No sooner were they in than the doors snapped shut. “Strap in securely. We will depart shortly,” announced a disembodied voice. Baker waved Michael into a seat, and they strapped in. The box, vibrating gently, began to move sideways. After thirty seconds or so, it stopped. A recessed red warning light began to flash. “Stand by to drop in five seconds,” announced the voice.
Baker looked across at Michael. “Bit of negative g coming up, so I suggest you hang on,” he offered offhandedly.
“Oh, right, sir, but-”
The bottom fell away from underneath them as the artgrav cut out completely. Michael struggled to control a heaving stomach suddenly intent on misbehaving. For a moment, he and Baker floated in their straps before a fierce downward acceleration began to build, the negative g pulling the two men out of their seats and tight against their restraining straps.
The complete lack of air noise and the massive acceleration gave Michael all the clues he needed. They were in a drop car in a hard vacuum tunnel heading for the center of Comdur, which lay the best part of 300 kilometers below them. If he remembered correctly, that meant that the drop car, its speed topping out at close to 2,000 kph, would have them wherever the hell it was they were going in less than ten minutes. He flicked a glance at Baker. The man seemed to be asleep, so Michael left him alone.
Baker would give him answers when he was good and ready; there was no point pestering him.
The minutes dragged slowly past. Michael tried hard not to think about the 300 kilometers of solid rock that lay at the end of the tunnel, now rushing toward them at more than 500 meters per second. The disembodied voice returned.
“Stand by for deceleration in ten seconds.”
Baker woke up. “Ah, good,” was all he said.
Deceleration was an understatement. When it came, Michael winced as the g force in the drop car reversed with sudden brutality, slamming him back into his seat. Jesus, he thought. More like a bloody fairground ride than a passenger conveyance.
Suddenly the g force vanished, and once again the two men floated in their straps. There was a short pause, and then the car began to move, artificial gravity returning to drop Michael back into his seat again. Michael followed Baker’s lead as, without a word, he unstrapped and stood up.
The drop car’s doors opened to reveal yet another lobby hacked out of the rock. Three tunnels led off the lobby. Baker wasted no time before plunging into the center tunnel; he took off so fast that Michael had to run to catch up. Fifty meters down the tunnel, Baker stopped in front of a bench set up across the mouth of a room the size of a small warehouse and packed floor to ceiling with shelves loaded with orange plasfiber boxes; a sign proclaimed it to be the Personal Maneuvering Systems Workshop. Michael’s confusion was now absolute, so he stood there as Baker commed someone out of the back of the workshop.
A crusty old chief appeared, a smile on his face as he saw Baker.
“Hullo, sir. Haven’t seen you for a while.”
“Some of us have to work for a living, Chief.”
“Well, sir, thank God I don’t,” the man replied cheerfully. “What can I do for you?”
“Two units, please. Oh, I forgot.” He waved an arm at Michael. “Chief, this is Lieutenant Helfort. You’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
“Morning, Chief. Junior Lieutenant Helfort. Nice to meet you.” Michael shook hands across the counter.
“Oh, shit, damn, and blast,” Baker muttered, shaking his head. “Sorry, Michael. You’re improperly dressed.”
Michael looked puzzled. It was pretty hard to be improperly dressed in a shipsuit and boots. “Sir?”
“Yes. Improperly dressed. A lieutenant should not be wearing a junior lieutenant’s shoulder straps. Fleet Dress Regulations, chapter something or other.”
“What? I don’t. .” The penny dropped. “Aaah.”
“Yes, sorry. Effective today, you’re a lieutenant. Orders only arrived this morning. Should have told you but forgot. Congratulations and all that. Now, where were we?” Baker asked briskly.
“Two units?” the workshop chief asked sardonically.
“Ah, yes. That’ll do. Plus stick boots, of course.” Ten minutes later, the personal maneuvering unit heavy on his back and stick boots on his feet, an even more confused Michael followed Baker down the tunnel. He had no idea what they were doing. He had no idea why they were wearing personal maneuvering systems. He had no idea why he had been promoted to lieutenant two years early. All in all, the whole day was turning out to be a complete mystery.
“Good, we’re here,” Baker said.
They were in front of a plasglass security lock behind which lay a black and yellow striped door marked REPAIR FACILITY YANKEE. DOOR M-34. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY in emphatic red letters.
“Now, Michael, I’m going to download a safety briefing. While you’re going through that, I’ll confirm that we can actually get in.”
“Sir.”
Michael got some answers as he watched the safety vid. Seemingly, behind the black and yellow striped door lay a single enormous space, brilliantly lit by wall-mounted light panels. Quite what the space was for, the briefing did not say. In the vid, it was empty except for a network of spidery bridges running in all directions. The briefing’s main purpose appeared to be telling him over and over again that unless authorized by a superior officer, he was to keep his stick boots on the bridges at all times. The rest of the brief was standard stuff for working in a zero-g environment. When Baker asked if he was ready, he nodded.
One by one, with their identities confirmed by a skeptical security AI, Baker and Michael passed through the personnel lock.
“Ready?” Baker asked.
Michael could have screamed. Get on with it, he wanted to shout. The suspense was killing him, but he nodded.
Baker commed the door open. It slid back silently. Michael blinked in the wave of harsh white light that flooded out. He followed Baker out onto one of the bridges, the artgrav disappearing as soon as he left the lock. As he looked down, his stomach lurched. They were hanging a good two hundred meters or more above the floor. For a moment, what he saw did not make any sense.
Then it did.
The space was vast, easily big enough to hold five heavy cruisers in a line with room to spare, the massive shapes sitting in cradles anchored to the floor and ceiling. Michael looked closely. The ships showed signs of massive radiation damage, with huge patches of their armor stripped away, in some cases down to the titanium inner hull. There were orange-strobed spacers and small workbots everywhere, maneuvering units spitting thin white spikes of compressed nitrogen as they wheeled and danced around the ships in an elaborately choreographed ballet. There were heavy bots on the move, too: salvagers, transporters, welders, cutters, hydraulic rammers, and more. Their escorts of safety bots were clearing the way through the endlessly shifting fireflies that infested the place.
Ah, Michael thought. Now he understood. It was a repair facility. No, hang on, that was not right. No repair facility ever had such strict security. After all, the fact that the Federation was fixing its battle-damaged heavy cruisers was hardly the state secret of all time, and why was the facility right at the heart of Comdur? Getting ships the size of heavy cruisers down Comdur’s gravity well, small as it was, would take some doing.
So what was going on here?
“Well, Michael. What do you think?” Baker asked.
“Impressive, sir,” Michael replied guardedly. “Impressive. But it’s not just another repair facility, is it?”