Bunker No. 11 - Day Two
It did not want a ditch
Lieutenant Sarah Jenkins could feel it in the Mauler's legs. It was in trench dig mode, six spider legs splayed out, two front legs replaced with digging claws. The plan was straight forward. Cut a trench from the bunker's underground water tap to the new outside purifiers. Run pipes, bury pipes. Have water you could defend, without burning up twenty percent of Reactor Two just to pump water up from two kilometers below.
Roots had other ideas.
The claw struck something that wasn't dirt. A dull thud sounded up Jenkins' arm.
"Contact hard," she announced, "not rock. Feels like wood."
"Back up and check," Adrian's voice came through her comm. He was on perimeter with Yelena's squad, KPR rifles up. Watching the tree line as engineers worked.
Jenkins reversed the claw. It threw up a large amount of loose dirt, revealing a root nearly as thick as the Mauler itself, nearly as thick as a cargo container, covered in bark like ironwood but paler. It snaked off to either side, disappearing into the forest, a major artery.
It was bleeding.
Where the claw had scraped along the root, a thick white sap was coming out, like milk but steaming. It dripped onto the Mauler's claw and the paint was bubbling and peeling off.
"Whoa! Corrosive! Pull leg! Pull leg!" Jenkins yanked back on the controls. The Mauler took a step back, shaking the glob of white goo off. It struck the dirt and the ground hissed. Small ferns around it were scorched and wilted.
Dr. Talia Chen ran up to the edge of the trench in her thermal suit, scanner in hand, uncaring of the sap on her boots.
"Don't touch it! Don't touch it with your skin!" She barked at the engineers, "pH unknown!"
She scanned the root, "it isn't just acid. It's laced with same energy as amber heart. Low dose, but same frequency. It looks like this root system has been absorbing that energy over the centuries. Probably a long-term mutation. HNV-28 changed a lot while we were under and this energy has been warping plant growth."
Adrian crouched at the edge of the trench, looking at the root now barring their way.
"Can we cut it?"
"If we cut it we risk contaminating the soil and making the sap airborne," Talia said, frowning at her results, "this is still Earth, just thirteen hundred years of virus and exposure later. We cut a load bearing root this size, the trench collapses, sap could aerosolize and be toxic. We don't know what this mutated sap does to the lungs."
Ryker's voice came over the channel from Command. He'd been listening. "We go around it. No cuts larger than arm thickness unless for safety. We adapt to the forest, not the other way around. Jenkins, reroute the trench five meters to the north. Follow the root, don't cross."
Jenkins grit her teeth. Rerouting the trench would mean going around a fern tree that was home to wire-mites, but she acknowledged the order. "Rerouting. This is going to take all day."
By noon, the trench was half done and everything was damp.
The engineers had jury rigged the outside purifiers from two welded cargo containers, filters from the stash in the bunker and pipes from the fabrication bay as long as they kept the STC running on low power. On the roof of the cargo containers they'd bolted solar panels, hoping to offset the power needed to run the pumps.
The panels fogged up in ten minutes.
The humidity was ninety percent, the trees breathing out water. Solar panels that on Earth would get ninety percent efficiency were now at thirty-eight and the lenses were hazy with condensation and green algae that bloomed as you watched.
Jenkins wiped at a panel with her sleeve for the third time. "This is pointless. We need wipers, not panels."
"We need wind," an engineer muttered, "the solar was for the desert. This is jungle."
Talia made a note: Need to print wind turbine blades next. STC had a template, but blades needed carbon fiber they were low on. Another trade.
Wire-mites came.
They weren't in any database. The size of rats, six legs, flat bodies like beetles, clicker jaws. They came from the fern tree when the shade was cut and swarmed the laid pipe, chewing up the rubber insulation.
"Contact small! Not hostile, just hungry!" Yelena kicked one away, it clung to her boot with its jaws but she rammed it with the butt of her KPR.
Adrian watched them. "They eat cable. That's hostile enough. We need conduit."
The engineers hauled up the pipe, wrapped it in spare armor plating from the door of the bunker and relaid it. It took two extra hours. Marines stood guard shooting wire-mites when they got too close, blue darts popping beetles like balloons.
It was all very tedious and not heroic at all.
Ryker walked the trench line at dusk, staring at the clear cut. They'd cut through fifty meters as ordered. Stumps oozed white sap, but less. Past fifty meters the trees were dark and thick and watching. He could feel it.
"How much longer?" he asked Jenkins.
"Two hours to finish lay, one hour to connect, if the roots cooperate," Jenkins said, grease and sap on her face.
"Do it."
Water flowed at 21:47.
Not with a triumphant rush. With a gurgle and a cough. The pump in the bunker whined, drawing power they couldn't spare, drawing water up from the deep aquifer and up the new outside line, up through the purifiers.
The first water that came out of the tap on the container was yellow.
The engineers stared.
"Filter failure?" someone asked.
"No," Talia took a sample, "filters working. Water from the aquifer is clean. But the pipe's picked up trace energy from the root sap. Low dose, same frequency amber heart. Second filter should catch it, but we only have two stages. Need three."
She looked at Ryker. "It's drinkable. If you run it through twice. If you drink it once filtered, it isn't lethal but..."
"But what?"
"Our brains are electricity," she said. "This energy interacts with electricity. It could induce vivid dreams, hallucination. On Earth we'd call it low-level exposure. Here, who knows."
Ryker looked across at the four thousand thirsty people waiting behind the bunker door. Reactor Two was at thirty four percent and dropping. Water inside needed more power to pump and water outside needed to be this water.
"Double filter it. Then we drink."
Engineer named Park, young volunteered for the test. He hadn't eaten in twelve hours. He took a bit of unpurified single filtered yellow water, just half a cup, and drank.
Everyone waited.
For ten seconds nothing happened, then Park blinked hard.
"I... I saw a tree," he said, "large tree. Roots like halls. Light inside the roots. There were people, with... pointed ears? Inside? It was safe."
He shook his head, "gone now. Just a weird dream while awake. Not bad, just weird."
Talia scanned his vitals. They were up but normal. "Hallucination, as predicted. Low dose."
Ryker nodded. "Then we double filter everything. No one drinks single filtered. And we log every dream. If people start dreaming the same tree, we need to know."
Water, now clear after the second filter began filling the tanks. Slowly, but filling.
Outside, the sky darkened to night. The insects in the forest were louder than ever. Wire-mites slunk back, Maulers powered down to silent battery with their spider legs folded back, guarding the trench.
Jenkins perched on the edge of the purifier container, legs dangling, sipping double filtered water that tasted of metal and earth. It was warm. It was theirs.
Adrian joined her. "We have water we can defend."
"We have water that induces dreams of pointed-eared people in trees," Jenkins said, half-laughing half-exhausted.
Adrian looked past the clear-cut at the dark line of trees. "You think Park really saw something? Or is it just a brain trick?"
Jenkins didn't answer. In the distance, behind the dark line and where the root they refused to cut ran, there were lights, not thermal, not animals, like fireflies but steadier.
She pretended not to see them. Lirael's scouts were back.
And deep under the dark line, where the uncut root ran, the white sap ceased to bleed, sealed the gap, and the trees decided to let that one wound heal.