Or they could be dead. They could have crashed and been killed, or maybe they were lying broken and bleeding in their ships, waiting for help that would never come. The aliens could have shot them down; he had completely lost track of the three of them right after they’d followed him out of the wormhole. Anything could have happened.
God, what had he done? He had let his friends follow him into an unknown and dangerous situation, and all because he wanted to make sure Ilana was okay, to get her back and— what? —make up for his feelings for Jaden? Break up with her officially, so he could clear his conscience? Or did he just love her and want her safe?
A faint breeze coasted over the dunes, stirring the sand; but it held heat, and burned Garner’s face. He tied a handkerchief around his nose and mouth to keep the worst of the sand and sun off him, but he had no eye protection or hat, and only a little water. He’d have to conserve, and find fresh water if he could.
Nothing moved in the sand and rock; all lay silent. He was glad for his long trousers and boots, in case of sand fleas (or the alien equivalent), but God, it was hot.
Then, in the silence, there came a sound. Distant at first, he couldn’t tell from where it originated; but as it drew closer, he recognized the sound of a motor and knew it came from the west. It was headed in his direction.
Garner chose the nearest sand dune and, careful to erase his tracks, climbed behind it, lying down on his belly and peering over the crest to watch the oncoming vehicle, his Beretta in his hands. The vehicle came soon enough, a truck of sorts, skittering across the sand like a giant insect. It had wings over its wheels, and it had been painted in the colors of the desert. The sound of the motor, though recognizable, had a tinny thrummm to it.
The truck stopped short of the downed Copperhead mock-up, and half a dozen aliens emerged, guns at the ready. They approached the tarp-and-sand-covered fighter cautiously, fanning out. While the others aimed at the ship, one of the Snappers yanked off the tarp. Garner heard the lead alien, one dressed in red, talking into its headset.
“We’ve found another fighter,” it said. “It looks like one of ours.”
The Turtle that had removed the tarp touched the canopy release button on the side of the ship. The canopy rose, revealing a Banshee’s controls.
“It’s another dupe,” the lead alien said. “It appears to be empty. We’re checking it out now.”
Two of the Snappers kept an eye out while the lead alien and one other, this one in greyish blue, searched the cockpit. They put their filthy hands all over it, touched everything they could.
“There’s no blood,” said Blue. “But it can’t have gotten far; the ships only came through a few minutes ago.”
Garner was glad the brass had made the alien dialogue required learning; he knew more now than he would have if he’d had to guess what the enemy was saying. He knew, for instance, that at least one other ship had been found in the area, and that the aliens knew it was a mock-up. What he didn’t know and needed to find out was exactly how many ships the Snappers had found, and whether or not they’d taken any prisoners—and if so, where had they taken them?
“Spread out,” said Red. “Let’s find this motherfucker.”
Garner didn’t actually know the alien had said “motherfucker”; the intel was spotty on slang. But it sure sounded like an insult. One thing he did know: the Turtles had started looking for him, and one of them was headed in his direction. Garner backed away from the dune’s crest, then ran for the rocks, once again hiding his trail. But once he hit the rocks, he could relax a bit; you couldn’t leave footprints on rocks.
He stayed low, weaving among the stones, taking care not to go in a straight path. When he had gone a few meters, he stopped behind a large outcropping and sneaked a look back. The alien that had gone up the dune he’d been hiding behind had reached the top and now stood surveying the area with binoculars, turning this way and that, its grey-blue uniform gleaming in the sunlight. Garner waited, doing his best to remain hidden while at the same time keeping an eye on the Snapper. After a minute, the alien spoke into its headset.
“Nothing in this direction, Captain. I’m headed back to the truck.”
It disappeared down the other side of the dune, and Garner breathed a sigh of relief. Soon he heard the truck start up and leave.
For now, at least, he was alone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On the alien planet
Sunlight hit Fault’s eyes, making them ache behind their closed lids. He blinked them open, squinting, and found golden light from an alien sun pouring down on his face from the hole in the ceiling. He stirred. The stunner had done something to his nerves, he thought, because he was stiff and sore all over; but he was glad he could move at last. He had no way of knowing how long he’d slept, but he suspected it had been a while, considering how cramped his muscles had gotten.
He sat up cautiously, ran his fingers through his hair. He’d thought the floor was made of densely-packed dirt, but he saw now that it was stone, just heavily layered with dirt. The walls were stone, too, and the ceiling, but the door was crafted of metal and had a small, barred window at the top. Fault clambered to his feet and wandered around the cell, searching for a way out, a weapon, anything that might help him. He ran his hands all along the dank, rough walls, feeling for hidden crevasses, loose rocks, whatever, but he found nothing.
He gazed up at the ceiling and the hole in its center with that terribly alien sun shining down. He thought he might be able to fit through the hole . . . but that was providing he could get to it. It sat too high for him to reach, even if he had something to use as a jumping-off point, which he didn’t—the room was disappointingly free of furniture, even a cot. The only way he was going to get up to the ceiling was if he could climb up to it, and the walls, though textured, didn’t offer much in the way of finger- or toe-holds.
That wasn’t going to stop him trying, however. He went to the door first, in case any of his captors liked to practice voyeurism, but the space beyond his cell lay dark and, from what he could see, empty. He tried the latch, just to be sure: locked, of course, from the outside.
So he went around the room again, searching for a section of wall with the most potential for grip. In the end, he chose a random section and gripped it as well as he could, placing his fingertips in the grout along a stone’s edge, jumping, and pushing off the wall with his feet to boost his efforts. It helped—some—but not enough; he fell back to the floor, skidding atop the dense layer of dirt and pebbles, no closer to freedom than he had been. He tried several more times, and they all turned out the same.
He slapped the door in frustration. “Hey! Hey, motherfuckers!” He grasped the bars and shook, but they remained stubbornly in place. “Hey!”
The only thing that answered him was a ghostly moan from a prisoner down the hall. Fault shuddered, wondering who that was and how long he’d been here. Probably since the Snappers had taken refugees from the Galapagos captive—which, in a way, he supposed was a good sign, because if one of the Galapagos’s people had ended up here, others could have. Like Ilana.
He paced for a while, agitated, then sprawled out on the floor, thinking to conserve his energy in case he needed it for an escape later. He hoped his captors would come get him soon, and take him to where Ilana was, or where any of the other prisoners were, so that they could plan an escape together; or, failing that, if the aliens could at least let something important slip, like what the key code was . . .
* * *
He must have dozed for a bit, because the sound of an electronic key woke him, and he leapt to his feet just as two Snappers in dark blue uniforms burst in and took him roughly by the arms. They each bore a pistol and carried a metal rod about two and a half feet long. He never got used to how alien the Turtles looked: tough-skinned and wrinkled, with impossibly round eyes and necks like giraffes’. One of this pair was grey, and the other was the color of a caramel candy—but there was nothing sweet about its
expression, or that of its companion; both set a hard gaze on Fault, as if blaming him for some unknown offense. So they had the ability to scowl, and they made good use of it, evidently aware he understood the expression—he got the distinct impression they wanted to scare him.
Which they did; the sheer fact of their alienness did that, along with the fact that he was in the hands of the enemy and had no idea as of yet what they wanted of him. Or what they might do to get it.
The Snappers’ hands wore gloves, but he could feel their oversized, three-digited hands clamping down on his biceps, cutting off the blood to his lower arms, and the idea of hands that inhuman touching him gave him the creeps. But he wasn’t about to show them his discomfort.
He twisted in the aliens’ grasp, but they proved the stronger, and kept a good hold on him. “Behave!” one of them said in their own language, but he pretended not to understand, and it shook the rod at him, clearly threatening.
They dragged Fault outside, where he blinked in the foreign sun after the dark corridors of whatever building they’d kept him in. Here the sand turned to loam and grass, or something like, and a short distance away, crops sprang up as green and leafy as anything on Osiris or any of the other Colonies, rows and rows of thick, spear-shaped leaves that people were digging up for the root vegetables growing underneath.
Fault took a second look. People. People were farming this land—human people, which meant they were from the Galapagos. They wore torn, ragged clothing that the Snappers must have supplied them, because it didn’t resemble anything Star Force soldiers would wear, and it fit poorly. They had all lost weight, from the look of them, and they were all filthy.
More Turtles in dark blue uniforms walked back and forth among the crops, guarding the prisoners. They all wore holsters loaded with pistols, and they each carried one of the long metal rods, which Fault surmised must be for beating captives who didn’t do as they were told.
One of the aliens gave Fault a shove, and he fell to the ground, his hands in the sandy soil and his Irish up. The Snapper told him in its strange, garbled tongue to join the other prisoners gathering the crops, using exaggerated motions to make him understand: pointing to the other captives, digging movements, pulling movements.
Fault gathered himself to a sitting position and glared up at the guard. “Fuck off.”
The Snapper’s scowl deepened, and it jabbed the rod into Fault’s chest; a brilliant white light flashed on the end of the rod, which buzzed and cracked, and then an electrical shock went through Fault’s body, sending a thrill of pain through him.
He bounced to his feet and sprang at the Turtle, but it struck him again, this time with a sharper bolt, one that sent pain lancing through him all the way to his fingertips. He fell to the dirt, writhing, and the alien once more ordered him to join the others in farming.
He couldn’t at first; all he could do was lie there with the dirt clinging to his face and the sun beating down on him, and try to breathe. The Snapper kicked at his back, cracking his ribs and telling him to get up, and what was expected of him, miming its words and prompting him again with a kick to the kidneys. An oof! of air escaped him, but at last he rose, albeit unsteadily, and faced the Snapper. It glared at him and punched him twice in rapid succession, once in the eye and once on his cheekbone. Red stars flashed in Fault’s field of vision, and he staggered back a step, cursing. He returned the alien’s foul look in spades, but he made a space for himself between prisoners where he could sit and pretend to work.
He began digging roots out of the earth, but his eyes were on the guards, making sure none of them noticed him whispering to the other captives. He scooted closer to the guy next to him, who ignored him completely, keeping his attention on the harvest as if that was all in the world he cared about. Fault wondered what the aliens had done to these people to make them so compliant, so nervous. “Hey,” Fault said. “You seen Ilana Carlsen around?” He figured the sooner he found Ilana, the sooner he, Garner, and the others could leave, and a better prepared team could come in and rescue the rest of these people.
The guy’s eyes flitted in Fault’s direction, then to the nearest guard. “I don’t know any Ilana. Leave me alone.”
“I’m from the Takarabune. We’re gonna get you outta here.”
“Leave me alone.” The guy moved pointedly away from him, so Fault approached the woman on the other side of him.
“Hey. I’m looking for Ilana Carlsen. You seen her?”
The woman glanced at him, then away again. “I don’t know her,” she said, but Fault could tell she was hiding something.
“You do know her. Is she alive? Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She gazed up at the guard, her face white with fear. Maybe it was the constant threat of the pain-inflicting rods that kept their tongues silent, but Fault suspected there was more to it than that. Some of these people weren’t trained for encounters with the enemy, but others were soldiers and did know how to handle themselves in this type of situation, at least in theory.
He supposed the reality of it might prove harsher than the theory, and at that thought, he left the woman alone for the time being, hoping he could maneuver nearer to someone a bit less afraid and gather some useful information.
Movement made him look up. Not far away, a pair of Snappers led a woman from a cell block to the crops and gestured for her to start working.
The woman was Jaden.
Fault sneaked as quickly as he could in her direction, keeping low and pausing to gather roots every once in a while, dropping them into waiting bins to make himself appear less suspicious. It took several minutes, because he had to be careful not to attract unwanted attention, but he reached her without incident.
When he got close enough to really look at her, he was dismayed to see how dishevelled and worn she was. He wondered if he looked the same.
“Fault!” she said.
“Jaden. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, they just stunned me with something, and it’s still wearing off. You?”
“Yeah.” He tugged at a plant. “You seen Garner or An?”
“No, I was hoping you had.”
He shook his head. “Been tryin’ to find out about Ilana, but everybody’s too scared to talk.”
“Keep trying. I’ll ask around about Garner and An.”
“Okay.” He had the sudden impulse to hug her, but he resisted, moving away from her instead, so they could maximize their efforts. All the while, he looked for weaknesses in the aliens’ system so that once they found out where the others were, they could make their escape.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On the alien planet
The alien sun beat down on Garner’s head and shoulders, making him sweat. He squinted in the too-bright daylight as he followed the truck’s tracks. He figured the truck would lead him eventually to where the Snappers lived, and possibly to where they kept their prisoners—which could mean finding An, Jaden, and Fault, as well as Ilana. From time to time he tried his radio, but got nothing except static. The desert remained unbearably still, producing a breeze only a couple of times in the hours he walked, and those breezes were miserably hot.
After a few hours of trudging in the sand, he stopped to drink a little of the water he had. It was warm but wonderfully wet; he had to resist the urge to pour some of it over his baking head.
Garner was thin but fit; however, walking in sand all day in boots not made for such activity took its toll; his legs grew sore and tired, and he had started to develop a serious blister on one ankle. He treated it as best he could with the First Aid Kit, but it still gave him trouble, and the ache in his neck and shoulders continued, a dull, endless reminder of the crash.
He stood up and stretched his weary muscles after treating his blister, then took another sip of water. A meter or so away, something dark and reptilian moved among a patch of weedy shrubs. He wiped sweat from his brow and eyes. He got out his binoculars and scanned the area, as h
e did from time to time, to keep aware of everything going on around him. This time he saw a second set of tracks, this one composed of more and bigger tires. The tracks diverted from the truck’s, heading towards a deep depression in the sand.
Garner had a feeling he knew what had left that depression.
When he reached the second set of tire marks and followed them, he saw other markings: footprints, the indications of something sizeable being moved. He knew it had to be one of the Copperhead mock-ups that had landed here, and judging by the other depressions in the sand, the aliens had towed the Copperhead back to their base—which, if he followed the tracks, led to the same place the truck was going.
He used the binoculars again, searching in the direction the two vehicles had gone. There, a few miles away, lay a sand-colored building with wing-like projections on either side of it, awnings of a sort that provided shade. At the moment the front of the building stood open.
And in the building sat eight Copperheads.
That hangar must be where the Turtles had taken the mock-ups. If Garner and the others could find those mock-ups, they could fly out of here, open up the wormhole, and contact the Takarabune.
And if the hangar was nearby, maybe it was a military base. Maybe the prisoners were there, too.
Garner began walking again.
* * *
A solitary bird soared overhead. Garner eyed it through the binoculars and decided it was a scavenger of some kind, because it had the kind of beak vultures had. He hoped that wasn’t an omen.
His water had run dry an hour ago, and he’d taken his pilot’s gloves off because of the heat, although now he reconsidered that wisdom, because his hands had suffered in the sun. He hadn’t seen any vegetation all afternoon, and was gratified to see small crops of scrub now, their dark green leaves turning red in the lowering sun. Greenery meant water nearby. He left the tire tracks in favor of the vegetation and started looking around. After a minute, he realized he could hear the trickle of a small stream, and he followed the sound to where the source had originated. The water was as clear as air, but he didn’t know what sort of pollutants might exist here, so he filled his canteen, dropped a water purification tablet in it, and waited. He left the canteen open to let the chlorine taste evaporate, and when the tablet had done its job, he took a long, deep drink.
Suicide Mission: Unity War Book 2 Page 9