by Bobby Adair
“Are you going to answer?” Blair pushes.
“Can’t say.” We should have arrived at the circular structure in the center of the colony already. It seems like we should have. If not that, then something. Hell, we could be moving in circles for all I know. I chuckle. At least we won’t walk off the edge of the Potato, though we might circumnavigate it.
Magellan Kane and The Sourpuss Queen, explorers extraordinaire!
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing.” I glance at the ground, looking for footprints and shuffle marks. My footprints. Blair’s shuffle. She’s more careful about foot placement than me.
Blair calls over the open comm again, searching for anyone who might hear.
A voice tries to respond, sounding like sixty-percent static and thirty-percent gargle spit.
Ten percent more of whatever.
“You make any of that out?” she asks.
“No.”
“It sounded like two or three different people to me.” It could have been a recording of crunching tinfoil for all I could distinguish.
“We should try another direction.” Like most of the things Blair says, her suggestion carries too much certainty.
“Take the lead,” I tell her. “I’ll admit. I’m lost.” It’s easier than igniting another argument. I stop walking and look back at her.
She’s hesitating.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t know which direction,” she spits it like I’ve accused her of misdirecting us. “There doesn’t seem to be anything this way.”
“There should be,” I tell her, some of my frustration escaping through my words. “There’s a whole damn mining colony here, twenty or thirty structures. We should have run into a wall or something.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” she mutters.
“Most problems don’t,” I explain, “until they’re solved.”
“Did you get that from a fortune cookie?”
Sarcastic enthusiasm seems like the right choice. “No fortune cookie ever lied to me.” I start walking again. “Keep an eye on the ground. Look for our tracks in the dust.”
“Our tracks?” She doesn’t immediately guess why.
I decide not to fill her in. She’ll conclude soon enough that I’m a circle-walking idiot.
Thankfully, for whatever reason, she keeps them to herself.
We trudge.
Frustration builds.
Minutes pass, and I stop to look up, hoping to see something to help me figure out where I am. I see more dark dust with the black of space behind it, and I see the rough glow of the Trog ship transforming the haze into a brighter color. At least we’re still on the same side of the asteroid as the colony, unless the cruiser has moved into orbit around the Potato.
“What are you thinking?” asks Blair.
“Maybe taking off and flying above this shit to see where we are.”
“We’re lost then?”
Like it was a mystery. Still, I don’t jump.
She doesn’t take the opportunity to pounce on me to vent her frustration over our situation.
I don’t thank her for making the effort to keep her vitriolic shit to herself. In the few dozen hours since she and I first met, we already have too much history between us to make kindness easy.
After a patient moment, she asks, “What’s the hesitation?”
“Variables. Too many.”
“Like?”
“What if the Trogs in that cruiser spot me and decide we’re all still alive down here and start firing again?”
Blair groans. “Look at me.”
I do. Her face shows a lot more frustration than she’s voicing.
“Not at my face.” She spreads her arms and steps back.
I can’t guess where she’s going with this. I look at her chest. Pointless. Through the suit, I can’t make out anything of her femininity.
“Not my tits, you dumbass. I’m covered in this damn dust. So are you. If you fly up there to get above it, nobody on that ship will see you, you’ll be the same color as this cloud.
I shake my head. If she had a bug in her head, she’d know. “It’s not the Trogs I’m worried about. They have Grays on that ship.”
“Why them?” she asks.
I give her the briefest rundown of what I saw on the cruiser my platoon commandeered, emphasizing the number of Grays we saw in the command section. I remind her that Phil sensed more of them on the Potato, somewhere down in the tunnels. I finally tell her, “I don’t know if the Trogs and Ticks are allies or what, but if I grav up there, to one of those big-headed gargoyles I’ll glow like a Roman candle. The dust won’t hide my grav signature.”
Blair’s shoulders slump. She understands. “Let’s walk, then. We’re bound to find something. This rock isn’t that big.”
I press on.
She follows.
She tries to raise the others on the comm again. Louder bursts of static are the only thing we hear.
I scan the moving slurry around us for any hint of a structure.
More minutes pass, I guess. I still didn’t check the time on my d-pad. “How long have we bee—”
I freeze.
“What?” asks Blair, concerned, and rightly so.
“Shhh.” Pointless. I remind myself again, sound doesn’t carry in a vacuum.
I watch as the dust ahead of me takes on a different texture—puffs with sharp edges, dark clouds.
Blair nudges me and whispers over the comm, “What?”
A few meters ahead, shapes are moving, left to right, and the bug in my head helps me see the dense mass of each. It’s not dust.
“Trogs,” I tell her, still stuck on the unnecessary whisper. “Back up.”
Instead, Blair leans to look past me, and I bump her as I step back.
She’s not moving. “I can’t see them.”
Scooting around beside her, I grab her arm and pull her down to her knees, pointing with my rifle. “You can barely make them out. They’re filing by. Watch. You can see faint shapes.”
Leaning forward, Blair says, “Kind of. I think I can see them. God, you have good eyes.”
Mostly it’s my sense of gravity. “Don’t move.”
“We could have run right into them.”
“Yeah.” I’m trying to detect the end of the line, hoping it’s not that whole Trog horde coming this way.
“What next?” Blair asks, softly, humbly, as hard as it is for her to step off her ego pedestal for a moment.
I think.
Retreat?
Find another way in?
Oh, fuck it!
It’s been a day of insane risks. I spot what looks like the last in the line of them, although for all I know it might be just a gap. Frustration over our current mess reinvigorates the anger I have toward the Trogs for the bombardment, and it’s time to vent it. “I’m going to fucking kill them.”
Blair shrieks, “What?”
It always amuses me how much meaning can be packaged around a simple syllable. Human language is so interesting.
I’m up and on my feet, letting go of my rifle and drawing my pistol as I move toward the last Trog in line. “Stay right behind, Blair. If I lose you out here, I won’t find you again.”
“This is a bad idea.” She’s angry. “You’ll get us killed!”
“Unless we can figure out a way to turn this shit sandwich into a Salisbury steak, we’re dead anyway.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Just be ready with that rifle if this goes south.”
“If?” She scoffs. “If?”
She says more, however, I’m ignoring her. I’m straining to feel the grav of any humanoid masses moving nearby. All I see is the line of Trogs stretching out in front of me as I fall into step.
They’re walking close, just far enough away from one another so the one behind won’t kick the heels o
f the one in front when they step.
Second thoughts and pictures of all that could go wrong start to spin in a flurry of nerves as my mouth goes dry, but I can’t pay attention to any of that. All the best shit only works if you jump right in.
I shuffle my feet to match the rhythm of their march. In long strides, I close in on my target.
As I get in range, he senses something and turns to glance over his shoulder.
Dammit!
The telepathic fucker probably caught a sniff of my bug.
I reach out and grab his integrated backpack with one hand while I jam my pistol just under the metal ring attaching his helmet to his suit. I pull the trigger and send a slug up through the base of his big bony skull.
He stiffens and pitches forward from the momentum of the projectile smashing inside his helmet. My grip is tight on his backpack, and he doesn’t fall. In the micro-g, I hold him up in front of me, and pray the next Trog in line is feeling just as much sensory overload as I am, and doesn’t sense his buddy’s demise.
Nothing happens further ahead that I can make out.
I fling the dead Trog’s body to the side, and tell Blair, “Make sure he doesn’t bounce.” In the light-g, it will happen, and the last thing I want is the Grays on that cruiser to start seeing Trog bodies springing into orbit. No doubt, that would prompt them to start pounding us again with their railguns.
I grab the pack on the back of the next Trog in line, place my pistol, pull my trigger, and toss his body to the side for Blair to handle.
It can’t be this easy.
Chapter 8
Eight down, and even Blair is impressed.
It’s a great system. I ambush and shoot. She handles the corpses. What’s not to love?
I’m starting to think we should forget about finding an airlock and just stay out here in the gray slurry, hunting and killing.
I skip my feet to get in step with the leader of a line that doesn’t exist anymore, except for him and me, and as I adjust my stride to catch up, I’m in a rhythm.
He stops.
Shit!
Panicking, thinking my system just fell apart in a puddle of hubris and that I should move my pistol back up into firing position, I plow into him from behind, and it feels like I’ve bumped into a tree.
The Trog half turns and elbows me hard on the side of the helmet.
My defensive grav absorbs the shock, yet the momentum nearly knocks me off my feet.
Blair is shouting and bringing her rifle to bear.
The Trog doesn’t turn all the way around. He focuses forward again, not realizing the frail dust-covered moron behind wasn’t one of his comrades.
Confused about that for a half-second as I regain my balance, I realize the Trog has just pressed his palm into the center of a backlit pad with only one big button.
An airlock door slides open.
“Blair, don’t shoot yet!”
“Why?”
Lights flicker on inside. I shout, “Airlock!” and rush in after the Trog.
I’m too slow.
As I’m getting close enough to put the barrel of my pistol in the best spot to kill him, he reaches the inner door and turns to check that the rest of the squad has followed. His oversized eyes betray his surprise, whether because he sees only two dust-covered suits instead of eight, or because he recognizes me as human, I don’t know.
I’m already pushing forward and trying to shove the barrel of my pistol up under his chin.
He blocks me with a forearm that’s longer and more muscular than mine.
Before I can adjust and pull my pistol free, he’s wrapping a powerful ape hand around my wrist and squeezing so hard I lose control of my fingers.
Through his faceplate, I see his surprise is gone, replaced by bared teeth.
He pushes me to my knees.
My God, he’s strong.
I’m struggling with all my might and way overmatched. I figure in a few moments, I’ll be dead.
I amp up my suit grav to push him away and find some leverage. He instantly responds.
“Double shit!”
A railgun barrel slides unexpectedly over my shoulder and past my helmet, stopping when it pokes the Trog in the chest. It fires as soon as the barrel makes contact.
Too close for the Trog’s suit grav to protect him, the dinner-plate-sized deflector over his sternum explodes in a burst of shrapnel and hits my faceplate as all the air from his lungs bursts free. For the briefest of seconds, I see a hole form straight through him as Blair’s round sparks against the airlock’s interior door.
The grip on my wrist relaxes, and a bubbly fountain of bloody air sprays out.
I push the Trog away, and he floats up toward the ceiling.
Blair is punching the button to close the outer door. “You alright?”
“Yeah.” I rub my forearm and flex my fingers. Nothing broken. “Damn, he was strong.”
“First time one got his hands on you?”
I look at her like it’s a stupid question.
The outer door seals.
She shrugs. “How am I supposed to know what happened when you went all Blackbeard on those Trog cruisers. You could have arm-wrestled them for control.”
Attempted humor? From Blair?
“No hand-to-hand.” Standing up, I scan the airlock’s inner door for a hole left by Blair’s shot. “If I have anything to say about it in the future, it won’t happen again.”
“That strong?” Blair walks the length of the airlock to punch the button by the inner door to cycle the atmosphere back inside.
I’m still examining the door for a hole as I hear a high-pitched hiss. Air is filling in around me.
“Don’t worry.” More of her irritating certainty. “The round didn’t go through.”
Chapter 9
The airlock stops hissing. A light above the door turns green. We’re matched for the pressure inside.
Blair has a palm on the door handle. She looks at me for confirmation.
Who am I kidding? She wants me to know she’s going to open and it and I better be ready.
With my rifle set to full auto, I’m prepared to kill however many of whatever is behind door number one. I nod my response.
The inner door swings open and I take a quick step forward for a full view.
I scan left to right.
Upturned and scattered are lounge chairs, the kind you might find by a pool back on earth—not now, but the kind in old movies when people with enough meat on their bones to look alluring in a swimsuit would sun themselves by the blue water and demurely try to get laid.
Clearly, the Trogs didn’t appreciate the arrangement of the chairs and tables.
We’re under the big smart-glass dome at the center of the colony, right where we intended to be. The main floor is down a short flight of wide stairs coming out of the airlock. Along the top edge of the circular wall supporting the dome’s glass, dim lights glow in a ring broken by dead and flickering sections. Doorways are set at irregular intervals around the perimeter, each opening to downward stairs and obscured hallways.
In the center of the circular room rises a fountain of the same shape. At first, I think it’s filled with an unfamiliar super-viscous liquid. That damned earth-borne intuition again. The goo is actually water flowing in the micro-g, with droplets falling so slowly they seem to be suspended in the air. Vertical waves, several feet tall and narrow, crawl around the fountain’s inside edge, not collapsing, but standing and morphing ever so slowly into mesmerizing, impossible shapes.
Impossible back on earth.
“There!” Blair points.
I swing my rifle and find a target.
I don’t pull the trigger.
The suit is orange, not white. The helmet is normal, human with a high forehead. His uniform, as grimy as any of the worn-out suits most of us wear, isn’t layered in the asteroid’s dust. That means he wasn’t outside
when the bombardment started.
But there’s no Korean name and rank stenciled on his chest. He’s not military.
“Who are you?” I demand, sending a signal across all the standard comm channels, and looping Blair in. I step down the stairs. Blair follows.
“SDF?” he lies.
“Who are you?” I demand, taking a step forward and jabbing the barrel of my railgun in his direction, even while I’m thinking what a stupid gesture it is—Oh, looky, in case you didn’t notice, here’s my big fucking gun.
“Tarlow,” he answers. He’s cagey. Just a pinch shorter than me. Not at all intimidating. He reminds me of a real live Teddy Bear. I have an inexplicable urge to hug him. He glances at the airlock up the stairs behind us like maybe he thinks if he makes a dash for the door, he’ll move so fast all my shots will miss.
I don’t need hugs today. I’m ready to play.
Maybe he guessed at the thoughts behind my eyes. He doesn’t run. Instead, he asks, “The Trogs?”
“Still out there,” Blair tells him. “Who are you? Are you one of the miners?”
He glances down at his suit and then back to us as if that’s a sufficient answer.
I’m thinking maybe I’ll just shoot him. Something’s not right about him, and the more I get comfortable with the act of ending lives, the less it seems like it’ll be a burden on my conscience to erase this cuddly irritant.
Blair hops off the final stair and stomps across the big circular rec area like maybe she’s about to slap some MSS-super-interrogation-shit on him. Clearly, she has no patience for Mr. Cuddles, either.
It’s surprising how little crap you’ll put up with when sixty seconds ago you were fighting for your life.
I ease to the side, so Blair isn’t in my line of fire.
As she closes in, I see Tarlow’s smirk slip into something a little less confident. I figure he’s reading the hostility on her face, and filling his suit’s recycler. His hands fly up with open palms and his scruffy beard parts wide to reveal a glowing, toothy smile.
I wonder how long it’s been since he was last out of his suit.
I shudder over the idea of my future spending every day in a flexible orange coffin.
“I’m not one of the miners,” he says. “I’m a tech. A jack-of-all-trades. A gopher. I fix things.”