There were only six suits left, so they fought it out. From what we saw on the security feed, two or three of the five survivors from that little dustup were probably wounded."

  "So five of them got away?"

  "That's what we think," Cassandra said. Wendy and Kyle nodded in agreement.

  "Did you send this up to the Astra?"

  "Yes, they want us to proceed with the demolition. Their getting away guarantee's that others are going to discover this place, and they don't want to see it used, especially not this close to Iverly."

  I nodded, "Well, let's break up into four groups, and tackle the remaining levels. We'll take them one level at a time. We might as well see if there is anything worthwhile before we destroy the place."

  "Sounds good to me," Dave and the others all agreed.

  We spent the next twenty hours searching the rest of the facility. There were a lot of personal effects of the people who lived there, but honestly, none of us really felt like looting the dead, plus we didn’t have the time with the Astra only a day out when we finished.

  When we got to the bottom floor where the last of the carnage had taken place, we had to seal up our helmets, the stench was pretty unbearable. At least someone had closed the doors down here to keep it from filling up the rest of the place.

  "I'm surprised that they took the time to put all of the bodies from the original massacre down here," I said when we came across most of the dead in one of the storage rooms.

  "They were planning on coming back," Cassandra told me. "Maybe the ones that got away still are. There's a lot of wealth in this place if you took the time to take it out."

  "How are you holding up?" I asked her.

  She smiled at me through the helmet, "I'm okay. The worst of it I let go when we left Trieste. Now? I'd pity these people, if they all didn't deserve what they got."

  I nodded, "Kind of funny how they all went for each other's throats as soon as a problem came along."

  "They were all just bullies and sadists really, just scum. They only ever cared for themselves, and all they ever wanted was power over others. Deadly power. There was no way they could ever have worked together here, they were actually worst than their leaders."

  "You really think so?" I said surprised.

  Cassandra nodded, "Those people at least had an ideology, a belief, even if that belief came from fear. They did bad things, but they could and did work together, they may have hated us, but at least they didn't hate each other.

  "But these people? These are the lowlife scum that they attracted, they only ever cared for themselves, and what pain and harm they could inflict on others. None of these people came from the movement's home world; all of them came from Earth or one of the major colonies. These were the people they recruited for the things that even the leaders were too afraid to sully their own hands with."

  When we got to the room of the final showdown, we all stopped and looked at the mess. There were over thirty dead here, and in the middle of the room several large pallets of rations that someone had destroyed. It looked like they'd used thermite on them.

  "There he is," Cassandra said and pointed to one of the bodies. "That's Mueller."

  I looked at him; he was an overweight man, with short stringy black hair. Not very tall, but he was wearing some kind of uniform, unlike most of the rest here.

  "What's with the uniform?" Dave asked motioning to the body. None of us wanted to touch any of them, they were so rotted at this point, they'd probably fall apart.

  "Just his way of showing everyone else that he was special," Cassandra sighed. She looked around, "This was actually the last room we dug out before we were sent on our way. We actually all expected to be killed, but their leaders said they needed tech workers and would pay a reward for them." Cassandra shook her head and laughed, "When they heard about the reward, one of the bright boys did the math and suddenly they realized that if they hadn't killed as many of us as they had for fun, they would have gotten over a million credits."

  "I can just imagine the argument that led to," Dave sighed.

  "Yeah, and they took it out on us, as always. But at least they didn’t kill anymore of us." Cassandra said with a sigh and turned back towards the doorway.

  I reached over and gave her a hug. "Let's go get the bombs," I said.

  17

  When we left the next day to make our rendezvous with the Astra we did have a few unexpected treasures: Cassandra and Mist had found Mueller's safe and Kyle had opened it. There was quite a bit of money, precious metals, and gems inside it. That along with the intel that had been raided from the base's servers we hoped would help defray the cost of the expedition.

  We watched the bombs go off as we left; Jerry triggered them once we were a nice safe distance away. The one we'd put in the hanger made a nice explosion. The one we'd stuck down on the bottom level just made the ground bulge for a moment, and then it was all over.

  Getting back to the Astra only took a few hours, then I think all eight of us went directly to the showers. Balizar had taken one whiff and had told us debriefing could wait until after we'd had the chance to clean up.

  The debrief had been fairly quick, they already had Cassandra's report on what happened, and we'd brought copies of the base's files to bolster the report, along with the pictures we ourselves had taken.

  Later that day the captain made an announcement to the ship that this was the last task leftover from the war that had been assigned to us, that we were still heading to our home port, Hobson's Choice, and that once we arrived we'd have a week's leave, and then the Astra would be able to finally return to our normal trading routes.

  Everyone on the Astra I think breathed a sigh of relief, the idea of going back to our normal duties, after so many years of not doing them probably made everyone happy. By the time we were in jump, it really did seem that things wer
e finally getting back to what we all thought of as 'normal.'

  "So is what the captain said true?" I asked Balizar as I sat on the floor panting, this was our first training session since we finished with the base on the moon. "Is the war over?"

  "That war is over, oh I'm sure there will be a few spy rings uncovered, a politician or two removed from office, but the rest of it is all over including the shouting."

  "So, is that it, do we go back to normal?"

  Balizar grinned, "Normal? What is normal? Do you know why this company was formed?"

  "Which, Tri-Star?"

  Balizar nodded.

  I shrugged, "I'm not really sure, weren't they a mining company originally?"

  Balizar waved a hand at me, "That was just the method they chose."

  "The reason this company, or this corporation was formed, was simple: To make a profit."

  I cocked my head and looked at him, "What? Then why did we fight this war? Why did we do any of this?"

  Balizar sighed and leaned back against the wall, "This company was founded to make the founders money, that's the reason any company is ever started. No one does all this work out of the kindness of their heart, they do it for a return, be that return money or the admiration of others, or just to feel good about themselves. It is the most basic nature of us all, human and animan.

  "But somewhere along the line the culture creeps in, takes a hand, influences the way business is done, and if that helps make a profit, or at least doesn't hurt the bottom line, it gets blessed and everything moves on.

  "The culture that dominates the world today does so, because it is the most successful, has spawned the most ideas, the most power, the most profit. It turned women from property into equals, gave them the right to vote. Did away with slavery, communism, fascism, it even fights never ending battles with itself to promote the idea that 'all men are created equal.'"

  "But we're not men," I said.

  "And that's where the current problems, the current wars, the current struggles start. Why are we free? Why aren't we all born slaves?"

  "Because it's not cost effective, they'd have to carry us from birth until death, and there wouldn't be any motivation to perform, and the unions fought it as an unfair labor practice."