THE FALL OF ROSENROT STATION

FIRST BLOOD

He went back then until he found the part where he had turned off and he looked at the other blood trail which was beginning to dry on the metal decking. He looked at it but did not follow it and instead went the middle course, following the blue stripe. About fifty meters up the corridor converged with several other corridors from the left and the right, the openings at staggered intervals, onto a single broad lane.

Each side of the lane were pairs of doors and shutterdoors. Etched over each door was a decimal designation and the letter A or B appended. The smaller doors had biometric scan units. The shutterdoors had to be interfaced through their sysnet nodes.

He went to the first one and looked at the scanner. The segmented display proclaimed that it was locked. He tested the card and it pulsed red. He continued on, testing all the doors on his left. About a hundred meters down the sixth door was already unlocked. He put away the card and then covered the contact diode and the door slid silently into the wallspace.

Inside was dark. He took out his torch and checked the power levels on the side. They were green. When he engaged the diodes the miniaturised arclight came on blue and bright cutting through the gloom.

The storage unit was filled with solid looking steel shelves. Boxes were piled high on the shelves and against the wall down the far end.

He went over to a nearby box and pulled off the tape sealing it shut. Within were transparent plastic bags containing grease and machined parts packed into the grease. He left it there and then proceeded down the shelves opening boxes at random. There was nothing besides machined parts. As he came around the second aisle he noticed a small powerloader parked just inside the shutterdoor. The loader was a squat triangle with an enclosed cab. It sat atop its treads with its forks retracted and the safety bar across them.

He turned around and started back through the maze of shelving. Halfway back he had a view of the doorway through a gap in the shelving and so he saw when the light that fell through the doorway flickered briefly. He froze. A moment later and the slat of light was blotted out again. This time the shadow hung there and then joined the rest of the shadows inside. It made no sound he could detect and in the darkness of the storage unit it was invisible.

He fled. The beam of his torch bounced and splashed through the aisles. Then he was at the loader. He pulled on the handle but the door wouldn't budge. He shone the torch on it. When he located the contact diode he stabbed at it and then stepped back. Behind him there was some small noise. It might have been a draft from the vents stirring through the refuse, but it was not. The cab door hinged out and up. He ducked underneath and threw himself up into the cab and then turned and pulled the door back down after him. As he was locking the door some bulk slammed into the cab. The bulk slid wetly off the glass.

When no more attacks were forthcoming he directed his torch outside and peered out through the glass. Once he had seen what there was to see he took out his palmcoder and took several photographs and then appended them to a new log.

MET 15-22 see attached images img005-006 of hostile compare img001-004 of drawings found loc 4.

He was still typing when the creature leaned its pale bulk against the cab and slowly dragged its claws down the glass. The glass shrieked. It repeated the attack again and again, working itself up into a fury. The glass scratched but did not break. The creature withdrew a pace and leaped up and onto the loader and it half crouched there, feet on the steel beam and clawed hands against the glass and peering down into the protected bubble of the cab. It's eyes glinted blackly in the torchlight.

He took out the drawings and examined them under the light of his torch. He glanced back up at the creature and ran the torchlight down its body and back up and then back at the drawings. He picked out the third drawing and studied it.

He created a new note on his palmcoder. Something that wouldn't go into the log.

PL Des hostile bipedal humanoid pale membranous flesh presence of bellybutton indicating placental birth. Face and jaw human proportions but skull flattened back. Human origins?

Theory: station conducting research into genetic manipulation of humans beyond licit uses.

He switched his torch off. Whether that made a difference was hard to say. The creature jumped down and circled behind the loader. Even put away the drawings and blanked the screen of his palmcoder and settled in to wait.

The creatures howl split the silence of the warehouse. It was back in front of the loader and had gotten down on all fours head thrown back and its neck swollen grotesquely like the hydrogen lift sac of a Venus skytoad. Then the muscles around its neck contracted visibly and the air forced out producing a tensioned and high pitched howl. This went on for nearly a minute and when it ceased the howl was taken up again somewhere else by another, an answering howl that filtered through the thin walls distant and echoing. It was calling to them.

He turned on the cabs interior lights and then searched down beside the controls for the on button. It was a pressure diode and when he pressed it a slight hum came through the frame of the loader. The loader had an induction engine which was too demanding to run off the nearfield and so somewhere beneath him was a small and well shielded atomic pile delivering all its energy needs.

He hit another button for the floodlights and they came on bright and brilliant. The creature turned, its large black eyes staring into the light without blinking. It's snout was short and it's mouth a bowl of daggerfangs that gleamed almost silver in the light and a curtain of drool laced each daggertooth to the next and hung below its thin rim of black lips.

The creature filled its throat again but Even did not allow it to finish. He throttled the loader forward and at the same time brought the fork up with the waldo. The bar caught the creature against the shutterdoor across its chest and the bar slipped up to its neck and caught here beneath its bulging skull. A little more pressure and the bar crushed its throat and spinal cord in an explosion of blood from its eyes and snout. He backed away and the creature slumped to the floor.

He turned the lights out and then climbed out of the loader and hurried back through the shelves to the open door. When he reached it he peeked outside both ways and seeing nothing coming, nothing yet anyway, he closed the door silently and locked it. Then he returned to the loader and shut himself up within it.