Dawn of Procyon (11 page)

Chapter 20

PSD 29-213: 1333 hours

Landry struggled along the ridge, the toboggan like a two-ton brick behind him. At the crest he finally stopped to catch his breath. From there he could see a great distance in all directions. Off to the west sat the dust-coated steel of the array tower, its edges glinting in the sunlight. His HUD told him that it was 478 meters away. There wasn’t much else to see, apart from boulders and endless drifts of sand. The outpost was somewhere beyond the horizon to the west, but as far as Landry was concerned, it might as well have been in another galaxy.

He couldn’t drag the load for three-hundred clicks. No way. It would take him a week.

He knew that he would die of dehydration long before he got there, even if his strength somehow held out that long.

Just climbing the ridge had taxed him greatly. He felt like sitting down in the sand and staying there, waiting for the Toad to come and finish him off, or until his IDB ran out of water and he died of thirst.

There was no point going on.

“Landry?” HAIRI said. “I have marked a heading on your HUD VR overlay that I believe will provide the quickest path back to the outpost—”

“I’m not going to the outpost.”

HAIRI paused as he processed the new information. “You must head to the outpost. There are no other means of ensuring your survival at this time.”

“No, HAIRI. That’s not going to be an option.”

“But you have everything you need to make the journey. You have air, water, and mobility.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not lugging around this garbage on the toboggan.”

“By inference you are suggesting that
I
am garbage, since my components are also resting on the toboggan.”

“Geez, man. Don’t take things so personally.” Landry was still short of breath after his exertion, and took a moment to suck in some air. “I’m just trying to tell you that this is hopeless. I can’t make it. The gear is too heavy.”

“Perhaps there is another option we have not considered.”

“There’s not.”

“Landry, I do not wish to die out here.”

“
You
don’t wish to die? You’re a piece of software, HAIRI. How can you die?”

“I can imagine no worse fate than to be left out here in the cold, cold sand—”

“Okay, enough theatrics. Let’s look at our options again,” Landry said.

“Very well. There is an array tower in close proximity.”

“So what? For a start, it’s dead. Went down more than a week ago. And even if it were working, it wouldn’t do us any good. The towers are just dumb transmitters. There’s no comms equipment inside that we could use to contact the outpost. All they do is just relay the data that comes in as they probe their allotted space quadrant. They’re either on, or they’re off. That’s about—”

Landry stopped. A long distant memory suddenly flickered in the back of his mind, something Grandpa had once told him over a dinner of roast lamb shanks in plum sauce, with dumplings on the side. Grandma’s specialty. Landry was thirteen or fourteen years old at the time, and had made an off-the-cuff remark about not understanding girls.

“They’re just a mystery to me,” he’d said. “And they won’t talk to me. I never know how to take them.”

Grandpa had liked to eat the shanks in his hands, and Landry still remembered him tearing strips off with his teeth as he’d delivered his reply.

“Landry, just remember this. Sometimes communicatin’ is done without no words being exchanged. You just need to watch a girl’s face, the way she looks at you, and you can get a good idea about what she’s thinkin’. Figure out if she’s interested. In fact, it’s the things she don’t say that often speaks the loudest, when you read between the lines.”

Landry had tried to do as Grandpa had suggested, but he was never quite sure he got the knack of it. It just seemed to be a thing with him and girls. After all, he could understand the complexities of just about any machine he chose to crack open, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of the opposite sex.

Now, however, it was the first part of Grandpa’s advice that stuck in his head.

Sometimes communicatin’ is done without no words being exchanged.

Landry had no way of speaking directly with the outpost, but was there another way that he might get their attention?

Yes, maybe
, he realized.

“Okay, I think you’re right, HAIRI. I have a plan. We need to get to the array tower.”

“I very much enjoy plans, Landry.”

“So do I.” He cranked up the magnification on the camera as he examined the terrain below. “And the first plan we need is to find a suitable path across to the array. I don’t want to spend three hours pulling this sh—” He reconsidered his phrasing. “This
toboggan
across the wasteland, only to have to backtrack when the ground gets too steep.”

“Please pan the camera a little to the south. I think I see flat terrain there.”

“Yeah, I see it too. And look there, not too many boulders. That’s good.” He turned further to the east. “If we can avoid—” Something caught his eye, and he backtracked slightly. Then his mouth gaped open. Something dense and black was sitting among the boulders out there, about the size of a car but formless and indistinct, like it was melting under the glare of Procyon A. “Look! There!”

“That is, I believe, a vehicle.”

“Or was. It looks like it’s . . . decomposing or something.”

“According to my database, and judging by the mass of the object, there is a ninety-four percent chance that this is a Argoni dogfighter, a single passenger aircraft frequently used in combat situations.”

“It’s
his
ship. The Toad. That’s where he crash landed after the collision with Gus and me.”

“Yes, I would agree with this conclusion.”

Landry cranked the magnification to maximum, but details of the ship remained tantalizingly out of reach. It was so dark that it almost appeared to be a shadow.

“That’s where he’s hiding,” Landry said. “It’s got to be. He must be taking the parts from the scout there.”

“Are you considering a confrontation with the Argoni?”

“Not really. He’s too fast, too strong. I want to stay out of his way if I can.”

“Then our route to the array should deviate from the wreck of his ship.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Landry felt like a bit of a coward saying that, but what could he do? The Toad
was
too strong. The pragmatic thing to do would be to avoid a conflict if he could help it.

In the distance, Landry could see the remnants of the Argoni base that had been wiped out a week ago. There was a large mass of scorched soil and boulders, and spindly fragments of the ruined structure itself. The Argoni seemed to build exclusively using a somewhat fragile, crystalline material that was easily destroyed by human ordnance. Whenever a Toad base was spotted from the air, the UEM would move in and reduce it to rubble, killing any Argoni inside. The Argoni had always struggled to gain a foothold on outpost planets. They seemed much more suited to combat in space than on the ground.

Panning back to the array, Landry considered his objective. The array was 478 meters away, but that was direct line of sight. To walk there, towing the toboggan, it would likely be closer to a kilometer, he figured. That was going to take a couple of hours.

“I think I have calculated a route to the array, if you would like to get started,” HAIRI said.

Landry sighed and stretched. “I sure would, buddy. My back was just starting to feel better from the rest. Can’t have that now, can we?”

“No rest for the wicked.”

Landry began trudging down the slope, hoping that he could make it to the array before the Toad caught sight of him and moved in for the kill.

Chapter 21

PSD 29-213: 0837 hours

“Who’s there?” Cait said. She gripped the wrench tighter and took a step forward. “I said, who’s there?”

More shadows danced along the length of the epidermis, and then suddenly a light came into view. Dazzled by its brilliance for a moment, Cait shielded her eyes. When her vision cleared, she saw the figure more clearly.

It was someone in a dark orange EVA suit. She couldn’t see the face behind the visor, but she could see a heavy pulse blaster in its hands.

It was a Marine, she realized. That was all, just a Marine.

She breathed a sigh of relief. Spud’s panicked reaction to the situation had affected her a little more than she would like to have admitted. She sensed movement behind her and saw a second Marine in an EVA suit had appeared on the other side of the breach, looking down into the epidermis.

That explained the shadow they had seen pass across the breach a few moments before. The Marines were patrolling the area outside the outpost.

The first Marine stopped not far away from Cait. He swept the flashlight mounted under the barrel of his blaster across the area, pausing briefly at each corpse, then shone the light into Cait’s face.

“Hey, knock it off,” she said, averting her eyes from the glare.

“Zone Seventeen clear,” the Marine said, ignoring her. “Heading back.”

He turned away and began to walk in the direction he’d come from. The Marine outside the breach concluded his inspection and disappeared as well, leaving Cait standing there with the wrench still clutched in her hand.

“Spud, you can come back,” she said, hoping the old man was still in comms range. She waited a moment, but there was no response. “Spud?”

She returned the wrench to the trolley, then placed a hand on the bender. She wasn’t going to be able to lift it by herself, but if Spud wasn’t coming back, she would be forced to wait for someone else.

Her omni-device buzzed, and she took it from her hip.

Pressure warning reported: Segment 18, Section 2.

Pressure warning reported: Segment 18, Section 3.

She scrolled to the floor plan and saw that Segment 18 adjacent to the one she was in. She knew from experience that some of the areas had seals that were fifty years old, and they were evidently straining under the added pressure of the breach.

Cait needed to get it fixed before the damage became more widespread. If the wrong seal came apart, an Ag-room could be destroyed—or worse. She knew that more people could die.

She didn’t have time to wait for another Optech to wander along. She had to get the repairs done
now
.

“Hey!” she called after the retreating form of the Marine. “Hey, I need your help! Can you give me a minute?”

The Marine did not turn or acknowledge her, and a moment later he disappeared from view.

“Great,” Cait muttered. She was in a real bind now. The breach couldn’t be repaired without the bender, but she wondered how she was going to move it by herself. She stood there mulling over it for a moment longer, then put her hands decisively on the bender chassis.

You can do this. You’re
going
to do this.

She planted her feet and lifted with all of her might, then staggered away from the trolley with the bender in her arms. The thing was monstrously heavy, and she felt for certain that it was going to fall and crush her. She bounced into the wall behind her and almost dropped it, then stumbled toward the breach. The bender was not only weighty, but an awkward shape as well, and she could feel it slipping through the fingers of her left hand with each small step.

If this thing hits the floor, that’s it. You won’t get it back up again.

She drove her legs forward and made it to the far wall, slamming against it, but the job was far from done. She still had to position the bender on top of the conduit, which meant lifting it higher.

Her arms felt like dead weights. Her strength had fled.

She gritted her teeth and grunted, straining with one last effort. Her feet began to slip on the floor, and she gasped, realizing that she might be crushed under the bender, but somehow she managed to grind it up against the conduit’s edge, and settle it on the top.

In the back of her mind she saw her father’s disapproving glare, and that made her smile in satisfaction.

She felt somewhat weightless after her exertion, but she didn’t pause to take a breather. She tapped on the bender’s console, and a few seconds later, a flurry of blue laser probes shot out of its scanning port, mapping out the damage. While the lasers did their work, Cait returned to the trolley and prepped the arc welder and the nano-web gun. She ran a quick check on both, and they both seemed in good working order from what she could see. That was something to be thankful for, at least.

The bender made a trilling sound when the scan was finished and Cait keyed in the sequence to initiate the repair. Several snake-like arms slid out of the chassis and attached themselves to the twisted metal. Soon Cait was busy with the arc welder, sealing the joins as the steel was folded into the correct shapes. In places where the gaps were too large, she used the nano-webbing, which would suffice until more thorough repairs could be done.

She lost track of time as she concentrated on her work, and before she knew it, the outside world had been shut out. The bender’s arms retracted. Cait completed the last join and moved back. The blue light of the bender pulsed again, sweeping across the disfigured wall, and when the scan was complete it powered down.

With a few taps on her omni-device, Cait activated the oxygen pumps along the segment, and air began to gush in around her. The metal creaked and strained around the joins, and for a moment she thought the breach might burst open again, but the repairs held firm.

She glanced down at the omni-device.

Pressure stabilized.

Good news
, she thought. There were no secondary breaches.

With a sigh of relief, she placed the tools back on the trolley.

What a day. And it’s barely begun yet.

The bender was still sitting on the conduit, but she figured that could wait. She knew it wouldn’t do any damage there, and she could come back later with some extra muscle to—

There was a sound nearby. A scraping noise that sent a chill down Cait’s spine. She turned her helmet lamps toward the sound, and for a horrible moment she imagined that maybe one of the corpses had come to life, that she’d been wrong before when she’d thought everyone was dead. However, the three dead men were still in the same spots as before. She edged forward cautiously, wondering if she’d simply heard the sound of the compartment repressurizing, but then she heard it again—a rasping noise that she couldn’t identify.

This time she pinpointed its origin.

It was coming from the overturned storage unit nearby. As she watched, the unit rocked slightly where it lay on the floor.

That thing was too small to fit a person inside.
Wasn’t it?

Cait considered getting out of there, leaving whatever it was for the Marines to clean up, but something told her that she needed to investigate. She had to know what was inside.

She stepped over and pushed the storage unit on its side, then flipped the lid open.

It
was
a person. A young girl of about ten years of age, with dark hair and dried blood on her brow. She lay at an awkward angle, her legs drawn up and her arms pressed to her chest in the cramped interior of the box. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and it was clear that she was barely conscious.

“Who are you?” Cait said, but the girl’s eyes closed, and she stopped moving.

What exactly is going on here? What were these people up to?

Cait acted instinctively, reaching down and hauling the girl out of the box. Compared to the bender, the kid was as light as a feather. Cait slung her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then made her way over to the bulkhead.

I have to get her to the Infirmary. The storage must have trapped some oxygen inside, allowing her to survive the duration of the breach, but the lid wouldn’t have formed a complete seal. She must have been at least partially exposed to Proc-One’s atmosphere.

Cait hauled her through the first bulkhead, then the next, and they passed the repair closet not long after. Although Spud was nowhere to be seen, others had arrived to investigate the incident—more Marines and several officials Cait recognized from Outpost Control. She lumbered toward them in her EVA suit, gripping the girl tightly, but no one moved to offer help.

“I need a medical team here!” she shouted at them. They looked at her blankly. “A medic!”

One of the officials stepped forward to examine the girl. “We can have someone here in a few minutes—”

Cait flipped the catches on her helmet and ripped it off. She flung it on the floor, furious. “Yeah, don’t go to too much trouble,” she snapped. “Forget about it. I’ll take her myself.”

Without bothering to remove the EVA suit, she began to run.