Without a word, the Sean bot fiddled with the access control pad. He worked on it for a good half minute with no luck. Then from his side bag he removed a compact metallic cylinder the length of my hand. With a smooth motion, he pressed one end against the control pad.
“Is that a donokkal?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes.” The blast door slid open with a whoosh.
“Where’d you get it?”
“I found it on the Baeder. Come on.”
Motion-activated illumination panels winked on as we stepped into a narrow corridor.
“We should probably get the guns out,” Ana-Zhi said. “This whole place could be swarming with security bots.”
“Doubtful,” Chiraine said.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that, princess?”
“They don’t need security. Who would be crazy enough to raid a Rhya station?”
She had a point. What I wanted to know was how come there was still power if the reactor was down.
“The station is running off auxiliary power,” the Sean bot said. “It’s not enough to actually open a jump gate, but it’s enough to keep the lights on.”
The corridor led us into a room which came alive once we entered it. Without warning, nozzles emerged from the walls and ceiling and sprayed us with a thick foam.
Chiraine shrieked in alarm, but Ana-Zhi grabbed her and calmed her down. “Relax. It’s just disinfectant. Standard procedure in a place like this.”
Jets of gas blew the foam from our suits as we proceeded through the room. Then a series of bright flashes of light followed us as we moved towards the far end of the room, where another blast door indicated the way out.
After a few moments, the door opened with an automated whoosh.
“At least we’re clean now,” Narcissa said.
We trudged into a corridor and made our way past various machine shops and storage rooms. In one of them, I saw lines of unmoving repair magnatae, standing like statues in the dim light of the store room’s utility panels.
“Look, Sean, your kinfolk are having a picnic in there,” Ana-Zhi jeered.
“Too soon, Ana-Zhi,” I said. “Way too soon.”
Chiraine grinned at me and gave me a comforting hug.
After five minutes of winding our way through a maze of corridors, we reached the inner spire which, according to the schematics, was the central core of the station.
“That might be a lift,” I said, pointing to a set of doors recessed in the central spire.
“It is,” the Sean bot said. “A maglev lift, judging from its energy signature.”
Narcissa managed to use the controls to summon a pod. “You think it’s safe?”
“No reason why it wouldn’t be,” the Sean bot said.
Soon we were descending into the bowels of the Fountain’s control station.
I hoped we could ride this lift all the way to the bottom of the station where the primary reactor and power core was, but no such luck.
The pod slowed and then stopped. Last stop, I guess.
According to the schematics on my Aura, we still had 300 meters to go in order to reach the primary reactor, but now we had to head back out away from the inner core and find another route down.
As we turned a corner, I caught sight of something lying on the ground a half dozen meters away.
It was a body. A Rhya body to be exact, dried and shriveled, like a fish that had accidentally jumped from its tank and landed on the floor while no one was at home.
“Poor thing,” Chiraine said.
“Yeah, I hope it didn’t suffer.” I felt my jaws clench as anger flushed through me. This was a brutal attack by the Mayir. And completely unprovoked. We needed to bring them to justice. No matter what.
We found a dozen more bodies on this level. Some were in the corridor, others were crowded next to an emergency exit that led to a much smaller lift that ran along the outer edge of the station. We ended up using that lift to descend a hundred meters through what the Sean bot thought was a systems control core.
“We’re getting closer,” he said. “Below us should be energy storage. We’re going to have to find a shielded route; otherwise you’ll need to carry me out.”
That was true. Intense energy radiation from the station’s power accumulator cells might fry us all.
“Here we go.” Narcissa had located another access shaft, and from the look of the shielding on the door, it should provide us safe passage through the energy storage levels.
We climbed down into it, descending a metal ladder.
“You okay?” I asked Ana-Zhi. It looked like she was still favoring her left side.
“For now,” she said.
“I can carry you, Z,” the Sean bot said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know what would be worse—the shame of being carried by the likes of you—or falling into a reactor.”
Thankfully, we all made it down in one piece.
At the bottom of the access shaft was a utility room filled with maintenance bots. The Sean bot inspected one of them and then informed us that they were automated core sweepers.
“Not dangerous,” he said.
“I told you,” Chiraine said.
A locked blast door was the only way out of the utility room. The Sean bot used his donokkal to unlock the door and immediately my suit registered a blast of cold air.
Chiraine had noticed it as well. “We just had a twenty-five-degree temperature drop.”
“Cooling units for the primary reactor,” the Sean bot said. “We’re very close now.”
Ana-Zhi stopped in her tracks. “I have to say, I’m having some second thoughts about this. Maybe you should take it down there and we’ll wait for you here.”
The Sean bot shook his head. “We have no idea what the area of effect is. It might just be a few meters. In that case, I’d be free but the rest of you would be stuck here with a bunch of angry Mayir.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “C’mon, Ana-Zhi. As you like to tell me: grow a pair.”
“Very
