Romeo Delta 2

by Taylor Rikkinen

  “Really?” Eddie asked.

  “Yup,” Romney said simply. “I like Norah and all, but she’s gone rogue on us a few times now and I suspected that she was going to ask an impossible favor of us.”

  “Son of a bitch…” Eddie breathed out with a wide approving grin. “So, where’s this Lewis guy?”

  “I did the math and his life pod would have landed out in the dust fields about a hundred miles past the Sky Base 10 crash site,” Romney said with a pleased tone as he brought up a topographical satellite map of the potential landing site. “Either his body is in that life pod, or the guy pulled through and managed to drag his sorry ass to a nearby mining settlement. By Norah’s information, it seems that somebody meeting Lewis Donavan’s description was verified by a couple of miners working those camps. The information was vague, but it’s a hell of a start.”

  All weariness left Eddie’s mind and he was filled with an instant burst of vigor. “Hot damn! This asshole better be alive because if he is, we’re going to find him and squeeze every last drop of information out of him.”

  “I’m with you partner,” Romney said approvingly. “But may I suggest that you hose yourself off first? Norah wasn’t lying. You really do look like hell.”

  Chapter 28 – Dirty Rotten Luck

  All of Eddie’s recent vigor was lost almost the instant he boarded a bus with Romney. He did not remember ever closing his eyes or snoring loudly with his face pressed against the glass, but there was Romney, nudging him awake, and telling him to get up. They had made it to the edge of town along the dusty highway heading towards a rental shop and Eddie was on somewhat uneasy legs as he walked.

  “I really should have grabbed a bite to eat before we left…” Eddie moaned miserably.

  “You always let yourself get worked up like this,” Romney observed. “You need to learn to relax a little while on the job. We’ll get you a coffee and a donut at the next gas station.”

  “It doesn’t work that way with me,” Eddie said vaguely. “Did Doctor Singh throw us an advance?”

  Romney nodded. “Yeah. I had to bargain with her a bit over email, but she came around eventually. Technically, we were able to verify Misses Wilco’s story with video proof that allowed Doctor Singh to finally perform legal medical procedures, so she was happy about that. It turns out that she took a leap of faith on us and we delivered in the nick of time.”

  “Good, my credit card is maxed out and I’m done hitchhiking,” Eddie grumbled.

  Romney let out a snicker. “Wow, Norah sure had you figured out.”

  Eddie let out a dejected groan and gave Romney a scathing look with weary eyes. “I’m too tired for this shit, Romney. I just didn’t feel like lifting someone’s wallet to pay for a ride. This may shock you, but the second I found out that Erin chick was innocent of her crime, I gave a damn about her.”

  “I don’t know if that assertion would hold up,” Romney said thoughtfully. “Even if she got Dusk’s first appeal, she still had criminal intent. Her actions did lead to the station falling, so at best she’s an accomplice to 60,000 murders. She’d just go from first degree murder charges, to second degree and still be left with the same sentence.”

  “I’m tired, but I’m not stupid,” Eddie said with an edge of groggy irritation. “I figured that much out on my own. That’s why we need something special. Something bigger to clear her name and really throw a wrench into things.”

  “How big are we talking?” Romney asked.

  “Unreasonably big,” Eddie said shortly.

  The two rented themselves a lightweight dune buggy to search the dust fields and as Romney drove, Eddie caught himself some more shut eye along the bumpy plains. He woke up a few times to see punk kids burning around in their own vehicles and going off of makeshift jumps, and another time he saw The Dusters on their motorcycles conducting an initiation for some dumb rookie. He finally got the sleep he needed, albeit intermittent, and gave a stretch and a yawn as he tried to orientate himself. It was all loose red dust as far as the eye could see and even by looking at the compass on the dashboard, he could not tell how far out they had made it.

  “I hope we’ve got enough gas for this,” Eddie said as he rubbed his eyes.

  “We’ll be fine,” Romney said in his reassuring tone. “We’ve got a solar panel on the roof in case of an emergency. Did you get enough sleep there, little guy?”

  Eddie let Romney’s teasing slide off of him as he reached into the glove box and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “Yeah, I did. Even if you do drive like a mook. How close are we?”

  “I’d say another ten or fifteen minutes before we come to the first mining settlement,” Romney guessed. “There’s a bunch around these parts, but I figure that if we stumble upon that escape pod, then we can probably make a good guess as to where he went if he survived.”

  “We may not even need to stumble upon the thing,” Eddie said with a yawn. “That life pod would have come down like a signal flare before the rest of Sky Base 10. I bet there are guys that saw that thing come down. Hell, maybe some scrappers already tracked the thing and dragged it off, who knows? Oh, I forgot to ask. Did you get the names of those miners that saw that Lewis guy?”

  Romney shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Norah’s information was purposefully vague and I’ve come to expect that from her. It looks like we’re going to have to hoof it around the settlements for a while and follow the leads.”

  Eddie began scanning the horizon and let out another small yawn. “That’s fine with me. Better then crawling around through a damn tomb of ugly little monsters.”

  “Agreed,” Romney said with a slight shiver at the recent memory.

  The two spent hours following leads and asking questions to people that had no interest in answering those questions. It was an uphill battle all the way through, but they eventually found a friendly patrol man that had an idea of what Eddie and Romney were asking about when it came to the life pod and he was able to point them in a general direction by using the position of one of the lunchrooms as a reference. The information was dubious at best, but after another hour of driving the dune buggy across the plains with Eddie watching through his binoculars, they caught a glimpse of something white sticking out of the red dust and Romney hit the gas. Eddie soon felt that vigor he thought that he had lost, returning to his body and his familiar wide smile broke across his face. As Romney came to a skidding halt, Eddie swung himself out of the still moving vehicle and made a dash over to the life pod like a kid going wild in a candy store. By the time Romney had caught up to Eddie, he was already tearing into the wreckage and looking for clues.

  “It looks like he escaped,” Eddie said with glee. “It looks like the recent dust storms have covered his tracks and I can’t tell which direction he’s gone.”

  Romney had a look around the area as Eddie continued to dig through the pod and he eventually found parts of an enviro suit half-buried in the red dust. Eddie caught a glimpse of Romney digging in the dirt and rushed over to him with an unending excitement.

  “Did you find something?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think so. I got a glove over here and part of a chest plate over there. My guess is that he wandered west.” Romney then projected a holographic map that was hard to see in the pressing light of the large dim stars on either side of them. “The two most likely camps that he would have ended up at are here.”

  Eddie squinted his eyes and a let out a whistle as he looked at the distance. “Yeesh. That would have been a lousy direction to pick. The guy had two bullets in him at the time and was bleeding out. I’m not sure if he would have made it that far.”

  “Let’s hope he did,” Romney said thoughtfully. “The pod would have come down well before Sky Base 10, so perhaps some people drove out here to see what had landed. There is the possibility that he was picked up while trying to walk away from his pod.”

  “And if he was, then someone would have taken him to a first aid station,” Eddie
added. “Which settlement has the better medical facility?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Romney said peevishly.

  “Useless, that’s all you are,” Eddie jabbed playfully.

  Romney scanned the entire pod landing site and made a 3D model of it in case they needed to refer to it at a later date and soon they were off again chasing down the trail of breadcrumbs that Lewis Donavan had accidentally left for them. The roar of the engine and bumpy terrain only helped to get the adrenaline flowing through Eddie’s body and he felt himself practically vibrating in his bucket seat as Romney jumped the buggy over the small dunes. After another couple hours of legwork, the two finally got a lead from a camp doctor that recognized the face of Lewis Donavan, but gave a completely different name.

  “Yeah, I know him,” a gruff old field medic said. “Charlie there ran into them Dusters out in the fields and had a scuffle. That’s what he told us anyways.”

  “Charlie?” Eddie asked.

  “Yeah, Charlie Wilco,” the field medic said. “And I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing too a week after the dust settled. I asked him if he was related to that madwoman that brought down the Sky Base, but he gave me a blank stare and shrugged like he had no idea what I was talking about. Said it must have been a coincidence and we left it at that.”

  “Great, another false identity,” Eddie said dully. “How many has this asshole got?”

  “Who knows?” Romney said just as dully. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got his face and that’s what counts.”

  The old field medic scratched his unkempt beard and picked at his teeth. “Doesn’t surprise me. That boy was jittery and anyone could have seen that his story was fishy, but I just assumed he was being evasive on account that he had got tangled up with them Dusters and was wanting to keep a low profile. I tell you, that boy is lucky to be alive. He was pale and damn near didn’t have a drop of blood left in him.”

  “But he made a recovery, right?” Romney asked.

  “Yup, he did,” the field medic said passively. “Even put in some work around the camp before he left. Can’t say he ain’t gracious.”

  “Did he say where he was going?” Eddie asked hopefully.

  The field medic smiled wide and exposed his yellow cigarette stained teeth and let out a laugh. “Only one place to go on Dusk, boy. He went back to the colony about a week ago. Said that he was going to pay an old friend a visit and bring her some flowers. Sounds to me that he’s got a sweetheart back home that must be worried sick about him. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, am I right?”

  Eddie absently thought about Norah and gave an involuntary nod. “You can say that again.”

  “Hey, he ain’t in trouble, is he?” the field medic asked. “I’d hate to see that kid thrown behind bars just days after I finished patching him up. Told him not to go anywhere until his wounds closed properly, but no one ever listens to me around here.”

  Eddie and Romney looked at each other and had a brief and silent conversation for a few seconds. Finally, Romney turned his head and looked at the medic and spoke.

  “He has some information that could turn the whole Sky Base 10 incident on its head. Erin Wilco may have been framed,” Romney said with a half-truth. “If you can tell us anything else at all, it would be appreciated.”

  The field medic chewed on that for a few moments and thought hard. “Well… I ain’t sure if this will help and I ain’t even sure if it was Charlie, but some guys were complaining about guns that went missing on the same day he left. Nothing big, just a couple of hand guns and a hunting rifle, but that could have been anyone. We get punk kids sneaking in here all the time stealing our shit and it could have just been them again. All I know is that the timing was suspicious. Don’t know if that helps any, but it may hint towards Charlie’s intent.”

  “Flowers, guns, and an old friend…” Romney listed briefly. “I think it’s obvious where he’s heading.”

  Eddie nodded. “I bet he’s been waiting for the quarantine to drop so he can slip into the Milo Medical Institute.”

  “Want me to warn Doctor Singh?” Romney asked.

  “Yeah,” Eddie said in thought. “Maybe we can lay a trap for him before he gets himself killed.”

  Chapter 29 – Larkspurs, Wisterias, and Stargazers

  The quarantine for the Milo Medical Institute had been abruptly lifted by Doctor Singh and the medical staff, as well as patients, began leaving en masse so as to not get trapped inside the building once again. As most were taking the stairs and crowding into elevators, only one man was going up past the disgruntle masses. He had an assortment of flowers that he had personally arranged in a vase for the patient he wished to visit and a loaded gun in case things went awry. He wore a fresh fine suit and a pair of discreet sunglasses to make himself slightly harder to identify, but he was certain that some people would notice him in passing. That was fine though. He was there to complete a goal, something he had been meaning to do for a few weeks, but that damn Doctor Singh kept putting up the quarantine and making him wait.

  He made his way up to the 10th floor and turned and weaved down the twilight corridors while following the brightly colored lines that guided him towards the quarantine area. When he got to the sealed door leading to Erin Wilco’s room he was a little surprised to see that it was completely unguarded. That didn’t seem right, but he waved it off as a headache he didn’t have to deal with and pressed onward. He put his hand on the handle and pushed open the airlock and waited for the air to convert and sterilize. A green light came on once the process was completed and he pushed through the next door where he was met with raised rifles pointed directly at his head. The man stood still for a few seconds and took the sight in as he slowly began to glare at the security forces, especially the one holding Erin Wilco down and keeping her silent.

  “Is this a bad time?” he asked with a dangerous growl as he removed his sunglasses.

  “Oh shit…” one of the security guards breathed.

  “Oh shit, is right,” the man said. “You dipshits are supposed to be guarding the outside, not the inside. Get the fuck out of here and maybe I won’t fire every last one of you. I told you that no harm was to come to Erin Wilco and the one time I show up, I find you useless bastards treating her roughly. Were my direct instructions not perfectly clear?”

  “N-no, Mister Falschwesen. They were clear. W-we were not expecting you to show up,” one of the security officers said in a panic.

  Kyva Falschwesen scratched his eyebrow in irritation and then reached into his suit jacket to pull out his signature .35 Hoskins repeater pistol. “So, when the boss is away the kids decide to play. I’m really not happy about this. Disappointed more than anything.”

  The security officer raised his hands and tried to say something quick, but Kyva fired a round into the man’s head and he went down, dead to the floor. The other two security guards became nervous and shrunk away from their scary red eyed boss and tried to make excuses, but he didn’t want to hear it and simply walked passed them to Erin’s bed.

  “Shut up and get out of here,” Kyva said coldly. “And take that pile of trash with you. I don’t want his corpse stinking up Misses Wilco’s room.”

  The security guards did as they were told and evacuated with their fallen colleague, leaving behind only the head of the biggest corporation in the galaxy and a crippled janitor that he had once employed. He placed the array of flowers onto Erin’s bedside table and gave her a wide toothy grin as if he had not just murdered someone right in front of her eyes.

  “Hello, Misses Wilco. I hope your stay has not been too terrible. I hear that the psych evaluations are a little extreme around here,” Kyva said, with a tone that could not help but sound sinister.

  Erin couldn’t believe her eyes and it took her a few moments to find her voice as she took in the strange turn of events. She had not been told what was going on and was simply pressed down to her bed and told to be quiet as the security t
eam took defensive positions in her room. At first, she had no idea what to say to the most powerful man in existence, but the words finally came to her mind. “Fuck you.”

  Kyva stared down at her and somehow his toothy smile got wider. “You are a rare breed. Almost no one ever stands up to me and it’s only ever once in a blue moon I get someone just like you, Erin. Can I call you Erin? I hate formalities and titles.”

  “Sure,” Erin said shortly. “What the hell do you want? Trying to take back your human Petri dish? I don’t have much left to give, but I’m sure a greedy fuck like you can find a way to squeeze something more out of me.”

  “Oh, don’t be like that,” Kyva said condescendingly. “Today, I’m going to be your best friend.”

  “Uh huh,” Erin said incredulously. “I highly doubt that. I don’t have a shred of evidence against you, and even if I did, it wouldn’t mean anything to someone like you, but you are responsible for what happened to me. You are responsible for all of my misery, you are responsible for the deaths of nearly 60,000 people, and you are responsible for the gremlins. I hate you and you have no right to call me a friend, even if it is in that condescending tone you keep using with me.”

  “Gremlins?” Kyva asked, but then he put two and two together. “Oh, you mean those test subjects from Romeo Delta 2, don’t you? Hey, those scary little bastards were in cages the last time I checked. I’ve got a lot of projects on the go and can’t keep track of all of them at once. Hell, I’ve got an entire planet a few stars away thinking that it’s Earth right now, and selling that lie was no easy task. It took a couple hundred years, but they eventually bought it. Just had to change a few maps and a couple of history books and wait on it for a while and boom, done.”

  Kyva then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a cigarette from an ornate case and lit it. He then offered Erin one and she outright refused it.