Chapter 32
Scarcely believing it, she sped towards him. She stopped right away, when he shied back away from her. "Who are you?"
Of course! She was still wearing her pilot's helmet. She hurriedly removed it, and the worry in his dirty face transformed into joy. "Di!"
They embraced tentatively, as if assuring each other that the other was real, but it turned into a real hug before long. Diana could feel him trembling, though, and let go gently. "I can't believe it's really you," he exclaimed softly. "I should have known, really. You would want to help in the fight, and you'd find a way to do it regardless of the rules. Still, how are you even here? I saw dozens of planes up there. How did you convince them to let you fly with them?"
"It's a long story," she said softly. "I could ask you the same. I thought you were dead—we all did! We saw the cargo plane go down, and Cain's drones were all over the area, so we couldn't get near enough to try to find you again!"
"That's a bit of a tale as well. We shouldn't trade stories here, anyway. Cain sends drones through this tunnel at regular intervals. This way."
That reminded her of her mission. When he tried to pull her away from the cave entrance, she resisted. "I can't, Simon. I have a mission to blow up that facility out there." She hefted her bag for emphasis. "I've got explosives in here that should do the job."
"Trust me, I've got a better target for you," he said, a trace of smugness working its way into his ragged voice.
He'd changed so much, and it wasn't just the beard and clothing. He'd always held himself tentatively, as if he wasn't sure how to behave in any given situation. Now he stood confidently, despite his appearance, and spoke the same way. He wore it well, she had to admit.
Glancing out of the cave again, Diana reluctantly nodded. Even if she could get to the top of the canyon and throw the explosives down into the right place, it was doubtful she could to it before her air ran out. Trusting Simon, she followed him into the darkness.
-.-
"Cain has a bunch of tunnels spanning most of this mountain range," Simon explained, having turned his flashlight back on after a few moments in the dark. "Most of them are naturally-occurring, but I'm sure he dug a bunch of them himself. I assume he uses them to hide his troop movements from Noah's orbital view. Unless he shot down that satellite already. I'm a bit behind the times, I'm afraid."
"He didn't," Diana said, still marveling at both his survival and his new posture. "Noah assumed he had some kind of jamming technology to hide his troops. I guess he's doing it the old-fashioned way instead." Simon nodded, and then led her around a corner. His flashlight played over a drone there in the tunnel, just waiting for them!
Diana gasped and reached for her bag, trying to get Simon out of the way, but he held out a hand. "Whoa, wait. Relax. He's with me."
Diana was still ready to jump to the side and take Simon with her, in case the drone fired, but it wasn't. It just hovered there, slowly following Simon's movements as he chuckled. "Like I said. This one's a friendly."
She'd never seen a drone up this close. Not an active one, anyway. She'd seen schematics from the various different versions they'd destroyed. It was... still terrifying to look at. "Careful!" She urged Simon as he approached it. "Cain started putting explosives inside his drones not long ago. It's how they took me down," she added darkly.
"Don't worry, I reprogrammed this little guy. He wouldn't blow up on us, even if he could." Simon climbed up on top of the drone, and then patted the space behind him. "Come on up. He should be able to carry both of us, assuming we don't jostle him around too much."
With great hesitation, Diana approached the floating death machine. She could hear its super-powerful internal rotors working overtime to keep itself and Simon aloft, but he seemed sure it could handle her weight as well. At least Simon didn't weigh very much now—he'd clearly lost weight. After she'd climbed up behind him, Simon touched one of the sensors on the drone's exterior, and it sped off.
Diana grabbed Simon's chest from behind tightly, breathing raggedly into her equipment. This wasn't like flying at all: at least in the Havoc, she had a freaking seat belt!
Still, Simon knew what he was doing. He piloted carefully but confidently through the tunnels. He'd obviously been here before. "Where are we going?" She called out into his ear, over the rushing wind.
"Hang on, we're almost there."
After another minute or so of rushing wind, and Simon pressed another control. The drone came to a stop, and then began rising up into a vertical tunnel. Then it moved forward again for another few meters and came to another stop. Simon patted it on the 'head' and then dismounted from his creepy mechanical horse. Gratefully, Diana followed his example.
There wasn't any light from the tunnel below, but the drone was still projecting its own searchlights. Diana caught a glimpse of mechanical equipment ahead, but not much of it. Simon was busy reaching for some cables directly under the drone. "There we are."
He connected the cables to the drone, and the whole room lit up! Or cavern, really.
It was about twice the size of their home in Greater Harmony, but he'd clearly been here for most of his time away. The equipment she'd seen before was lit up now, with monitors on one side and a keyboard set up next to it. Diana recognized it as being from Simon's original programming kit, which he'd taken with him to find Cain's crash site. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
"So I guess you managed to salvage some things from the shuttle, huh?"
"A bit," he said. "Some I stole from Cain's facilities. Either way, this is home for now. Welcome. If you want to carry me across the threshold again, you'll probably have an easier time of it now." He patted his reduced belly. "Say, you don't have anything to eat in that pack of yours, do you?"
"Uh, sure," she unzipped it and fumbled around for a bit, and then pulled out an energy bar and tossed it to him. His eyes lit up and he tore it open. Then he slid off his breather and practically inhaled the whole thing.
Chewing like a maniac, he replaced the breather, and his eyes rolled back in his head. "Oh, God. This is heaven! It's so good!"
Despite herself, Diana grinned. She'd never seen someone enjoy a granola bar so much. Her smile was tinged with sadness, however. He'd obviously been scraping by somehow, but not easily. It had been over a month since his supposed death!
Diana handed him another one, advising him to take his time with it, as she slowly looked around the room. The two monitors next to the keyboard, and the computer tower next to it, were probably from the shuttle. Cain had servers, but no need for a visual display or keyboard input. The whole room was drawing its power from the drone, which meant it was probably invisible to Cain's patrols.
"How did you even get here?" She wondered aloud. "You were shot down over a hundred kilometers from here!"
"I wasn't trying to get here, at first. After the shuttle went down, we salvaged what we could and headed up into the mountains. We figured that whoever shot us down would be looking for survivors."
"We? So Steve survived as well? Where is he?"
Simon swallowed hard, and it wasn't because of the granola bar. "He, uh, was injured in the crash. He made it as far as the foot of the mountains, but not much farther. I... came back for him a few days later. To bury the body."
She reached out and squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry, Simon. I've lost people too, since this whole thing started. It's never easy."
He shook his head. "Anyway, I got lucky, right off the bat. Cain didn't have many drones just at the start, but he started building a metal refining facility right near where I was hiding, on like, day one. I snuck into it, and siphoned off some O2 to fill up my breather canisters. That's how I stayed alive that first day."
"How many spare breather canisters do you have?"
"Six," he reported grimly. "And that's counting both my breather and Steve's."
She stared at him in the mild light. Breather canisters could only hold an hour's worth of oxygen at a time. She'd tried sleeping with a breather on, once, just to see if it could be done. It had been bulky, and uncomfortable. If he had to switch out a canister once every hour... "Are you telling me you haven't been able to sleep more than an hour at a time, since you first got here?"
"It was bad for the first week or so," he admitted, "but I found a way around it pretty quick. I stole a much larger oxygen tank, and the tools to alter it slightly. I can refill it by zooming down to the refinery and stealing more oxygen, and then hauling it back up here. When I need to sleep, I attach my breather directly to the tank."
"That's a relief. I can't believe you survived, despite all that! I mean what have you been eating?"
"Nothing that good, I tell you," he said in the same tone as before. "Remember how we went to Cain's crash site first, and then up into the mountains? Well, we salvaged some of the materials from his old plane, including frozen cell samples and seeds. Cain was supposed to get the terraforming process started, remember. He never did, for whatever reason."
She tried to think about the various life-forms that were the very first building block in terraforming. "So you planted seeds and harvested them? And used the rations on board the shuttle while they were still growing?"
"Nothing so advanced. I planted... lichen and moss, actually. Fortunately there's a large underground aquifer near the refinery, so there was plenty of water for the plants. I've been eating them ever since. Until now, at least," he lifted the empty granola bag with a grin. "This is far better, trust me."
Diana had never eaten anything but the carefully prepared meals that Noah had planted and harvested, or occasionally the stuff from the commissary back in Harmony. Obviously this moss and lichen was edible, but it couldn't be that nutritious.
"It's really bitter," he said in the same tone as his words. "Like chewing the painkillers from back when were kids. Still, it got the job done. I'm still here, aren't I?"
"Yes you are," she said proudly, and he blushed a little.
-.-
They spent the next few hours in his cave, while she filled him in on the situation in the outside world. He'd been just as amazed as she'd been at Tycho's willingness to help and to keep the secret, and had been suitably impressed with her combat skill and leadership position.
Her breather ran out partway through the conversation, but he showed her how to refill the canisters using his O2 tank. It was ingenious, really, how he'd been able to stay alive here all alone. But he wasn't alone anymore, and she had the equipment to call for an evac for both of them.
Still, she had a mission to think about. If wiping out that manufacturing facility wasn't an option anymore, then what did he have in mind? "You said something about having a better target for me?"
"Right," he seemed to take stock of things, and then led her over to the computer monitor. "When I saw Cain start to build drones, I figured he was sending them out to fight something. You guys, probably. By the way, did you ever get any idea as to why he's doing all of this? He's not programmed to attack humans!"
Diana shook her head. "Noah's tried contacting him hundreds of times, on every frequency, but he never gets any response. He figures that maybe Cain's IFF system has failed, and he can't tell humans from alien targets anymore. Cain did take damage from that asteroid field on the way to New Eden, and he did crash. It could be either of those events, or both."
"I'm not so sure it's that simple," Simon reasoned aloud. "The US Military built him, but they weren't blind to the possibility of him going rogue. I saw Noah's programming, and what he knew of Cain's programming, before any of this started. There are fail safes in Cain's heuristics, designed to keep him from hurting people if his IFF system goes down. Whatever his problem is, it's not that. Either way, Noah gave me his command codes when he sent me and Steve out to make contact. I've transmitted the codes myself—from another location, don't worry—but I didn't get any response. He's just not listening."
He sighed. "Anyway, after we were shot down, I knew I could never make it out of Cain's territory on foot before I ran out of oxygen, so I started to think of ways to signal Noah for a rescue. That's when I recruited Wilson here," he gestured over at the drone. "I snagged him off an assembly line before he could be connected to Cain's network, and disabled his communications gear. With him carrying me around, I could get a better look at what Cain was up to."
"Impressive," she said truthfully. "Why'd you call it Wilson, though?"
He just smiled over at her and after a moment, she got it. "Gah. I never should have made you watch Castaway with me."
"It's just a joke name," he assured her. "I haven't been gone that long. Regardless, he's been very useful. Totally worth the risk of stealing him." He typed some commands into the console, and a virtual map sprang up on the screen. It was of this mountain chain actually, but there were lines running over it that she'd never seen.
"Are those the tunnels that Cain cut into the mountains?" She guessed.
Simon nodded. "All the ones I've mapped, anyway. I used Wilson to hack into the signals he broadcasts to his drones a few times, but he keeps changing the frequency and encryption. This map isn't a hundred percent, I'm afraid."
"Wow. You haven't just survived here, you're helping with the war effort! This is more than we've been able to gather from the outside."
He paused at that. "Huh. I guess it is a war, isn't it? I never really thought of it like that. Anyway, I was hoping to contact one of the pilots up there earlier today, using Wilson's radio transmitter. I don't think my message got through. There was probably too much jamming." He smiled wryly. "I should have figured you'd be one of the pilots."
"Wait, you knew we were going to attack that facility today?"
Simon shrugged. "Sure. Why do you think I put that radioactive stuff into the refinery, anyway? I knew Noah would be able to track it, and that he'd send people to destroy it. I wanted to call a pilot and tell him what I'd learned. And that I was still alive and wanted to get the hell out of this place."
So it hadn't been an accident or slip-up on Cain's part after all. Simon had arranged the whole thing. "Well, it worked," she said wonderingly. "You got in contact with us, if not in the way you planned. I have a radio and long-range booster in my bag. I should be able to contact one of the patrols and let them know where we are. And what you've learned."
"That's great! As much as I want to go home, we shouldn't radio them just yet. We're behind the lines here, and have mostly-free run of his territory, as long as we stay away from his big facilities. You wanted to hit him where it hurts? Why not go after his brain?"
Smiling to herself, Diana pointed at a portion of the mountain chain, north of their current position. "Noah thinks that's approximately where Cain's core drives are. It's the most heavily protected part of his whole airspace, anyway."
Simon shook his head. "No, it's just a decoy; I figured that out last week. It's a bit of deception on his part. In the off chance you were able to force your way past his drones and blow up his brain, he'd still actually be alive, somewhere else. If you thought he was dead, then he'd have time to rebuild and come after you again. Sneaky, isn't it?"
"How do you know it's a decoy?"
"Because the signals he uses to control all the drones actually come from here." He pointed to a glowing dot on the screen, about fifty kilometers to the west of Noah's estimate. "I've already been there, with Wilson. Unfortunately the whole cavern is sealed off. The comm array is virtually identical to Noah's, but it's imbedded in the rock face, with Cain underneath it. The good news is that he doesn't have any drones in the area, because that would draw attention from you guys. The bad news is, I didn't have any way in, until you showed up." He looked pointedly at her pack, and the explosives therein.
This was sounding like a good plan. "Ok, so we blast open the cavern where he's hiding, and hopefully the explosion is big enough to turn him into scrap metal?"
He peered at her bag again. "That depends on what you got in there."
Grimacing, she fished it out. "When my plane went down, I disconnected the fuel cell and took it with me. I designed the NE-1 with Noah, and we agreed that the plane should have more capabilities than just flying and shooting. In a pinch, with a little help, this fuel cell can become a pretty powerful grenade."
Simon stared at her. "Your plane uses an explosive as a fuel cell?"
"Sure, they all do. Even the bigger ones like the Archangel and the cargo shuttles use them, but those are much more powerful and would pack a bigger bang."
"Would the one you have there be strong enough to blast through, say, four meters of solid rock?"
"Probably," she said after a moment of thought.
Simon pulled up another design. "I downloaded this just after he moved his core drives. I think it's an acoustic scan of the cavern itself. According to this, the narrowest wall between the cavern and the outside is about four meters thick."
"This should do it, but how do we disable him if we don't have any more explosives?"
They both sat in silence for a moment. Simon stirred first. "I suppose I could try to sneak into one of the manufacturing bays again, and steal some explosives before they get put into drones. But I haven't done that since grabbing Wilson, and I'm sure Cain has changed his security around. I guess... we'll just have to try and disable Cain's drives manually. I've got tools here that could probably do it."
"If you could even get close to him!" Diana exclaimed. "The last time you got near an AI's core drives, Noah nearly shot your head off! Besides, even if he doesn't have any defenses, how long would it take for you to shut him down? I bet if we go after his antenna array, he'll just fire up a backup somewhere and keep fighting without a hitch."
"Those are all good points," Simon admitted. "I'd say it would take me a few minutes at least to disable his combat protocols. That's assuming he doesn't have any defenses inside the cavern, and that he doesn't have drones close enough to call in to help. Still, I'm not seeing any better options here. We can always just use that radio booster of yours and get out of here. Tell Noah and Adam what we know, and trust them to come up with a plan of their own."
Diana shook her head. That would sacrifice her secret. Besides, Diana knew as well as Simon did, that they wouldn't have this opportunity again. Cain would pick up on the radio signal right away, and then he'd find this place in short order. They wouldn't be able to hit him from the inside after this. In addition, they might not have the time. From what Noah had told her, Cain’s drones were getting more advanced over time. Before long, her people wouldn’t be able to handle large numbers of them as easily anymore.
Then another idea hit her. "What if I could buy you some more time?"
