by Kelly Jensen
The settlement abutted the steep mountain that formed the other side of the ravine. A primitive metal fence greeted them on this side, wicked looking with razor wire strung across the top. It was a throwback—any decently funded settlement in need of a barrier would normally opt for a sonic or forcefield version. Beyond the fence sat about two dozen prefab buildings that could have belonged to any colony on any planet. They were utilitarian and completely without any individuality.
Hunkering down behind a boulder that felt slimy with alien moss, Zed reached for Flick, touching the backs of their hands together. If he’d been feeling better, he wouldn’t have hesitated to scale the fence. Getting over razor wire wasn’t fun, but he could do it. Or just phase-shift through the damned thing. Neither was really an option at the moment.
Zed cobbled together his concentration enough to form a mental phrase. “Need to scout.”
“I will.”
Exasperation rose, bringing tension to Zed’s shoulders.
“I will,” Flick repeated, the words paired with concern and the need to protect Zed.
Zed pressed his lips into a thin line. Before he could argue, Flick moved away and melted into the shadows.
Goddamn it!
Teeth gritted, Zed waited in the lea of the boulder, watching the compound. He didn’t see any patrols, which hinted that this wasn’t a paramilitary establishment. That could be good, if they didn’t have a lot of weapons—or bad, if they made up for the lack of weapons in religious zealotry. It wouldn’t be the first colony to succumb to cultlike weirdness. There was no clue either way. Other than the lights over the prefabs’ doors, there was no sign of life at all.
Seconds ticked into minutes that seemed like hours. Finally, just as Zed was starting to think he should try to find Flick, Flick emerged from the darkness. He jerked his head in an invitation to follow him, and Zed didn’t hesitate.
Flick led him along the fence. The night encroached, but when Flick gestured at the metal barrier, Zed could make out why Flick had brought him there. There was a tear, as though something had taken a bite out of the wires. It wasn’t big enough for either of them to squeeze through, though.
“Can we make it bigger?” Zed murmured.
Flick’s eyes narrowed, then grew unfocused. After a moment, he held up his crystalline arm, which now sported something that might be a wire cutter—if Zed looked at it crosswise. Zed scanned their surroundings for threats while Flick worked. A grunt dragged his attention back to Flick, who was struggling to use his makeshift wire cutters. The fence rattled gently as he tugged at the wire. It looked as though he didn’t have enough strength in his crystalline fingers to cleave through the metal. He needed a spring in the joint or some sort of leverage, like real wire cutters had.
Zed laid a hand on Flick’s shoulder. “Worth a shot,” he whispered.
A door on the side of the closest prefab opened with a creak. “Something’s fuckin’ with the fence again,” a male voice called out. Footsteps jogged down the steps.
Zed and Flick scrambled to their feet. Too slow. A man rounded the corner of the building, freezing as he spotted them.
“Hey! Dayne!”
“Run!” Zed spun and, knowing Flick was right there with him, took a step back into the woods.
But froze as a laser carbine fired in front of him, leaving searing heat in its wake.
“Hands where I can see them. Turn real slow toward me.” A new voice, female, and on this side of the fence. Shit. He glanced to his right and saw her approach, the carbine level and at the ready. Zed followed the order she’d given. No way he wanted to mess with that weapon.
“Fuck,” Flick muttered.
“One way to get inside.” Zed allowed his lips to curve into a rueful smile.
The guy who’d first spotted them joined his gun-toting colleague. He clapped a hand on the woman’s shoulder and murmured something—she must be Dayne—then moved in front of Zed and Flick. He pulled out a wallet and activated a light, passing it over the two of them to get a good look. There was no way he could miss their disheveled state—smudges of dirt darkened Flick’s cheek and light hair, and Zed knew he looked about the same. Not to mention the various scratches and bruises they’d picked up.
“You two from that bird that went down a couple days ago?”
Zed pressed his lips together. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Flick do the same.
The man huffed out a half chuckle. “C’mon, guys. I ain’t never seen you before, and it’s not like we get a lot of visitors ’round here.” He nodded at Zed’s bandaged wrist. “You got that seen to all proper?”
Even though the guy’s easygoing manner of speaking nudged Zed to respond, he resisted. He swung his gaze forward, over the guy’s shoulder, and waited.
After a good ninety seconds, the guy cursed softly. His hands, which had been sitting on his hips, dropped to his side and his shoulders slumped a bit. “Well, c’mon then.” He swung a hand out to gesture in the direction of the building he’d come from. “Let’s get on behind the fence and we can have a more friendly-like conversation.”
Zed cast a glance at Flick, but he didn’t see much option other than complying with the guy’s order. He might be able to Zone—but that was a big unknown at this point. And would he be able to move quickly enough to take out the woman standing behind them with the rifle? Maybe. He wasn’t really willing to bet Flick’s life on it, though, which was what he’d be doing. Flick met his gaze and Zed’s eyes darted toward the buildings. With the barest of nods, Flick acknowledged the plan. Such as it was.
There’d come an opportunity to get out. Or maybe this was their ticket to a comms room. Either way, they were heading beyond that fence, like it or not.
* * *
The interior of the settlement had the snapped-together feel of a work camp. The prefabs formed a square around a central pavilion. Felix almost expected the odor of stin and crushed rock dust to waft around the next corner. Tucking unpleasant memories away, he concentrated on making a mental map of his surroundings.
The prefabs on the side they entered from were stacked two high and three deep with a narrow corridor running between. Potential cover if they needed it. Running at a right angle were three rows of long units with fewer windows. Bunkhouses. Judging by the single light on one corner of every prefab, each had its own power. Probably solar cells on the roof of the stack and a battery inside. Given the thick atmosphere of the planet, they would be using auxiliary power generators as well.
“This ain’t a sightseeing tour.” Their escort nudged the back of Felix’s shoulder.
Felix glanced at Zed. Without touching, they couldn’t pass thoughts back and forth, but they’d been together long enough to read one another. He dipped his chin slightly and went back to looking for something useful, like a comms tower. Zed could do the people watching—that was his thing.
They continued through the diagonal passage to the central square. Bright light reflected from the underside of the pavilion, showing off the tight weave of the smart fiber ceiling. Protection against ultraviolet, heat and rain. Radiation and heat would be the worst of it, Felix guessed. He glanced over his shoulder at the prefabs again. Air circulators used a lot of power. No wonder they only had one corner of each building lit.
The light in the square prevented further reconnaissance, the rows of stacked prefabs on the opposite sides nothing but shadows. But Felix could see down the diagonal avenues. One led off into darkness, the other ended at the rocky wall of the ravine. Would there be a path up from there? Or a tunnel through to...The possibility of caves beneath the planet surface left a greasy feeling in his gut. He hadn’t liked tight, dark spaces before his time with the stin. He liked them less now.
He couldn’t see the perimeter fence from the center of the camp. One conclusion he could draw, however, was that
the camp, settlement, whatever they wanted to call it, wasn’t big—and besides the laser carbine the woman Dayne carried, he could see no other weapons. He also couldn’t see anything that might be a comms tower.
A handful of people were gathered in the square, their presence casual and incidental. They looked up as Felix and Zed were guided into the light, and an older heavyset man disengaged from the group to approach them.
“What do we have here?”
Felix and Zed were nudged forward. “Found these two lurking outside the fence,” Dayne said.
Another man left the group, his bald head catching the light as he walked toward them. “Check ’em over for weapons and the like?”
“Not yet. Wanted to get them inside first.”
The bald man frisked them quickly and efficiently, relieving them of their packs and the knife from Felix’s boot. Shit and double shit. He turned Felix’s crystalline hand over and back again, eyebrows raised, but didn’t comment. Felix had reformed his fingers into...fingers. He’d also locked the fingers and elbow, hoping the arm might pass as a fried piece-of-shit cybernetic limb. Cybernetics and j-space didn’t mix, and pretending the arm was useless might give him an advantage.
His and Zed’s bracelets also came under scrutiny but were left in place. That, more than anything, spoke of the futility of getting a signal to go anywhere on this planet.
Stepping back, Baldy handed the packs and knife over to the heavyset man before addressing Dayne. “Heard the shot, thought you were running off lopers again.”
Lopers? The name, and the running-off part, suggested lopers were mobile. So, not tentacled and living in fissures. Check. Had that been what they’d heard snuffling around earlier?
“Don’t tell me there’s another hole in my perimeter,” the heavier guy said.
Felix resisted the urge to look at Zed. His perimeter. So this guy claimed ownership of this place.
“We need to run a current through the fence. Scare off lopers and beggars.” Dayne cast a wary eye over Felix and Zed.
“Find me some more generators then,” called a skinny woman from the back of the group.
“Working on it,” someone else grumbled.
The leader looked them over. He frowned as he caught sight of Felix’s left hand. “What’s up with your hand?”
So much for having his arm escape notice. Felix displayed visible effort lifting his stiff arm. “Cybernetic limb, for all the good it is now. It’s fried.”
“Weirdest damn limb I ever saw,” Dayne mumbled.
Felix tucked it back against his side.
“They’re from that bird we saw go down,” said the guy who’d brought them in.
“And they look it.” The leader nodded toward Zed’s bandaged wrist. “More’n two of you?”
Zed shook his head. “No.”
The leader narrowed his eyes a moment, considering, then offered another nod. “Well, I suppose this is the part where I welcome you to Paradise, population one-twenty-five.” They called this shit hole Paradise? “I’m Todd. We can call you one-twenty-six—” he lifted his chin in Zed’s direction, then turned to Felix “—and one-twenty-seven, or you can give us some actual names.”
Silence blanketed the setting. Felix resisted the urge to fidget as he waited for Zed’s lead. Finally, Zed said, “I’m Loop and he’s Fix.”
Dayne scoffed. “One-twenty-six and one-twenty-seven is better names than that.”
“Be nice, Dayne, or I’ll have them bunking with you.”
Bunking?
Felix looked around again. Except for Dayne, no one had a weapon pointed at them, and even their escort’s postures had relaxed since they’d come inside the fence. These people did not see them as a threat.
Apparently noting his attention had strayed, Todd called him back. “It’s not much, I know, but it’s all you boys got now.” He tilted his head. “Unless your ship is salvageable?”
Felix bit his lips together. Zed should be the one to take care of any intel exchange. He was the people person, the covert operator and strategist.
Todd’s gaze drifted to Zed. “Looks like he’s deferring to you, Loop.”
Triple fucking shit. Though did it actually matter if they thought Zed was the leader of their two-man outfit?
“If you’ve the means to lift it from the bottom of the sea,” Zed said, jerking his head back toward the far side of the ravine, “then it might be good for parts.”
Todd smiled. “Listen to the way he talks. You’re a fancy one.” His gaze dropped to his bandaged wrist. “Let’s see if we can get you fixed up, then we can discuss what value you might have to this colony. We’re a small group. Everyone has to pull their weight.”
More people had gathered in the square, emerging from the prefabs and shadows. When Todd called out “Garman!” a tall man stepped forward, ducking under the pavilion, even though the edge was at least half a meter over his head. He was probably used to braining himself against the top of every prefab door.
“Here,” he said.
“Want to take Loop here over to Medical and get his wrist sorted? Can’t put him to work with it all trussed up like that.”
“Sure thing.” Garman gestured toward Zed, but Zed didn’t move.
“C’mon now, I can see you’re in pain,” Todd cajoled.
After glancing at Felix, Zed stepped forward. Felix followed.
“Oh no. Medical ain’t a big place. You’d be much more comfortable here, Fix.” Todd had a grandfatherly smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Dayne poked Felix in the back with the rifle.
Felix risked a quick touch, reaching out to grab Zed’s fingers. Go. Eyes open. I’ll be fine. They didn’t have much choice, but the touch, the message, helped build the illusion of control.
Love you. Zed squeezed his fingers before letting go.
Todd arched a brow. “All right, all right. How ’bout if we feed you while your boyfriend is getting patched up?”
God, this was weird. Even more so now that his stomach had woken to the idea of being fed.
“Andy, take him to the mess and get him a plate of something, will you?”
The guy who’d brought them in—Andy—ducked his head. “On it.”
Zed was led off across the square. Felix would have watched him disappear into the shadows, then he’d likely have watched the darkness for his silhouette to reappear. But Dayne was nudging him with the damn rifle again—in the opposite direction.
Chapter Ten
Actually being given food was the last thing Felix had expected. Maybe he’d read too many holo comics featuring evil villains, or maybe he’d been fooled by the institutions set up to protect and guide humanity—namely, the AEF and Central—too often. But when they’d taken Zed one direction and him another, he’d figured he’d find himself locked in a black hole, his dinner whatever he could scrape off the floor.
He’d eaten worse.
The foodfactor burped and another greasy gray cube crapped onto the plate beneath it.
Damn, he’d eaten better too.
‘Factor food had been all the thing until people realized you pretty much only got out of a 3D printer what you put into it. So, if you wanted something tasty, you had to vary the ingredient blocks. Standard gray nutrition cubes were cheap and easy to transport. Why anyone bothered actually feeding them through the ‘factor was beyond him, though. They tasted about the same either way. Unless you keyed in something like doughnuts. ‘Factor doughnuts were pretty good.
Another cube dropped onto his plate. It hadn’t formed properly, leaving one side gooey and quickly disintegrating into mush. Probably a fault in the timing mechanism. That was always the first part to go. The molds were hard to damage and ‘factors didn’t use much power.
Glancing over at Andy, Felix said, “I could fix this for you.”
Andy’s brows rose. “Yeah?”
Felix felt his brows dip in the opposite direction. Why wasn’t he being cuffed, his offer of help returned with a sneer? “How old is it? Is this the only one you have?”
“It’s the only one we got left. We used to have three.”
“Have you still got the others? I could use them for parts.”
“You seriously think you can fix this thing?”
Felix looked around. “Don’t you have anyone here who works on this kinda stuff?” Maybe the skinny girl who’d called for more power generators. Certainly not Dayne, who stood by the door hefting her rifle.
Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Sure we do, but the ‘factor ain’t totally broke yet. Keeping the fence repaired is our top priority.”
“Because of the lopers.” Another cube of crap hit the plate and Felix picked it up. Four mouthfuls of mush were enough for this road trip. “They don’t have tentacles, do they?”
For the first time, Andy looked truly amused. “Run into some rock scragglers, did ya?”
Felix rubbed his neck. “Yeah.”
“Over here.” Andy nodded toward one of the few unoccupied tables in the mess hall—a double-wide prefab on the south side of the pavilion.
Felix straddled the bench and took the all-in-one utensil Andy offered.
“Scragglers are a menace, but they’re not mobile. It’s the lopers that make a mess of things. They chew through anything. Found one gnawing on the side of a bunkhouse one night. Another nearly ate a power cell.”
Now the perimeter fence made sense.
“So how long have y’all been out here?” Felix stabbed a cube and carved off a slice.
Andy regarded him quietly before answering. “‘Bout eighteen months. Some of us.”