Breaking Point

Chapter 5: The Labyrinth

Five directions lay open, with no indicator of which way could lead anywhere useful.  Forward, backward, left, right, down.  The place looked like it was designed specifically to be traversed in microgravity.  No real distinction between ceiling, floor and sidewalls; handrails on every surface; square doors with enough space for a person to go through from any angle; hallways splitting off in every one of the six cardinal directions.  While a normal person would be able to fully reach in every direction, Zaid found he would have to bend his elbows in order to reach up or down, bend his knees in order to turn around and altogether it felt claustrophobic.

Zaid chose to go down, orienting himself head-down -- not that it made a difference; he could barely feel the gravity anyway, but it made it easier to look around.  He opened the first door he came to.  It looked like an infirmary, with medical supplies and surgical robots mounted to the walls.  Inside it had the same regime of handrails everywhere.  It probably hadn't been used in a long time.  A big lump of bubbled something sat in a corner, probably some kind of egg sac.

For somewhere that hadn't been occupied in a long time, it felt too clean.  Zaid had explored abandoned areas on Earth before; most of them were overrun by plants, which could root through concrete.  There were signs of previous occupancy, including a small amount of trash that collected at the "bottom" of each room (the main way to tell the direction of gravity), but no dirt or plants, no accumulated dust, no real filth but the eggsac-blob, nothing.  It was sterile.

Now Zaid was noticing that unless he made effort to move around, he'd start feeling a bit hot.  There was no air circulation.  There were obvious circulation vents placed around the hallways but no air blowing through.  Zaid chuckled.  "Obvious.  No power, no circulation."

His voice echoed eerily through the sterile environment.  "Guess nobody minds if I think out loud.  Nice to let it out.  Who cares if I'm completely insane, as long as there's nobody around?"

Nobody around.  "I guess nobody's going to mind if I goof around for a few minutes."  He made his way back to the top of the hallway, pointed himself downward and kicked off the door as straight and hard as he could.  Not quite straight enough -- after several meters his momentum came to a stop as he crashed into an intersection corner.  He went back to the top and tried again, hitting a wall with the next attempt.  Again and again, each time getting a little further before running into something.  This was fun.  Just the kind of thing Lanesra would have loved.

Lanesra.

Zaid choked a bit.  "That's enough," he said aloud.  Not allowed to think about that.

Fortunately the oncoming train of thought was stopped prematurely by a faint skittering sound.

Time to kill something.  Hopefully.

He listened close.  The sound stopped.  He slammed his fist against the wall.  There it was again, moving away from where he hit.  Some kind of bug.  Interesting.  Didn't expect bugs here.  He had to be quiet if he was going to find it.  Maybe it'll run home.  Lead me to his nest.  Kill his whole family.  He kept tapping the wall, following where the bug skittered.  Across to a side corridor.  Crossing over to another corridor.  Up.  Left.  Down.  Into another corridor.  The slow pace and endless turns started getting frustrating.  He lost track of time but guessed he had been chasing the bug for over an hour and had no idea where he was relative to the beginning.  He sighed.  Bloodlust over a stupid bug.  What am I even thinking?  What am I even doing here?

Now it sounded like two bugs, one of them bigger than the other.  He kept going.  Three bugs, and now he didn't have to tap the walls for them to move.  Then more bugs, to the point where he couldn't tell where they were going by listening anymore.  He could see a vent on the wall; maybe looking through it he'd be able to see them.  Almost without thinking he ripped the vent cover off like paper from a package, and every bit as sloppy.

And there were the bugs.  Like miniature versions of the one he encountered just before being shipped off to this forsaken rock -- twelve-legged two-tailed scorpions, varying in size from fingernail to handspan, all crawling through the ductwork.  With his natural eye he could see they had luminescent patterns on their exoskeleton, which made him a little uncomfortable since he had adapted to seeing nothing out of that eye.  Zaid didn't fit through the duct but he could see the next room that probably had another vent on that same duct.  He pulled himself over to the door.  This one appeared to be locked but that wasn't a problem -- it caved like cardboard under a few of Zaid's full-bodied kicks, launching him into the room and slowly landing him on the wall opposite to the door.

Zaid looked around.  The wall was lined with a series of painted grey metal boxes, each labeled in some foreign language.  In hindsight a lot of things had posted signage in what was probably that language, but he hadn't taken the time to notice before.  Whatever it was, he couldn't read it.  At least he could identify the numbers.  Some of them repeated, but alongside other symbols.  Maybe they were color-coded, too, but his synthetic eye couldn't distinguish color in its dark mode.

But right now all he cared about was where the bugs were going.  The creeping and skittering sounds and a barely visible green glow emanated from a vent that followed an obvious path from the hallway.  Following the path with his eyes, there was another door on the other side of the room -- a much bigger metal door marked with universally-recognized warning signs.  Triangles with figures of people getting electrocuted, engulfed in flame, burned by spill and all sorts of other hazards.  And a round one, the universal symbol for radiation danger.

This one took quite a bit of effort to pry open, starting with the crowbar form for Zaid's hand.  The door's edges were bent up and scarred, but eventually they yielded to his strength enough for him to force his body through sideways -- something much harder to do without the assistance of normal gravity, almost more like pulling himself "up" through it.

As he forced his body through the door he could immediately tell the air was much warmer and dripping with moisture, and a sweet yet somehow putrid smell overwhelmed his nostrils.  The initial repulsive instinct almost made him turn away, but in a moment his body started feeling a little floaty.  Whew, whatever this is, it's almost like a drug.  He pulled the rebreather from the collar of his armor and slipped it over his nose, biting down on the mouthpiece as he slowly breathed in and out until the only float he felt was the dearth of gravity again.

He looked around again, squinting his natural eye as there was some brightness to the room.  The ceiling was significantly higher, perhaps six meters compared to the just under three meters in most of the rooms.  It was nice to be able to stand fully upright even if the microgravity made it virtually impossible to walk normally.  Dozens of round pillars stood from floor to ceiling, lined up in neat rows and columns as far as Zaid could see, and most of them having one or two glowing blue segments -- bright enough that he could see around with his natural eye again.  A few of those pillar segments were broken and not glowing.  Around the broken segments were copious blobs of what looked like some kind of luminescent mold, which the trail of two-tailed scorpions were scooping up in their little pincers before trailing off in a new direction.

Zaid carefully crawled in the direction the buggers were marching.  At first he leapt to a pillar but discovered it was too hot to touch.  Instead he managed to find some meager grip on the black ceramic tile, which protruded only millimeters above the grout.  Hand over hand, careful not to slip, careful not to move too quickly as he had only a few Newtons of friction to start and stop his nearly 500kg of mass, careful not to accidentally shove himself upward which could leave him uncontrolled for several seconds.

Another one of those big scorpion creatures awaited him at the end of the bug trail, this one almost as big as the one he killed on Earth.  His right arm transformed into an ion blaster.  This time with more distance he'd have more time to charge up the shot.  The creature charged when it saw him, but it wasn't fast enough -- a ball of lightning shot from the tip of Zaid's cannon and hit it squarely in the eyes, triggering a steaming and convulsive death.

Thing moves really fast in microgravity.  Come to think of it, it was also weird that it could hold itself on the ceiling on earth.  Must have some way of sticking to things that's not like a normal insect. Doesn't really make sense.

Anyway, this is probably the power generator for this section.  Maybe if I can get the power working again I'll be able to figure my way around this labyrinth.

New step one:  Get the power on.