Tag: pickman's models

Time to buckle down on some stuff.

“Anybody got a suit that’s still got a working translator?” Tobias looked around, grimacing at the irregular chorus of head-shakes. Apparently the Euros had cannibalized all the ‘useless’ circuits and chips from their suits, too. And why not? He snorted. Everybody speaks English up here, because we won’t speak anything else. “Well, maybe we’ll find somebody who does speak it. Until then… we got a trail to follow, Buckley?”

Buckley was crouched over some of the furrows. “…Yes, I think we do. It’s faint, but our, ah, suits can track them. We’ll need to take it slow. Nice and careful, no messing around.”

“Understood. We’ll proceed until we find somebody. Squaddies up front, and we all keep together. Buddy up, and yell if your buddy’s gone, even for a second.”

“Understood, sir.” Reithner paused. “Assume hostile intent now, sir?”

“No,” Tobias responded, “but be prepared for it.”

A book! That nobody can read. Yeah, that’s never a problem in these kinds of stories.

“What happened here?” asked Reithner. No, Tobias decided on the spot. She’s not asking a question. She’s trying not to think about the answer.

Buckley wasn’t as patient. He peered at the rough walls, pointing out the scratches — and faint brown stains. “All waist height,” he noted, then traced the furrows in the crushed-rock lunar floor with one foot. “You either walked out of this room, or you got dragged.”

“Hold on,” Tobias said, pointing at a wider-than-normal crack in the wall. “There’s something in there — oh, wow.”

Reithner had been staring at the room; she started at his exclamation, then relaxed. “What is it?”

“A book.” He pulled it out. “An old one, made out of paper and everything.”

“How old?” asked Buckley. “Like, you know, an illustrated folio?” He meeped laughter at Tobias’s look. “Hey, I read history.”

Still working on the story sampler!

Or, in the case of some of the shrines, other people. “How long?” Tobias asked, without looking. 

There was enough air that he didn’t need the radio to hear Buckley’s response. “A week, sir. At most. In this heat the flesh is going to — well, you can see what’ll happen.” He sounded clinical about it, which made sense, right? “It’d be really unsafe to take off your helmets in this muck, sir. Trust me on this.”

“Understood, Buckley. You see something interesting, Lieutenant?”

Reithner jumped, slightly. She had been peering at a painted frieze of — well, the inscription said ‘Maguglpur,’ but the picture was clearly of the god the Red Imperials called ‘Bonefarmer.’ The half-flesh, half-skull was diagnostic; so were the little pictures of humans, impaled on femurs. Worse, it was fresh. The horrible scenes Tobias had studied at the Academy had felt distant, safely consigned to history. This was something from current events. 

Yeah, back to this.

The mural Reithner was illuminating with her headlamp was… well, it was ugly, and there was no getting around it. It didn’t even have the dubious virtue of technical skill; the artist had pounded and smeared it onto the rock wall using whatever materials were at hand. Possibly literally, Tobias thought as he averted his eyes. You can always get brown and red that way.

“That’s… Steelfang, right?” Buckley growled. “The Red Imperial god of death?”

“One of them, yes,” Tobias replied with utter calm. “He’s also sort of their god of farming. That’s why his mouth looks like a scythe, the better to reap his victims. The cult thinks blood makes the grain grow. Give me a good reason not to burn that damned thing off the wall.”

“We do not have incendiaries.” Reithner sounded hot, rather than cold. “Why did we not bring incendiaries?”

The desire in her voice made Tobias get himself back under control. “Right. Douse that light, Lieutenant. We don’t need to see it any longer.” He took a calming breath. “Lieutenant, Buckley, private circuit.” He waited until they both clicked in to continue. “Give me a good reason not to blow the airlock, and leave.”

Airlocks!

The first team was made up of three grenadiers and two Squad members, and when the door opened again, they had the exact same number of people. “There’s power and air, sir, but no people manning the gate,” the Squaddie told Tobias. “No communications network up on the other side, either. My suit couldn’t even find anything to handshake with.”

Reithner had been listening to one of the grenadiers, presumably telling her the same thing. “Nothing from our suits, either. The atmosphere is breathable, but the temperature is at thirty seven degrees.”

“Well, at least there’s no ice — no, wait.” Tobias frowned. “I forgot: your people still use Celsius. You’re saying it’s hot in there?”

“Yes. Blood temperature, in fact.” She sounded incredulous, which was fair, because so was Tobias. Most of Heinlein Base had been shut down and sealed off in order to conserve heat; the other human-occupied outposts had the exact same problem. If this place was that well heated, they probably had power, and to spare. Yet one more reason to investigate, he thought. Not to mention, handle gently.

Airlock!

It was definitely supposed to be a gate. Whoever had put it up had taken doors from the shipping containers up on the surface, including the frames, then mounted them into the rock. There was even a doorsill. The problem was that it was an airlock. Improvised and jury-rigged, but definitely an airlock. That had implications.

Not to mention hindrances. Tobias examined the walls on either side. “I don’t see any communication jacks,” he announced. “No jacks, ports, or plug-ins. Anybody else?”

“No.” Reithner sounded bothered by that, too. If anything, she sounded even more upset than Tobias. “Not even an emergency transmitter. This is a highly unsafe installation.”

“Or they don’t have anybody they want to talk to,” Buckley pointed out. “How far inside do you think we can get with the door closed behind us before we lose signal?”

“Right away.” Tobias had extended his suit’s sensor cable, and was now waving it around. “There’s no EM radiation coming through ahead of us. Once we’re inside, we’re cut off from our bases until we can find a transmitter that’s set up for surface communications.”

“Not gonna lie, sir: that sounds like a great reason to not go inside.” Buckley had gotten more and more darkly sardonic over the last few months, but right now there was no humor in his voice. “They don’t want to talk and they probably don’t want guests. Let’s take the hint.”

Tyranny!

Continue reading 01/14/2024 Snippet, PICKMAN’S MODELS.

Androids!

The impromptu entranceway to whatever was down below was free of booby-traps, alarms, or even cameras. There weren’t any guards, either, or signs that any had been posted. Theoretically, that suggested that the teams could go in, and right on down.

Nobody was ready to trust that theory. The party descended carefully, using as little light as possible, which meant almost no light at all. It was uncanny just how well Luxboroughers moved through the dark; if asked, Tobias would have told Reithner that they were using prototype DoW low-light vision equipment. She didn’t ask, and the grenadiers might as well have been androids. I wish we had androids, Tobias thought sadly. They’d come in handy right now.

They were never cost-effective for the moon, Asenath reminded him. Androids were better-suited for a stable and forgiving environment. Besides, we do not have the supervisory personnel needed to keep them from accidentally killing people.

Trying to give an impression, without saying it outright.

The tram they were on had started as a stiffened fabric dust-trap, bolted to a single-tracked frame and sporting plastic sheets for doors at both ends. Good for keeping direct sunlight and dust out, and sturdy if you weren’t trying to smash it. 

It was also unpressurized, which was helpful if you needed to have a private conversation. Tobias waved to the lieutenant to get her attention, then offered a communications cable. She accepted it, and jacked in. His HUD lit up with her information, although Tobias knew most of it already. Lieutenant Elise Reithner, FDE. Technician specializing in logistics. No combat experience listed, so why is she leading a half-dozen Euro grenadiers? Them, Tobias could have identified right off the bat, dossiers or no: they were all wearing crowd-control suits, their low-G carbines looked excellently cared for, and every one of them was barely under the maximum mass limits for Lunar service. He wondered how much weight they’d all lost, under the new ration regime. Hopefully, not enough to get them killed…

Reithner’s voice interrupted his thought. “Is there a reason for the operational security, sir?” Tobias noted that her English was excellent, with a tinge of… German, he supposed.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” he replied. “I decided to give you the opportunity to pass along whatever messages General Bruno might have wanted you to transmit privately. So if you’re supposed to save them for the right moment, you might as well do it now.”

Corporal Joe Buckley! Will he survive?

Buckley ended up bringing a half dozen members of the old Luxborough Squad with him. At least, Tobias assumed it was them. They had all showed up wearing shielded vacc suits, the kind where you couldn’t see inside the helmets. The Luna City — squatters? Tobias considered. Colonists? No, they’re leaving with the rest of us — detachment had kept their suits on the entire time, too, waiting outside the main airlock with only a portable auxiliary life support unit to keep them company.

Tobias wasn’t sure if the lieutenant in charge of the squad General Bruno sent over had noticed that the Squad’s unit wasn’t actually recycling atmosphere and power. If she had, she was keeping her mouth shut, which was decidedly a survival trait these days. People tried not to think too hard about stuff that couldn’t be explained. If you did, it might start to make sense without warning, and always at the worst possible moment.

The lieutenant hadn’t commented on the fact that Tobias hadn’t brought any of his own people from Heinlein Base along, either. That was a relief, because his own staff had been somewhat acerbic about the discussion, starting over why he was going. We’ve gone over this before, he had eventually pointed out. I’m the only one with the full set of command override codes, anything involving the Lifeboat is my responsibility, and if there’s something down there? Well, we don’t have many other soldiers left, and the best of them are coming with me. Or did you want Corporal Buckley to be in charge of the detachment? I trust him to do it, but how will the Euros act if there’s… complications?