Up Against It - M. J. Locke [167]
In a short while, air pressure dropped to zero millibars; he lofted out into the longwall area and the bots followed.
The methane longwall stood before him: a translucent blue green wave, frozen in place, streaked with veins of orange and darker blue. Along its base ran a mechanized conveyor. Robotic arms gouged crescents of ice from the wall and placed them in lidded metal baskets that opened to accept the ice, then closed and crept along the conveyor. At the end of the longwall, the baskets pushed their contents into a bladed hopper at the slurry mixing chambers.
Geoff launched himself alongside the longwall with bots trailing him. At the slurry mixing station, he shut the mining operation down. Behind him, the conveyor and mining arms grew still and the slurry mixing blades stopped.
The slurry lines were normally emptied by removing the maintenance cover out at the chem plant, and blowing exhaust through the lines. Not exactly subtle, though, and the goal was not to call attention to himself until absolutely necessary. But there was no reason he couldn’t suck the material in, instead. It’d be messy. But doable.
Here goes.
He overrode the failsafes and pulled the series of levers that would reverse the flow of the mixing blades. Then he commanded all the minerbots to get up onto the conveyor, broke the pressure seal between the mixing chamber and the pipe, and bounded up onto the conveyor himself.
Giant globs of slush squirted and wiggled out of the hopper like toothpaste. He tried to stay out of its way, but the glop went everywhere. A big wobbly chunk bumped him, throwing him into a slow tumble. It smeared up his faceplate and filled the creases in his joints. Geoff caught hold of the conveyor, and tried to wipe away the spatters and shake loose the chunks of ice from his suit. Finally the flow ebbed and settled. While waiting for the sloshing to die down, he attached a cable lead to the nearest minerbot, plugged the other end into his suit, and fixed the coil of cable to his suit. He shoved off, settled into the hopper, and commanded the bots to wait for his signal. Then he flipped on his light and passed through the hopper and mixing chamber into the pipe.
It seemed to go on forever; he made his way amid crunchy, frozen slush, uncoiling his comm line to the bots as he went. Space suits were not designed for tight spaces; it was difficult to bend his elbow and knee joints far enough to get purchase on the pipe’s curved surface in the gunk.
When he reached the chemical plant, the pipe bent sharply upward. Geoff kicked off and leaped up several meters to where the pipe leveled out again in a giant T fitting. He wormed into the level section of pipe, squirmed to face the way he had come, and looked across the gap. The manhole cover sealed off one end of the T. That was his exit.
Geoff pulled a buzz saw from his tool pouch, braced himself at the edge of the dropoff, and cut through the bolts holding the maintenance cover on. Then he kicked at it with both feet. The big metal cover went tumbling into space. Geoff stretched across the drop, stuck his head out, and looked around. No one was in sight. The ship’s top fin jutted up above the ridge, and the arms of Cronus the earthmover towered over all. Amaya’s bike, which they had left propped up next to the rock near the vent pipe twenty meters away, was gone.
He sat huddled in the pipe for a moment, gathering his nerve. They could be anywhere right now—they might be right behind him and he’d never know till they shot him. But there was no turning back.
He tied off the communications cable that linked him to the lead minerbot, back at the longwall, then leapt out and down. As he settled to the surface, he twisted in all directions—up, down, sideways—looking around. No sign of his enemies. He touched down.
How many would he be up against? Three, perhaps four. There had been six, but Amaya saw one injured or dead in the mine blast, and