Dawn of Procyon (26 page)

Only, they wouldn’t underestimate him this time. They wouldn’t give him another chance to escape.

He looked about desperately for ideas. He could see the remnants of the scout on the ridge, but knew it wouldn’t do him any good. If only he could—

There
. Something was glinting in the early morning sun, over toward the array. For a moment he thought it was a part of the array tower, an angular piece of metal that had caught the sunlight, but then the shimmer diminished.

It was the windshield of a vehicle that was crawling slowly across the terrain, turning in an arc. As he watched, he saw another section of it flash in the sunlight as it changed direction.

It was a ground scout, possibly a mudhopper.

Someone had come to investigate the array.

This is it. My last and only chance of making it out of here alive.

Landry’s heart surged, and he began to run.

Chapter 50

PSD 29-214: 0203 hours

Cait wandered the empty corridors for an hour, maybe even two. She was listless, unable to calm her nerves after the day she’d just endured. After initially heading for her apartment, she’d realized that she couldn’t abide the thought of returning there. She knew that she would get no rest if she lay down to sleep in the dark stillness of her room, that thoughts of Fraxa and Landry would have free reign to occupy her mind.

So instead, she just walked. Late at night there was no one to bother her as she roamed, and she found that she could simply let her mind drift as she shuffled from place to place.

She had no destination in mind, no route to follow, but in time she somehow ended up back at the doors to the workshop.

I must be going crazy
, she thought to herself, staring uncertainly at them. She considered moving on, but she somehow felt compelled to enter.

Something told her that it was the only place she might find solace tonight.

She thumbed the bio-door and went through.

Even before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, the familiar scent of the workshop hit her nostrils—a combination of grease, scored metal, and the arcjet vapor that was literally soaked into the walls.

It almost brought a smile to her face.

She checked her watch. It was a little after midnight. The other Optechs wouldn’t be showing up for hours yet.

She made her way over to her desk and slumped into the chair, then flicked on the desk lamp. Things were just as she’d left them a few hours before—the omni-devices stacked in one corner, the work list sitting ready for the day ahead. Movement caught her eye from below, and she reached for the aluminum trash can beside the desk. Inside was a stack of junk she’d cleared out earlier, and something was flickering.

She reached in and pulled out the digital photo frame she’d been carrying during the day, the one that belonged to Landry. For what must have been the hundredth time, she saw Landry kissing the redhead with that goofy smile plastered on his face.

She felt a pang of guilt.

So that’s it for Landry, huh? Swept into the garbage like so much trash.

She hadn’t meant to throw the photo away. At least, she didn’t
think
she had. It had simply ended up lost in the clutter, and when she’d dumped the rubbish it had inadvertently gone with it.

Kinda poetic. Isn’t this pretty much what happened to Landry himself? Got himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up being cast aside?

She felt her cheeks flush with shame.

She knew.
Out of all the people here at the outpost, she was the only one who knew Landry was still alive out there. Or perhaps that wasn’t entirely true. Administrator Barakula knew. She’d seen it in his eyes when she’d told him about the SOS. He’d understood the situation perfectly well but was only interested in profit margins. He was only interested in turning the whole incident into a grab for cash.

It was that apathy that was eating at Cait. The apathy of this entire outpost, the fact that no one seemed to care that Landry and his pilot were in need of help.

And that was the crux of the matter. Until yesterday, Landry had been nothing more than an obstacle in the way of her climbing the ladder. Then, as she’d begun to gather his belongings, sort out his affairs, she’d uncovered much more. She’d found a real human being underneath. She couldn’t just pretend that he meant nothing, that no one would miss him. And she couldn’t pretend that the rules and regulations of the outpost were standing in the way of her helping. They weren’t fair, she knew. Look at how they’d treated Fraxa, for example.

You should clean up this stuff and just get on with your life. You got your promotion. You’re on the path to success.

She thought of the way Fraxa had looked at her with such admiration. Would that Cait, the one Fraxa believed in, care more about a job than a human life?

Then, she saw her father’s face in her mind, his disapproving glare. His voice telling her she’d never make it out here.

She thought of how much she’d always wanted to prove him wrong.

Is this how you wanted to show dad what you were made of?
she thought bitterly.
By ratting out your workmates, backstabbing and manipulating your way up the ladder?

I thought you wanted to be the best Optech this side of Alpha Centauri.

“I didn’t manipulate anything,” she told herself. “I earned this promotion on my own merit.”

Yeah, you earned it. That’s why Dodge gave you the job right after he got through patting you on the back for spilling your guts about Landry. And Barakula, standing behind him, obviously having told him about how much money they could make by leaving Landry and the pilot out there to rot.

Quite a coincidence how that all worked out, huh?

All of a sudden, her skin was crawling. She felt an intense wave of loathing, not just for herself, but for the whole outpost. For the fact that no one seemed to care.

What have I done? I’ve spent all this time trying to prove dad wrong, and it’s brought me nothing but misery. It’s turned me into a person I don’t even recognize anymore.

Fraxa’s words came back to her:
I wish there were more like you.

How would the girl feel if she knew Cait had let an innocent man die out in the wasteland?

Cait thought about her father again, and she realized that she’d been wrong all this time. She hadn’t proven anything by running all this way to Proc-One, and she sure wasn’t going to prove anything by simply being a supervisor.

She had to return to Earth, face up to him. Show him the woman that she’d grown into. Prove it to his
face
what she could do. Talk to him, make him listen.

Shaking, she checked her wristwatch again. There were approximately five hours until Procyon A dawned in the east. If she went to the hangar, took one of the mudhoppers and drove toward the sun, she could reach the array tower by dawn. She could finally put this thing to rest. Whether she found Landry or not, she could at least live with the fact that she’d tried, that she hadn’t left him out there to die.

She wouldn’t have his shadow hanging over her for the rest of her life. She could look Fraxa in the eye and know that the admiration she saw there was deserved, because Cait Underwood wasn’t the kind of person who would let another human being die simply because she couldn’t be bothered to help.

After checking on Landry, she would come back to the base. They’d charge her for leaving the outpost without authorization, she knew, and probably ship her back to Earth.

That was fine. That was exactly what she wanted. Even if they didn’t throw the book at her, she would leave of her own volition, and she would take Fraxa with her. She would take responsibility for the child and see her returned to her grandmother back home.

She was finished with Proc-One. She was going to leave here and never come back.

She suddenly felt elated, like a great burden had been tossed from her back. She was finally free of the negativity that had consumed her all these years. She was ready to start again, turn over a new leaf.

With a final glance around the workshop, she headed to the door and then proceeded toward the hangar.

Chapter 51

PSD 29-214: 0759 hours

Cait watched Procyon A appear over the horizon. Out in the wasteland, far from the outpost, there was a certain serenity about the place. A peacefulness that she found oddly appealing. She’d never driven out there on her own before, and she wondered if perhaps that was why she felt that way. Maybe it was simply the fact that she’d had four or five hours alone with her own thoughts, time to contemplate what she was doing.

She came to a dip in the terrain and swung the mudhopper to the right to avoid a large boulder. The vehicle jostled and bounced as it slammed across the dirt, then roared as it powered up the other side of the gully. The mudhopper really ate up the clicks. It was the most versatile of the Groundswell vehicles, a modernization of the old dune buggy design, with an enclosed cabin and a storage area at the rear for hauling equipment and rock samples. It was built to handle rough terrain, with a mean set of adjustable coilover shocks, aircraft grade aluminum rims and 3-ply casings on the tires. In fact, despite their high usage, Cait rarely saw mudhoppers turn up in the workshop for anything other than a tune-up. They were built like tanks.

Although the mudhopper maintained its own environment within the cabin, she’d donned an EVA suit before leaving the hangar, just to make sure. After all, she’d come out there to rescue Landry. To do that, she would have to exit the vehicle at some point. Plus, it was a standard safety procedure. If the mudhopper were to roll down an embankment and the windshield cracked, she would be in a whole world of hurt without an EVA suit.

She was feeling somewhat reckless, but not
that
reckless.

The array tower was just ahead, starkly outlined against the dawn. She glanced around, searching for any sign of the Himura Seagull that Landry and his pilot had stolen from the hangar. It would be easy to spot if they’d landed it there, shiny and white against the terrain.

If
they landed it here
, she reminded herself.
There’s no guarantee they ever came this way.

She slowed the mudhopper as she neared the tower. There was no sign of a hab-tent deployed or any other indication that Landry or his pilot had tried to make camp there. She drove the vehicle in an arc, surveying the perimeter. She could see footprints around the base of the structure, but they didn’t necessarily belong to Landry. Given the right weather conditions, particularly a lull in wind activity, footprints could remain visible for several weeks. The prints might have been left by a previous maintenance crew who had been working on the array.

She stopped the mudhopper, craning her neck. There was certainly nothing obvious around the tower to indicate Landry had been here. A part of her had almost expected to find his body here, crumpled pathetically against a boulder or the tower itself, his oxygen supply having long given out. Maybe that would have at least given her some closure, she thought. She could—

She stopped, staring up at a nearby ridge. Something was glinting up there, an object she hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps it had been hidden by shadow, and the steadily rising Procyon A had only just risen high enough for it to catch the light.

It was a ship, she realized, although it looked too small to be the Seagull. She thought she recognized part of the VTOL assembly there. Perhaps it was only the back end she was seeing, with the front end buried by sand.

She put the mudhopper into reverse, scanned the ridge to locate a path she could follow up to investigate.

Then something else caught her eye, away from the ridge. Something was out there. Something was running toward her, across the flat toward the east.

She hadn’t noticed the movement in the glare of the sunlight, and they had come close enough for her to make out a few details.

For a moment, her heart leapt. She felt for sure that it was Landry.

Then a ball of ice settled in her stomach.

It wasn’t Landry.

It wasn’t even
human
.

It was one of the Argoni, a vile, hulking black creature that lumbered across the sand in great strides toward her.

She cried out involuntarily, shoved the mudhopper into gear, spun the wheels as she tried to get away.

The thing was
fast
. It leapt across boulders and anything else that was in its way, and as she picked up speed, it changed course to intercept the mudhopper.

No doubt about it, she thought. It was coming for her.

Panicked, she kept glancing out the window at it as it closed in, and as a result, she did not see the large boulder looming before her until it was too late. She swerved, slamming against the edge of the rock, and the mudhopper ground to a halt. Panting, she reversed again, extricating herself from the boulder, then gunned forward.

But it was too late. The Argoni leapt, flying through the air as the mudhopper picked up velocity, landing on the hood so heavily that the whole vehicle rocked. Cait screamed and began veering left and right in an attempt to dislodge it, but the Argoni had dug in tight. It wasn’t letting go.

She jammed her foot on the accelerator, driving altogether too fast considering she couldn’t see where she was going. They dropped into a gully, the mudhopper groaning as it jarred against the bottom and then thundered up the other side.

Still the Argoni clung to the hood.

Something was happening to it, she realized. It was shrinking, or transforming. Peeling its outer skin, revealing sickly, pale flesh beneath.

Was that . . . was that a person under there, she thought? Was that
Landry
?

Is that thing eating him?

She jammed on the brakes. The thing looked at her then, and she could see that it
was
him. It was Landry. He wore no EVA suit, and in fact looked almost naked. He was staring at her, opening and closing his mouth, his face turning blue as he suffocated in Proc-One’s toxic atmosphere.

He reached for her.

Am I really going out there? With that thing crawling all over Landry?

The black creature, or whatever it was, had withdrawn more. Landry had almost become fully visible now, as if it had tried to eat him and then decided to spit him out instead. It writhed, amorphous and grotesque, and attached itself to the mudhopper, spreading across the hood like a ropey, misshapen black spider web.

Landry’s eyes had become glazed. He was about to pass out.

Cait glanced beside her, pulled a wrench from the storage bay in the back seat, then opened the door. She got out and ran around to the front of the hood. The black creature had stopped moving, and sat there, splayed out across the mudhopper, seemingly dormant. Cait dodged forward and cracked the wrench against the hood, hoping to scare it away, but it didn’t so much as flinch. She tried again with the same result.

“Gah!” she muttered, slipping the wrench onto a hook on her EVA suit. She reached for Landry, linking one of his arms over her shoulder, then dragged him around to the passenger side of the mudhopper. She opened the door and bundled him inside, then circled around the other side and got behind the wheel again.

She hit the button for rapid environment stabilization, and the cabin hissed as it filled with oxygen.

“Landry?” she said, reaching over and slapping him with her gloved hand. “Landry, are you with me? What’s going on?”

Landry lay still for a moment, comatose, then convulsed and dry retched. Startled, he glanced around as if he had no idea where he was.

“Cait,” he gasped. “What the . . . what are you doing here?”

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” she said sourly, but she couldn’t help but smile.

“Where did you come from?”

“I came looking for you, you idiot,” she said. “Do you think I came out here to watch the sunrise?”

Landry began to draw himself up in his seat. “No, I—”

“And what exactly is that
thing
on the hood? Where’s your EVA suit? How are you still alive?”

He struggled for breath as he tried to reply, and it was only then that she noticed what a mess he was. There were rivulets of dried blood all over his body, and patches where his skin was worn away, revealing raw flesh beneath. And one of his arms was horribly disfigured, marked with several deep wounds, and a patch of skin at his wrist seemed to have turned black and necrotic.

“Landry, what the . . . ?” she said. “I mean it, man. How are you still alive?”

“Cait,” he said, glancing outside fearfully, craning his neck, “don’t worry about that now.”

“We need to get the first aid kit before those wounds get infected—”

“I’ve got a lot to tell you,” he said, turning back to her, “but right now we need to get out of here. We need to go.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re coming, Cait. I’ve seen things. I
know
things. The Argoni are coming.”

She glanced about, confused. “What Argoni?”

He looked at her, and something in his eyes sent a chill down her spine. She saw within him an unfathomable sense of fear, as if he’d witnessed horrors that he couldn’t even begin to describe. After a moment he turned away, toward the expanse of wasteland that surrounded them, and when he spoke, his voice was as hollow and desolate as the world outside the mudhopper.

“All of them.”