It looked like solid metal, but it wasn’t. That was clear when I rapped on it with a wrench. That meant it was an Old World material, which meant any cutting tools I had, unless they were diamond or corby edged, had no prayer of even scratching it. Still, things like this could always be opened. There were a few advantages of it being made of Old World stuff. First, it would not be rusted in place like iron; second, Old World construction did have some flaws. These flaws were well-hidden, but the Builder’s Guild treated them as ‘High Secrets’ that peons like me were not supposed to know; one of the reasons non-guildsmen were treated so poorly. I was going to need some things.
Leaving the entry and only carrying my hatchet and some strapping, I returned to the treeline and began gathering wood. I was looking for hardwoods like oak or maple; the fire I was planning on had to be hot with as little smoke as possible. It took several trips, but finally, I had enough and built a lean-to-fire against the hinge side of the door. Lighting it with my little blow lamp, I headed outside so I wouldn’t suffocate.
As I had hoped, the mountain breeze and the fact that the Old World construction’s concealed ventilation gave the flames a good draft meant I just had to crawl in there every once in a while to stoke the flames with fresh wood.
It took a while, and the sun was high in the sky when it was done, but at last, the many layers that made up the construction had begun to separate and peel apart like an onion. The Old World material was unbelievably tough and impossible to cut with normal tools, highly resistant to flame and electricity, and basically unaffected by the elements, but a long, consistent heat would cause it to break down into its components. Now, I had to wait until it cooled before I could get in there with my small prybar and bend the much thinner and less durable layers away until I could get to the guts of the door.
It was late afternoon by the time I could start and carefully lever past the thin sheets, revealing the heavy bars and gears. These were not made of the same materials as the external skin, and I could cut and bend the pins holding those gears in place, allowing the bars to be pulled from their locking sockets with satisfying ease.
Each one of the bars had to be separately freed, and I was exhausted by the time I had finished. Not having had a chance to go hunting, I ate some of my travel pemmican and settled in for the night.
_____________________________________________________
When I awoke, the sun was well up in the sky, and crawling out the entry tunnel to relieve myself, I saw vultures already circling and feeding on the three corpses below. Leaving them to their feast, I returned to the door and, pushing my bar into the space between it and the jam, began to slowly and carefully work it open. It took a lot longer than I was expecting due to a thick, flexible gasket between the door and a rounded channel cut into the frame. After much patience and swearing, I had it open at last and, holding up my lantern, looked down into a black stairwell.
So, with revolver in one hand and lamp in the other, I began to descend.
The first thing I noticed was that there was very little dust. The second was that the stairs were made of finely finished cement with grooved metal caps, most likely for traction, cast into the lips. The handrail was a smoothly polished metal tube, not wrought, forged, or cast, and seemed to be matte-finished steel. The workmanship was superb, and I had heard that the Old World craftspeople were beyond compare, but actually seeing something as prosaic as a handrail finished so cleanly drove that point home.
The steps led me further into the ridge, and I could feel the weight of the stone pressing down on me. The Final War had the stone storms, so the only places safe from the Hivers had been far underground, which meant the Old World had dug deep for protection, and places like this showed it.
Pausing to refill my lamp; it wasn’t dry, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t caught off guard by it going out; I continued on, finally arriving at another one of the Old World heavy doors. This one had a handle, though, and reaching out, I pressed down, and it swung toward me easily as though it had just been fitted yesterday. A red light began flashing, and a loud buzzing noise started, causing me to swing my pistol around in shock. Above the door, a panel was flashing bright red alongside a sign inscribed,
Surface Exit R-34
Emergency Use Only. Alarm Will Sound.
Well, that explained the noise; the reason the door on the surface was difficult to open was that it wasn’t meant to, except from the inside. Raising my revolver, I shot the grill the noise was coming from, stifling it immediately. Now that I could hear myself think, I took note of my surroundings.
In the still flashing red light, I saw I was in a dead-end corridor, with the door I had entered from on one of the end walls. A short distance away was another door also with one of the ‘press down to open’ handles. Opening my powder horn, I reloaded the empty cylinder of my revolver and fitted a new snapcap on the chamber’s firing horn before proceeding. Whatever I might run into next could possibly be more dangerous than a loud noise.
Pressing down gently on the handle, I was surprised at how thick this door was. A good foot or so, at least. The chamber beyond was larger than my lamp’s glow could illuminate, but as I moved forward, I heard a humming whine, and lights fitted to the ceiling began to respond. They had to be electric and not the heavy arc units that you saw in the streets or theaters, but more so the filament style…The light was bluer somehow, though, and not the yellow-orange.
The room itself was immense, perhaps a hundred feet in diameter, and arranged on one main floor and two enclosed mezzanines above and surrounding three-quarters of the edge of the room, each level a good ten feet above the lower. The lowest level was a series of desks with chairs behind them, all facing the wall where the mezzanines did not cover. On the desks were sets of gloves and headsets with a pair of lenses mounted ahead of the eyes. I had seen something like these in a museum, but those had been cracked and damaged as well as scavenged for their components, and these all looked unused and almost new.
There was a spiral stairway to one side, and I climbed up to find the first level was offices, possibly. Each with a window so they could look out at the main level below. As I entered them, lights, concealed behind panels in the ceiling, switched on. In each office was a desk and a chair, with a set of the gloves and headset placed neatly on the desk. The room closest to the stairs and with the best view of the main level was the largest and had a large table surrounded by chairs, possibly a meeting room?
Going up one more level was what had to be barracks. There were bunk beds, lockers, and even a set of bathrooms with a gang shower. I tried the faucet, and after about five minutes of gurgling, water poured out…hot water! The other tap was cold, and after letting it run for a while, I tasted it. It was very mineral tasting, like the water from a deep well. Which wasn’t that surprising; where else would it have come from here?
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Filling my water bottles, I continued on to find a room with possibly a kitchen. It had what looked vaguely like an electrical resistance coil stove, at least, and that was an ice chest, but there was no smell of ammonia. Then came a dining area with a large window that overlooked the main floor below, and at the very end of this floor was a room with a heavy door that had been left standing open. This was some sort of vault, and the empty racks on the walls seemed suspiciously familiar, as if it had been an armory.
Heading back down the stairs to the main level, it was clear that this had been some sort of command post that had been constructed but never used. Looking around for other entrances, I found several more of the heavily reinforced doors. The first was secured somehow, so I left it alone. The next opened into a short hall with one side made of glass and a desk behind it. The door on the far end was bulged inward and would not open.
The last of the doors on the main level opened into a cavernous room that was partially collapsed. The remainder of it was filled with boxes made of that Old World material, along with a large metal cylinder about twenty foot long and six in diameter. It had a large hatch at one end and a panel mounted on the side. Examining the panel, it, at first, told me nothing; there was a gray glass plate, but nothing marked on it…until I touched it, and a light glowed from behind, illuminating it in orange.
Hari-9
System Ready for Charging
YES/NO
PRESS YES to Start Charging Sequence PRESS NO to Continue Sleep Mode
The words ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ were blinking into visibility and then vanishing. There really was no choice for me as I pressed ‘Yes.’
The display changed,
Hari-9
Central Power Available -- Charging Initiated
00% Completed-- Estimated Time to Completion: 05:59:59
The last two digits began counting down one at a time. I knew about as much about Old World technology as any more or less educated individual, in some ways more due to my studies at the Academy, and I had seen examples in drawings and pictures as well as salvaged equipment from the ruins of the old cities, but I had never seen a countdown timer like this.
I had a while to wait, so I returned to the top mezzanine, got some water, and ate some more of my pemmican before falling asleep on one of the bunks.
_____________________________________________________
Waking up, I noticed the overhead lights had gone out in this room, but as I sat up, they switched on. Handy.
Stepping out into the hall, I walked down to the bathrooms and used the toilet and then the gang shower. It had been so long since I had a hot bath I stood there for a while, just enjoying it. Then, taking my traveling clothes, I rinsed and washed them as well as I could, especially my underthings and my footwraps, before redressing in my spares while the ones I had just cleaned were left to dry. Buckling on my holster and slinging my tool roll, I returned down to the area I was thinking of as a warehouse to see what progress the cylinder had made.
Hari-9
Central Power Available -- Charging Completed
100% Completed-- Estimated Time to Completion: 00:00:00
Initiate Deployment
YES/NO
PRESS YES to Initiate PRESS NO for Hot Standby
I actually paused for a second before pressing, ‘Yes’.
There was a whining hiss, and the end of the cylinder swung to one side as a tray slid out. On the tray was a young dark-skinned woman wearing a close-fitting black cloth jumpsuit with a shoulder patch of a globe with the letters ‘C D O’ embroidered and cloth tapes above her breasts with ‘HARI-9’ on the right and ‘R-34’ on the left, and laced boots. Light metal hoops were around her temple, waist, wrists, and ankles, and her eyes were closed.
The tray finished extending and then began to pivot until the woman was standing. A panel with many numbers and letters and what might be gauges appeared on the surface beside her head. I recognized the abbreviations for volts and amperes and temperatures, among other things, but the context was beyond me. A series of lights came on next to the phrase, ‘Boot Status’. They were all red to start, but then they slowly started to change to amber and then finally to green. The ‘Boot Status’ phrase then disappeared, and the phrase ‘Cycling’ in red took its place. This phrase began blinking and slowly changed in color from red to amber to green as the blink rate slowed. As it came to a stop in bright solid green, the phrase changed to ‘Active’, and the woman’s eyes opened.
I stumbled back, not sure what was happening, while the light metal hoops separated and were pulled back into the platform she was leaning against.
Her head turned, and she looked at me, “What should I call you?” she had a very strange formal and archaic accent.
“Bonchance…” I said, almost by reflex, “My name is Bonchance Magellan.”
She stepped off of small platforms that had been under her boots and moved in front of me, “Who are you, Mister Magellan?”
“What?”
She looked at me for a moment, then looked around the room. Then her hand flashed out and grabbed me around the throat, “Who are you, and what happened here?” her grip was like a vise.
“Bonchance Magellan,! I gasped. “I’m a traveling mechanician…This place? I don’t know! It’s been abandoned for centuries! I just found it yesterday!”
“Your pulse rate is elevated,” she looked at me closely, then her tone changed to be more friendly, “but that’s probably because I’m scaring you shitless. Sorry,” she let go of me and walked past, up to the door to the main room. Stepping through, she stood and stared before turning to look at me, “Where is everyone?”
Shrugging, I carefully walked in after her, staying well out of her reach, “I really don’t know. This seems to be a Final War bunker that had been set up but not stocked or staffed.”
“I was supposed to be assigned to R-34,” she looked over at the wall where the ‘R-34 CDO’ had been painted.
“Assigned? Ma’am, who are you?”
“You don’t have the clearance...” suddenly, she paused. “The term Final War, what does that mean?”
“The war between the Hivers and the Old World…The stone storms…the Pox?”
She looked puzzled, “The Hi-Side war?”
“I am afraid I don’t know what that is,” I admitted.
Looking around, she proceeded to the locked door and, passing her hand over a plate set in the wall, waited until it slid to one side before entering. Throwing caution to the wind, I was right behind her.