by Darren Beyer
Grae shrugged. “It’s not ideal. I’ll get the skimmer’s nav system to calculate the quickest route and feed it to our SCoUT suits. We won’t have a trail, but we’ll have the next best thing. As long as we don’t get any weather, we should be able to get within range of our portable detector by this time tomorrow.”
“What about the drones? If one finds us out in the open, we won’t have much of a chance.”
“We won’t be in the open. Those spikey pines provide a lot of cover, and our SCoUT suits will keep us hidden from its sensors.”
Grae again ducked into the cargo compartment. He took out a holstered pistol for Ivey, then retrieved a long case, from which he pulled out his hyperium rifle.
At Ivey’s concerned look, he smiled. “Just in case.”
Chapter 40: Location Unknown
The lifeboat was small, but four seats had been squeezed into the space, each with a pressure suit and helmet secured next to it. Mandi had just barely managed to halfway slip into one of these suits and strap herself in before the lifeboat shot free of the ship. She now took a moment to adjust the suit and secure the helmet in place.
Her eyes darted between the capsule’s stark interior panels, its empty crash seats, and its single viewport. It was the last that had her heart racing. Repeating scenes scrolled by: the darkness of open space, a yellow-orange sun, the murky atmosphere of the planet below, and, occasionally, the ship she’d just managed to escape. She tried following it as it passed from view, but soon it was gone altogether, and she felt a wave of motion sickness sweep over her.
Locking her eyes forward, Mandi focused on the data screen, which was displaying positional, motion, and ship status. All she could make out was that the capsule was spinning— and she didn’t need the display to figure that out.
The capsule filled suddenly with an orange light, like a sun that had seen one too many years, and Mandi shielded her eyes with her hand. A second later, the craft lurched, throwing her to one side. On the data panel, lights flashed, and through the viewport, the scenes rotated more quickly.
Even through her helmet, a piercing alarm assailed her ears. Straining against her seat’s straps, she reached for the control panel and shut it off. With a deep sigh, she lay back in her seat and closed her eyes, bracing for the final blow that would do her in. Never in a myriad of lifetimes would she have thought her last seconds would be spent tumbling in an escape capsule in some far corner of known space.
At the sound of a new alarm, she opened her eyes again. An icon flashed on the control panel: Landing Beacon Detected.
“What the hell…”
“Reentry sequence initiated,” said an automated voice. “Prepare for retrograde thruster burn in twenty… nineteen… eighteen…”
When the count hit zero, the reaction jets fired, stabilizing the tumbling capsule and orienting it for atmospheric entry. Seconds later, the main thrusters ignited, their rumble shaking the craft and pinning Mandi to her seat as they initiated the capsule’s fall to the planet below.
When the engines fell silent, Mandi again felt weightlessness. But not for long. The g forces grew as the capsule slowed against the thickening atmosphere. A buffeting, slight at first, grew in intensity, and a dull rumble crescendoed into a roar. Outside the capsule’s window, a dull red glow grew brighter. The more Mandi was pulled back into her seat by deceleration, the more vivid the glow became, transitioning from red to orange to yellow and finally bright white. Mandi fought the g forces, straining to remain conscious.
At last the glow and g forces subsided, and a muffled pop indicated the firing of the drogue chute. The capsule rocked and spun now, throwing Mandi from side to side.
Suddenly, a massive jolt struck the craft, throwing it violently onto its side. Mandi let out a scream before an even stronger impact knocked the wind from her, and stole her consciousness.
The loud hiss of venting gas startled Mandi to consciousness. Smoke hung in the lifeboat, and what felt like normal gravity pulled her to the side, against the straps of her harness. A single amber lamp flashed on and off, its light dispersing through the haze to wash the entire capsule in dull orange once every other second. Nothing else in the downed capsule showed any signs of life.
The heads-up display in Mandi’s ill-fitting helmet indicated the presence of several toxic substances; it gave the air in the capsule a yellow rating for breathability. If she had to, she could remove the helmet, but as much as she wanted out of the filthy thing, she thought it best to keep it in place.
Unbuckling her harness, Mandi fell sideways from her seat and rolled to the capsule’s lone viewport. A small amount of light came through, but rocks and dirt covered most of the window. Pressing her helmet closer did nothing to give her a better vantage.
With a sigh, Mandi sat up and took stock of her situation. The lifeboat had three other pressure suits—which meant three extra air packs. Those could come in useful. A quick search of the compartments on the sides of the capsule turned up packaged dry food, water, space blankets, hot and cold packs… everything needed to sustain life. Though it wouldn’t last long. Unfortunately, she could find no backpack, which she’d need if she were to explore any distance outside.
Mandi crawled to the hatch she had entered through. Beyond it was an unknown world— one that filled her with trepidation. But it was time to find out where she was.
The mechanical atmospheric gauge showed an external pressure lower than that of the interior, but similar. The “Corrosive” indicator showed green.
An oversized yellow handle was labeled “Interior Hatch Manual Control.” Beside it, a red mushroom plunger was protected by a clear plastic cover secured with safety wire. The words “External Hatch Emergency Release—CAUTION ORDNANCE” gave Mandi the distinct impression that something dynamic happened when the big red button was pushed.
Mandi twisted the yellow handle counterclockwise. After two full turns, the internal hatch had opened only a few centimeters. She rubbed her forearms and biceps before continuing.
Behind the internal hatch was a second hatch. Mandi stared at the menacing red button, with its wire, cover, and all. She took a deep breath, then broke the wire seal and opened the plastic cover.
“Here goes nothing.”
Bracing herself, Mandi slammed her palm against the button. A short whoosh sounded as external vents opened to equalize interior and exterior pressure, followed by six pops like gunfire as the explosive bolts securing the hatch blew away, taking the hatch with it.
Through smoke and dust, a reddish light streamed in. Mandi inched forward, looking up through the open hatch to a hazy sky.
The atmospheric indicator in her heads-up took her by surprise. She had expected a bright red icon indicating a hazardous environment, but instead it showed yellow—not perfect, but breathable. Her heart began beating quickly, and her breathing quickened.
“Where the hell am I?”
She stuck her head out of the stricken lifeboat.
The terrain around the craft reminded her of deserts she’d visited while on assignment in the Middle East: red, rocky, dry. The sun hung low in the sky, made blurry by the haze. Perhaps it was atmospherics, an illusion through her helmet, or the fact that Mandi hadn’t seen a sun in months, but it looked twice as big as any she remembered on Earth—and much redder. Barely visible through the murky clouds, a crescent daylight moon shared the sky.
Mandi hoisted herself up through the open hatch, swung her legs off the side of the lifeboat, and slid to the ground. When she turned and looked behind her, her mouth dropped open. Atop a nearby hillock crowned with jagged rocks, projecting from the scattered boulders, were partial walls and girders. They looked ancient—decayed by time, wind, and blowing sand—but they were unmistakable. What was left of the walls looked like cement, while the supporting girders could have been taken directly from the rubble of any of the war-torn towns she’d seen as a reporter on Earth.
And that wasn’t the most shocking thing. A gr
oup of half a dozen armed people, clad head to foot in wrapped black garments, also stood atop the hill. A couple of them pointed at Mandi, then broke into a run toward her.
Mandi did the only thing that came to mind. She turned and ran.
Chapter 41: Eridani
As Grae paused to catch his breath, he squinted against the Eridanian sun to watch Ivey struggle up the slope in front of him. With every footstep, the dry, loose ground gave way just the smallest amount, causing some dust to rise and the coarse dirt to slide. There was no Eridanian wildlife to cut game trails, so walking up hillsides and through underbrush was no easy going— and the need to cover their tracks made their task that much more arduous.
If not for the alien pine-like trees, Grae thought, this could have been any of thousands of foothills in the American Rockies or Sierras. But there, Grae was at home among what remained of Earth’s flora and fauna; here on Eridani, he was an infiltrator, and danger in the form of sentry beacons, patrolling drones, or TSI security forces could be waiting around any bend or over any hill.
Just as he resumed his climb, a warning indicator flashed on his helmet’s heads-up display.
“Ivey, incoming! Drop and go flat!”
Grae fell in his tracks, and Ivey did the same, nearly disappearing within the camouflage of her SCoUT suit.
Grae scanned above the hilltops. At first nothing marred the clear blue, early midday sky, but then the black shape of a military-grade drone leapt into view above the hillside they climbed. It swept past them into the valley below, then looped around to come to a hover less than a hundred meters away. It rotated in place, scanning the surroundings. Grae could just make out the small ball camera underneath it. Then, without warning, it sped down into the valley, up the opposite hillside, and out of sight across the far ridge.
Grae waited several minutes, then called to Ivey. “Get moving. Let’s get to those trees up the hill.”
Ivey nearly jumped to her feet and scrambled up the hill as quickly as she could manage. Keeping one eye on the horizon and the other on Ivey’s trail, Grae followed, doing his best to cover their tracks. The drone didn’t return, and as they made it to the safety of the trees, Grae looked back at the open hillside. In his haste, he hadn’t covered their tracks as well as he would have liked. His work would fool most, but a trained eye would know someone had been there.
Ivey raised her visor. “Did it see us?”
“I don’t think so. That was a Goshawk—a defense drone. It doesn’t have much in the way of combat capability, but it does mount a 4.5-millimeter machine gun. If whoever was piloting thought we might be here, the hill would have been sprayed by a few hundred rounds.” Grae took a quick look around. “But it doesn’t mean it won’t come back. We need to find that network node—fast.”
Ivey held up an index finger and spun it once in the air. Grae turned away to give her access to his pack, from which she retrieved their direction finder. Holding it high in front of her face, she rotated it slowly, then extended her arm with her hand held flat and vertical.
“That way,” she said. She pointed along the ridgeline. “It can’t be far.”
She returned the finder to Grae’s pack, and they resumed their trek. At least there were plenty of trees along the ridge to give them cover.
For the next few hours, no more drones threatened them, and the light grade of the rising ridgeline presented an easy path. Finally, with the sun beginning to set, the trees began to thin, presenting a clear view of a bank of solar panels next to a trashcan-sized cylinder set on a concrete base. A suite of antennas bristled from its top.
“I think we’re here.” Grae scanned the surrounding terrain from the last cover they’d have. “Let’s hope no one’s watching.”
The sun had dropped below the horizon, allowing the stars to shine brightly in a mishmash of unknown constellations. Grae would have preferred cloud cover, but rain was scarce in the region at this time of the Eridanian year, leaving the air crisp and dry. He scanned the approaches to the communications platform through his rifle’s scope. Nothing moved, and with the planet Ascension out of view, it was as dark as it would get.
“It’s time. Stay low. I’ll cover you from here.”
As Ivey slowly made her way to their objective, Grae continued scanning the skies and surrounding terrain through his scope. He turned it back toward the ridgeline, where Ivey inched her way forward. Even with the scope’s night vision on maximum, it took a few seconds to find her. Her SCoUT suit was doing its job. Switching to infrared didn’t make her any more visible.
Grae keyed his helmet’s comm. “How’re ya doing?”
“My knees and elbows hurt.”
“Go flatter. Slide your arms and legs, don’t lift them.”
“Then my shoulders hurt.”
“No one said this would be easy. Besides, you’re almost there—if you count halfway as ‘almost.’”
Ivey grunted as she slid another meter. “Screw you.”
Grae smiled and turned his rifle toward the valley hiding TSI’s secret facility. Just a couple klicks distant, only a few subtle heat variations betrayed its existence. He switched back to night vision—still only a few scattered light sources stood out and nothing stirred.
For the better part of the next hour, everything remained quiet as Ivey continued her crawl. When she finally reached the concrete base of the platform, she rolled onto her back and lay flat.
“Next time,” she said, “you do this.”
“When you can learn to shoot as well as I do, and you can teach me to hack a network, I’ll be more than happy to. Until then, you crawl, I watch.”
“I already shoot better than you do, but the hacking stuff… yeah, you have a ways to go to catch me.”
Grae rolled his eyes. “We don’t have all night. You might want to get cracking—or hacking.”
Ivey sighed through the comm. “No rest for the weary. Feeding you my helmet cam.”
Grae’s heads-up display showed Ivey opening the top of her suit and retrieving a toolkit. She moved slowly around the platform’s base until she found an access panel.
“This is where we get in.” She traced the panel’s seam with her finger. “What are the odds that opening it triggers an alarm somewhere?”
“I’d say pretty good.”
Ivey moved to where the power cables entered the housing. “That’s why I’m going in here.” She cut away a small amount of the grommet around the holes for the cables, retrieved a device from her toolkit, and attached it next to her cut.
“What’s that?” Grae asked.
“It’s a telescoping boroscope with a universal connector tip mounted to the end.”
“In non-geek speak, please?”
“Watch and learn, Raymus.”
A miniature holo screen control panel popped open, and an articulating telescoping arm rose from the top of the device. Video from a tiny camera mounted on the end allowed Ivey to guide the boroscope through the hole to the interior of the housing.
“I just need to find the main board and plug into the auxiliary port.”
For a few minutes, Ivey probed the communications platform.
“Here it is. Now for the auxiliary port… and bingo. I’m in.”
“Just like that.”
“Pretty much—except for the security credentials. But that’s why I brought this.” Ivey attached another device to the first via a cable. “It may take a while, but sooner or later it’ll get through. In the meantime, I think I’ll kick back and get a little shuteye.”
Before Ivey could get comfortable, the holo screen showed an alert: Algorithm complete.
“That was quick. Someone was pretty sloppy when they set this up. But I guess they figure that if no one even knows this place exists, what’s the chance of finding its communications platform?” Ivey studied the holo screen. “Let’s see what we have. Lots of network traffic. I just need to find a place to drop a multistage compiler backdoor… somewhere that won’t b
e easily found.”
“While you’re looking, can you pipe me a copy?”
“One sec.” Ivey worked the controls. “There you go.”
As Ivey continued to work her magic, Grae studied the data stream, looking for patterns.
“How long will this take?” he asked.
“If you want our sniffer to be found by the first network security scan, then it’s quick. If not, it depends on how many times I get interrupted with questions.”
“Well, I need to follow this data.” Grae pulled a comm from his backpack and powered it on. “Connect me into the network.”
Ivey sighed. “All right, but be careful where you step.”
With his comm connected into the network, Grae began to log all of the inbound traffic.
It didn’t take long for his suspected pattern to become clear. “Ivey?”
“Questions—”
“What does it mean if all this data is going to one place—and there’s almost no return traffic?”
Chapter 42: Location Unknown
As shouts carried across the barren distance and through the suit’s external mic, Mandi scrambled up a berm and slid down the opposite side, looking for a quick escape. Odd, lumpy geologic formations created a maze of options. Without pausing to think, she darted to the nearest one and ran past it. She glanced at the veiled sun to get her bearings, then ran past formation after formation, pushing off one here, running into another there.
Pausing next to a larger formation, she listened for any signs of her pursuers. Muffled voices came through, but her old helmet lacked high-quality audio capabilities, and she couldn’t identify the direction of the sounds.
She checked the atmospheric display once more—it still indicated breathable air outside. Holding her breath, she unlatched her helmet. With a hiss, the pressure equalized, and a puff of warm air met her face. She took in a large gulp. The outside air had a trace metallic taste and smell, but it was refreshing compared to the stale, recycled air of the pressure suit.