This corridor had several large doors on the side marked “POWER’, ‘COMMS’, ‘SENSORS’ and ‘PROCESSING’. She went straight to the door marked ‘POWER’ and, passing her hand over the panel, stepped inside as it slid open.
Inside were panels and panels of gray-painted machinery. Stepping to a desk set next to a wall, she sat down and became perfectly still. I began hearing clicks like relays and a deep humming sound beginning from behind me. She rose and moved to the next door, ‘PROCESSING’, and repeated what she had done. This continued until all four doors had been accessed, and things were beginning to glow and hum in each of the rooms.
She returned to the main room and, sitting down at the central desk, became perfectly still again. As she sat there, I saw faint orange light begin to glow on each of the headsets and green dots on the backs of the gloves. Figuring why not, I picked up the closest set of both and put them on.
There were words scrolling across my vision, and looking down at the desk, I saw a typist board. Pressing one of the keys, I felt a pressure in my finger as if I had actually pressed something.
At that moment, the wall the desks were facing lit up, and I saw a massive glowing map in full color. Were those clouds, and were they moving?
“What is this?” I gasped.
“Real-time imagery,” the woman replied. “I checked the system clocks. You’re correct. I was in Charge Standby for over four hundred years. My world’s gone; there are no cities, no countries, no CDO signal sources that I can currently access.”
“Who are you?” I said, turning to face her.
“I was Master Sergeant Mara Edgerton, but my current designation is Hari-9,” she said with a sigh. “This Final War, what happened?”
“It destroyed the world. The Hivers wanted what the ground had, and the Old World didn’t want to give it to them, just like any other war. Then the Hivers started stone storm..”
She shook her head, “Lunar mass drivers. Hi-Side wanted stuff that they couldn’t create in the O’Neill cylinders or in the habs and decided that groundlings were more useful as serfs in general,.. so, to get their point across, they started blowing up all the major cities with multiple chunks of lunar regolith. Go on.”
I struggled to remember what I had learned in history class at the Academy, “The Old World fought back; they had some warning of what was going to happen and had been preparing just in case…building bunkers like this one, creating socs, and other weapons. They had a lot more people and cities than the Hivers did, so they could build faster and more until the stones flattened them.
“It had been tense as hell, and you’re right. Earth did know that something was coming…but we were not prepared for how absolutely brutal they would be. I was in training when they flattened DeKalb, my hometown. DeKalb, Illinois, only had about sixty thousand people in it, but it wasn’t that far from Chicago, so naturally, it had to go. But before that, we had been getting ready for something, and building the deep bunkers was a good start. After we Kesslered LEO, it stripped most of Hi-Side’s reconnaissance arrays, so they really couldn’t be sure where we had hidden stuff…especially after we began ASAT-ing any of their recon birds.”
“Uh, Master Sergeant…”
“Mara is fine.”
“I may possibly only have understood half of what you just said…”
“I’m sorry.”
“…and are you really from the Old World?”
She looked sad, “I am, but to me, it’s not old. I was set in suspension, and now I’m here, and it only seems like less than an hour to me since then.”
“I don’t understand how you’re here…how you survived?”
“I‘ll get to that. What happened next? How did the war end?”
“The Hivers started dropping in and grabbing things…”
“The forward command pods. You can terrorize and destroy from above, but to actually hold anything, you need boots on the ground. Hi-Side set those up to have forward operating bases where they could organize material and resource recovery. We took out a lot of those.”
“…and that was when the Old World came up with the Pox,” I finished.
“You’ve mentioned that before. What was that?”
“When the Old World realized they were losing, they came up with the Pox and managed to sneak it aboard a few of the Hiver’s vehicles. According to the stories, the Hivers started more and more stone storms as they were dying, and then they stopped. The war was over, but so much damage had been done that almost everything was lost. Then whoever was left started rebuilding, but so there was much destruction…all the great cities were gone, they had released their own geneers, and there were so few of us left that my instructors at the Academy said it took around a hundred years before anybody was certain if humans were going to survive at all.”
“Bioweapons…” she sighed. “We had augmented troops, and then there were avatars like me, and I knew we were working on tailored viruses. So the Pox…They managed to get it up into the habitats…in a closed system like that, it would have been terrifyingly effective, especially if it had an asymptomatic long incubation period with an enhanced infection rate.” I understood none of that.
“We’re you a scientist?”
She shook her head, “I was in Military Intelligence. I’d actually done an undercover rotation up in the habs before the war started. When all hell broke loose, I was outside Lawrence, Kansas, and was pretty badly damaged when they shotgunned a cluster at it. They didn’t want to use one big rock. It would screw up the atmosphere too much, but a lot of smaller ones could tear up the landscape and destroy infrastructure. I got hit…I should have been dead, actually…but they saved me, and I was uploaded into this,” she patted her chest.
“What might that be?”
“Oh, this body. I said I’m an avatar…you don’t know what that is?”
I had to shake my head.
“This body is a machine; my mind and memories were encoded…Do you know what encoded means?”
“Much like the weavers use a loom deck? To control the warp and the woof?”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Loom? Oh! Jacquard looms! Exactly, only instead of cards or…tape?”
“Cards. Cello cards.”
“Celluloid is back in use…Okay. Yes, like that. Only, we used electricity and energy point arrays to store incredible amounts of data in extremely small spaces, and the human mind is a lot of data. How much do you know about the technology of my time?”
“It was a lot better than what we have now. Books and manuals survived, but the empty blasts destroyed most of the computing machines, and nobody could repair them, or we didn’t have what was needed to make the repairs. Then, the things that did survive just wore out. Occasionally, someone finds a bunker like this, salvages it, and the parts are used to repair Old World technology, but that doesn’t happen very often.”
“Are you one of those salvagers?”
“Not intentionally. I told you, I’m a traveling mechanician.”
“That sounds like a mechanic.”
“That and I understand electrics too; I was an honor student at the Imperial Academy of Engineers.”
Just then, my stomach growled.
“Oh! You need to eat, don’t you?”
Nodding, I looked apologetic, “Yes. I’m very sorry, but all I have is some trail pemmican. It’s not much, but we can split it,” I offered.
“I don’t need to eat. Once my ICA is up to full, I can operate for up to six months.”
“ICA?”
“Ionic Charge Accumulator. It’s the power plant that drives this body. As for you…let’s check the loading bay.”
Getting up from behind the desk, she led me to the crates next to the cylinder from which she had emerged. Going to a panel set in the wall, she placed her hand on it, and it lit up. Streams of text scrolled up, and she began to trace patterns on it with her finger before looking at me, “Aisle 6, shelf 12.”
Now, after grabbing a low four-wheeled dolly, she was heading past the stacks of crates and looked down on the markings on the floor, stopping at a large ‘6’. Turning down the space between two large shelving racks, she pointed at the markers on the sides, “We’re looking for ‘12’.”
It took some time to find it, but at last, we were looking at a crate. She stepped forward and, leaning back on her heels, picked it up before setting it down on the dolly. The light metal frame creaked under the load.
“How strong are you?”
“Very,” she replied. “This body needed to be strong, fast, and tough for my mission profile.”
Pushing the crate on the dolly, she went to a section of wall under the mezzanines and pressed a panel on it. The wall slid open, revealing a small room, obviously an elevator. She entered, pushing the crate.
“Come on.”
I squeezed in; it was very cramped with the two of us and the crate, and I was pressed against her. She didn’t feel like a machine at all. Reaching past me, she pressed the button marked ‘M2’, and the door slid shut as we started to rise. There were more buttons on there; ‘ENG’, ‘Ops’, ‘M1’, ‘M2’, ‘SURFACE’, ‘OP’.
“Does this go to the entrance?” I asked.
“I think so, or at least one of the entrances. I was just trained on the general layout and procedures for these redoubts. One entrance is at the warehouse where we got this,” she tapped the crate as the door slid open, and I scooted out, “It has a big one, but that was probably sealed after it was loaded up. There should be a few man doors scattered around, and the vehicle door, of course.”
“Vehicles, like automobiles?”
“Yes. Do you have them?”
“Steam and electric. Hybrid drive systems.”
“Steam-powered hybrids?”
“Yes. It takes too long for steam to be raised to just get in and go, so they run on electricity until the steam has built pressure, then it switches over and propels the automobile while also spinning a turbine generator.”
“We had left fossil fuel…gasoline, diesel…hybrids, but they had fallen out of use, and we had switched to ICA systems with solar and wind power for our charging points,” she went on as she pushed the crate into the kitchen area.
“We do have some refineries, but we mainly use the products as lubricants or as raw materials. The Kingdoms of Roland and Marchesse control most of it and charge as much as they can get away with.”
“What country are we in now?”
“The Duchy of the North Star. It’s part of the True Empire.”
“Who’s the Emperor?”
“Harold the Second. He just came into power as his father, Wallace the First, died about a year ago.”
“Huh…Do you know the names of the countries of the Old World?”
“This was the United States; there were ones called United Kingdom, and Mexico, and China…and a lot more. It has been a long time, but not every piece of knowledge was wiped away. We’re speaking the same language, after all.”
“Yes, we are,” she said as she grabbed one of the metal sealing bands and twisted. The metal snapped in her grip, and she moved to the next one. After that, she lifted the lid off, which required her to push down on a lever. After a deep hissing sound, she could finish picking the lid up and setting it to one side.
Inside were thick card boxes; opening one revealed tough Old World sealed bags. She picked one out and tossed it to me, “I have no idea if these are any good after a few centuries, but it’s worth a try. They are gamma-radiated and freeze-dried and have been stored in a lightproof, cool, and oxygen-free environment for all that time.” She pulled another packet out and read the printing on it, “Stable for thirty years.”
Pulling out my knife, I slit the packet I was holding open; inside was an assortment of smaller packets.
“You’ll need some hot water for that. Do you have a pan or a pot, and a cup?”
“Hold on,” I headed into the bunk room where I had left my pack and pulled out my small cooking pot and my canteen cup before returning. She took the pot and filled it with water from the sink before setting it on the stove. While it heated, I returned to looking at the contents. They were labeled:
* Beef Stroganoff with Noodles
* Dessert Bar, High-Density Stabilized
* Protein Drink Powder, Vanilla
* Beverage Powder, Fortified Orange(there were two of those)
And something marked Accessory Packet.
“Is this food?”
She laughed, “Surprisingly enough? Yes. Open up the entrée pack, that’s the biggest one, and pull the bag out; it has a base that it can sit on. Then open up the bug juice packet…uh…the beverage powder, and dump it in the cup.”
The large packet had a clear bag filled with a dry brick of something. The smaller packet was filled with an orange-colored, fruity-smelling powder.
She took the cup from me and filled it with water too, mixing the liquid with a finger, then she handed it back, “There you go.”
I took a sip, and it was delicious. Sweet and fruity.
“That’s loaded with carbs, too; keep you going.”
The water in the pot was boiling now, and she slowly poured it into the clear bag over the brick up to a small black line. Then she opened the accessory packet and removed a stretchy band which, after she had rolled the excess of the clear bag down, leaving just a small bit of room over the water level, she wrapped around the top, sealing it, then she handed it to me, shake it and squeeze it a little, it takes a few minutes for it to fully hydrate…become edible.”
Nodding, I took another sip of the drink and began to do as she said. I looked up at her, “What about you?”
“I don’t need to eat; I can’t taste or smell anything very well anyway. I can eat a little to help keep my cover, but it just passes right through.
“Cover?”
“This body is an infiltration avatar. One of my brother or sister, Hari, was probably how the Pox got into the Habs; these bodies were designed to be mainly undetectable and blend in.”
“Were there other kinds of avatar bodies?” I said as I looked at the bag I had been shaking. Fishing around in the bag the stretchy band had come from, she produced a spoon, which she slid over to me.
“Heavy combat, field recon, techs…a few kinds…Since the Hi-Siders blasted all our major military units, we had to use what we had; I was basically a corpse when they found me, barely alive enough to be uploaded. My meat body died right afterward, in fact. After I was upped, they asked me if I wanted to pass away or become an avatar and stick it to the ones that killed me.”
As she was talking, I had opened the bag, and a delicious smell came out. Sticking my spoon in, I took a bite. It was wonderful.
“Stroganoff,” she said, looking at the outer bag’s label. “Yeah, that’s a good one.”
I finished it off and then ate the Dessert Bar, High-Density Stabilized, which had a smooth, sweet, creamy flavor I had never tasted before. Then came more hot water and the Protein Drink Powder, Vanilla packet. This was also smooth, sweet, and creamy but had a totally different taste than the dessert bar.
She was smiling at my facial expressions, “Feeling better? Or do you need another?”
“Can I?”
Now she was laughing, “This place has rations for forty people for at least five years…probably more. I think you can have another meal, and you can tell me all about the Empire and the New World.”