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.
The door mechanisms were locked, but the manual locking mechanism was easy for him to bypass. They weren't security doors, but cargo doors. A capsule was inserted, the door shut, and the area would pressurize and shoot the capsule through the system to another warehouse. Opening the largest door, which was at the end of the ramp for the 72" diameter capsules, he saw that there was already a capsule loaded into the chute. That wasn't something he could move on his own.
The second door, only 24" in diameter, was empty. Beyond it was a second door that would open when the system pressurized. Ten minutes later, the first door was off its hinges, and Milo was cutting open the second door. There was no pressure in the tube or power to the system, but he wanted the door removed entirely. That took a full hour, cutting into the steel and removing it. There were four ways to enter this complex that he'd found: Massive collapsium doors he couldn't move, a smaller human-sized door that he couldn't move, a large tunnel jammed with cargo capsules, and the small tunnel that he was going to explore.
A 24" manhole was easy for most people to move through. A short, 24" pipe could be crawled through by small adults for a short time. Several famous prison breaks had been through sewer tunnels this size. But long tunnels descending into unknown facilities in total darkness was something most people could only enter in dire emergencies. Ten-year-old children, desperate prisoners, and Milo had no trouble. For Milo, it was like parts of the Habitat or the smaller caves in Genesis. He did take the precaution to go slow and not dive straight in. A 100' safety line gave him a way to pull himself out. His claws had no trouble holding onto the softer steel of the pneumatic tube. Pausing and thinking over what he was doing, Milo risked it—the tube entered by a passage through the collapsium siding. In an emergency, he might be able to cut out of the tube, and he had air for another six hours and could send his drones for more supplies if needed or retreat.
The first fifty feet were at a thirty-degree decline, which would help move the cargo capsules, and after that, the tube straightened and made a long curve to the left. Milo advanced on his hands and knees for several hundred feet before entering another sealed door. A visual sensor in the tunnel controlled this one. Incoming packages would trigger it and open the door. But again, there was no power to either door or sensor. Milo was forced to bring out a small powered tool that used the same material as his claws for a cutting blade. It took him an hour to cut through enough of the mechanism to force the door into its slot and proceed past it. Things were easier after that. The next part of the tube was clear plexiglass on top, and he pushed the door upward and hopped out.
He was in a cargo area like the one outside, with hundreds of empty cargo capsules stacked on cargo movers. Pallets, pallet movers, and small cargo trains filled the room, along with tube systems to send cargo onward. Three chairs sat in front of keyboards and screens, unresponsive. There were several sets of locked steel doors leading from the cargo area. Lights were off, and the temperature was 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but what surprised him was the air quality. It wasn't breathable. Someone had flooded the area with argonite, an inert gas composed of argon and nitrogen. Trying to crawl into this area without a breathing apparatus would have been fatal. And it put him on a timer. He signaled the drone at the top of the tube to call another and bring him more air tanks, just in case.
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?]
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