Nobody stopped me or said, ‘Hold on there, Paul old son, you’ve done enough dive work already today. Here, we’ll go instead’. Lilly did say, “I’ll get you a ride on robot three, he isn’t far away, meet him outside airlock 2.”
“How do I get a ride, stick out my thumb?”
“There’s a short ladder on the inside of the leg that leads into the cab. Don’t try to get in the cab, it’ll take too long.”
With yet another recharged life-support pack, quickly assembled by San, I went to airlock 2, to catch a ride on robot three. San and Clem helped me get ready whilst the airlock initiated. San passed me the last plasma gun once I was all wrapped up. The other two guns were lost outside, at least for the time being.
I was getting an old hand at dealing with the airlock’s water onslaught, and was ready to rock and roll as soon as the water equalised in the chamber. Robot three was straight ahead and it was a good job, because I had to practically walk into him to find him, feeling my way through the soupy waters. I found the ladder that Lilly told me about. It amounted to rungs starting about five feet off the ground. They were set at unequal distances so as not to interfere with locomotion. After pulling myself up and negotiating the irregularities, I was pretty much set. My helmet comms were fixed to Channel 11. Lilly’s voice asked, “Ready?”
The robot moved off on my say so. All I had to do was stay put, hang onto rung three and try to see where I was going. It was impossible, all I could make out were waves of sediment. I gave up.
After five minutes or so, the robot stopped. Lilly told me to climb up the rest of the rungs; “The land rises hereabouts, you should come out into daylight… be quick though, the sun is setting.”
I thought about something sarcastic to say but didn’t and climbed the remaining four ladder rungs. I came up facing Blue Base and spotted the Sporo on the edge of the under hang. “Take the shot,” Lilly urged, “before it slips over the ledge! Don’t worry about hitting Blue Base, its already flooded. We should be OK down here.”
I found a footwell just outside the cab and twisted my arm through the handrail above. My weight was now resting on the robot and I could steady myself to get a good bead on the target. I wiped my visor clean of water dribbles, lifted the plasma gun and when the sites picked up the anomaly that was the Sporo, the crosshairs blinked furiously. I took the shot and milliseconds later the Sporo evaporated into a mist of purple, followed by the disintegration of a large section of the Blue Base’s construction.
I wiped my visor again, just to make sure of myself. “Woohooo!” I hollered into the helmet mike. There was applause and shouting at the other end. I was mighty relieved that our nemesis was dead, but it didn’t mean that his other little chums were not in the water. If we were careful though, they need not affect us.
My first priority, after my initial relief ebbed away, was to get back to Blue Base in one piece, get some of that soya crap down my neck and have a sleep.
After the ride home on robot three and several rounds of back slapping and congratulations, I fell into any old bed and slept 24 hours solid. San had given me some kind of ‘downer’ that counteracted the amphetamine residual in my nervous system. I don’t think I would have needed it
On awakening, I was given a good breakfast of more soya crap. At least we could salvage food later. “How’s Jen?” I asked lazily, spooning in some sludge.
“Much better,” Lilly said, “she’s awake. You can go and see her later.”
“Lucky cow, got to sleep through everything. Did you manage to get hold of Rubicon?”
“They’ve gone, left us for dead.” Lilly was serious.
“Can you tell that for certain?”
“The water has gone down so much, San was able to rig up a microwave transmitter just above sea level. We are certain that the ship has departed orbit.”
I surprised myself when I said, “Good, I’m glad they’ve gone.”
“Yeah, they must have concluded, that with the destruction of the lander, further exploration was pointless and far too dangerous for any Van to undertake.”
“Lilly, you are a Van!”
“Not anymore.”
Over the next few months the planet re-froze; it didn’t really affect us. At least it meant the spawn of Sporo would perish, or at least freeze beyond a danger to humans. We had enough stored food rescued from hanger 1, that we reckoned, even without resupply, we could live for the next 120 years quite comfortably. With the help of the robots we had begun to build homes for ourselves, deep into Burgesses’ soil. There was even talk of creating children. Pernio seemed up for it, Clem was less enthusiastic and Jenna downright hostile. I thought if San or I ever managed to procreate with her - like the mate of a black widow spider - we’d better start running as soon as the deed was done. Maybe children, if they did come, would evolve into humans that could breathe the limited amount of oxygen available in the atmosphere. Incidentally it had gone up to near 8%, something San said was down to a ‘delayed planetary inertia, after the initial dose of terraforming.’
I’ve begun to build up a cache of weapons to defend my freedom, should another mission from Earth arrive and decide I’m still a Scrit. I just hope nobody will, that they decide, given the circumstance, that we are now unreachable; Beyond the Rubicon.
Beyond the Rubicon Page 16