Fredrick Carr's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The rig hung ready on the truck bed. Fredrick had eleven names, five of them fresh. Now he needed to know what the deep route would take from those men before he sent any of them below. Greymire stood at his shoulder, radio pack humming. "You want gear checks done right," she said, "talk to the two who fixed the door and the two who read the servers." She keyed her radio. "I'll pull them in." Logan came first, walking his careful walk, the two lost fingers kept clear of anything he lifted. He carried a bright orange suit folded over his good arm. He dropped it on the tailgate. A radiation symbol stared up from the chest. "Explorer suit," Logan said. "Repaired. Seals hold." He tapped a scuff mark. "Below the collapse, the counters climb. Old reactor bleed, maybe worse. Bare fur down there and your men glow." He looked at Fredrick. "I need suits for anyone who goes past the stairs. Two, minimum. I'm one of them." Greymire nodded. "Radiation's not a maybe. Greymire says you'll want both problems solved before anyone descends. Suits and the door." "What door?" Fredrick asked. Sinclair answered as he came around the garage wall. Fredrick had heard the name on radio calls but never met the man. He was black and brown, a radio pack on his back, and he moved like someone who had already counted every card on the table. He set a battered case on the tailgate and opened it. Inside sat rows of tools, cleaned and fitted, a small screen among them. "The door past the collapse runs on a security lock," Sinclair said. "Prewar. Sealed tight. Your scouts mapped up to it and stopped, because a lamp won't open it." He touched the screen. "This will. I rebuilt the set myself. It reads the old locks and talks them open." He met Fredrick's eyes, plain and level. "But a tool's only worth the hand that holds it. You send me down, or you send no one." Fredrick weighed it. Two problems, both real. Radiation would kill slow. A locked door would stop the mission cold. He had the men. He needed the gear and the two specialists who came with it. "Then it's decided," Fredrick said. "Logan and Sinclair go with the deep crew. Suits for both, plus two spares." He looked at Greymire. "Log the hack set and the suits as mission gear." Logan zipped the suit closed. "Give me a week. I finalize the descent plan, fit the suits, test the seals." He jerked his chin at Sinclair. "He drills the lock on a spare panel first. No surprises at the bottom." "One week," Fredrick said. Sinclair closed his case. "One week, friend. Then we open the last door." Fredrick pinned the suit under a strap beside the rig. The plan had a date now. In seven days he would send Logan, Sinclair, and a handful of his thin crew below the collapse, into the reactor's bleed and whatever waited past the sealed lock.