by T Q Chant
Sam Cane: Hard Setdown
by T.Q. Chant
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Tim Chant
Cover illustration copyright © Daniel Rhodes
The right of Tim Chant to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
For Kelly
CHAPTER ONE – HARD SETDOWN
A neat window of uncolour flickered briefly into existence just outside IGC187X’s gravity well. Its jSpace sails folding, an InterGlobe Corp lugger shot out of the gap, maybe a shade over the safe velocity. It sliced out at just the right angle, shedding just enough speed to kiss the dun globe’s upper atmosphere, then skim right off. Back out to safe jumping distance while using minimal fuel and time. Standard IGC payload/colony delivery interface, fast and dirty because fast meant cheap. And if InterGlobe didn't do everything on the cheap, Sam Cane probably wouldn’t have this job.
Sam was already in the lander, encased in a smothering cocoon of shock foam and sealed into the bomb-like ceramplus capsule, as they came out of jSpace. She wouldn’t even get to take a look at the planet they were about to drop her on – time was money and the company might lose a few sterlars if the ship had to hang around while she got some sightseeing in.
There was a clunk from beyond her feet and the sound of hardshell cases being shifted around in the delivery matrix. She reached out to flick on the comm. “What’s being loaded?”
The watch commander's voice crackled through, surprising her. “Spare parts for the colony’s jSpace commer. We haven’t been able to confirm handshake,” he said. “Sat and colony site are still there, though, so chances are they’ve just got a problem with the kit.”
“You’re going to put me down without even confirming anyone is alive down there?”
“Company policy, Cane – we don’t wave off or hang around unless we actually see something is wrong. You know that.” Sam could hear the smile in Commander Traver’s voice. “If you wanted to work for a colony corp with decent personnel policies, you should have applied to New Horizons. But then, they do better background checks.”
There was a hiss as Traver opened the pod’s hatch and grinned down at her. There was something in his expression Sam really didn’t like. “Last chance, Cane. Five years on a backwater colony will drive a livewire like you completely nutso.”
“Got my reasons, Commander.” He’d been picking at her like this for the whole run out. She wasn’t sure why, as she was pretty damn sure he wasn’t interested in getting into her issue shorts.
“Hope they’re good ones.”
“The very best.” Keeping her skin was the best reason she could think of, and right now that meant being as far away from the home system and the older colonies as possible. Traver didn’t need to know that, though.
“In that case, I wish you joy and wealth in your new posting.”
The voice of the lugger’s captain broke through. “Cargo bay, prepare for payload delivery.”
“I am not fucking payload,” Sam muttered.
“Say again, cargo lander?”
She was saved from having to answer as automated systems shunted her forwards into the deployment tubes. She realised she was sweating; had an urgent need to urinate.
Had an urgent need to change her mind.
Too fucking late. See you in five years, civilization.
The lugger was shuddering now, the atmosphere thick enough to send vibrations running through the stubby arrowhead of the vessel. “Here we go.”
The bottom dropped out of her world.
**********
Spitting out a mouthful of dust, Sam Cane pulled herself up, flushing with embarrassment. She turned, kicked out at the offending rim that had tripped her as she exited the lander.
“Fell I don’t know how many fucking klicks, and manage to faceplant onto the first world I’ve stepped on since Mars. Good fucking show, Cane.”
There was an eerie silence on Colony World IGC187X’s sole landing field. A wrecked heavy-duty lander, obviously stripped of parts and about a decade obsolete, was becoming one with the desert that encroached on the far perimeter. Too far for her to be arsed checking it out. The two pods – the one she’d ridden down in and a second larger but unpressurised cargo delivery pod that sat, smoking, half a klick away – seemed to be the only complete vehicles on the broad expanse of rocket-scorched spraycrete. They wouldn’t last once the colonists had disassembled them for their spare parts.
“Once we’ve disassembled them,” she corrected herself. She had to get used to the fact that, for the next five years at least, she was a colonial shitkicker too.
No sign of the couple of simple, rugged Islander orbital hoppers that were on-inventory for the planet. No sign of any other vehicle, in fact, or any person. Realising the local office wasn’t sending a pick-up, she pulled her pad out to check distance and direction. Too far for the personal comms built into her kit. Well, after two months cooped up on the InterGlobe Corp transit lugger, she could do with a walk. “Pack command – engage motors. Slave to my biomet and follow.”
With a whir, the hoverfan pack rose from its housing on the tiny landing pod and blipped confirmation of her orders.
“Let’s take a look at this place. Better make it to the settlement before sunup.”
**********
Two hours later, she stopped to hook her flexarmour vest onto the pack. “Fuck them for not deploying us with bikes when we land,” she muttered, flipping open a compartment on the pack and pulling out a tin of beer. She was parched from the walk, even in the almost-night.
The western horizon was starting to glow white-hot with the sunrise, picking out the broken terrain of the deep interior in stark silhouette. The datastacks for this backwater claimed it would be unpleasant but safe to be out and about, but she didn’t want to test that theory. 187X was a young colony, more of a test setdown and explorer waystation that had been on-planet fifteen standard years. Quarterly jSpace message pods and occasional rotation of personnel (when they wanted to go – the guy Sam was replacing had decided to stay and put down roots) was the main source of information on the place. The dispatches, though, were heavy on resource opportunities and light on anything useful.
The beer was tasteless, but cold and refreshing; somehow still managed to be worse than the stuff available during her short stint in the Commonwealth Army before she went corporate. Sam took a few minutes, crouched by the pack looking back at her tracks that ran straight and steady from the distant landing field.
It was, mercifully, a slow sunrise. It wasn't dispelling a deep night because PG367t was a main-line/dwarf binary system, and the orbit of the runt star meant that night time was never anything other than twilight. It was the only thing that made this posting even remotely interesting, at least more interesting than her last post, a training wheels job straight out of two months in Corp security specialist academy.
“Let's move.” The tin went back in the pack – no material could be wasted this far out. The pad said another hour’s walking. “Best pick up the pace.”
**********
The main colony site didn’t have a name yet, not one formally recorded anyway – given that it was the only significant settlement on the planet there wasn’t much point.
Cresting a ridge after a long trudge up from the rocky desert that had challenged her issue boots beyond their limits, she looked down the steep reverse slope onto the drab little settlement that huddled in a valley, at the centre of a spreading fuzz of spiky, hardy transgen grass. It looked like every other newborn colony she'd seen on the vids, almost like it had been shot at t
he planet by an IkeCorps prefab gun: rows of blocky plas pre-fabs dotted with wind turbines and the occasional tower glistening with solar panels, the occasional obligatory IGCorp slogan board dominating the side of a building.
She kicked her way down the slope through knee-high plants. The sun that had started to warm her back was suddenly absent, blocked by this fold in the land. She realised the sense of scattering the prefabs in this natural bowl. The site was pretty far north and even in mid-summer the primary star wouldn’t be high enough in the sky to scorch the human habitation. On the far side from her, rows of hydroponics tunnels were ideally placed to catch as much sun as possible; fungal vat facilities were squat shapes below the shining fabric of the agritunnels. Beyond them, a rugged terrain of broken mesa rose and marched away towards the horizon. Looking east and west from her vantage point, Sam could see that the line of orange rock stretched unbroken into the distant haze. That broken country had only been briefly surveyed and found to be lacking water or anything of interest.
She paused about halfway down the slope, crouching and staring through squinted eyes at the colony. “No movement,” she murmured. She could see clothes drying on a line, a simple Grizzly groundcar with its hood up and half its engine strewn about it, both good indicators of the lowtech approach of starter colonies.
Nothing untoward but for one fact. “No sign of life.” Feeling suddenly vulnerable, she backed up to the pack and strapped her armour on. Flex vest, helmet with tactical visor, articulated arm and leg padding. Not enough for a firefight, but an angry bastard with a club would be hard-pressed to hurt her. The utility belt with her issue FN Enforcer non-lethal sidearm went round her waist. She took a moment to settle it properly on her hips – she’d had to take the belt in herself and even then it hung awkwardly on her narrow frame.
“Well, this is a pretty fuck-up. No sign of the Chief, no sign of anyone for that matter, no way I should ever have been fucking put down without a handshake.” She spat to clear dust from her mouth. “Guess I’d better get down there and work out what the fuck has gone on.”
She toothed the pad to her helmet systems and voice keyed a search for hints of trouble in the report datastack. Colonial admins often didn’t like to say if there was trouble, but things sometimes got hinted at or slipped their way in.
“Pack – hold position.”
She trotted down the slope, eyes alert for any sign of danger. The pad pinged back a negative on her search – she’d probably need to do a more thorough set of criteria later – just as she crossed the unmarked threshold of human occupation of the world.
“Hello?” she called out after a moment’s hesitation, hovering just inside that threshold. New colonies could be strange, new customs and rules of etiquette cropping up within months of their establishment. Didn’t want to offend anyone.
She listened, her whole body taut with the effort, but no voice answered her, no faces appeared at the window. She could hear the snap of the hanging clothes in the stiffening breeze, and somewhere a door was slapping open and closed.
“This is so fucked up,” she murmured. For a moment, she thought about returning to the comfort of the entry pod. Except that comfort would be false – it wouldn’t be able to get her back into orbit and didn’t have a comms system that could reach the lugger.
She clicked her comms over to the local security channel. Without knowing why, she spoke in a low tone. “Colony security office, this is Specialist Sam Cane reporting for duty. I have a visual on the colony site and see no movement. Does anyone copy my transmission?”
Hissing static greeted her transmission. She flicked over to a wide band. “This is Security Specialist Sam Cane on IGC one-eight-seven. Does anyone hear me?”
After another moment's hesitation she started forward cautiously, almost unconsciously drawing the Enforcer. Her boots crunched on gravel underfoot – pavements would come with the buildings that would eventually replace the prefabs. The Colony Administration Building had a radio and jSpace transmitter, a way for her to get on the horn to the cold bastards on the lugger and get them to turn around.
The colony was beyond eerie. It reminded her of places from history like Pripyat or Boston, abandoned in a hurry after nuclear disaster or bioweapon attack, everyday life just dropped as people ran for safety.
Not that many had made it before Boston and a decent chunk of Massachusetts had been sterilised.
“No vehicles,” she noticed, with the exception of the unserviceable Grizzly. “Maybe everyone just decided to go...somewhere else? But where?”
Something – some sound, maybe just intuition – caused her to whip round, Enforcer coming up. She pulled the trigger on instinct, stitching a line of stuncaps along one of the message boards, randomly punctuating an irritatingly chirpy message about collaboration strengthening individual innovation (tell your bright ideas to the Corporation). A flight of native birds took to the wing and she watched them go, marvelling at the way the arc of their flight mirrored Earth birds despite these creatures’ double wing arrangement.
“Evolution, baby,” she muttered as she fumbled out a replacement clip and recharged the weapon. “Terrible shooting though.”
The wind was beginning to rise now. The datastacks she’d read and re-read on the tedious haul out here from Ascension’s Grace indicated that this was a normal climate phenomenon brought about by the sudden change in surface temperature as the small but fierce primary sun rose up into the sky.
She grinned at that. Small and fierce. Maybe she was suited to this place after all. The grin went as a gust almost took her off her feet. She clicked through to the pack. “Pack command – home on me.”
Squinting against the rising dust, she spotted the largest building in the colony huddle. Aerials and a satellite dish sprouted like a small metal forest on its flat roofs, and a small solar array jutted up high enough to put it in the sunlight. That would be the colonial admin building, which meant shelter from the wind and, maybe, answers.
The pack hummed up to her just as she reached the double door. She stood in front of them for a second, waiting for them to slide open, then shook her head at her own stupidity and looked around for the controls.
Still nothing. Scowling, she realised the colony really was that backward and tried what had looked like an ornamental handle. Then she shot the lock out with the Enforcer – stun caps weren't entirely non-lethal – and kicked the door open, going in with the pistol up in a double-grip and her optics automatically compensating for the dimness inside.
“Pack – hold position.” She went past the slightly incongruous reception desk and killed the lock on the inner door with extreme prejudice. Turn left – even if she hadn’t studied the datastacks, admin buildings were the same no matter how many lightcenturies you were from old Earth.
Time. Distance. Time over distance – this had become key. She went up a flight of stairs, snapped left and right at the top, covering the corners as she’d been taught, and kicked through into the sysroom.
Her hands were shaking as she dashed across to the comms desk. She breathed a sigh of relief that the units seemed to be standard issue and undamaged.
She hit a series of keys on the console in front of her. It remained resolutely dead.
“Fuck. You!” She unstrapped her armour and pulled her helmet off to dive under the console, heart crashing in her chest. She knew she didn't have much time before the lugger was beyond effective radio range. She didn’t want to have to rely on the jSpace comms system.
“Right right right, some clever bugger just unplugged it.” She wired everything back up and cracked her head on the underside of the unit as she came back up. Swearing fluently across a range of languages, she hammered at the keys again. There was a reassuring hum, just in the audible range, as the comms unit came on. She synced her headset with it.
“InterCorp Ship six-three-oh, this is Sam Cane on IGC one-eight-seven-X requesting an immediate pick up. Do you copy?
The colony site is abandoned and I require immediate pick-up!”
She sat back with a sigh, rubbing at the lump rising on the back of her head. Ship 630 would be accelerating hard away from the planet, probably burning at a small but not insignificant fraction of the speed of light to reach both high enough velocity and distance from a gravity well to make the jSpace transition on the way to its next stop. “Probably about four minutes,” she decided having worked through the calculations – two minutes for her transmission to catch up with the lugger and a response to get back. Plus FAT – Fucking Around Time, that amorphous pause in any business when instructions were passed up and down the chain of command, chewed over at every stage of the proceedings.
Five and a half minutes later, a voice crackled in her earphones. “Say again, colony? We don’t recognise that ID.”
Sam bit back on more cursing, knowing it wouldn't help, knowing it would give them another excuse to jerk her chain. “Six-three-oh, this is Civil Security Specialist Samrit Cane Khokani, employee number Bravo-Oscar-six-six-niner-Epsilon. I am requesting immediate support. Colony Station Indigo-Golf-Charlie-one-eight-seven is deserted. No sign, repeat no sign, of continuing human habitation on this rock. I have not been able to make contact with the local security office or administration. There – is – no-one – here!”
The reply came back faster this time, and she recognised the voice of Watch Commander Traver. “Cane Khokani, this is Traver. We have copied your transmission and are scoping for signs of activity away from the main colony site. Request that you continue attempting to establish contact with the colony personnel. We will be at point of no return in two standard hours, repeat two hours. Check in in one hour forty minutes to establish further course of action.”
Sam fought the urge to scream back at them. Traver was following procedure – turning the lugger around and burning back to the planet to pick up a stray security officer, when for all they knew the whole fucking colony was just off for a picnic three klicks away, would lead to the usual round of arse kicking and paperwork. They’d have to make sure they’d exhausted all possibilities in the time they had before the lugger reached peak velocity and safe distance, and was able to slip into jSpace.