Lornia drew a shuddering breath and then moved onward. Part of her did not care what type of being was currently working its way through the obstacle course and the maze of time and space that held fast the machine.
It could be humans, and it might not be. She would not know until she saw them face to face. There was only one way to ensure a face-to-face meeting with the beings currently heading toward her, and that would be to make her way to the docks.
Or at least try to.
She wavered. The beast wars had been violent and awful. Before that experiment had implanted the war-machine within her, she’d been a gentle creature. Her areas of study and interest had been in botany and science. Gentle sciences, the science of bringing water from dried lands. The science of bringing food forth from places that were barren.
That was what had made her so desirable to the others who had sought to hold fast the doors on either side of the universe. With her assistance, they could eat well and always have clean water to drink.
She had sought only solitude, as ironic as that was now. She’d relished the idea of being someplace where she could spend her long years making things happen, things like growing food in the crevices of the ship floor. When she had imagined solitude, back in those years, she had imagined working for as long as she liked without interruption and speaking to those that she passed in halls and sat with at the communal table for meals if she felt like it, but no other time.
She wanted solitude. What she had gotten was silence. But that silence was about to be broken.
Lornia hurried now, her bare feet moving toward a hallway that she had not gone down in at least a hundred years. The arsenal, what was left of it, sat at the end of that hallway and her shoulders tensed and her breath sucked in, dragging her stomach toward her backbone as she took a few now hesitant steps past the doorway that led to that hall.
The doorway was half shut, and had been half shut for a very long time. No lights remained in the hallway that sat shrouded with vast webs from the Orb spiders that had died decades ago, just one more victim of extinction there in that forgotten place.
She made her way down the hallway with all of her senses alert. The Orbs might be dead but who knew what may have come into those rooms during her absence? Nothing. There was nothing there. Relief hit as she finally made her way to the vaulted door of the arsenal. She paused before it, her forehead wrinkling with thought.
What would she need? What was left of that arsenal anyway? So much of it had been used during the wars with the fearsome beasts, and she had not cared for the arsenal, which she now regretted. She’d been more interested in simply surviving what was unable to be killed with a mere weapon.
Lornia’s fingers spun the door lock, and it opened with a rusty wheeze. She tread inside lightly, allowing her eyes to grow used to the dimness before moving forward toward the racks and shelves where the weapons lay. Dismay hit. Time and the elements had taken their toll on those weapons, despite the airlock. Many had gray-blue dots of dampness upon their grips and triggers. Would they even work now?
She took a laser from one wall and aimed it toward an already-destroyed weapon. A quick and rapid burst from the laser made short work of the weapon she had fired upon. The weapon that she had destroyed lay cracked and broken, without even enough power to implode or explode in the face of the laser’s pointed ray.
“One laser is not enough.”
No, not at all. If she were to make her way to the docks, those long since deserted docs, and safely, she would need much more than a single laser. She was afraid to continue to test fire any of the weapons that she pulled down, so she contented herself with taking those that showed the fewest signs of wear and disuse. She strapped long ammo belts across her narrow waist and then over her slender shoulders. She wore those ammo belts well. A laser weapon hung from each slim hip, and additional weapons rested in the belt right below her flat belly.
Lornia strode back out of the arsenal room and then paused. She alone knew where those weapons were. What if she needed more later? It would not do to leave the room open in case whatever was coming to that door turned out to be an enemy. She hastily locked it and then exited down the hallway and back toward the central corridor.
The light had changed, shifting toward a violent orange color. That meant that evening would not be far away. Time was strange there and evening might last for mere moments or for entire moon phases. She stared at the light. Perhaps it would be better not to try to go to the docks. She had no idea if the beings that were arriving would be arriving before she could make it to the docks or if they would be arriving far after she had arrived there.
There was nothing at the docks, no type of food or supplies. If there were indeed beasts along the way that she had to fight, she would need strength and sustenance as well. Tralam was vast; it had been built to hold thousands. It had been built to be a refuge for those who would hold the weapon prisoner, but in the end, so few had come in, so much of the fortress had never been used. Could not be used because there was simply nobody to use that space.
She would retrace her footsteps back to the gardens. She took a large bag and began to gather the large fatty nut-breads that grew below the wide and glossy leaves of their trees. A single nut-bread could sustain her for several days. Her appetite was poor, and had been for a very long time. Those who were coming might be large of appetite and in need of much nourishment, so she packed as many as she could readily carry on her back into a pack.
She added in a dozen of the juicy, puce-colored vegetables that could be eaten raw because they were so easily digestible, as well as some fruit and a few starchy roots just in case she needed them.
She added in herbs and salt, that common denominator of all universes. Without salt, there was no life. Next, Lornia found a large bag in which to carry a good supply of the freshwater from her pool and then found herself unable to carry it. Some hasty rearranging of weapons and the pack that she carried enabled her to finally take the water along as well, but the weight was heavy, and she wondered how far she would be able to go under all of it.
She stood there, uncertainty freezing her feet to the floor once more. She was part of the machine. She had strength, that she knew, but that strength was mostly untested. She had had no cause to have to fight anyone other than her insane partial creator after her awakening. She’d never tried to journey through the fortress before either. She’d been content to stay in the sections of it that she knew the best and to let the rest rot away.
That was no longer an option.
Lornia set off, heading toward a series of switchback hallways and tunnels that would, eventually, take her to the docking stations.
