The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (38 page)

A squawk of distress came from the other side of the hangar, from behind the rock pile and the ship.

“
You all right, Tick?” Sedge called. Had that been Tick? It had almost sounded like a feminine cry.

“
He’s fine,” Striker said. “Just swallowed his gum. Such a shame. He’d barely popped that in.”

“
You can
touch
them,” Tick said.

Since Kalish could not see him through the rocks and ship, she was not certain what he meant. “The people?” she guessed.

“
Them. The ship. Everything. Your hand doesn’t go through like with a holodisplay.”

“
Are we sure they’re not really here?” Striker asked.

“
If they were, that one would have slapped you for leering at her breasts,” Tick said, recovering some of his equanimity.

“
I wasn’t looking at her breasts. I was looking at her fur. And wondering where all it goes.”

Kalish barely heard them. She walked past two workers who were soldering a seam on the ship and stretched out her hand toward the underbelly of the hull. Cool, smooth metal met her fingers.

“
Amazing,” she breathed.

Even though she knew it was a holodisplay and they could not take it with them, giddiness filled her at the realization that she was touching something that aliens had built thousands of years earlier. She did not think anyone had seen pictures of the ancient race before either, so just seeing the people working was an amazing find.

“
I wonder if you can climb on it, look inside,” she said.

“
That’s an affirmative.” Tick’s voice came from somewhere above her.

Kalish backed up until she could see him. He had found a spot to climb atop the hull and now stood more than forty feet above her head. It was another thirty or forty feet to the top of the hangar, most of which lay peeled open, thanks to the rock fall, and in spots the ship rose nearly that high. She wondered how the aliens got their craft
out
once they finished building them. Some large parts and machinery could fit through the large doors at the front, but a ship this size certainly could not roll out. She did not see wheels on it anyway. Just landing struts.

“
Can you look inside?” she asked curiously, tempted to climb up herself.

“
I can check.”

“
What happens if Sedge turns off the holo while you’re up there?” Striker asked.

“
Uhm, I guess I fall,” Tick said.

“
And land on some of those rocks down there. You could get your balls smashed into a thousand pieces.”

“
A risk I accept every time I go on a mission with you.”

Kalish jogged past a couple of workers carrying another panel over and joined Sedge again. She wanted to climb up onto the ship, too, especially if it might be possible to look around inside, but she had to know: “Is there any chance of getting the computer that’s projecting that—” she glanced around, having no idea where the projector might be or how the solid display was being made, “—out of the wall and onto my ship? If everything it’s showing us is accurate, this could be all we need to build a duplicate of one of their ships.”

She bounced on her toes. As much as she had been in love with the idea of flying out with a ship in tow, obtaining the schematics would be more efficient. They wouldn’t need the tractor beam or to try and figure out how to slip such a cargo past the orbiting Fleet ships. A computer that she could tuck into one of the hidden storage compartments on the
Divining
Rod
would do just as well. They might even be able to figure out how to copy the schematics, so she could give Cometrunner what he wanted and keep a version for herself.

“
I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Sedge said. “There are only two more runes I can press though, and I’ve translated them.” He waved his tablet, then pointed. “This one says security and that one says roof. I don’t think we want to risk calling security.”

“
No, let’s skip that one.”

Even if they had not seen any of those killer robots during their search of the hangars, that did not mean they were not hidden away somewhere. They hadn’t seen them on the refinery platform either, not until they had come striding out of the darkness with weapons blazing.

“
That one says roof,” Kalish said. “Maybe they were able to retract the roofs on the hangars, so the ships could fly out when completed. I was just thinking that the doors weren’t big enough.”

Sedge nodded. “Maybe so.”

He rapped a knuckle against the wall. The material clanked, sounding thin, much like the door.

“
If there’s a computer in here, it’s a small one.” Sedge turned, eyeing the chamber. “More likely it’s somewhere else and this is simply an access panel.”

“
All right.
Where
else? We’ve looked at everything in this hangar.
All
of the hangars.”

“
Kalish, come look at this.” Her mother waved from back near the entrance.

Kalish jogged down the long hangar toward her, aware of Tick and now Striker as well clambering around atop the ship. Apparently, Striker had gotten over the worry of falling and ball-smashing.

“
The rocks are messing with the holo,” Tick called down. “It looks like there’s a big hatch or maybe cargo bay doors up here, but the rock is just...
there
, where the rest of it should be.”

“
Can you move the rocks?” Kalish asked.

“
Uh, they look like they weigh a few tons each.”

“
What’s that?” Striker ambled over and patted a boulder. “A job for the Chief of Boom?”

“
An explosion in here may cause another rock fall.” Tick pointed at the cavern ceiling high above. Though it disappeared into darkness, Kalish had no trouble imagining the mountain on top of them.

“
Maybe there’s another hatch on the bottom,” she said. It would make sense that there be a way to access the ship from the ground. “I’ll look in a second.”

Her mother had not moved. She was standing and pointing along the wall, toward a corner that had been hidden from Kalish’s view before. A trapdoor that she was certain had not been there before stood open, with a worker sticking halfway out of it, gesticulating to another worker standing on the ground next to him.

“
Sedge.” Kalish spun around so quickly, her braids of hair batted at her face. “It looks like there’s a basement. Maybe the computer is down there.”

Her mother’s lip thinned, but she did not say anything about Kalish calling him over. When she found some time, she would have to explain Sedge’s story, enough to make her mother understand that he was a good man. But not now. She couldn’t wait for Sedge to reach her. She ran to the trapdoor, afraid the workers would finish, and it would disappear back into the floor. The man who had been standing on a ladder or whatever had held him up had
already
disappeared, and the second worker was heading back toward the ship.

When Kalish reached the edge, she could see into what appeared to be a tool shop. It probably was not a true basement that spanned the length of the hangar, but it might be what they needed. She pushed the toe of her boot toward the opening, not sure whether it would lower down or hit the floor. It thumped against solid ground. She slumped with disappointment.

“
What is it?” Sedge asked as he approached. His tablet was still out, a display open over his palm. He was recording the scene, she realized.

“
That’s a good idea.” Maybe she should be trying harder to find a way into the ship, so she could record the engine room, in case they were not able to find the computer or a schematic to take with them.

Sedge tapped the “opening” as she had done, his boot not going through either. “It must be here somewhere. Everything we’re seeing seems to be a part of events that actually happened. Maybe this is even an instructional video, the equivalent of a Fleet field manual that’s supposed to teach a new recruit how to do his job.”

Kalish goggled at that notion. “Look around. Maybe there are some runes on the floor that—”

A loud groan came from above the hangar, from within the rocks high overhead. Kalish stumbled back, pressing her back to the wall. Was another rockfall coming?

The workers shouted to each other, and people hopped off the craft, ran out from underneath it, and pushed tools and machines to the walls. Clanks and screeches came from above, this time from the roof of the hangar rather than the rocks. The warped ceiling, with its gaping holes and dangling metal pieces, split open down the center.

“
Is that a holo or is that really happening?” Kalish asked.

“
I can’t tell,” Sedge said, then punctuated the sentence with a sneeze.

“
What’s going on?” Tick called down.

“
You better get off of there.” Sedge waved at the workers. “They’re all running for the door.”

The people weren’t running exactly. Though Kalish could not understand their words or decipher their hand signals and gestures, she had the feeling they felt happy. Accomplished. A day’s work well done?

The hangar ceiling finished opening, the panels disappearing, or perhaps folding down on the outsides of the walls. More groans came from the rocks. Kalish turned her flashlight in that direction, but her beam barely reached the cavern ceiling. The hangar lights disappeared, leaving them in darkness again, aside from lamps blinking on the front and rear of the ship. A hum reverberated through the floor of the hangar.

“
Is that part of the holodisplay?” Sedge wondered, staring down at his feet. “It’s all so real.”

A slash of light came from the ceiling of the cavern. Sunlight.

Kalish stared up at it, half-blinded but unable to look away. “That’s brilliant. I was wondering how they could get ships out through that tunnel, but it looks like they didn’t. How close are we to the surface? I wouldn’t have even guessed, but that must be a door, a way out.”

She could tell the light was coming down through a large tunnel, but not how far up it extended. Was that a hint of the sky up there?

“
Kalish, what are you doing in there?” came Tia’s voice over the comm.

“
You can see that too?” Kalish asked. “From out there?”

“
Well, obviously. It’s pretty hard to miss.”

Sedge frowned down at his tablet. “I’m not entirely positive that’s part of the program.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
My sensor thinks there’s actually an opening there.”

The workers had left the building, or at least seemed to do so. Since Tia had not mentioned a squad of aliens trotting down the beach, Kalish guessed that the holodisplay ended at the door. But what of the cavern ceiling?

The landing struts on the spaceship were sucked into the hull. For a moment, it hovered above the floor, but then it rose up, as if it were a fully constructed craft, ready to shoot up into orbit.

Striker and Tick had found their way down, and they ran over to join Kalish and Sedge.

“
I can get sensor readings from the planet’s surface now,” Tia said.

Sedge nodded grimly. “There’s actually a door there, and it’s actually open.” He said it as if he had been condemned to death.

Kalish didn’t understand the reason for his tone. Seeing all of this was amazing, though she lamented that she had not found a way into the ship to record the engine room and everything else inside. The ship was lifting higher now, rising above the open roof of the hangar.

“
I just got a couple of old messages from the captain,” Sedge said. “From yesterday. From after we lost contact with him.”

“
Is the ship all right?”

“
More importantly,” Striker asked, “is the Fleet and everybody else up on the planet going to know we’re here now that the giant door to the outside is open?”