The LC-130’s nose lifted on powerful hydraulics to allow us to drive the snowcat out, and the inrush of frigid air was like a punch in the face. I tugged my balaclava into place as I walked down the ramp with Bunny. Top drove the cat and the flight crew waved him down and guided him onto the access road. The crew was instructed to button up the plane and remain aboard. A team from Gateway was supposed to refuel the bird, but so far no one had come to meet us. That was troubling for all of the obvious reasons.
The closest buildings were utility sheds, all of which were dark and probably locked. The main building was a quarter mile away — a two-story central structure with single-story wings stretching off as if embracing the foot of the mountain.
“Lights are on,” said Bunny.
“Doesn’t mean anyone’s home,” murmured Top.
We had all of our normal gear and a lot of the nasty little gadgets developed for us by Dr. Hu. But Bug’s information about the ancient meteor strikes made me paranoid about some kind of weirdo alien space bugs trapped in ancient ice and now melting because of the engines and general operations of Gateway. So I made sure we all wore BAMS units. These are man-portable bio-aerosol mass spectrometers that were used for real-time detection and identification of biological aerosols. They have a vacuum function that draws in ambient air and hits it with continuous wave lasers to fluoresce individual particles. Key molecules like bacillus spores, dangerous viruses, and certain vegetative cells are identified and assigned color codes. Thanks to Mr. Church we had the latest models, which were about the size of a walkie-talkie. We clipped them to our belts. As long as the little lights were green we were all happy. Orange made us sweat. If they turned red we’d be running like hell.
We climbed onto the snowcat and I’m pretty sure we were all thinking something was hinky with Gateway. When you lived at the bottom of the world, visitors were rare. You came out to greet them. And yet every door on the station remained closed. We drove in silence to the main building and Top parked us at an angle that would allow the cat to offer us protection if this turned into an ambush. He idled there for a full minute.
Nothing.
“Maybe they’re putting their mittens on,” suggested Bunny.
“Uh-huh,” grunted Top. “And maybe they’re baking us some cookies.”
“Let’s get to work,” I said. “Combat call signs only.”
I screwed a bud into my ear and tapped it. “Cowboy to Bug. Talk to me.”
“Welcome to the winter wonderland, Cowboy.” The fidelity of the speaker was superb and Bug sounded like he was right next to me instead of sipping hot cocoa at the tactical operations center at the Hangar, the main DMS facility in Brooklyn. “We are mission active and all telemetry is in the green.”
“Okay, we’re on the ground and about to leave the cat,” I said. “Bunny, let’s go knock. Top, watch our backs.”
Top nodded and clicked the switches that made a pair of thirty-millimeter chain guns rise from concealed pods. A second set of switches folded down a pair of stubby wings on which were mounted Hellfire missiles, six per side. Like I said, Mr. Church always makes sure we have the best toys.
“Don’t get trigger-happy, old man,” said Bunny.
“Don’t get in my way if I do, Farm Boy,” said Top.
We got out. The sun was a cold and distant speck of light that seemed poised to drop off the edge of the world. Winds cut across the open plain with the ferocity of knives. The ’Skinz kept us from freezing, but the cold seemed to find every devious opening in our face masks and goggles.
I stopped and raised my head to listen to the wind. It blew across so many jagged peaks that it picked up all sorts of whistles and howls. I wasn’t experienced enough with this part of the world and its sounds, but it seemed to me that there was more to that wind than the natural vagaries of aerodynamic acoustics. It actually seemed like the wind was shrieking at us.
Bunny caught it, too. “The fuck is that?”
I had no answers and didn’t want to give in to any kind of discussion on the topic.
“Time to clock in,” I said. “Bug, where are we with thermal scans?”
“They’re online but the readings are all over the place. First I get one signature, then I have a couple of hundred, then a dozen, then none. It keeps changing. I don’t think we can trust that intel. Geological survey of the area indicates heavy concentration of metal ores in those mountains.” He paused. “Not sure why that’s messing with thermal imaging for the buildings, though. Best I can advise is to proceed with extreme caution.”
“Roger that.”
Bunny swore softly and then faded to the left side of the main door; I took the right side. I reached out a hand and knocked on the door. Even when you know it’s a waste of time, you go through the motions in case you’re wrong. And, sometimes you do the expected thing in order to provoke a reaction.
We got no reaction at all.
I reached for the handle. It turned easily and the lock clicked open.
Bunny mouthed the words, “So much for the concept of a ‘secure facility.’”
I waved my hand for Top. He turned off the snowcat, dropped down to the ice, and came up on our six, fast and steady.
We entered in silence, moving quick, covering each other… and then stopped. Just inside the metal doorway was a small vestibule, and the back wall of it was one mother of a steel airlock.
“Bug,” I said. “Tell me why I’m looking at an airlock.”
“Huh? Um… I don’t know, it’s not on the schematics for the old radar station. And there’s nothing in the materials purchases or requisitions about it.”
“Balls.”
Top ran his hand over the smooth steel. “Ten bucks says it’s a Huntsman.”
I nodded. In our trade we get to see every kind of airlock they make. And, unfortunately, we get to deal with what’s behind most of those airlocks. Fun times.
“There’s a geometry hand scanner, too,” said Bunny. “Pretty sure it’s a Synergy Software Systems model. The new one that came out last December.”
“Good,” said Bug, “that gives me a starting point. Sergeant Rock, put on a glove and run the scanner.”
Top took a polyethylene glove from a pocket and pulled it onto his right hand. It looked like the blue gloves worn by cops and airport security, but this one was veined with wires and sensors that uplinked it via satellite to MindReader. He placed his hand on the geometry scanner and let the lasers do their work. Normally they create a 3-D map of the exact terrain of the whole hand, but the sensors hijacked that process and fed the scan signature into MindReader. The computer fed its own intrusion program into the scanner and essentially told it to recognize the hand. Sure, I’m oversimplifying it, but I’m a shooter, not a geek. I’m always appropriately amazed and I make the right oooh-ing and ahhh-ing sounds when Bug shows me this stuff, but at the end of the day I just want the damn door open.
The damn door opened.
“You da man,” Bunny said to Bug.
We stepped back from the airlock as the two-ton steel door swung out on nearly silent hydraulics. I expected a flood of fluorescent light and a warm rush of air. Instead we saw only darkness and felt a cold wind blow out at us like the exhalation of a sleeping giant. It was fetid air, though, and it stank of oil and smoke and chemicals. But it was more than that. Worse than that.
It was a meat smell.
Burst meat. Raw meat.
Like the inside of a butcher’s freezer.
INTERLUDE THREE