Cornerstone, page 4
“Out of interest, who is the commanding officer on Cornerstone?” asked Lanson.
“I don’t—” Aveen took a breath. “I’m not permitted to disclose that information, sir.”
“Fine,” said Lanson.
Less than five minutes later, the Gallivant’s crew and soldiers were divided between two of the ground transports, where they sat on hard benches with the members of the Cornerstone platoon.
Lanson sat opposite Aveen, and, as the transport accelerated with a grumble of its engines, he wondered how much he dare ask the Cornerstone officer. It was clear the security here was far tighter than he’d realised, and that the base followed different protocols to other facilities within the Human Confederation.
“What’s in the adjacent bay, Lieutenant?” asked Lanson, keeping it deliberately vague.
“I’m not allowed to tell you anything, Captain,” said Aveen. “That’s assuming I knew it to tell.”
“How long have you been here on Cornerstone?”
“Coming up to five years now.”
“That’s a long time to be stationed in one place, soldier.”
“I guess you could call it my home now, sir.”
“And what about the rest of your platoon?” said Lanson, indicating the other Cornerstone soldiers in the back of the transport.
“There’s none of us been off this planet since we came here,” said a woman with dark curly hair. She shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“Is that the same for everyone?” asked Lanson.
“Maybe,” said the woman. “I don’t speak to anyone outside my platoon.”
The soldier wasn’t a very good liar, but Lanson didn’t press in case she got into trouble later. It was starting to appear as if whoever came to Cornerstone stayed on Cornerstone, in order to keep the secrets of the place from spreading farther afield. On the other hand, neither Aveen nor his soldiers looked as if they knew anything of much significance.
All of this was adding up to a worrying situation. Although Lanson didn’t expect any harm to befall him or his crew, it was looking increasingly like leaving Cornerstone would be difficult. Whoever was in charge of the facility probably had sufficient authority to request that Lanson be kept here until the ongoing research was no longer so sensitive that everything had to be kept under lock and key. That might take months, unless the Sagh’eld began sweeping through this area of human territory – in which case the research facilities would be moved elsewhere, and existing personnel moved with them.
We’re all on the same team and with the same goals, thought Lanson. I can’t lose sight of that.
The transport continued its journey and, through the opening at the back of the vehicle, Lanson had a clear view of the Gallivant. The warship had taken a real beating from the Vachal destroyer, and the torn armour plating around the Zavon missile craters was a stark reminder of how close he’d come to death.
Still, Lanson reflected, losing warships and nearly dying weren’t exactly new experiences, though he hadn’t learned to love either.
After a short time, the transport came to a halt.
“Sir, follow me,” said Aveen stiffly.
The officer stood up from the metal bench and made his way through the other soldiers in the transport. Lanson followed and climbed the three steps which took him onto the ground. He moved quickly away from the vehicle to make room for the others to exit.
Looking around, Lanson found that the transport’s driver had parked it in an area at the end of one of the southern bay exit tunnels. The space was about fifty metres by fifty and with a ceiling higher than it needed to be. Even here, the resonance of the Gallivant’s Rodos drive was loud enough to make normal speech difficult.
A bank of personnel airlifts had been installed into the western wall, along with a twenty-metre-wide cargo lift. He spotted a handful of personnel, and a couple of soldiers in combat suits stood guard near the airlifts.
“The airlifts aren’t big enough for us all to go in the same one,” said Aveen, spelling out the obvious. “We’ll divide ourselves between the leftmost three.”
Lanson didn’t argue and he entered one of the cylindrical lift cars along with Aveen. Other soldiers entered the car until it was full.
“Going up,” said Aveen, touching the inner panel.
As soon as the lift door closed, the droning of the Gallivant’s propulsion dropped almost to zero and Lanson’s ears felt the relief of it. A short period of acceleration brought the car to the upper level and the door opened again.
“Still underground,” said Lanson, when he stepped out into a wide room, with a much lower ceiling than the one below.
“A lot of Cornerstone is,” said Aveen. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I hope not,” muttered Lanson under his breath.
The walls on this level were clad in drab grey alloy tiles, and there was no sign of the cargo lift, which Lanson assumed must exit on the surface. A duct thrummed softly as it pumped out cold air. A group of technicians was waiting for one of the adjacent lifts to arrive. Several of them were staring at their portable diagnostic devices, and not one of them showed interest in the arrival of so many people from the bay below.
Three exit passages led from the room, with ceiling-hung signs displaying their destinations. Lanson’s eyes automatically went to the sign opposite – AD-7140-2. The letters and numbers meant nothing to him.
“Straight ahead,” said Aveen, pointing. “The officer’s mess is three thousand metres that way, but there’s an underground shuttle.”
Lanson walked alongside the Cornerstone officer. Looking ahead, he could see that the passage opened up into a room about fifty metres farther. A couple of soldiers were heading this way, in no particular hurry, and the overall lack of personnel made Lanson believe this area of Cornerstone wasn’t much used. The two soldiers offered salutes as they went past, close to the left-hand wall, though it wasn’t clear who exactly they were acknowledging.
Entering the room, Lanson spotted nothing of particular interest, except for the shuttle. This shuttle turned out to be no more elaborate than a twenty-person gravity vehicle parked at one end of a tunnel wide enough to accommodate two such cars. When Lanson climbed onto the front bench, he discovered the vehicle was pre-programmed to head only to a single destination – the end of the tunnel – and at a pre-set speed.
Aveen set the shuttle in motion – leaving half of the personnel to wait for the next trip. After a journey of approximately three thousand metres, accomplished in a glacial five minutes, the shuttle came to a stop in a room similar to the one it had recently exited, and adjacent to the second shuttle, this one being currently empty.
Having sent the shuttle back to pick up the others, Aveen insisted that everyone wait here for its arrival. That arrival took ten minutes, and then the officer beckoned the group to move again.
A short walk though grey corridors brought Lanson and everyone else to an airlift large enough to accommodate them all. It carried them upwards to another room, one exit from which led into a corridor. Warm light flooded into the passage through windows in the right-hand wall and Lanson stopped for a moment to look outside, ignoring Aveen’s obvious impatience.
The windows offered a view across the landing field. It was busier outside than when Lanson had recently brought in the Gallivant, with far more lifter shuttles in the air. One such vessel flew slowly past, with a huge crate dangling from its gravity chains. When he looked east, Lanson could see the two huge cargo ships, several kilometres away from where he was standing. The windows were thick, and they blocked out almost all the sound.
Aside from the shuttles, a potentially more significant development hovered in the cloudless blue skies above the landing strip, at an altitude Lanson judged to be five thousand metres.
“I wonder what’s brought that destroyer in so low,” said Matlock.
“Beats me, Commander,” said Lanson, with his eyes narrowed.
At eight hundred metres in length, the destroyer was twice the length of the Gallivant, and with a vastly greater mass. The vessel was proportionately narrower across the beam, but with higher sides, and its V-shape was less pronounced. Even from this distance, Lanson could see that it was bristling with repeater turrets.
“The Extermination or the Bulldozer,” said Massey. “I guess it doesn’t matter which.”
Lanson turned to Lieutenant Aveen. “Why has that destroyer come in so close?”
“I don’t have that information, Captain,” said Aveen. “I’m not on the need-to-know list for warship movements.”
“Fair enough,” said Lanson. He indicated along the corridor. “Lead on.”
“Yes, sir.”
Aveen headed off along the corridor once more, and Lanson fell in step with a feeling of growing unease.
Pushing his worries aside – for now - Lanson followed for another four hundred metres until Aveen stopped at a three-metre-wide unmarked door in the right-hand wall.
“This is where you’ll be staying, sir,” said Aveen, touching his hand against the door operation panel.
Lanson stared through the opening. A short passage led to a large room which, while not exactly well-appointed, was at least furnished with what looked like comfortable seats and – hopefully, he thought - cruiser-grade replicators. The two visible wall screens were showing the same TV show, though the sound was muted. Lanson could also see a row of metal desks. On top of each was a basic computer.
“This place has been surplus to requirements for a couple of years,” said Aveen, thumbing through the opening. “There are enough beds for you all, with plenty spare.” He smiled, showing he probably wasn’t an asshole - just another officer handed some difficult orders. “It should be more comfortable than your warship.”
Lanson nodded. “What happens from here, Lieutenant?”
“The mess area is self-contained, sir,” said Aveen, looking uncomfortable again. “Once you’re inside, I have security codes which will prevent you from leaving. I’ll post a couple of soldiers outside.” He pointed at a speaker in the wall. “You can talk to them using the door comms if you need anything.”
Nodding his acceptance, Lanson indicated the personnel from the Gallivant should enter. He didn’t much like the situation, but the time to cause hell wasn’t now.
Lanson followed the others and the door slid shut behind him.
FIVE
The mess room was hardly different to any other officers’ mess room. An inconsiderate scumbag had left a tray with food scraps on a table nearby and a thin covering of mould made it clear the incident had occurred several weeks ago. It was also apparent that no cleaning bot was assigned to this part of the base.
Straight ahead, another window – this one large and rectangular – looked out over the landing field, and, when Lanson checked, the destroyer was in the same place as before.
Otherwise, there wasn’t much to see, and Lanson set off along one of the two exit corridors, with Gabriel and Matlock following close behind. The exploration didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes – the Gallivant’s personnel had been confined to an area containing a dozen rooms in addition to the mess area. Six of these rooms had bunks for four, and the rest were individual quarters.
One door was closed, and the light on the access panel was red. When Lanson tried to operate the panel, the door remained closed.
“Private Galvan reports the entrance door back there is also security locked, Captain,” said Gabriel a few moments after this discovery. “And I was looking forward to sightseeing.”
It was hard to tell if Gabriel was angry or not, since his natural tone of voice made it sound like he was chewing gravel, and Lanson couldn’t glean much more from the soldier’s expression.
“It’s going to take a few weeks to patch up the Gallivant,” said Lanson. “Later, I’ll speak to someone on the base and find out exactly what the plans are for us.”
Gabriel nodded. “Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “This isn’t normal.”
“No, it’s not,” Lanson agreed. “They’re working on something top-secret here, Sergeant – and don’t ask me what it is, because I don’t know – so they don’t want us wandering around poking our noses into places we aren’t welcome.”
“I’ve been to other secure research facilities before, sir. Hell, my squad and I were assigned guard duty at Future Path on Edanor a few years back. It was nothing like this.”
It was now clear that Gabriel was unhappy with the situation on Cornerstone – more so than his face was letting on. Lanson didn’t like it either, but being here on Lorimos was greatly preferable to death – which would have been the most likely outcome had the Gallivant been forced to travel another four days to Valdos.
With the exploration done, Lanson returned to the mess area. His eyes lingered on the entrance door. His command codes should override the security - unless someone on the base was on their toes enough to have taken steps to prevent it happening – but it probably wasn’t the best time to try them now.
Instead, he headed over to one of the replicators, where Private Rocky Chan was making his selection. The soldier still had his thick-barrelled RAHD – Rodos-accelerated handheld destroyer – slung over his shoulder, like he couldn’t bear to set the weapon down even for a moment.
When Chan moved aside, Lanson instructed the replicator to create him a culinary masterpiece of burgers, fries, and juice. He was pleased to discover that the device was indeed a more capable model than those installed on the Gallivant, and the food it produced looked and tasted almost like the real thing. Almost.
Then, Lanson dragged a chair over towards the window, so he could look outside while he ate. A clock on the mess room wall indicated it was early afternoon on Lorimos, and there wasn’t a cloud in the pristine sky. Lanson wasn’t too interested in the weather, and he watched the spaceships outside, in case he could learn something from their activities.
“What’s the plan, Captain?” asked Matlock, hauling over a chair of her own and sitting next to him.
“Do we need one?”
“You know what I mean, sir,” said Matlock, making a gesture that was intended to encompass the entire base. “Unless you’re planning for us to sit here for a month while the repairs are completed. Hell, if they even are completed.”
“We can remotely access the logs on the Gallivant, Commander, you know that. If the repairs don’t begin in the next few hours, I’ll start pushing for answers.”
“It just seems as if you’re letting things—”
“I’m not,” said Lanson sharply. “We haven’t been here much longer than an hour, Commander. What do you expect me to do? Order a breakout from our quarters and attempt to steal one of those cargo ships on the landing field?”
Matlock looked pained. “No, sir. I was only concerned you were treating this all like it’s acceptable.”
“It’s not acceptable,” said Lanson. “But that doesn’t mean there’s a need for immediate action.”
He turned back towards the window, through which he could see two immense lifter shuttles – the biggest he’d seen on the base so far – heading at a low velocity in the direction of the cargo vessels. Lanson’s eyes tracked them, while his mind kept on turning. It seemed as if everyone was on edge about being here on Cornerstone, and, while he shared those concerns, Lanson didn’t see an immediate need to poke a stick into what might well turn out to be a hornet’s nest.
Besides, the Gallivant wasn’t going anywhere soon, and the warship’s personnel all needed a chance to recover from the engagement at Renar-2. The last two days at lightspeed - knowing that the warship might break up at any moment - had taken their toll, and anyone who claimed otherwise was either outright lying or full of bravado.
After a few minutes, Lanson climbed to his feet and pushed his empty tray back into the replicator. “Lieutenant Turner,” he said. “Connect to the Gallivant’s databanks and see if there’s anything in the archived flight records about a Blade class cruiser being sent to Lorimos. The model we saw in the underground bay looked as if it was two gens old, so don’t waste time checking the newer models.”
“Yes, sir, I see what I can find.”
“I’ll log into one of these computers over here,” said Matlock, pointing to the row over by the left-hand wall. “Maybe my security tier will be high enough to access something useful.”
Lanson wasn’t hopeful, and neither was Matlock, judging by her expression. “Go ahead, Commander,” he said.
“Anything you want the rest of us to do?” asked Lieutenant Abrams, holding a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.
“If you think of anything, I’m all ears,” Lanson countered.
“The thing is, Captain,” said Abrams. “I don’t like mysteries, and this here on Lorimos is a mystery. My mind’s going to pick at it until it comes up with answers.”
“Mine too,” said Lanson. “However, what I’d most like is for the Gallivant’s repairs to be completed in double-quick time, so we can get out of here. Whatever they’re doing at Cornerstone will become clear once they have a breakthrough and the new tech starts showing up in the HC fleet – assuming that breakthrough ever happens.”
Ten minutes later, Turner signalled that she’d made a discovery. “Captain, I think the Blade class in that underground bay is called the New Beginning.”
Lanson racked his brains. “Never heard of it.”
“There’s no reason you should have, sir,” said Turner. “Most of the flight records for vessels coming to and from Lorimos are inaccessible but the New Beginning’s file is among those I’m able to view. The vessel came here about six years ago – nearly five years after the beginning of our war with the Sagh’eld.”
“Just when it was becoming clear it was a war beyond our capabilities to win,” said Lanson.
“Yes, sir.”
“New Beginning,” Lanson repeated. “Sounds like a statement of intent.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Turner. “Maybe it’s a test ship.”
Lanson had been thinking the same thing and he nodded. “Is there anything to indicate when the Vachal destroyer was brought here? It would fit in the bay of one of our heavy lifters – the Goliath, maybe.”
