The Apocalypse Contract

CHAPTER 48 - SYDNEY

Sydney altered course, ending their spiral approach in favor of a hovering position a discreet distance from the target crater. "I'm launching our bots toward the cave." The image of the moon was replaced with two windows showing twin views of the lunar surface, a bird's eye view transmitted directly from the drones' own sensors. One window had a picture of the muppet Bert in the upper left corner. The other had a picture of Ernie. The Ernie bot surged ahead, allowing it to be seen in Bert's display window. It resembled a metallic insect rather than a Sesame Street muppet.

They approached the crater. It swelled until it consumed the display. The bots skimmed along the surface, the view showing lunar rocks and dust sailing underneath until they reached the crater wall. The cave mouth loomed ahead, ready to devour them.

"OK, get ready to bug out fast if we need to," Mel cautioned.

Sydney gripped her sister's hand. "Don't worry, I've got the ship all set to do a high-G 'run the hell away' maneuver if it comes to it." She pointed to the big red activate icon she had positioned on the control console's surface.

The bots entered the cave. For a moment the displays were pure black, then they shifted frequencies, and the ghostly outlines of the cave walls appeared. They journeyed inward and found a gigantic door. It gaped open.

"I'm sending Ernie in," Sydney reported. The bot hopped over the lower edge of the airlock door, scuttled across the chamber, finding a second open door several dozen meters farther in. Like the first, it looked large enough to fly a jumbo jet through. The tunnel grew even darker as the bot ventured past the second door, so Sydney switched to active lighting. The bot's spotlight swung around the cavernous space, revealing walls like pale skin marred by jagged gouges and rips. The tunnel was otherwise empty.

"It's kind of a dump," Samantha observed, "and I don't think anybody's home."

"I think you might be right," Sydney agreed. "I'll keep Bert at the tunnel entrance to act as a relay and send Ernie in a bit farther. She sent the bot scuttling onward. The tunnel began to curve downward and to the right, which meant the bots would eventually lose line of sight with each other. She kept a careful eye on signal strength to be sure she didn't lose control of Ernie.

She sent the bot on a zigzagging course, examining the walls on each side of the tunnel. "It looks like they left in a hurry. They ripped equipment right out of the walls and left the cables and conduits dangling."

"Hey, back up a bit," Mel requested. "Does that look like a hexframe interface line to you?"

Sydney looked at the bundle of cords dangling from an abused patch of tunnel wall. "Yeah, I think you're right. We should be able to patch into the base network through that, assuming it's still running."

Sydney tapped at the control console. The maintenance bot scurried up to one of the damaged conduits and began working on it. After slicing away the outer jacket, precision tools danced across numerous exposed data strands. One by one it attached the conductive strands to its own diagnostic network interface. "That should just about do it... and... we have a connection!"

"Amazing," Mel responded. "From the looks of the place, I expected it to be totally dead."

Sydney opened a window and sent some basic queries to the moonbase's network. "No, it's definitely alive, if barely. The main reactor is down; looks like the network is running on reserve power systems. No significant traffic going over the network. I think they gutted the place and ran... didn't even bother to shut the door on the way out."

"Can you determine how long ago?" Roger asked.

"Couldn't have been long if reserve power is still running," Mel observed.

"Give me a second, I might be able to tell you." Sydney sent several diagnostic queries to the network. She opened a new window on her control console to display the results. "According to this, network traffic was much higher just a couple of weeks ago before dropping to almost nothing."

Peter whistled. "Two weeks. We didn't miss them by much."

"I'll dig around and see if I can find out more. It looks like they ripped most of their hexframes right out of their housings, but there are at least a few nodes still active on the net somewhere." Sydney dug into her bag of hacking tools and began probing the alien network. "Mel, I think it's probably safe to land in the crater. No need to keep burning fuel in a holding pattern like this."

"I'm on it," her sister replied. "I'll bop on over to the Island of Crows and pilot it down. We'll need to decouple our ships before we land, but we can link back up as soon as we're both on the ground." She blinked out of existence.

Sydney's console flashed a message telling her that the two ships had separated. She picked a spot close to the tunnel entrance and steered the Wonderland to it. The much larger Island of Crows settled down next to it and extended a mechanical arm with a high speed tether.

A moment later, Mel materialized in the control room and walked up to Sydney. "OK, that's sorted. How goes the hacking?"

"I've got some scripts probing the network, but it will take time. Should we all go to Miss Marple's for a while?"

"How about the Painted Pony instead," Roger suggested, "I need to return a book to Marguerite, and the change of scenery would be welcome."

Sydney laughed. "Roger, have you been hanging out with the NPC's? You do know they're not real... right?"

"I am fully aware that the creatures of your menagerie are mere automata you created for your own amusement. Nevertheless, Marguerite has proven quite versed in French literature and is a surprisingly good conversationalist."

Mel snorted. "You've been thrown over for a tentacled chatbot. That's gotta sting."

Sydney suppressed an irrational pang of jealousy. "I choose to take it as a compliment. Marguerite is some of my finest work."

"Wait, are we talking about that babbling ball of blue tentacles?" Samantha asked.

"Yes, that would be Marguerite," Sydney confirmed.

"Because she stopped me in the middle of a tea run earlier demanding to know where you were."

Mel raised an eyebrow. "Hmm. A chatbot with separation anxiety. That is weird."

"Says the woman who lives with a bunch of crow versions of herself," Sydney replied. "I made her heuristics more adaptive than any of the other Non Player Characters, so some random behavior is normal."

"Still, I think I need to spend some more time with this particular NPC. Race you all there." Mel blinked out of existence.

"Well, I for one prefer to walk." Roger extended an arm to Sidney. "Care to join me? I just need to stop at my room and fetch a book on the way."

Sydney smiled and took his arm, then turned to Samantha and Peter. "You go on ahead. We'll meet you there."