Not even the suit’s lights could penetrate the gloom right across the ring. As a result, the curvature effect was completely lost. She was standing in a metal cave, walls, floor, and ceiling made up from millions of aluminium alloy panels, heat sealed to the naked rock underneath and welded together. Plants had been grown up the walls while the arkship was occupied, vigorous creepers clawing their way along metal trellises. Their leaves were black and wizened now, dead from lack of water and light long before the heat seeped away into space. But the cold had arrived before they’d fallen in their final autumn, sprinkling them with frost then freezing them into place against the dull metal tiling.
The ring’s ceiling had an analogue in human warehouse roofs; criss crossed with thick pipes and sturdy gantry crane rails, giving the vast chamber an overtly industrial feel. Its illumination had been provided by thousands of large circular disks of smoked glass, which peered out of the gaps.
“A winter wonderland palace,” Monica datavised. “Even if it was built by the devil’s own elves.”
“How could they live in this, for Christ’s sake?” Renato asked. “It’s just a machine. There’s no attempt to make it pleasing or hospitable. You couldn’t stay inside all of your life, it would drive you insane.”
“Us,” Oski datavised. “Not them. They don’t have our psychological profile.”
“I expect they would find one of our habitats to be equally disenchanting,” Samuel said.
“The Tyrathca have arrived,” one of the serjeants datavised.
Everyone saw it through the sensor disk Monica had left up in level one. A flash of light from the airlock which led up to the spaceport support column. Large jagged sections of the square titanium hatch flew into the corridor, rebounding from the walls amid cascades of ice chips to twirl away in both directions. The Tyrathca emerged, and began moving in a slow canter towards the entrance to the spiral ramp. They were in spacesuits, which made it hard to tell between breeders and soldiers. Although the SII had tried many times to sell them programmable silicon suits modified to their physiology, they’d resolutely stuck to their own original design.
The body of Tyrathca spacesuits was made from a tough flexible plastic, a silvery blue in colour, like metallic silk. They formed overalls that were loose and baggy enough for the big creatures to slip into easily, with concertina-like tubes for legs and arms. After that, instead of inflating them with oxygen, they were pumped full with a thick gel, expelling all the air. Given how many limbs (and therefore joints) a Tyrathca body had, such a concept neatly did away with the problem of providing multiple pressurized joints on every suit. In order to breathe, they wore simple tight-fitting masks inside the suits. Oxygen tanks, a regulator mechanism, and a heat exchanger were worn in a pack along their backs, with two black radiator fins running along their spine. Additional equipment was carried on a harness around their necks.
“Looks like subtlety is another trait we don’t share,” Monica datavised. “They must have blown out every airlock along that first corridor to get inside. The sensor disk is registering a lot of gas motion in that corridor. They just don’t care that Tanjuntic-RI is going to vent its remaining atmosphere.”
“If they don’t, we shouldn’t,” Renato datavised. “It won’t affect our mission.”
“They’re all armed,” Samuel datavised. “Even the breeders.”
The Tyrathca were each carrying a pair of long matt-black rifles, with coiled leads plugged into power packs on their harnesses. Monica put an armaments library file into primary mode, and let it run through the catalogue for a match. “Masers,” she datavised. “Fairly basic medium-output projectors. Our armour should withstand an energy strike from them. But if we get caught in a saturation situation we’ll be in trouble. And they’re carrying other ordnance as well. I think I can make out some guided rockets, and EE grenades on those harnesses. Human-built.”
“I wonder who sold those to them,” Oski datavised. “I thought the Confederation didn’t permit armaments sales to the Tyrathca.”
“Not relevant,” Samuel datavised. “Come on, let’s locate that control office the archaeology expedition found.”
Monica bled in her suit sensor’s infrared visualization as they moved off. The Tyrathca buildings materialized around her, tapering towers of a pale blue luminescence, like flame frozen against the empty blackness which stretched out along the ring. It was a cold necropolis, with every street and building identical, as if each section had been stamped from the same die and laid out end to end. Gardens of tangled plants besieged each of the towers, their entwined stalks caught in the act of sagging. Unrelenting cold had turned the vegetation as hard and black as cast iron. Fanciful leaves, strangely shaped flowers and bloated seed pods had all been reduced to the same sombre shade of charcoal.
“Damn, those Tyrathca can move fast in low-gee,” Samuel datavised. They hadn’t been walking ten minutes, and already the Tyrathca had reached the bottom of the first spiral ramp. A sensor disk showed one of them sweeping a portable electronic scanner over the floor while the others waited behind. The group split into three, following the various thermal trails.
“I make that eighteen coming our way,” Monica datavised. “I think we’ve got four breeders. They’re slightly larger.”
“I will return to the entrance,” one of the serjeants datavised. “I will have time to lay several false heat trails before they reach this ring. That should split them again. And I may manage to close the airlock door. Either way, it will reduce the force that will ultimately pursue you.”
“Thank you,” Monica datavised.
The serjeant turned round, and walked back down the road.
“And then there were five,” Renato muttered uneasily round his respirator tube.
Ione wanted to know as soon as possible what the Tyrathca intended. The knowledge would certainly help her plan the kind of tactics needed to keep them away from the team. The two diversion serjeants had busily laid their heat trails, meandering between several of the big machinery chambers on the second level. That was when she found that the map made by the archaeologists was not perfect. Several times, she’d had to use her inertial guidance to work out where she was when corridors didn’t correspond to the indicated layout. It was a factor to consider when she sketched in her possible escape routes. The Tyrathca wouldn’t suffer from such misinformation. Tanjuntic-RI’s exact topology would be known to them; passed down from generation to generation via their chemical program glands.
One of the diversion serjeants was now hanging back from the archway that opened into a hemispherical chamber. It was a big space, occupied by what appeared to be a refinery constructed entirely out of glass. Colonnades, spheres, bulbs, and minarets formed their own miniature city, bound together with a tangled lattice of tubes. Individual containers were full of coloured liquids that had turned to ice. Cracks were visible everywhere. If heat ever did return to this chamber, the whole edifice would probably collapse.
There were three other entrances to the glass refinery, the one opposite the serjeant was where the heat trail from the ramp led. Sensor disks on the corridor wall showed Ione the Tyrathca advancing steadily along it. Ione waited. She knew her suit’s heat signature would be visible to the Tyrathca as soon as they entered the refinery chamber, shining with the tenacity of a red dwarf star against the arctic corridor.
The first Tyrathca came in. Stopped. Raised the scanner it was holding, pointing it directly at her. Her suit communication block picked up a burst of encrypted data. The whole column of Tyrathca came to a halt. Then two of them moved up to support the first. They immediately fanned out on either side of the chamber, reducing her target opportunity.