James Axler - Sunchild

It took little time for them to ascertain that the redoubt was, on these lower levels at least, completely deserted. It was in a reasonable condition. There were signs of stress in some of the walls, suggesting that earth movements resulting from the tremors and quakes following skydark had made some impact on the redoubt, but most of the lighting was still working, and there was some circulation of air through a purification plant. The air was clean, but a little thin, suggesting that the plant was damaged.

“Can’t stay here too long,” Mildred remarked as they explored the empty rooms. “The air’s fine now, but it won’t last that way forever.”

“Why not?” Dean countered. “It’s been okay up to now, right?”

“Think about it, my boy,” Doc interjected with a sardonic note. “The air is, shall we say, a little thin down here. Suggesting, I should imagine, some malfunction of the ancient technology keeping this place alive, albeit perhaps in a wheezing and somewhat dubious manner…A little like myself, in fact.”

“So?” Dean prompted, still in the dark.

“So, it’s thin and strained when the redoubt is empty. But now it has seven people breathing in at a ridiculous rate. A rate made, with some irony, even faster by its very paucity.”

“Big words for say we use faster than made,” Jak commented with an amused look at the old man. Doc merely shrugged.

“So how long you reckon we got?” J.B. asked Mildred.

She shook her head, the ends of her plaits moving rhythmically as though caught by a much needed draft of air. “Couldn’t say for sure, John. It’s like being at a high altitude. I don’t think we’d suffocate for a few days, but the more rarefied it gets, the more it might affect us. Hallucinations, maybe.”

“Great. Like jolt only not so good,” Jak muttered in a dour tone.

“Think we can risk a night?” Ryan asked Mildred. “I’d like us to get some rest before tackling whatever may be out there or risk another jump.”

“I’d say we could do that,” Mildred replied after some thought.

“Good. Now let’s try and find the shower stalls, mebbe some clean clothes. That’d make me feel better for a start,” Krysty added.

“Right. Stink like mutie polecat on heat,” Jak grunted.

It didn’t take long to find the shower stalls and washing facilities. Like most redoubts, this one was laid out to a specification that had been generally used. There had been exceptions, but for the most part it could be assumed that if a person had explored one redoubt, he or she had a fair chance of navigating every other one he or she came across.

The showers were still working. As with several of the redoubts they had encountered so far, the lighting in this one was erratic. But the water was still on, and the heaters still worked. The first streams of water were lukewarm, flecked with some decay and foreign matter from the pipes, but after a minute or so by Ryan’s wrist chron the water was clear, flowing freely and of an even temperature.

They took turns to shower, keeping a guard at all times. It seemed that the redoubt was deserted apart from their presence, but they could never be too sure. The friends had been taken unawares on a previous occasion.

It was a simple matter to find clean clothing. The store rooms for all redoubts were situated in the same place, and in this redoubt they were lucky enough to find underclothes and thermally insulated outerwear that had lain unused for over a century. They took the opportunity to change clothes and would later launder what they usually wore.

One strange thing, though—the clothes weren’t the usual regulation khaki and olive-green, or white. Some of the clothes were in colors that seemed, under the dim lighting, to be black or a dark blue. Some of it, under the better lighting of the corridor, even revealed itself to be purple, a color rarely if ever seen in predark sec conditions. And the lighter colors were yellows and sky-blues. It was a small but significant difference.

“These make a change,” Dean remarked as he dressed, “but it doesn’t seem right to me.”

“You’re right,” Krysty agreed. “The armies from before skydark would never have used this.” She held up a purple T-shirt that seemed, in the light, to have streaks of a faded pattern running across it. “This is no ordinary military redoubt.”

“Built on the same lines, though,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “Odd. Most of the nonmilitary redoubts we’ve jumped to have been different. But this…”

“I know,” Mildred said. “It’s uncanny, and maybe just a bit creepy. It’s a military base, but with so many nonmilitary touches. If only it wasn’t so damned dark…I’d swear that these rooms are just a bit smaller than the usual size. It’s like someone got the military blueprints but had to downscale just a bit.” Mildred shivered. “It just gives the place a screwy atmosphere, like looking into a distorting mirror.”

Jak looked at her, puzzled. “Not feel danger here,” he said simply. “Old sec weird. Seen plenty weirder.”

Doc, who had so far been silent, leaned thoughtfully on his swordstick, hands clasped over the silver lion’s head. “I wonder…” he mused, then lapsed into silence.

“Wonder what, Doc?” Ryan asked gently, knowing that when the old man was straining to recall, it was best to keep patience and coax it from him.

“Whitecoat paranoia,” Doc continued. “You know, those fools always believed there were secret cabals out to overthrow them—private armies, hidden money and knowledge. All power, I suppose. But perhaps…”

“If this was such a place—another sec force—then mebbe it’s got a good armory.” J.B. almost smiled as he jammed his fedora onto his closely cropped scalp. The twinkle in his eyes betrayed his excitement.

“We could do with a few new blasters, mebbe some grens,” Ryan said. “Should be easy to find the armory if this follows standard layout, right?”

They all nodded agreement.

“Well, I vote we get some sleep first,” Krysty said with a sigh. “We know we can’t stay here too long, and I can’t feel any danger at all, lover.”

“Okay. We’ll search for the armory after we’ve slept, mebbe see if we can access some information. This place seems to be in good order, so mebbe the comps won’t be too fucked up.”

The weariness with which his companions agreed and the fact that the Armorer was content to leave the weapons search until after sleeping were sure signs that the friends badly needed some rest.

As they had all suspected, the dormitories were easy to find. Echoing Mildred’s impression that the redoubt was on a smaller scale than most old sec installations, the dorms housed only a few beds per room. In fact, it looked as though the total personnel of this redoubt couldn’t have been more than thirty at most.

Dean, Jak and Doc took one room. Mildred and J.B. another, leaving Ryan and Krysty to take their pick of the remaining dorms.

Shutting themselves away from the others, and gaining a rare privacy since the beginning of their travels, they settled into one of the beds. The controlled environment of the redoubt had kept the linen fresh, and little dust or dirt had accumulated over the preceding century.

Krysty moved closer to Ryan, molding herself to his body and running a fingernail over the ridges of the one-eyed warrior’s ribs.

“Still tense, lover?” she asked, feeling the knotting of his muscles.

“Mebbe it’s got to where I’ve forgotten how to relax,” Ryan replied. “It’s too quiet, too calm. I don’t like it…. It’s not right. Too easy.”

Krysty drew circles with her nail on his rippling muscles. “Mebbe so…I can’t feel anything, and I’m cherishing the calm. Gaia knows we don’t get too much of that. It’s not a calm and peaceful world, so finding an oasis of peace for just a little while…Do you think you’d be able to settle if we ever did find the promised lands?”