“No. I won’t risk losing you.” Evelyn looked her in the eye. “You know my feelings. We either take the rover farther in—”
“In these conditions!” Cate interrupted. “Even with the lights on, I can’t see a damned thing. How am I supposed to drive through that?”
“Or,” Evelyn continued, “we assume the worst and back the rover slowly out of this valley. We can always come back when the mist clears, but if something has happened to Tessa and Siobhan, we might be in danger if we sit here.”
“I won’t leave them. I won’t.”
“Right. In that case, perhaps you’d take your place at the controls. Move us forward very slowly, and I’ll do my best to help.” She gestured to the front of the rover and raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Goddammit,” Cate muttered, but she marched to the driving seat and sat down, fastening her safety belt and running her eyes over the control panel.
“You’d better strap yourself in, Evelyn. And keep your eyes peeled. I remember seeing boulders all over the valley floor.”
Evelyn sat down next to her. “Of course.”
Cate sent the rover rolling forward, her eyes fixed on the curtain of white mist swirling across the windshield, squinting against the glare of their own spotlights reflected by the mist. A rock loomed from the fog, and she adjusted her course, her jaw clenched tight.
“You’re doing fine,” Evelyn said, her voice calm. “Keep your course steady. If they’re out there, they’ll hear us.”
“If? There is no if. They’re out there, and we’re going to find them. That’s all there is to it.”
Evelyn didn’t reply, and the dull drone of the motors filled the cabin, Cate’s nerves jangling with every rumble and crunch from the rover’s wheels.
“This is hopeless,” Cate began, but she stopped in mid-sentence when the cabin’s speakers crackled, a garbled murmur breaking through. A voice.
“Stop!” Evelyn snapped, and Cate brought the rover to a shuddering halt, its tires grinding into the soft soil. The two women stared at each other, anxiety etched into their brows, their eyes alight with uncertainty.
Evelyn held up her hand for silence. “Cut the motors.”
Cate flicked the switches on the control panel, and the background buzz of the motors died away. But though they both leaned forward, straining to hear, there was nothing from the comms. Not a sound.
“I need to move closer,” Cate whispered. “I’ll have to restart the motors.”
Evelyn frowned, but before she could answer, Siobhan’s voice broke over the intercom:
“…we see you…lights…”
“Siobhan,” Evelyn called out, “where are you?”
“…wait…Tessa got…she needs help.”
Evelyn locked eyes with Cate. “I’ll break out the first aid kit. Sounds like they’ve had trouble.”
Cate nodded then made to unfasten her safety belt, but Evelyn laid her hand on Cate’s arm.
“No, Cate, you stay here. As soon as they’re on board, start backing out slowly. Understand?”
Cate nodded, and Evelyn removed her own belt and hurried from her seat, bustling through to the back of the cabin.
Cate let out a long breath then leaned forward to peer out through the windshield, narrowing her eyes as if she could pierce the mist’s thick blanket by force of will. Was that something moving? Cate’s breath caught in her throat. Could it be them? Yes! A pair of dark shapes emerged from the mirk, resolving into Siobhan and Tessa, the taller, older woman leaning heavily on the younger. “They’re here!” Cate cried out. “I see them. Tessa’s limping. Maybe she fell and hurt her leg again.” She turned in her seat. “Evelyn, Tessa might need help to climb the steps. I should go out and—”
“No.” Evelyn didn’t raise her voice, but her tone was edged with unshakable authority. “We need you in the driver seat, Cate, and as soon as I give you the word, you must get us moving. Siobhan will get Tessa inside, and then, whatever has happened, we’ll deal with it. But it’s your job to get us out of here, Cate. I’m relying on you to get us home as fast as you can.”
CHAPTER 13
Base Camp
In rec room one, Lyndsey leaned her back against the wall and faced the man Alec had found. The man sat on a plastic chair, his back straight and his expression composed. In the doorway, Alec fidgeted, his rifle in his hands; a precaution which, in the circumstances, Lyndsey had agreed to.
“So, your name is Simon Parkins,” Lyndsey began. “And what did you do on your ship? What role did you have?”
“Reserve Navigation Assistant,” Simon said. “The Pharaon was my first posting in that rank. Before that…” he let his voice trail away. “It hardly seems to matter now. I used to think a lot about ranks and promotion and all that stuff. But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?”
He looked to Lyndsey as if needing her approval, and she offered him a sympathetic smile. “Simon, tell us what happened to your ship.”
“The Pharaon broke up. It was terrible. A few of us stayed on the bridge until the landers had separated, but in the end, we had to run for the escape pods. I tried to get the Captain to come with me, I almost dragged him off the bridge, but he wouldn’t come.” He looked down at the floor. “I did what I could.”
“How many of the crew made it to the pods?” Alec asked.
Simon looked up with a start. “I…I’m not sure. The blast…it all happened so fast. I heard messages. Some of the pods made it to the planet, but not all. Not all.”
Lyndsey frowned. “You heard messages?”
“Only at first,” Simon replied. “The pods could communicate, so I knew they’d entered the atmosphere, but then…then things went wrong. The comms died. No more messages.” He shook his head slowly, staring into the middle distance.
“You got lucky though,” Lyndsey prompted. “You landed here.”
“Lucky? I guess you could say that.” Simon looked her in the eye. “There were four in our pod, but the landing was rough. I knew enough about navigation to recognize a beacon when I saw it, and I managed to set the guidance system and lock onto the signal. The system brought us here, but our approach trajectory was all wrong. We headed for the surface at the wrong angle. I tried to correct our course. I used the retros, but there wasn’t enough time. When we landed, we hit hard. Too fast. Not everyone made it.”
“Just you?” Lyndsey asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Simon blurted. “There were two of us. Deborah and me. We were shaken up, but apart from a few bruises, we were okay. She worked out how to get inside the building. She was real smart.”
A heavy silence hung in the room. Lyndsey and Alec exchanged a look, then Lyndsey lowered her voice and said, “Simon, what happened to Deborah?”
“She died.” Simon took a shaky breath, and when he carried on speaking, his voice rose, growing more strident with every syllable. “She went outside. I begged her not to. We never went outside unless we could help it. Never. But she was strong…strong-willed. And she said she had to look at those…those damned green things. And they…they…” he put his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
Lyndsey stepped closer to Simon, and hesitantly, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe…” she began, but the rest of the sentence refused to follow. She looked to Alec for help, but his expression remained stony. “Simon, I know this has all been a shock,” she went on. “It must’ve been hard for you when we suddenly turned up after all this time, and you’ll need time to adjust. We’ll leave you in peace for a minute, then we’ll talk later. Is there anything I can get you?”
Simon shook his head without taking his hands from his face, and Lyndsey took this as her cue to leave the room. She walked out the door without looking back and marched swiftly along the corridor, heading to the central hub.
Alec followed her from the room, matching her pace. “Should I stay with him? Post a guard?”
“Send someone to stay in the corridor, but tell them to leave h
im alone for a while. He seems fragile.”
“Poor guy. Been on his own too long. It messes with your mind.”
“Yes, he’s had a hard time,” Lyndsey said, but already she was pushing Simon from her mind; she had plenty of other people to think about, some of them still suffering from their wounds. Once Kyrksen had gained control of the security systems on the base, they’d managed to dock the trucks with the hub’s entrance, maneuvering the trucks into position one at a time. Even so, getting everyone and their gear into the base had not been without difficulty, and moving the injured had been a harrowing experience all around. She could still picture Lara’s tortured expression when they’d lifted her from the bed, and it would be a long time before she’d forget the poor woman’s anguished cries. “Are all the crew inside yet?”
“Should be by now. Last time I checked, almost everyone had made it through.”
“Good. Everybody settling in okay?”
“Yeah. I sent a team to the galley to make us all something to eat, but most people are in the other rec room or fixing up the living quarters.” Alec paused. “Kyrksen is in the comms room, of course.”
Lyndsey crossed the hub, heading into the corridor that led to lab one. “In here. We need to talk.”
“Sure.” Alec followed her into the laboratory, and Lyndsey made sure the door was closed before she took a seat on the nearest stool. Alec remained standing, his arms folded. “Shoot.”
“First, I want you to make an inventory of essential supplies. Food, water, medical. While you do that, I’ll run through the critical systems: air filtration, water reclamation, lights, heat. We need to get the basics nailed down right away.”
“Got it. And by the way, Thaddeus has taken charge of the wounded. It’s not really his job, but since Lara got hurt, Thaddeus has stepped up to the plate.” Alec smiled. “I didn’t know he had it in him, but he has the bit between his teeth, and he’s doing a good job.”
Lyndsey nodded. “He’s a good man. Let him run with it, and I’ll look in on him later and see how he’s getting on. In the meantime, tell him that if there’s anything he needs, he just has to ask.”
“Will do.” Alec hesitated. “And how about you? Are you holding up all right?”
Lyndsey stared at him. “I’m exactly how I need to be—in control.”
“Sure, I didn’t mean…” He unfolded his arms and shifted his weight onto his back foot. “You know you have my support. This is going to be tough, but I’m here for you. That’s all.”
“I know.” Lyndsey let her expression soften just a little. “Thanks, Alec. You’re doing a fine job. We’ll catch up later and see how things are going.”
“Definitely.” Alec pursed his lips for a second, his mask of professionalism slipping. “Earlier, when we were with Simon, there was something I wanted to ask him. But the time wasn’t right.”
“What?”
“Something Andy said. I wasn’t sure at the time, but when we brought the trucks in, I took a good look around, and there’s no symbiont growth inside the perimeter fence.”
“I had other things on my mind, but you’re right.” Lyndsey narrowed her eyes. “Maybe Simon has been keeping the phase two growth down somehow.”
Alec shook his head. “He said he hardly ever goes outside. And even if he’d tried, I don’t see how he could’ve kept it clear. And there’s no symbiont out there. None.”
“No phase two, you mean,” Lyndsey said. “There must be a layer on the ground, you probably didn’t—”
“No,” Alec interrupted. He took a step closer to her. “I checked, Lyndsey. There’s no symbiont, period. Not a trace. There are plants growing in the compound just a few feet from the stage two symbiont outside. Something’s going on here, and I know Simon’s cut up and all, but we need to find out what he knows. If he’s found some way of beating the symbiont…”
“It would make a huge difference,” Lyndsey said. “You’re right. I’ll talk to him now.”
“Want me to come with you?”
“No. He might open up more if it’s just me. You get started on the inventory, I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Alec dipped his chin, then he let himself out the room, and Lyndsey heard his footsteps fading away. She headed for rec room one and found Simon sitting slumped on the same plastic chair and staring into space. He sat up a little straighter when she walked in, but his eyes were still glassy and distant.
“Feeling better?” Lyndsey asked, tilting her head to one side, an earnest warmth in her expression. “I know things have been difficult, Simon, but you’ve done well. You’ve pulled through, and now we’re here to help. Life will be easier from now on.”
“Do you think?” Simon gave her a wry smile. “Different maybe, but better? I don’t know.”
Lyndsey kept her tone neutral. “Listen, I hope this doesn’t seem insensitive, but I need to ask you about the symbiont.”
Simon blinked. “Are you talking about the green stuff? Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. I’m sure you’ve worked out that it forms a mat over the ground, usually very fast—”
“Tell me about it,” Simon cut in. “Damned stuff spreads like wildfire. When we first got here, it was really bad. If it hadn’t been for Deb, I reckon we would’ve been overrun years ago.” He sighed. “Oh boy, we had some arguments about it. She’d work all day and night trying to figure that stuff out. Skip meals. Go without sleep. How’re you going to get anywhere if you’re dead on your feet? That’s what I used to say to her. But she’d just laugh and say, And how are you going to keep breathing if that stuff grows over the air filters?”
He gazed fondly into the middle distance as if reliving the moment, and Lyndsey cleared her throat to remind him she was there. “Deborah must’ve been very smart. Whatever she did, it certainly seems to have worked.”
Simon looked up with a start. “She said you people spread that poisonous muck on purpose. She hacked into a terminal, read all about it. Is that right?”
Lyndsey maintained eye contact with him, trying to figure out what to say, but in the end, she settled for a firm nod. It was enough.
Simon let out a snort. “I didn’t want to hear it. I told her she’d got it wrong, but I should’ve known. I should’ve listened to her. Like you said, she was smart. She reckoned that stuff got on board the Pharaon somehow. That was what brought it down.”
“No,” Lyndsey said, “that’s not right.”
But Simon carried on as though he hadn’t heard her. “She said it was the only explanation for the way everything failed so suddenly. It ate through the plastic, got into the electronics and all that. I didn’t believe it at first, but I can see it all now. It brought the ship down, made the landers go out of control. So you…” He locked eyes with Lyndsey before carrying on. “You killed every man, woman, and child on that ship. They were innocent, but you and your kind…you didn’t care about that. You were just too goddamned greedy. What’s a few hundred lives to people like you?”
“That’s enough,” Lyndsey snapped. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but you’ve gone too far. I’m sorry your ship went down, but we had nothing to do with it. And you’re wrong about the landers.”
Simon’s lips wobbled. “They survived? But I heard a signal. They’d lost control.”
“That was just one of the two landers. It headed out over the ocean, but the other one touched down. They were lucky. They wound up on a range of hills—high ground where the symbiont hadn’t spread. They built a settlement. They’re up there now.”
“Oh my God! They made it! But…but it’s been five years.” Simon pinched the bridge of his nose. “If we’d known, we might’ve been able to do something. Deb would’ve figured out a way to get in touch.”
“I don’t think so. It’s too far. There’s no way you could’ve made it over there without a vehicle, and they couldn’t have known about you—their comms were too limited.” Lyndsey hesitated. “That’s changed now, though.
I left them a long-range set. You could speak to them if you like. There might be some of your friends up there.”
Simon stood shakily. “What are we waiting for? Let’s do it.”
“In a moment.” Lyndsey raised her eyebrow and waited until she had Simon’s full attention. “First, you have to tell me how you kept the symbiont from growing inside the compound.”
“The fence.”
“No. The fence is only there as a precaution. Personally, I thought it was unnecessary, but it was company policy, so the damned thing got built.” She paused, leaning closer to Simon, pointing her finger at his chest. “You’ll have to do better than that, Simon. It’s just a fence. Wire and poles, nothing more. So what did you do? Did you spray chemicals? Is that it?”
“What chemicals?”
“I don’t know. But you must have found something that worked.”
Simon stared at her. “I already told you. It’s the fence.” Lyndsey started to object, but Simon hurried on, speaking quickly. “Deb figured out how to wire up the fence to make a kind of…what’s the word? I’ve been on my own too long.”
Lyndsey watched him mashing his lips together, a scream of frustration building in her chest.
“A field!” Simon blurted. “An electromagnetic field. It stops the green stuff from feeding. It even works if the stuff gets past the fence. Stops it in its tracks. And good riddance!”
“That can’t be right. If she’d put a current through the fence, it would’ve earthed out. The charge would’ve dissipated. You couldn’t have made a field strong enough.”
“It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t work the first time, but Deb wouldn’t give up.” He nodded to himself, his eyes growing moist. “I remember when she got it though. She was so excited, grinning like the cat who got the cream.”
Lyndsey held her breath. This is nonsense, she thought. I know everything there is to know about the symbiont, and this doesn’t add up. She studied Simon’s expression. The man was telling the truth, at least, he sincerely believed what he was saying. But perhaps Deborah had lied to him, stringing him along with a fairy tale to make him think everything was under control, to keep him sane.
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