Once inside the mine, Echo lit an oil lamp and picked her way through to the cave network, climbing up to her present vantage point. From there, hidden from all but the nearest direct view, she watched the tollean ship quarter the area then move away, leaving blackened devastation in its wake.
Prone on the rock lip, she looked down into the gorge. Her heart beat increased, breaths coming in short gasps. She wondered if the fire was affecting her. Adrenaline coursed through her excited body just as it had the previous night at the airstrip.
Oh, Gods! The excitement ... near death excites me! No, that's ridiculous. Sucking in another breath, she tried to calm herself. The idea all the action aroused her was too much at that moment.
Her companion squeezed in beside her. “What now? You’re a bit flushed, aren't you?”
“Follow me”, Echo responded, ignoring his observation. Crawling from the opening, back along the narrow passage and through the caves, she struggled to compose herself and act as calm as possible.
At one point, the old mine broadened into a wider section with a level floor, the walls and roof lined with old timbers. Another mattress lay against a wall, surrounded by cooking equipment, oil lamps, and crates of assorted gear.
“This is where the original prospectors lived before they built the hut,” she said, placing her lamp on an old barrel. “My dad and I cleaned the place up years ago, and I restocked for emergencies when I moved here last year.”
Clever girl, Ben thought. “You anticipated this?”
“I expected the monsters to come looking if they ever discovered me. I was wrong. They never did.”
“Yeah, until now.” Ben sat on the mattress. “If you hadn’t done this, we would have been trapped in that fireball. Now all we need is to get out of here and figure out a way off this planet.”
Echo put aside her bag and crossbow and dropped beside him. “What about the monsters' ships?”
“No, the big one is out. I've never flown one of those, and I can't read the controls or manuals. The scout cars I might figure out, but they're atmospheric – can't travel in space.”
Echo laid back, thoughts rushing through her mind in a constant, confused flood. “We can't leave until the fires burn out.”
“How come there is no smoke in here?”
“The wind in the canyon sucks air out of these tunnels - the smoke can't get in.”
Ben nodded, closing his eyes. Echo stared at the walls of the mine, angry at the loss of the cabin and still edgy from her recent experiences. The caves were hotter than normal, but she was not convinced that was the cause of her perspiration.
“I didn't sleep last night,” she said. “You snored right through!”
“Sorry. Like I said, this gravity knocks me about a lot.”
For what seemed like an eternity, they lay in silence, until Echo rose and began to rummage through the supplies in the crates. She understood the ship's loss upset Ben: it was not only their one way off the planet, but also his pride and joy. He had been second in command, and the chief engineer, and had lost his much-loved baby! A thought leaped into her mind.
“You're an engineer, yes?”
“Yeah, right.”
“So you can repair a ship?”
“Yes, of course, but not one with a split hull lying on an alien occupied airstrip.”
“What about the ships at the base along the coast.”
“Like I said - the Tolleani blasted them from the air when they first arrived. I don't think they’ll ever fly again.”
“The one in the hangar?”
“I'm sorry?”
“The spaceship inside the building at the back of the field ... the hanger in the back corner.”
Ben sat up and leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Echo's. He tried to think back to his flyover, and whether or not the roof of that particular structure had been damaged. “This ship is space-worthy?”
“I don't know ... don't think so. The controls inside are all pulled apart. It looks like they were fixing something. Maybe you could finish it.”
“Perhaps, if it isn’t too much of a mess.”
“Then we can leave!”
“Yeah ... but I will still have to come back here first.”
“Why! Can't we just go?” Echo shook her head. “Your crew are gone, damn it!”
“Very likely, but I still want to make sure. And I'm going to find out what the bastards are doing in that base.”
Echo vision began to blur again. “Why is that so damned important?”
“I'm sorry, but we need to know what they are developing. It might be critical for the war effort.”
“Why?”
“Ask yourself. Why would they put a project way out here at the end of nowhere? The work would be so much easier on one of their home planets, but instead they come here to a remote world they left for dead. It has something to do with the stuff in the mine, I'm sure, and the research is so dangerous they don't dare do it on one of their own worlds.”
“Trilatenite ... the ‘stuff’ is Trilatenite. Can it be turned into a weapon?”
“Not one I've ever heard off, but I'm an engineer, not a physicist. Fusion reactors use it, so I wouldn't be surprised. The data block in their lab ... every night they remove it from their computer and lock it away in a safe. I want it.”
Echo sniffed, and returning to her rummaging. Arguing did not seem worth while. “Okay, we go to the airbase, fix the spaceship, and come back here. This time I help. I know their movements better than you do. We rescue your friends if they are still there, and steal your computer block.” With any luck, she thought, by the time the ship was fixed he would change his mind about coming back here at all!
Ben sat watching as she moved about the grotto. 'So, how long did you think, for us to get there overland?”
“In this area there are high ridges running down to the sea, with lowlands between them. There are several between here and the air base. We could never cross them with your leg the way it is. In your condition, our only choice is to follow the road.”
“So you said before. How long?”
“It will take us several days on foot, and it's more exposed. The valleys are all low grassland and marsh, and there is not much cover. Where the mountains come down to the coast, they're covered with forest, and that’s better for concealment. At one place there's a cave we can shelter in, and we can do the open areas at night.”
“The Tolleani use heat sensors,” Ben said, “so they will see us either way, except in the cave. The good news is, at the moment they think we're dead, so they won't be looking.”
“Fine!” Echo said, dumping an old metal plate of suspect looking cold food on the floor in front of Ben and sitting beside him. “It’s only a sort of dried biscuit. I'll get some other supplies together, then we leave.”
Ben definitely liked this girl. He picked up the dish, examined the content and tried to decide exactly what it was.
Through the night, the fire burned higher towards the peaks, petering out as it tried but failed to compete with the saturating dampness of the forest. In its wake, the stream remained hemmed by a carpet of ash and charred tree trunks, the ruins of the cabin a blackened pile of burned timbers.
The next morning the ground still smouldering in many places, but the water ran clear, washed clean overnight. Most of the smoke was gone. With the entrance tunnel collapsed by the explosions, what little had reached the caves drifted away from the refuge with the natural ventilation of the honeycombed mountain.
Towards midday, Echo helped Ben down from the opening high in the cliff face to the floor of the canyon. They followed the gorge to the coast, emerging below the town.
She knew the way to the next settlement well: after the tollean attack, she had driven the coastal route several times in search of other survivors. As darkness settled over the coastline, she and Ben set off for the air base, their way lit by the pale light of Corros's twin moons.
The road wound its way alo
ng the coastline just behind the dunes. Unmaintained for years, it was now little more than a track, covered in water-worn potholes, vegetation encroaching at the edges. In many places, sand blows or water covered the surface, but on foot, the going was better than Echo had expected. Travelling through the night, they crossed the first ridge and descended to the next valley.
The following day they sheltered in a copse of woods not far from the path, spending the daylight hours huddled beneath an old foil thermal blanket from the mine. It provided respite from the sun, and at least some protection against detection by alien heat sensors.
Echo enjoyed the time close to another human being, not only for the intimacy, but also from a need for simple companionship. She missed the embraces of her parents or brother, and each hour brought her closer to Ben. Increasingly, the idea intensified that she could not live without him and had become dependent on him not only to escape the planet, but also for strength, reassurance, and peace of mind. That he was not at his best on the ground was something she could forgive; he was, no doubt, superb in his own environment.
The next morning they stopped in deep forest where a second ridge ran down to the ocean. At a creek crossing, Echo guided Ben upstream to where water flowed from a cave opening in the cliffs. Beyond a mound of boulders, the entrance led away into darkness.
“There's a ledge in there we can camp on, beside the stream,” Echo said. “The heat seekers won't be able to find us, and we're too far away for them to see smoke, so we can build a fire.” She picked her way over the rocks to a narrow shelf deeper inside the ridge. Through the day, they lay close together on the rock floor, not for warmth, but a sense of comfort and safety.
“This is a good spot,” Ben said. The last 12 hours had been difficult for him. He was a big, heavy man, and Echo had supported him all day, his leg troubling him more with each passing hour. The wound, despite being only shallow, had begun to fester. Infection was rare on this world, and it was something Echo felt powerless to deal with. As she lay back, she gave in to exhaustion. No more ... not today!
Soon after dawn on the fifth day, they reached the next settlement. Typical of the mining colonies on this planet, it centred on an open plaza surrounded by a handful of public and community buildings, with the residential quarters built along secondary roads leading out from the center. Like Echo's home, this one serviced a single mine located further away in the surrounding hills.
Human remains lay everywhere in the streets. With no survivors to collect, bury or burn them, the victims of the tollean attack laid where they fell. Disturbed by roaming animals over the years, only scattered bones remained.
On the approaches, Echo counted numerous animal skeletons in the stock pens. In her own valley, she had released the domestic animals, but here, any that failed to break free on their own remained trapped until overtaken by death. She had visited here before, six months after the tollean attack, and had released a few still living animals, but at that stage most had already died.
During the long and arduous journey, Ben's injured leg had worsened each day. Upon reaching their objective, they searched for anything that might help. Beneath its bandages the wound was inflamed, the muscles red, swollen and painful. In Echo's experience, the local microbes were ineffective on the stronger human immune system, but the normal rules did not seem to apply now.
“Immunity here is based on technology, and it’s a fragile thing,” Ben said. “Take away the foundation and the structure tumbles. This infection might be anything ... a mutation maybe, or something tollean. Ben had not received the treatments colonists did, so it could even be something local. Whatever it was, broad-spectrum drugs might work, or not. Most colony PX's stocked a small supply of them, but it would depend on whether they were still viable.”
With no obvious signs on the buildings surrounding the square to guide them, Echo began a door-to-door search. The PX contained nothing useful, but in what proved to be the town doctor's office, she found a variety of medications, long past their use-by dates, but with luck, still effective. She doubted the antibiotics would work, but Ben's response to the anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics was positive, so they rested for a few days until the redness in the leg subsided.
Their destination, the deserted naval air base, was now only a few kilometers distant.
Chapter 11
Soon after dawn on the eighth day, Echo and Ben stopped on a rise overlooking the military base. In the bright light of morning, the place looked deserted. A deathly silence hung over the ruined facility.
Inside the perimeter fence, the damaged patrol ships, each with its cockpit area blasted, sat side by side in front of the hangars. The hanger buildings, their doors closed, appeared untouched at first, but from the high ground, signs of alien attack were visible on most of the roofs.
Ben began to climb down towards the road. “Doesn't look like anyone is around. It's as quiet as a tomb down there.”
The front entrance was wide open; only an old and worm-eaten wood boom blocked the way. The gatehouse was a blackened ruin. Inside the yard, few of the smaller structures remained standing, the offices and living quarters reduced to piles of charred timber.
Without bothering to check the buildings, Ben limped out to the tarmac to inspect the patrol vessels. “I guess we can forget about them. Control decks are gone ... one engine is blown out on the second. What wasn’t destroyed by laser fire has been ruined by the rain getting in. Neither will ever fly again”
“The monsters just left them here, Echo said. “They don't waste much time on anything, do they?”
“No, but it makes sense. The ships are wrecks, so the bastards have no interest in them. They can't use them, and any of our technology they might have been interested in would have been crisped when they blew out the cockpits, so why bother. Stupid really, to hit the cockpits like that. Show me where this other boat is.”
Echo led him across the airfield to a slightly smaller hanger located in the furthest corner of the compound. A personnel door opened into one side of the building. A massive steel lock hung from the door bolt. “It was padlocked when I came here before,” she said, “but I smashed it to get in. This one is new.”
Minutes later Ben returned from one of the other hangers with a heavy steel wrench, and within seconds, the new lock lay in pieces. He wondered why the Tolleani had put it there. Perhaps they were interested in the ship Echo claimed was within.
The interior of the hangar lay in semi-darkness, but as Ben's eyes adjusted to the low light filtering in through long-uncleaned skylights, a solitary object emerged from the gloom. “Well I'll be ... Christ on a bicycle!”
“What?”
“This is a military dispatch courier. Super fast, three-man flyer designed for carrying military dispatches and emergency supplies. Similar to my ship but smaller, and a lot older. What in the Gods' names is it doing here?”
“Can we use it to get away?”
“For sure, if it's space-worthy.”
The vessel was about thirty metres long, sleek, and metallic grey in colour, the long, tubular fuselage sporting short, stubby wings for atmospheric flight. With no windows anywhere, it resembled a sinister and deadly missile.
A work platform stood under one of the wing cowlings, access panels folded back to reveal the mechanisms within. Ben climbed up and peered inside for several minutes. “They must have been swapping in a new engine ... got it in, but not hooked up. I can see better when I get some light in here.” He scrambled down again, ambled over to the boarding ramp and disappeared into the fuselage.
Echo moved to follow, and then stopped: she knew nothing about these ships, or anything mechanical. Everything in there would be beyond her understanding, so instead, she turned and left the hangar, intent on exploring the compound.
Most of the unburnt buildings showed major roof damage; only the maintenance workshop and a handful of smaller structures had escaped destruction. Echo started to cross the courtyard, then Ben w
alked up beside her, pointing towards a small, still intact building by the gate. “The base commander's residence.”
“Why are some buildings damaged and not others.”
“The Tolleani employ a standard technique when they attack a military target. They use heat sensors to locate personnel from the air, and take each one out with a needle beam. That usually sets fire to the building, but some escape being fired on because they are vacant at the time. It might be what saved our dispatcher. The bastards may be murdering arseholes, but they aren't needlessly destructive ... usually.”
“These ones were,” Echo said, looking at the surrounding ruins. “Is the spaceship all right?”
“No, but it can be, given time. The engine installation will have to be completed, the control consol needs re-wiring, and the fuel tanks are empty. The computers are wiped, and most of the systems will have to be checked over as well. It looks like it was just being given a routine maintenance when the attack occurred.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Yes. It won't be easy on my own, but I can do it. All our ships have multiple backup systems so the computers are restorable. The refuelling station still has a sealed underground storage with liquid hydrogen inside ... a win for us!”
“I can help. I don't know machines, but I can still lift and carry. And I can find us food while you work.”
“Perfect,” Ben replied. “What would I do without you?”
Weeks later, Echo sat on the porch of the residence. They had assumed the building escaped destruction because it was empty at the time of the alien attack, but on closer inspection, they found foil insulation lining the roof. The metal interfered with heat sensing equipment like a thermal blanket; the structure would have appeared vacant regardless.
She soon discovered her belief the monsters never came here was wrong. Once a week, a small surveillance craft flew over the town and base. On each occasion, it circled before headed inland toward the third of the mining communities: it was clear the aliens kept at least a cursory eye on the settlements.
Solitude's End Page 9