Location: Unknown, A-class planet, Cave system
Date: March 24 2728 — Standard Earth Calendar (SEC)
"Oooohmmmmm," I moaned, biting the last piece of the cat meat.
"So good," I added, licking my fingers and eyeing the Ateeve hungrily, where meat was stored now.
It was a stroke of genius to convert the empty warhead chamber into a fridge replacement, but now I just wanted to open it up again, to have a bit more of this marvellous meat to eat.
It had been what, a year? Since the last time I had naturally grown meat in my meal.
No matter what they put into space rations, they never taste like this, always lacking something.
Or, perhaps, the taste was so good because of the fresh air, the heavy work I had done, and the anticipation I had built since I killed the bobcat yesterday.
Patch tests, three times with different tissues, with all the proper timeframes and measures that Lola came up with, took a bit longer than I had expected, but I didn't complain, not during them, and not when Lola made a soup with only a bit of fat tissue instead of the steak I so wanted.
And not even later, when I had to wait for another twelve hours before finally having my hot-cat.
"That's the last one for the next twenty-four hours, Kat, and I want to see your bloodwork and urinalysis first," said Lola, bringing me back from my daydreaming.
"Fair," I agreed, standing up from the rock I used as a chair.
Before me was another one, just a bit bigger of a rock, good enough as a table. I placed them both not too far from Ateeve, by the wall, so the sidelights would give enough light for any meal I would have.
It wouldn't be too wrong to call it a kitchen. I brought all the supplies related to cooking here, including the stove from the survival kit and a pan, which DOC used to make the marvellously fried meat for me today.
I watched the whole process without taking my eyes away, gulping saliva all the time from the smell alone, but that was not the reason I did it. I needed to learn cooking, because I didn't know how far and for how long I would be walking there, in the Anomaly, leaving Ateeve, DOC, Esdies… everything behind.
And cooking was becoming a skill I had to catch up on, and catch up fast, especially in such a primitive way, with no cooking droid around, as well as the need to take care of the kitchen tools before and after cooking.
At least the stove was so primitive that Lola thought it would actually work in the Anomaly without the need for extra shielding. Another thing to test, before leaving.
"I was planning to explore the cave behind C and B passages," I said aloud, putting plates and the pan into a tub cut in the ground and filled with water to wash things up.
"Great, and on time. I just finished assembling a new detector for you," Lola replied.
"What could be new on a stick with a light on the end?" I asked, jokingly, but perking up from my crouching position.
Any advances dealing with the Anomaly were needed and welcome as spring after a long winter.
"It's a box on the stick now, and I reversed the function. As soon as the box is placed into the Anomaly, it will light up. The first time, it will calibrate, taking the current anomaly density as ground zero, to measure against it later," she explained, and I quickly caught on to what she was doing.
With it, it wouldn't be so hard to find the direction towards the end of the Anomaly.
"Thank you, Lola," I said, "I will test it thoroughly."
—
The entrance to the passage marked as C, when looking from the Ateeve, was on the right side and almost opposite to the one with the passage to the surface.
It was also lower than the one into the cave with a lake, but still high enough for me to stand upright in and wide enough for three people shoulder by shoulder.
Double-checking extra clips for Sixer, backup batteries for the shield, and the map once more, I looked deep into the darkness and made the first step inside.
The recon droid took its place behind me and a bit off to the side, highlighting the passage.
The passage was not straight, and soon, after a dozen steps or so, the lights from the Ateeve disappeared behind turns, leaving me and the recon droid one-on-one with the unknown ahead of us.
AR blinked, notifying that we had reached the end of the previously scouted area, and I slowed down, keeping Sixer at the ready and the detector on the pole extended before me.
It was already thirty or so meters deep into the passage, but nothing changed—same rocky walls, same uneven ground, with no signs of anyone walking here before.
Until we reached the next turn, and I saw the dawn light at the end of the passage. Another exit?
In a few slow steps, the passage got wider, opening up to another cave with reflected lights coming from somewhere above, and the box on the pole lit up, blinking with different intensities.
Freezing mid-step, I let it finish the initial calibration until it settled on the yellow colour, which made sense.
Based on C-level organs of the bobcat, we might be somewhere deep into the Anomaly, at least in the fourth belt, if counting from F-level and choosing yellow was logical on Lola's end.
Right.
The light density would not be as useful as the colour code would be. So, orange to red if the Anomaly density increases, and green to blue if it decreases. Turning off completely, if none are detected, as we had in the main cave.
Nodding to myself, I marked the line where the Anomaly began with a few stones lined up along the boundary and left another radio probe a half metre away from it.
It had to inform Lola, by just stopping its signal on the radio frequency, if our safe zone decreases from this side, without the need to check it all the time.
Simple solution, when not a single scanner on Ateeve's board could detect the Anomaly remotely.
The recon droid was doing its own thing, utilising scanners to map what we could from this spot. Ateeve wasn't able to reach this place through the solid stone with Aetherium ore in it, and now we were fixing that.
The cave before was wider in width than it was long in length, and also taller, much taller, than the main cave, with steep rocky walls that would be hard to scale without special equipment.
It was also a bit deeper, making the passage from the main cave above the ground by at least five meters.
Checking the map that the recon droid just made, I made notes for things out of the direct line of sight and confirmed my suspicions—ones I was not happy with.
It was silent here, no sign of other life, and if not for the light reflections on the stony walls, with a now noticeable smell of excrement, I would call it a day.
Bats, I hate bats.
Slowly retreating back, carefully setting each step, I only hoped that whatever mutation had happened to the local bats, they were not like the ones we had on Ladoga.
Because those? Those were a nightmare.
If humans and most animals had a distinct silver mutation in keratin-based structures—a sort of signature card for all to see—then the bats on Ladoga had a mutated screech instead. A screech, meant to be used for orientation, was turned into a silent weapon.
You wouldn't hear it, you wouldn't even know about them being around, until one moment, you would just drop with a severe migraine, often followed by extensive bleeding from ruptured blood vessels in the sinuses.
"Lola, it's a bat cave," I reported as soon as I was back in the passage, but not far enough away, as I would have liked, preferably in the planet's orbit.
"Got an update from the recon droid," she replied, and the recon droid flew back into the bat cave again.
"Let's hope they are not like the ones on Ladoga," she mirrored my worries, "but to be sure, I am sending the drone to collect high-band data."
"Prepare the anti-missile system as well. I am afraid the railgun would be useless against the hordes of them," I added after a moment of thinking.
"I will see if I can add Aetherium to the load," she replied, and I silently nodded.
A high-velocity particle cloud discharge, if mixed with Aetherium, should shred them just fine.
"How is the detector?" Lola asked, switching the topic.
"Calibrated, seems to be working," I replied, still suspiciously eyeing the cave entry mouth where the recon droid had disappeared.
"I will keep an eye on it," Lola said, and I shook my worries off, turning away from the bat cave and beginning to walk back.
"Well, send me another droid, I am going to check on the last unknown passage," I said, hoping it wasn't as bad as the last one.
—
The last passage was right across from the lake cave, on the opposite side of the main cave, and was one of the least comfortable to pass through.
Being only a meter wide, it looked like a split in the stone wall, rather than the passage itself, but the scans showed that it was widening after the first ten meters, and possibly had a chamber or something after.
This time, I had to use my shoulder light instead of relying on the recon droid following behind me. The droid was not even able to rise up to the ceiling, because the split was narrowing down above my head, leaving no space for the droid to fly, except behind my back.
Silently thanking my short height, that allowed me to walk without bending or even crawl, I kept moving forward while keeping the detector before me.
As with a bat cave, there was nothing to look at, even when we passed the narrow part, and the passage became wider and taller.
Feeling a bit freer from the hanging stone walls over me, I paused to look around. In blinks of my shoulder light, the passage, which was quickly turning into a long gallery, began to shine, reflecting light as if it were full of small stars scattered all around.
Coming closer to the wall, I ran my hand over the rock. It had embedded quartz in it, that was easy to recognise, and was the one reflecting the light from my shoulder light.
Quartz rock outcrop. A lot of quartz outcrop.
Readjusting my grip on the not-so-short detector's handle, I stuck it out and began moving forward again, looking for a place where the Anomaly started.
With each step, the gallery rose in height, now being almost five meters above me, almost forming a round tunnel, if not for stone columns here and there.
I knew they had some special name, but didn't really remember it. Caves were never my interest, in comparison to flight and space, preferably both at the same time.
This passage, this crystal gallery, was different, I realised, after the Anomaly did not start after ten meters, nor even after thirty.
The dark, almost black, stone columns and walls, with blinking quartz outcrops, were only creating a peaceful, unique atmosphere here.
A place to spend time, lost in thought or meditation.
Too bad, I had no time for that.
Shaking off a contemplative mood, I once more looked around, now searching for hidden danger or other splits in the rock that could potentially lead somewhere less forgiving, but finding none.
Slowly walking back to the exit from the gallery, with the recon droid trailing behind, I found myself… lacking.
While this exploration was important—I couldn't leave anything to luck, and finding bats was just another confirmation that all I did was right—but in a way, it was just a distraction before I left with nothing else to do.
Except finally getting out. Getting out into the unknown, with no intel, no scouting, and, if Lola fails to protect the scaf, no technical advantages.
Looking at the Sixer in my hand, remembering all its functions and abilities, I realised that if I took away most of them—meant to work in pairs with ARC AI—I might just make it easier to shield.
Or Lola had already done all the needed calculations, and was waiting to finish with scaf protection before proposing that.
My thoughts drifted back to the bobcat and what we found when DOC finished taking it apart.
The fur, while being soft, was no less resistant to damage than the scaf itself. Not counting the energy shield, of course.
If we failed to protect the scaf against the Anomaly in a timely manner, the fur might become the alternative I needed.
At least as a passive protection.
But all alternative ways rested on the assumption that I could handle the Anomaly on its own, without mutating, at least right away.
We had better test it soon. I didn't have much time, and I couldn't live here forever.
The only question was—if I could.