by Aileen Erin
I stepped into the suit and jammed my arms in it to wrench the rest over my shoulders. The suit was much heavier than I realized. I stood there for a minute, trying to do up the front of the suit before giving up. I was going to need Tyler’s help. There were three layers of closures—zipper on the bottom layer, and then a series of snaps in the middle, and a seal with a button on the outermost layer.
Tyler was nice enough to walk me through how to get everything secured correctly, which was nearly impossible with the thick gloves. I could barely get my fingers to move, let alone have enough dexterity for the complicated clasps.
By the time it was done, I was exhausted, already sweating, and I didn’t even have the helmet on yet. “That was a pain in the ass.”
“Why do you think I avoid going out there at all costs?” he asked with a grin.
“The danger?”
“That, too, but the suit is a bitch. Does a good job of protecting you though, and that’s all that matters out there.”
I really hoped he was right. My stomach was in knots, and I had to get a handle on my nerves. Upchucking that nasty sausage in the suit wasn’t going to help anything. I took a step toward him, and it was like my feet were encased in cement, but I took Tyler’s word for it. As long as the suit protected me, I wasn’t going to complain. Much.
He grabbed something from a hook by the door and turned back to me. “This is what you’re spraying out there.” It was a belt with a two-liter canister attached and a little handheld nozzle with a trigger. “It’s compressed in there, so it’s a little heavier than it looks, but should last ’til your break.”
Attaching the canister to my waist with the gloves on took me a few tries, but I got it on and gave him a nod. “What’s next?” I wanted to get this over with. The longer it took, the sweatier I was getting. Lying to myself that it was just the heat and not nerves wasn’t quite cutting it anymore. Soon I’d be out there, risking my life for nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I was trying hard not to let it get to me, but I couldn’t stop the anger from rising again and again until I was clenching my teeth hard enough to crack them.
“There are a few buttons on your right wrist. One for AC—on the right. One for the helmet—in the middle. The other button is for your water. Hold it down, and a tube will come out. When you let go, it retracts. But you’ll want to use that sparingly. The suit doesn’t hold much. They weren’t exactly designed to be out there as long as you’ll be.”
“What?” The scream ripped from me. “What do you mean they’re not designed to be out there for long?” My chest constricted and my breath came out in short gasps. I was keeping a handle on the glow even with the anger, but barely. I thought Ahiga approved the suit.
Tyler held up his hands. “Hold on. That didn’t come out like I meant. Keep in mind they’re made to last longer than their suggested usage. I’ve just never been out there longer than a few minutes, but you should be fine. They wouldn’t assign this job if it wasn’t safe.”
I wanted to laugh and cry and shout and scream and blow this place up because that was exactly why I’d been assigned the stupid job.
I wanted to tell Tyler that but couldn’t. I kept my jaw clenched tight, and tried to tell myself that I wasn’t walking out there to burn to death but I couldn’t do that either.
I’m a di Aetes. I won’t quit. Not ever.
That was the mantra that had gotten me through years of running, living on the streets, stealing food, and finally—when we got to Albuquerque—through the stress of years of hiding. It was the same determination and fight that would get me through this stupid job until Declan got here.
I jammed my finger on the middle button, and the helmet came up with a snap. A few displays lit up on the inside of my visor. First was the time, center of the helmet, just above my eye line. The temperature both outside and inside the suit showed on the bottom left, and power and oxygen levels were on the bottom right. Currently, I was at 96 degrees Fahrenheit in my suit and 100 percent for power and O2.
“You hear me okay?” Tyler’s voice came through the helmet.
“Yeah.”
“Good. Cams are in the suit, recording everything. SpaceTech likes to keep a record. And when you’re out there on your own, I’ll be able to check in with you. See your video feed.”
In other words, Jason was going to be watching me out there. Perfect. Just perfect.
“Now go ahead and start up the AC. You’ll want to give it a head start before we go on out there.”
“Sure thing.” I hit the one on the right, and freezing air started circulating around my body. It took less than ten seconds for my teeth to start chattering. The temperature readout disappeared for a second and came back as 36 degrees Fahrenheit. “Shit. It’s fucking cold.” I started shivering and thought about turning the AC off.
“Won’t be that way for long. If you’re ready, I’m hitting the red button.”
I’d never be ready for this, I tried to give him a thumbs-up anyway, but it was a little tricky with the thickness of the gloves and how much I was shaking from the cold.
“Let’s get started.” He hit the green button, and an alarm blared. The bots came forward, spewing cooling mist around the opening door.
Tyler waved me into the cooling chamber. It was no more than three feet deep. As soon as the door shut behind me, the one in front of me slowly opened. With each inch, it got hotter. Slowly, my teeth stopped chattering. By the time it was open enough for us to walk through, I was already sweating.
A cage elevator hung in front of us, waiting to let us down, but I wasn’t too eager to jump in. Tyler gave me a shove, pushing me into it. “Don’t want the bay to overheat. Cooling chamber can only do so much for so long.” The doors slammed shut behind us, blocking my exit.
“Wow.” I couldn’t help but be awed by the sight in front of me—so different from anything I’d seen before.
“You’ll get used to it. Kinda pretty, right? In a deadly sort of way.” Tyler hit the down button, and the metal groaned as it lowered us slowly to the crusted over lava. We were at least fifty meters above the surface.
If I didn’t have to go out there, I might’ve agreed with Tyler about it being pretty. I’d been a little bummed out when I first got here that I didn’t get to see the planet, but now I wanted to run back inside. This wasn’t a place meant for humans or Aunare or anything alive.
A heavy coating of ash in the air blocked out the light from the two stars in the center of the Abaddon system, which meant the planet was as dark as night, but the lave lit it well enough for me to see off in the distance. I could make out a series of volcanos on the horizon, spewing bright orange, yellow, and red streams into the air and flowing down their sides.
The active lava flow stopped about a quarter of a mile from the base, forming a hard black crust. The base was like an island on a sea of lava. Around the edges, the red-orange ocean pressed against the black, pushing it up from underneath.
I turned back toward the base. Massive round pylons held up the building. I couldn’t see what was doing it, but there had to be some serious cooling in the space between the surface and the bottom of the base. Maybe there were cooling mechanisms inside the pylons?
Judging from how far up the base was from the surface—at least a good thirty meters—I figured there was plenty of room underneath in case some of that lava managed to break free of the blackened area, but I wasn’t sure how much flow the base could withstand if that happened. And what happened if a volcano formed underneath the base? How far below the surface did they drill the pylons?
I had a lot of questions, but I honestly didn’t really care about them. I just wanted to stay alive until I could escape this planet. It wasn’t my job to worry about the safety of the whole base. My only job was to survive.
It was silly for me to even worry about the stability of the base for a second. SpaceTech was a lot of things, but they weren’t stupid. Not when it came to money and profit mar
gins. I was sure they were confident that the base was going to be fine.
I turned back to see the volcanoes. There were at least twenty small, nine medium, a handful of large, and two massive ones that I could see.
SpaceTech couldn’t control this much nature. The fact that SpaceTech thought they could maintain a base here long-term was the height of arrogance. How very like them. I just hoped I was far away when the lava tore this place apart.
I glanced through the grating under my feet. My mouth went dry as I watched the surface grow closer. My breath sounded harsh and ragged, echoing inside the helmet, as Tyler’s words came back to me. About how the suit wasn’t built for prolonged exposure.
He was right. There was no way they could be.
This suit wasn’t going to be enough. I gripped the railing of the elevator to keep from turning around. From pressing the button to take me back up. Because I didn’t have a choice but to keep moving forward.
So I’d keep moving forward. One step at a time.
“You’re going to be fine.” Tyler’s voice sounded inside my helmet.
Maybe. But maybe not.
Six in. Three out. Three in. Six out. Four in.
The cage shook as it jerked to a stop, and with the weight of the suit, I nearly lost my footing, but Tyler held me steady for a second before stepping out onto the surface.
When I didn’t move, he yelled back at me, “Come on, girl. No time for dillydallying. Let’s get this done and back in the bay quick as we can.”
I’d done some stupid things in my life, but this was definitely going to go down as the most iced thing I’d done. It wasn’t like it was by choice though. So that was something.
I gave myself one more moment to count my breaths before swallowing down my nerves and stepping into the inferno.
Chapter Twenty
“Over here!” Tyler’s voice shouted at me through the helmet’s com.
We’d been at it for what felt like ten hours, but I knew from the readout on the inside of my helmet it had only been an excruciating hour, forty-two minutes, and fifty-three seconds. The temp inside my suit had slowly risen to 125 degrees Fahrenheit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my blood were close to boiling at this point.
I was used to heat, but not like this. The helmet made me feel like I was suffocating. It was a miracle of technology that the glass—or whatever it was made out of—hadn’t fogged. My breath was hot against my face, and I wanted out of this suit. Off this planet. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
A blast of yellowish-white steam hit my legs, and I looked down. The black crust had started to crack. “Shit!”
“Damn it, girl! You gotta watch where your feet are!”
I stepped slowly back—so as not to crack it more—and aimed my hose where the sulfur plume was shooting from the ground. The foaming chemical concoction was cold enough to turn a human into a Popsicle in five seconds, but it barely made a dent in the heat that was coming up from the ground.
After five minutes, the crust re-formed. The chemicals left a clear film over the patched spot.
I sprayed the surrounding area, and then looked back to the bay. My heart dropped into my toes. We’d only made it about fifty yards from the elevator.
How was that even possible?
The idea that I was supposed to hose down and somehow stabilize the whole area around the base was not only absurd, idiotic, and dangerous, it was hopeless.
Jason Murtagh had given me his version of a Sisyphean task, and the longer I was out here, the more I wondered what his end game was. Why this particular job? What was he trying to accomplish? If he wanted me dead, there were much quicker and easier ways.
But maybe that was the point. A slow, painful, boiling end to my existence.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just the suit making me hot. I’d find a way to end Jason Murtagh if it was—
“You gotta keep moving. Remember what I said.” Tyler’s sharp tone cut through my rising anger. “Walk slow. Spray as you go. This whole area you see has been stabilized by the ice bots, and it needs to stay that way. The pylons cool the area under the base. That area is off limits. Lots of tech doing its thing underneath it, even if it doesn’t look too impressive from here, but we have to do it along the perimeter of the base if we want to keep everyone safe. Lava’s tricky. It’ll find a way to take down the whole area if we give it any room. Your job is not to give it that room. We can’t lose the base.”
I almost laughed. Unlike SpaceTech’s most beloved base, my life was expendable. The ground had opened under my feet six times in less than two hours. “I’ll do my best, but bots would be able to cover all the ground in no time. If I was working in twenty-four hour shifts, I might be able to do a full lap around the entire bottom of the base, but that isn’t as far out as you said the base needs. And I can’t work every day, all day. I won’t even make a dent in this.”
Tyler’s sigh hissed through the tiny speaker in my helmet. “You’re right. I don’t know why they decommissioned the bots. It’s just plain bullshit.”
I agreed with him. This was bullshit. “SpaceTech has a long-standing history of doing completely horrible things to all kinds of people and species.”
Tyler turned slowly to me, and I wondered if I’d said too much.
“Yes. Yes, they have.” Tyler’s eyes met mine, and even through the glass of the helmet, I could feel the intensity of his stare, but I didn’t know him well enough to know what it meant.
Sweat trickled down my forehead, and I itched to wipe my face but couldn’t. Not in the suit. The salty drops stung my eyes, and I tried to blink them away.
“Ten more minutes, and then we get a break.”
“Okay.” I needed that break. I wasn’t even sure I’d last the ten minutes. I had to get out of this suit, even if for only a second. I needed to be able to breathe. And if I wasn’t mistaken, it smelled as if my hair was frying in here.
I took a breath, aiming my hose in another direction, counting down the minutes to the break. My breathing technique kept me calm and steady despite my growing anger and unease.
“You want to make sure you keep moving. Maximize the power of the 320zpd.”
“Right.” The more I moved the liquid around, the less the ground would open up under me. Or that was Tyler’s theory. I was doing my best, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Nothing we were doing out here made any difference. Something was off about this whole job.
If the base was really that endangered by this lava, then there would either have to be more than just me out here or I’d have to be scheduled for twenty-four/seven. But neither was happening. There was no way that Jason was going to risk the whole stability of the base just so he could torture me. It didn’t make sense.
Which meant that not only was it bullshit that the bots weren’t working, it was bullshit that this job was even a thing. I would bet my life that they didn’t even need the bots in the first place. That the bots were there to make some risk assessor happy. The base could probably withstand being surrounded by waves of lava.
So I was back to the original question: Why did Jason want me doing this particular job?
I was hot, but on the whole okay out here. Sure, the ground had cracked under my feet, but as long as I stayed aware, I should be okay. It was miserable—I’d give him points for that—but I was mostly safe.
I mimicked Tyler’s waving movement with the hose even though the whole process was an exercise in idiocy. I was feeling more bitter by the second, and it didn’t help my mood that I was fading in this heat. Fast. Each movement was taking more and more effort.
I tapped a button on my arm, and the water spout came out. The water was warm and tasted like metal, but I didn’t care. I was melting in this suit.
By the time the alarm on my suit sounded, signaling our break, I was about ready to drop. We moved carefully back toward the base, icing as we walked. The gray concrete and metal structure reminded me of everything else SpaceTech did—soulle
ss. It towered aboveground, held by countless pylons that disappeared under the black crust of the hardened lava. The base was made up of a central rectangular building with four other rectangular buildings connected to it by a ring that contained the central corridor. The cargo bay I’d exited was in one rectangle, along with two other bays. The women’s quarters and mess were in the central building, along with a whole lot of other things, including the massive hangar.
The base was much bigger than I’d thought, but it didn’t make any sense to me. Why waste time and energy to stabilize those corridors? Why not have everything in one building? But then, I wasn’t an architect. If I’d built it, I would’ve put in some windows, but I’d bet money that SpaceTech thought windows were a luxury that could melt in the heat without expensive treatments.
The elevator clanged as we finally reached the cargo bay. We stepped into the cooling chamber, and our suits were coated with cooling mist. The alarm was blaring loud enough to hear even over the hiss of the spray.
When the door finally opened to the cargo bay, the bots were going crazy, spraying their cooling mist into the air around the door. The alarm finally shut off when the doors slammed shut.
Thank God. I pressed the button on my suit to retract my helmet as I collapsed on the ground.
“Shit,” Tyler said. “Your face is redder than a tomato, but your suit held or else we would’ve gotten a warning.”
“No warning. All good.” I lay back against the lockers. I thought the room was warm before, but now it felt pleasantly cool. My cheek rested against the metal, and I closed my eyes. “This is nice.”
There was a bunch of rustling, and I figured Tyler was probably changing out of his suit.