“I do not believe that is advisable,” Marti said. Her Humanform automech stood off to one side near her main body and she spoke through one of her minimech.
“I agree. I don’t think it’s a smart idea,” Ethan said.
“You don’t?” Quinn said. “I mean they don’t make them in my size anyway, but why not for you normal-sized people?”
“The sink,” Kaycee said.
Ethan nodded. He was concentrating on the image from the ConDeck that they fed down to the main console screen in engineering. The view began to shift as Charleigh brought the ship up away from the surface on thrusters. They were using minimal power on all systems to keep from leaving a larger EM signature.
“Marti once I get us to 10,000 meters it’s your ball,” she said.
“Copy, standing by to transfer control.” Marti’s voice switched back over the comm.
“Thirty seconds,” Jackie announced.
“We’re at ten klicks, transferring control to Marti,” Nuko said.
“Handoff complete,” the AA acknowledged.
“The Magellan is LOS,” Jackie said. The bigger multicruiser was in high orbit and had dropped behind the planet. It would be there for just over a minute, so hopefully it couldn’t detect them when they went to full power.
“Twenty seconds,” Jackie said.
“Bring the coils up and stand by,” Marti ordered.
Carson checked to make sure the inertial charge capacitors were online. Nodding, he waved, deferring the operation to Rene.
“It’s all yours Marti,” Rene confirmed.
“Last chance to chicken out,” Carson said, glancing at Ethan like he expected him to call off the insanity.
The captain winked. “We’re good to go. Everybody grab onto something.” He knew it wasn’t likely that they’d even feel the jump, and if it didn’t go perfectly, they’d plow into the planet before they realized they were dead. So that made hanging on a ludicrous idea. But hanging on to an anchor point still felt better, however irrelevant it was.
“Ten seconds,” Jackie said. “The Argos is now LOS.”
They gave it a little extra time to make sure the lower ship wouldn’t see their photon boom when they dropped back to normal space on the edge of the atmosphere.
Despite his confidence in Marti, he held his breath as the chrono counted down the last seconds.
The screen blinked. The floor plating shuddered as a howling scream ripped through the ship. And then they were staring down at the surface of Tamilis Two through a fiery plasma of green and yellow.
“Altitude 137 kilometers. Delta-V to surface 5.1 kilometers per second and decelerating. Fifty-six seconds to the landing zone,” Marti announced.
“Now I understand what Jetaar said about you. Lady luck is surely your lover,” Carson said. His grin nearly split his face in two, but he looked like he was about to collapse.
“What do we see down there?” Ethan asked, focusing on the task at hand.
Ammo was still on the ConDeck and he expected that she was already scanning the LZ. “Not a damn thing,” she said, feeding the raw sensor data to the engineering screen. “It looks undisturbed, but there are no signs of human activity and no RF anywhere. It’s dead.”
“This feels uncomfortably familiar, doesn’t it?” he said, glancing at Kaycee and Angel. They’d both been down to Starlight and although the handler just nodded, Kaycee looked like she was staring at a ghost.
“It does feel like before,” Rene whispered.
“What do you mean?” Carson asked.
“It’s just like Starlight,” he said.
“You’re that Walker?”
“Doesn’t Jetaar tell you anything?” Angel snorted, but then winked when he shot her an evil eye.
“When we landed there, everything was dead. Just like this,” Ethan said.
They were skimming low over the terrain and banking to the east to head for the field they’d picked. As they turned, a small spaceport slid under them.
Several ships sat on the tarmac, looking undamaged.
“Why aren’t we landing there?” Carson asked.
“Too obvious,” he said.
Rene held up a hand. “Before we land at all, you might want to rethink that idea altogether. We were in shuttles before. The Jack Sparrow is a lot bigger. It might not be below the threshold.”
“Good point,” he said. “Charleigh, do not put the gear in the dirt.”
“Copy that. Are we aborting?”
“Negative,” he said. “We’re playing a hunch. Just get us close enough to jump from the ramp, but do not touch the ground under any circumstances.”
“Do you think that will be enough?” Angel asked.
“Unknown,” Marti answered. “In both cases when I contacted the sink field, I was in physical contact with the ground. However, that is not necessarily more than a circumstantial correlation.”
“Back up a second. What’s this threshold you’re talking about?” Carson asked.
“What we discovered last time, was that technology below a certain sophistication level seemed to be unaffected by the power sink that was holding everything dead. We don’t know what it was, but it didn’t affect the shuttles we took down. The problem is the power drain nearly destroyed Marti’s Gendyne body.”
“So, it’s not proportionate to power, but rather to the complexity of the hardware?” he asked.
“Or data speed,” Marti added. “A shuttle is relatively powerful but lacks an AA level data network.”
“Is it a self-targeting weapon of some kind?”
“We don’t even know for sure it’s a weapon,” Kaycee said.
“Just because it damn near ripped Marti’s head clear off, doesn’t mean it meant us any harm,” Angel said, delivering her opinion with enough sarcasm to make everybody flinch.
“It would be helpful if we could detect whatever is causing the effect. Preferably without blowing your head off again,” Ethan said. “Assuming it’s not a natural occurrence, then there’s got to be something doing it.”
“The most expedient solution is to send one of my minimech bodies with you and try to trigger the effect without risking anything else,” Marti said. “The last time we were not scanning for a source, so drawing it out of hiding will be useful.”
Carson shook his head. “You’re telling me you don’t know what triggers it, and we’re hanging here with our eggs out while you try to get your asses kidnapped by some kind of bad voodoo?”
“Pretty much,” Ethan admitted.
“Are we sure we’re safe?
“Not at all.” He shrugged.
“We’re over the LZ,” Charleigh said.
“Were we detected?”
“Not yet. But the Magellan will be over the horizon in a minute or less,” Ammo answered.
“We gained almost two full minutes of concealment through our position over the limb of the planet relative to their orbit, but we need to get you unloaded and us under the trees before they get into our sky,” the pilot said.
“Can you hang at two meters so we can jump?”
“Cando boss,” she said. “Ten seconds.”
“Good. Let’s do this,” he said, turning and heading back to the cargo bay. “Hold the deck. We won’t be long.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The blue-green grass made crunching sounds as they leapt down from the loading ramp at the back of the Jack Sparrow. Quinn and Angel hit the ground first and scrambled out of the way. Ethan watched and waited as they swept the area for potential trouble.
Angel signaled the all clear and he and Kaycee jumped down. Marti’s minimech dropped to the ground behind them, hitting the grass and rolling to its feet like a tiny chrome plated commando.
“We’re out. Go!” Ethan said. He pointed toward the nearest structures and they all trotted away as the ship climbed and pivoted toward the west. As soon as they’d gotten to a safe distance, Carleigh hit the mains, and the ship roared off over the buildings and out of sig
ht. The rolling thunder of its engines faded into the distance, leaving them alone and surrounded by a profound echoing stillness.
The field itself was an oddly shaped trapezoid of grass with open patches of dirt and strange markings. Two shade awnings stood behind a wall of metal mesh and they took shelter there. Kaycee pulled two hand scanners from her belt pouch and swept the field.
“No contaminants in the air,” she said, putting one of them back in a clip and hanging it where she’d be able to grab it fast if she needed. She focused on the other unit and began tapping commands into its screen and frowning.
“I am detecting no electromagnetic activity,” Marti said. Built for close work in tight confines, Marti’s minimech had little in the way of long-range sensors, but it could scan basic EM signals, and would be useful as a communication hub since it maintained a link to Marti.
“The Magellan is above the horizon,” Ammo announced. “We’ve got over an hour on the Argos though.”
“We just got under a ledge before they got back into the sky. We’re hanging on thrusters and have everything we can in standby mode,” Carleigh added. “That should make us hard to detect until you’re ready for extraction.”
“What about the Tahrat?” Ethan asked.
“It doesn’t seem to have noticed us,” Ammo said. “It’s far to the west over the main settlement and hasn’t moved.”
“Good. Stand by and we’ll let you know when we’re done. Hopefully, it will be long before the Argos is overhead,” he said.
“Where to, boss?” Angel said. “We’ll start losing daylight about that time too.”
“If our objective is to determine the source of the sink field, then I would recommend we find the most sophisticated facility within range,” Marti said. “On Starlight, we encountered the effect when we attempted to enter the spaceport, and then again at the hospital. Both facilities would have had advanced technological equipment.”
“If that’s our goal,” Ethan said. He was watching Kaycee running her scans. She looked frustrated. “A problem?”
“There’s definitely TU-142 in the environment,” she said. “I don’t know how it could have gotten here.”
“You said it doesn’t occur naturally.”
“It’s a synthetic. It has to be contamination.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Not at these levels,” she said. “Even if we happened to encounter a higher concentration, it takes months for the symptoms of TSS to manifest, and we know where we can get the meds to treat it.”
“According to the survey reports, Tamilis Two does not contain the necessary elemental components in the crust to synthesize TU-142,” Marti said.
“That means it has to have come from somewhere else,” Angel said.
“Is it from weapons fire, maybe?” Quinn asked.
“Unlikely. The amount of energy required to produce it would produce other evidence of that type of event,” Marti said.
“We can interpret the data after we get done. For now, we need to widen our field,” Ethan said. “Let’s get moving.”
Kaycee nodded. “Just one more minute.” She stepped around the mesh wall and walked out into the open. “I want to map the distribution of the TU-142 before we move out. There looks to be some kind of uneven layering of it.”
With a sigh, Quinn followed her out into the open, rotating to keep an eye on the buildings in the distance.
“Are we getting any life signs anywhere,” Ethan asked, glancing at Angel while he waited.
She’d pulled out a small scanner and looked at the screen before she shook her head. “Still nothing. I’m not even detecting any unusual heat. Only the ambient background.”
“At least that’s better than last time.”
“What, you don’t think fifty-five Centigrade is fun?” She winked as a sharp gust sliced through their coveralls.
Ethan turned into the breeze and realized snow covered the tops of the mountains in the distance. The wind’s teeth bit into his skin. Once the sun was down, it would get harsh fast.
Reaching out, he touched one of the metal supports for the mesh wall with his Urah Un. Nine degrees. His fingers tingled strangely, and he pulled his hand back and looked at his palm. Maybe it was the trace of TU-142?
Marti’s mini had walked past the terraced seating on the edge of the field and was staring off along the main thoroughfare that ran along the side of the field. “I believe that the tall building three hundred meters to the west, on the south side of the road, is likely to be technical processing. If it has automated manufacturing, that may be a prime target for me to encounter a sink field.”
Ethan followed it over to where it stood and kneeled to look it in the face. It felt like talking to a toddler. “Are you sure you want to do this? It will destroy your body.”
“I chose this unit for the landing party specifically to sacrifice it. It is the oldest of my minimech bodies and has a servomotor in the left manipulator hand that is pulling abnormally high current. The thumb digit is almost inoperative. I would say that it is in the process of failing and would need replacement soon, anyway. Therefore, it is a logical choice.”
“Suicide because of a broken thumb.” He sighed, realizing he was anthropomorphizing the little robot body because it looked like a child. It wasn’t even suicide since Marti was still safe in her new housing aboard the Sparrow.
He shook it off as Kaycee and Quinn joined them. “Anything interesting?”
“Maybe,” she said. “The TU-142 is concentrated in overlapping veins that appear to penetrate vertically into the surface.”
“Like walls?”
“Maybe. They all curve. Like rings… or craters.”
“Can you tell where they’re centered?
“It looks like there are several locations. I’d imagine if we had time to survey it, we might be able to find them. But with the limited range of these handheld sensors I don’t think there’s much we can do until we can dig into the data with a better computer.”
“Alright, then let’s move,” he said. “The longer we stand around, the more exposed I feel.”
“Have we picked out our first target?” Quinn asked.
“Marti says the big building on the left looks like a good place to start.”
“It looks industrial,” Angel said. “Didn’t you check out several industrial buildings on Starlight without running into the field?”
“Marti’s Gendyne body stayed outside while we went in,” Ethan said. “We know that the field didn’t affected our bodies. We might have run into it earlier and not noticed.”
She nodded, accepting that explanation as being as valid as any. “If we’re ready to roll, I’ll take point and Quinn can bring up the rear.” She unslung her heavy rifle and headed out, keeping to the side of the road, and rotating in circles as she progressed.
Ethan pulled out his hand scanner and unsnapped his holster but left his stunner in its place. The likelihood of needing it was slim, but the handler’s abundance of paranoia was infectious, and healthy.
Marti trundled off after her and Ethan stood for several seconds trying to shake the image of sending a child off to face the executioner. Another chill wind slashed at him and he shivered.
“Are you alright?” Kaycee asked, picking up on his discomfort.
He glanced at her and shrugged. “Something doesn’t feel right in this. I lost two of my crew last time and I can’t shake the feeling we’re walking into it again.”
“We’ve got our eyes open this time,” she said. “And the best scanners we can carry.”
Quinn stepped up behind him and pointed down the road with a jerk of his chin. “You’re up boss.”
He went ahead, pulling his stun pistol and glancing around before he took off. They kept an even spacing and spread out over a hundred meters as they moved along. Nothing around them made even the slightest sound, except the chill wind and the rustling of leaves.
Angel had reached an alleyway betwe
en two buildings on the north side of the road, when Marti’s body stopped. A sizzling crack and then a bright flash enveloped it as it shook in a violent spasm and collapsed forward onto the ground.
“Marti’s down!” Ethan yelled, charging forward toward the fallen minimech.
Angel popped back around the corner and dashed back to help. She slid to a stop as Ethan dropped down to examine the smoldering machine corpse. Scorch marks covered the entire front side of the body, and the faceplate had disintegrated. The edges of the hole where the optics had once been were still glowing.
“She’s been shot?” Angel asked. “That looks like an energy beam.”
“I don’t know,” he said, reaching out to roll it over and get a better look. Searing pain shot up one of his arms as he touched the body, and he lurched back and fell on his butt. Looking down at his hand, he watched his Urah Un let loose and curl up in his palm. The pain ended the instant it broke connection with his nervous system.
“Are you alright?” Kaycee asked, dropping down beside him. She was looking at his scorched hand piece as it twitched like it was dying.
He nodded, turning his attention back to Marti’s body. “Just don’t touch it with yours.”
“Looks like Marti found a trap,” Quinn said. He and Angel were both kneeling beside the corpse with scanners in their hands. “How did it burn you? It’s not that hot.” To prove the point, he reached out and touched it.
“I’ll explain that later,” Kaycee said without looking over at the handler. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Ethan nodded. “Stupid of me to not think about the fact that my Urah Un might pick up the after-effects of whatever happened.”
“I didn’t think about it either,” she said, flicking her wrist and sliding hers off as a precaution.
“Yah, I felt something strange earlier when I touched a support on the edge of the field. I should have known better.” He grabbed the twitching spider in his hand and dropped it into his pouch as he pushed himself up onto his knees.
His collarcomm chirped, and he realized that they’d lost their secure comm when Marti’s body went down. He tapped into it and cleared his throat. “We lost Marti’s minimech.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 100