“That will depend on their activity level,” it said. “If they can conserve and not move vigorously, they may be able to continue until late afternoon tomorrow. I would anticipate none of them would last beyond thirty hours.”
“What happens then?” Quinn asked.
“If they can lie down flat and stay that way, they’re all in good enough shape to be alright,” Kaycee said. “On the other hand, if they’re forced to be active, then it will tear up their circulatory system. Blood will descend into their legs and their brain will get less and less oxygen as that happens. Over the course of a day or so they’ll get progressively worse.”
“Is it permanent?” he asked.
“Vaso-regulator drugs will restore circulatory pressure, but brain damage from oxygen deprivation could be irreversible. Fortunately, that’s one of the later stages.”
“How long would they have?”
“There’d be some damage within a few hours, but they might fight it off for a day or more. Especially Angel. She’s in the best shape of all of them.”
“Then I don’t think we have a choice but to try ourselves,” he said, glancing at Ammo who shrugged then nodded.
“With hand scanners and stunners, we should be able to get them back with a minimum amount of interference in the planet’s culture,” he said.
“We don’t have exosuits,” Kaycee said.
“I’m sure Parker won’t loan us any either,” Ammo added. “So, we’ll have to go naked.”
“Naked?” Quinn grinned. “I enjoy feeling wind on the skin, so I’m good with that.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “Quinn and I can handle a two-g endurance workout I’m sure. I used to train in a gravity tank when I played slamball in college.”
“That was years ago, and it’s not easy to get back that kind of condition without some hard work,” Kaycee said. The glare that launched in her direction would have vaporized her if she hadn’t been expecting it.
“Can you amp us up on those vaso-regulators? Preemptively?” Quinn asked ignoring their eye lock.
“They’re not intended for prophylactic use,” she said, leaning back and scratching her head while she thought it through. “I don’t have any in stock and it’ll take me several hours to synthesize enough.”
She stood up and walked in a slow circle around the table. “I should give you a supply to carry with you, so you don’t have problems, and I can load you up with four auto-syringe doses in case you can’t find them until after they’re having problems.”
She stopped and stared at them both. “You need to understand that you will have a maximum safe endurance of no more than thirty hours, and you’re going to feel all kinds of foobed for a few days when you get back. The longer you take down there, the worse it will be on your bodies. They don’t intend this class of drug for extended use.”
“But will it work?” he asked.
Kaycee nodded. “They’ll work to get you hotwired short term and through it… hopefully, with no lasting damage.”
He shrugged. “How long will it take to synthesize that much juice?”
“A minimum of eight hours,” she said, shaking her head. “I also need to see if I can come up with the specifications for the local inoculation compound that they give everybody. No point in sending you down there, only to let the local micro-flora incapacitate you.”
“Viroxycin Immunoxate 112-E,” Marti said. “I have already sent the specifications to the pharma-synthesizer.”
“Excellent,” she said, turning toward the MedBay to get started.
“That still puts us down there a day ahead of them,” Ammo said.
“That only leaves having to figure out how to make that part happen,” Quinn said. “Even an old base like this has to have a defense grid.”
“That’s easy,” Ammo said. “We push out and coast with the power off until we get far enough away to do a freefall entry. After that we can make a low level swoop back through the grass to the basecamp.”
“If you say so.” Quinn raised a very skeptical eyebrow in her direction. “You do know how to fly a shuttle don’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ethan sprawled flat on his back on the soft mossy grass, staring up at the heavens and watching the bright moons drift across the almost luminous vault of the sky. He’d cut off the power to all but the essential parts of his PSE, so the surrounding darkness was shot through with bright moonlight and deep shadows, and not the artificial green vision of his suit visor. It put him at a disadvantage against the Ut’arans, but it conserved what battery life he had left.
He and Angel had spent half the day packing Toby and so they both had to have burned more of their suit’s energy than the others, but he didn’t know. He’d asked Angel to take an assessment of their collective status so he could figure out what to do when the next suit failed, and they had to drag another doomed body through the jungle. It was futile and he knew it, but he refused to accept that they should just give up and accept their fate.
Fuck their we’ir sharrah.
Beside him, he heard footsteps in the dark. Shuffling and heavy. Probably one of the humans. A section of the stars eclipsed, and he recognized Angel’s silhouette.
“They should have gotten here by now,” she whispered as she crashed down on the grass beside him. She landed heavily, making it obvious that her suit was on minimum power mode as well.
“Maybe they got to him,” he said.
“Hopefully,” she said, her voice showing she didn’t expect that to be the truth.
“Where do we stand,” he asked.
She let out a slow hiss and flopped the rest of the way down onto her back beside him. “Nuko and Tash are alright,” she said. “Smaller suits pull less power. Nuko’s got almost fifty percent and Tash has forty-seven.”
He nodded, then realized she probably couldn’t see him. “They will make all day tomorrow then.”
“The rest of us probably not,” she said. “Sandi is clear dead. Even her liner is out of juice. If she can stand up at all in the morning, I’ll be surprised. I think she walked in on muscle.”
“She’s only wearing the top half of a suit, why’d she burn so much?”
“A PSE liner has a small emergency battery. The real power supply is in the exoshell. She was still suiting up when the Rockpile went dark, and her main pack hadn’t connected yet. She’s been running the arms and neck portions of the shell on the reserve battery all day.”
“They’re not needed to walk, so why didn’t she cut them off?”
“She said she didn’t know you could,” she said. “Honestly, I think she’s just given up.”
It’s hard not to, he thought, but he held his tongue. The silence hung for several seconds, broken only by the sound of something moving in the trees beyond their glowing rock ring.
“Rene is going to be in trouble though,” she said, rolling to face him with a low grunt. “He’s got less than ten percent because of that damn problem with his actuator micro-motors. He’s even powered down his liner tonight, and he’ll conserve everything he can, but he’s not got three hours left, best odds.”
“What if he’s only running the liner?
“And we carry him? Then we’re all dead by midafternoon,”
“Not all of us,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’m at thirty-eight,” she said. “I’ve been cutting my exoshell off and muscling it until I can’t walk, then I power it up until I recover. It kicked my ass today, but I think I might make it the whole day.”
“I should try that tomorrow,” he said.
“How are you doing?”
“Just under thirty.” He lied. He was just under twenty, but with Angel’s idea of gravity sprinting, he might make most of the day before he was dead.
“Company,” Angel whispered, tapping his arm, and pushing his face to the side to make sure he was looking in the direction she was pointing. Another silhouette broke the arc of the sky. Female, with a waka
t close behind.
“Tuula Mir’ah?” he guessed before he activated his night vision and confirmed her identity. Powering up his suit, he sat up.
“Moktoh, nerada cha’toh nee.”
“Mir’ah cha’da nee, ak-tok click-tick, tap-tap clickak tic, click!” The wakat language sounded completely different, but even Ethan could tell it was unhappy with the Tuula.
She growled, snapping her tongue in a series of slapping sounds. The wakat hissed and swayed its body back and forth.
Grunting, she swept the wakat away with a gesture. It made another series of rapid fire sputtering sounds as it danced back and sulked off to sit in the distance.
“Moktoh not good on Marat akUt’ar,” she said as she knelt just outside the rope ring that pretended to be their prison cell.
“Moktoh is your wakat?”
“Moktoh is big love wakat boy,” she said. “Mir’ah need knowing of Marat. I speak not big words. I know small but look to your mind.”
“You want to know something?”
She jerked her head up and down.
Nodding is obviously not a universal gesture.
“Kep’tan Woh’kah is not tribe of Marat akUtar?” she asked.
“Careful,” Angel whispered. She rolled up into a sitting position behind him.
“We are Marat akUt’ar,” he said. “Not the same tribe as the other Shiny Man.”
She sat in silence for several seconds. Mir’ah akCha’nee. Ekan akAr’ah. All AkUt’ar?”
“Yes. All akUt’ar. Marat ak… Earth,” he said.
“Er’tah?” She wobbled her body back and forth. “Kep’tan Woh’kah akEr’tah. Marat akEr’tah? Yes?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
She jerked her head up and down. “Mir’ah not good to be in utel akEr’tah.” She looked down at the ground and swayed back and forth.
“Utel?”
She put a hand on the ground beside her left knee, and then she put it on the ground beside her right knee. Moving it halfway back to where it was originally, she thumped the ground. “Utel!”
“Guessing games with an alien.” He sighed.
“It’s not good to be in the middle,” Nuko supplied. She’d crawled up with her suit off and was on her hands and knees beside him.
“Shiny man tribes in big fight. Yes?” she asked. “Mir’ah no good utel… middle?”
“She learns language fast,” Tash said, from where she lay apparently trying to conserve power since her suit was dark and she was struggling to get enough air into her lungs.
“She thinks we’re at war with the other shiny man, and she doesn’t want to be in the middle,” he said, glancing over at her.
“Where would she get the idea we were at war?” she asked
“Someone told her as much?” Angel suggested.
“Yes. Marat akUt’ar… akEr’tah… speak to Tuula Mir’ah. Words say do we’ir sharrah for Kep’tan Woh’kah.”
“Why does it sound like the shiny man doesn’t like me?”
“Maybe because he told her to feed you to the jungle,” the handler said.
“Mir’ah no hear words of Marat akUt’ar,” she said, jerking her head to nod. “At’ah’keet Kep’tan Woh’kah go akCha’nee.”
“Of the Cha’nee? She is taking you to the Cha’nee tribe for something,” Tash said.
“Kep’tan Woh’kah go Cha’nee make Mir’ah big tuula Ut’ar,” she said.
“Tuula is queen isn’t it?” Nuko asked, glancing at Tash to get a confirmation. She exploded into a belly laugh that startled Mir’ah clear back onto her butt.
“Boss, she’s taking you home so you can make her the queen of all Ut’ar,” she said. “I hope you ate your vitamins lover boy.”
“Wait,” he said, failing to see why she thought this was funny. “Can we go back to the part where some other guy in a PSE told her to kill me?”
“It might amount to the same thing in this gravity,” Angel said, trying hard not to laugh, too.
“I’m serious. Why does some other human want us dead?” he asked.
“And why is she willing to stand up to him and keep us alive?” Nuko added.
“Mir’ah akCha’nee tribe not all see Marat akUt’ar,” she said. “No see keet. Kep’tan Woh’kah make see big keet. Make Mir’ah Tuula Ut’ar.”
“Truth,” Tash supplied. “See the big truth.”
Turning her suit on, she rolled up to join them. “That makes sense. She needs to take you to her people to show you off as a trophy. To prove the shiny man exists, so they will believe and follow her.”
“How far is it to her village?”
“A long day-walk for them,” she said. “At the rate we’re moving, two more.”
“We’ll all be dead before then,” he said.
“Kep’tan Woh’kah no dead,” she said. “Al’mor?”
“Al’mor?”
“Al’mor,” she repeated, putting her fingers in her mouth. “Al’mor?”
“Eat!” he said. “We cannot eat Ut’ar food.”
She looked down and swayed side to side again. “Marat akEr’tah must e’eet, yes.” She waved her hand at the other humans lying on the ground. “Marat is small. I no mor’et we’ir sharrah at dawn.”
“Their shine is small. I no… something… in the morning?” He glanced at Tash and shrugged.
“Kill and give the body to the jungle,” she suggested.
“You don’t want to kill the weak ones?” he asked, looking back at Mir’ah.
She nodded in her strange jerking way. “Yes. I no mor’et… kill… marat akEr’tah. Is big good yes?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ammo did know how to fly a shuttle. Her plan was risky, but if no one was looking out a window on the station, they’d be far enough away before they powered up the main systems that Watchtower’s automated sensors might miss them. She launched them out of the Olympus Dawn’s hangar deck with a single burst of the main engine and then cut all power inside the shuttle. They coasted for several minutes, covering several hundred klick in freefall before she started applying gentle pulses with the manual steering thrusters to slow them enough that the planet would haul them down.
Apparently, it worked, because when they hit the atmosphere like a meteor with no sign of pursuit, she finally started flying. Before that, they were a rock. An extremely fast, extremely hot rock, plummeting through the atmosphere barely this side of hell’s incinerator.
By the time she pulled them around to a hard landing just outside the Rockpile, Quinn was more than a little green.
“Let’s make feet,” she said, pushing back from the console and laughing when she looked over at his sweat soaked face. The whites showed all the way around the edge of his eyes. “Or maybe you need to sit a second?”
“Yah,” he said. His voice came out as a hoarse squeak that made her laugh.
“The ride wasn’t that bad was it?”
“Nope,” he whispered, clearing his throat. “It’s probably the drugs.”
“Your first time doing a ballistic reentry isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Just breathe and you’ll find your legs in a second.” She heaved herself up and squeezed his shoulder as she headed to the back of the shuttle.
“It’s more my stomach I’d like to find first,” he said, grunting as he hauled himself up to a standing position.
Once they’d gotten deep into the atmosphere, she’d turned the gravity plating off so they were already at full planetary gravity. It wasn’t as bad as she remembered, but they weren’t physically active yet, so it would get worse.
She started pulling out their gear. They’d packed light since they didn’t want to be carrying any weight they didn’t have to, but everything felt awkward as she swung their bags up onto the rear passenger seat and started going through them to check it all once more.
“I do not know if there are Ut’arans in the basecamp, but it is possible,” Marti said over the shuttle’s internal comm
.
“We can’t afford the time to do much of a recon here,” she said. “We’ll get in and out as quick as we can and get your body back to the shuttle.”
“If my automech’s internal AA system realized that escape was impossible, it should have gone into standby mode to wait for retrieval. If so, it will have adequate charge to assist.”
“We’ll get you out of there one way or another,” Quinn said, scooping his bag up as he opened the door. “She’s right though, we need to be moving. They’ve got a full day lead on us.”
Ammo stepped up beside him. The sun was just rising to color the sky, but it was still too dark to see well.
Snagging a handbeam out of his kit, he snapped it on and scanned the area. They’d both studied the diagrams of the Rockpile that Marti had created for them, so they knew where the entrance was, but it was still hard to pick out the cleft in the rock wall from a distance. “I think that’s it,” he said, holding his beam focused on a slit. “It looks like there are tracks in the grass around it.”
She nodded, pushing out of the shuttle and dropping heavily down onto the ground a step in front of him. Tapping into her collar comm she added, “Lock the doors and keep an eye on the shuttle in case something comes out of the trees.”
“You need to proceed quickly,” Marti said. “There are several nocturnal predators that will find your presence interesting.”
They trotted across the open ground and into the narrow crack that concealed the door. They didn’t know where the Ut’arans had breached the basecamp, so they brought a pry bar from the shuttle, but when they got to the back of the slot where the opening was, it looked like a small explosion had blown it outward.
“Holy frak,” Ammo whispered. “They did this with bare hands?”
“They do have rudimentary tools,” Marti said.
“The metal of the inner door is shredded and twisted, and the stone that covered it is pulverized,” Quinn said.
“They are also substantially stronger than humans,” it said.
She pulled out her hand scanner to sweep the entry room and nodded. All clear.
Setting his back against the far wall, Quinn used a foot to push one of the larger shards out of the way so they could get inside. The metal groaned as he heaved against it, and he had to strain to make it bend.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 53