Project Charon 2 Patty Jansen (readict .TXT) 📖

her station overalls, carrying a toolbox, they didn’t need to ask what she was doing. She didn’t see a single pirate.

She stopped to look at her map, because the recycling plant was somewhere around here. It showed that this area went on into a number of chambers, and that she would have to traverse all of them in order to get to the area that would allow her access to the area beyond the dark zone of the agricultural plant.

At the end of the massive growing chamber another short passage led to a multistorey room with large vats, filters and aeration tanks of the recycling plant. So at the end of that chamber, she went into the next one.

And she stopped at the door.

It was dark in the room beyond and her eyes struggled to make out just what she was seeing.

Chapter Twenty-Three

This room was very different from the previous. The first thing that Tina noticed, having come from the bright and green farm, was how humid and dark it was inside here.

Pale-blue light emanated only from rows of lights on the gallery levels. There were no bright overhead lights as in the agriculture section.

The room looked a lot more crowded, and this was because gallery levels seemed closer together and were crowded. They contained big chunky boxes with curved glass lids. Row upon row of these things occupied the gallery levels as far as she could see.

In the agriculture sector, the air had been filled with the hisses of water from sprinklers, the zoom of harvesting robots, the clatter of little carriages on the rails. In this room, Tina could hear herself breathe.

She barely dared move, because her footsteps sounded so loud.

She checked her map. According to the data, she was still in the “dark zone”.

As she peered at the screen, a message from Rex flashed across.

Are you all right?

She resisted replying immediately. Instead, she kept recording everything she saw. She’d send it to Rex and Jens soon.

She had to wait until her eyes became accustomed to the low light. Standing in the aisle that traversed the sector, she recorded the sheer size of the room, the many gallery levels, the banks of equipment on the ground floor.

Then she slowly climbed up a set of metal stairs that led to the first gallery level, where two rows of the big, chunky cabinets occupied most of the space, leaving just a narrow aisle between them.

Tina peeked through the glass of the first cabinet and almost gasped aloud.

A man was inside. He lay on his back, his eyes closed. Most of his body was covered by a blanket. A few clear tubes came out from under the blanket and disappeared into the side of the cabinet. The area above his head glowed with soft purple light. The fuzz of beard on his chin indicated that he had been in here for a few days, but otherwise he looked like a perfectly healthy young man. He couldn't have been in here for long.

In the next cubicle lay another man in a similar condition, and the same with the next one and the one after that.

She walked along the row, recording everything she saw.

In the fourth cabinet, someone had left open a small panel cover on the outside. Inside was a screen that indicated the temperature inside the chamber, a number of dates and a name: Joshan.

Tina figured out how to open this panel on the next cabinet. This man’s name was Lokthar and the next one was Markan. All names that sounded ominously like Artan.

They were all men, and all within the age range that served in active duty in the Force. What was the bet that these were crew from the SF Manila?

In her time in the Force, some of the men would tattoo their recruitment numbers on their bodies, usually on their arms, but some would have the number on the side of their necks, under the ear.

And indeed, a few cabinets later, she found a young man with a number on the side of his neck. She took a photo of him showing his face, making sure the number in the picture was legible.

At the end of the section of the gallery, where a narrow metal bridge connected it to the next gallery, was a desk with a computer screen. Tina crouched under the desk, disconnected the cables and connected them to the electrical diagnostics tool as Jens had shown her. She used her fingerprint to authenticate access, and sent the recordings she had made.

A moment later, Jens sent back the recruitment card of the man in question:

Brett Finlayson, age twenty-six, place of origin: Olympus, time in the Force: three years and two months. Employment: SF Manila.

Her heart jumped.

Tina went back to look at the young man’s face and spotted what she hadn’t seen the first time: a faded bruise on his forehead. This young man had not asked to be put in this tube.

She walked along the rows of the next gallery. Most of the occupants here, too, had been inside for only a few days at most. They were all men. Where were the female crew of the ship?

She had to find them.

As Tina walked, the level of technology and content of the cabinets started to change.

The first men she saw were just asleep, but later ones were attached to machinery that monitored things she didn’t understand. Clear fluid was being pumped into their veins.

A while later, she noticed how the men who had been in for more than three months started to change. Their skin became grey and mottled, and then warty.

Some men were left in this state, with all equipment removed except whatever kept them in stasis, and others continued to receive treatment. Some of them grew into grotesque shapes, with their hands changing into multi-tentacled octopuses, and their faces becoming unrecognisable as human. Their skin started to darken from light grey to slate grey.

Tina stopped and recorded the vastness of the