Lost on the Warren (Colony Ship Warren Book 2) by John Thornton

Author:John Thornton [Thornton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Automacube Enterprises
Published: 2020-07-25T22:00:00+00:00

10 Elsa Finds a Warehouse

While Beth and Allen were struggling to get across the biome and up onto the plateau where the ghost city was located, Elsa had troubles in a different part of the vast Colony Ship Warren.

Zero—the converted engineering automacube which housed the WASP and in turn was Elsa’s physical essence—along with the red security automacube which Elsa had named Elementary rolled along a lonely corridor. The team was small, but Elsa had plans for expanding it.

“I wonder what the Shade of Elsa is doing now?” Elsa conveyed the rhetorical question to the team as scans were made and information was gathered.

“Unable to answer,” Zero replied.

“AI Fife, should be consulted. Shall I send some inquiries?” Elementary asked.

“Send nothing now, thank you,” Elsa conveyed.

Elsa’s conversion of the Warren’s automacubes to work for her and her mission was not without some quirks and idiosyncrasies.

“I am just processing my plans,” Elsa continued and they approached a major warehouse where they hoped to find stored automacubes.

As was Elsa’s established practice, Elementary rolled ahead of Zero as they neared the pressure doors of the warehouse. They had already searched several other smaller storage locations, but none had automacubes in place. The docking and charging stations were there, but the automacubes were missing. At each of those previous locations, Elsa had covertly tapped into the files and logs and found numerous discrepancies between what was officially located in that spot and what was actually physically there. It was not just regarding automacubes, but also other supplies and materials. Roughly sixty percent of things were missing and those lost items were not on any official manifest.

Conjectures on the meaning of those discrepancies eluded Elsa. Conferring with Zero and Elementary produced only their typical responses.

“Why do you think the logs and official records indicated where things are located, but when we actually physically assess these places, we do not find what we were led to believe should be there?” Elsa inquired.

“Unable to answer,” Zero answered and offered nothing more.

“This is a serious finding which needs further investigation. Protocol advises that I issue a report to my supervisor, AI Fife. Shall I send the incident report and request an investigation?” Elementary asked.

“We will not be consulting the lattice of compeers at this time,” Elsa reminded her team. “We need to enlarge our team to accomplish our mission.”

Elementary rolled up to the pressure doors and inserted a cable into an access port.

Sirens blared, a red light came on and began flashing, and a voice boomed out from hidden speakers.

“Restricted access. State your purpose,” the mechanical voice thundered.

Doors on both ends of the corridor slammed shut with loud metallic clangs.

Elsa knew they were locked in, but also scanned for any wireless communications, signals, or transmissions, but could find none. Elementary’s connection to the access port also allowed Elsa to probe the wired systems, the energy conduits, and the other utilities which were connected into that newly encountered storage area.

Elsa rapidly assessed everything within purview concentrating on the nonphysicality and found no links or couplings from the storage warehouse to any outside source.

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