Dawn of Procyon (19 page)

Chapter 37

PSD 29-213: 1500 hours

Cait was still thinking about Landry when she returned to the workshop that afternoon. As she passed Dodge’s office, there was the sound of something crashing inside, and a moment later Dodge threw the door open and glared out at her.

“Underwood, where have you been all this time?”

She gestured helplessly. “The breach, remember? Then I was out taking care of all that stuff about Landry—”

“That was supposed to take an hour, an hour and a half,
tops!
” he yelled, spittle flying from his lips. “And here we are, late afternoon, and you finally come shambling back.”

“This whole thing with Landry has gotten really complicated. I’ve been walking all over the place. Outpost Control, the Cross—”

“The
Cross?
What exactly did that involve? Chugging moonshine at Dive again with your buddy Shillington?”

“No, Landry’s next of kin—”

“I don’t give a crap about your excuses.” He thrust an omni-device at her. “We’ve had three crits lodged this morning from the UEM that have to be resolved by tomorrow. Get someone on it!”

“All right, all right,” she said. “Don’t–”

“And after that, I want a full review of every new work request that came in today, and a report forwarded to me before you go home. I don’t want any more work falling through the cracks. Got it?”

Without waiting for a response, he stalked back inside his office and slammed the door, and Cait was left on her own again in the corridor. She stood there staring at the frosted glass door, then headed over to the workshop.

Inside, the other Optechs were chatting amongst themselves and sipping coffee in what looked to be an extended afternoon break. As Cait appeared, they managed to look suitably sheepish, slipping back to their tasks in various parts of the workshop. Cait ignored them, signaling curtly to Pasternak as she went to collect her tools.

“
You
. With me,” she said. “Get your gear.”

“Sure thing, Supe,” Pasternak said. “Where you been all afternoon?”

“Don’t ask.” She slammed a wrench into her kit, and the sound reverberated loudly across the workshop.

She regretted her lack of control immediately. All eyes turned toward her.

“That good, huh?” Pasternak said.

She shook her head dismally. “Let’s just go.”

At the rear of the workshop, Cait thumbed the swipe on the heavy doors and waited until they had risen far enough for her to stoop under, then she went through. The conduit they found themselves in served as a link between the workshop and the UEM depot, a channel through which vehicles could be transferred when the need arose. The walk was only a minute or two through to the other side, but Cait couldn’t wait for it to be over.

She wanted to get her mind back on fixing things. She didn’t want to think about Fraxa sitting in the Infirmary, afraid. She didn’t want to think about Landry, or the implications of what she had discovered about him today. It was he, as much as Lionel Dodge, who was to blame for her foul mood.

Why did Landry have to disappear and leave such a mess behind him? It was almost as if he’d intentionally done it just to ruin her day, she thought. That long sought after promotion had suddenly turned into a poisoned chalice as she struggled with the moral implications of what she was doing.

Just do your job
, she told herself.
Forget everything else.

At the far end of the conduit, a Marine stood guard over the entrance. He watched as the two of them registered their thumbprints. Satisfied, he allowed them through. They entered the expanse of the military hangar, where fighters and ground support vehicles were arranged at one end and dropships at the other. The place was a hive of activity, with Marines making last-minute adjustments to their gear, arguing over logistics, and hauling supplies in crates. One of them spotted the two newcomers and came jogging over toward them.

“Cait, Pasternak,” he said. “Where have you two been?”

“Afternoon to you, too, Corporal Bates,” Cait said.

“Landry normally has someone assigned a lot quicker than this,” Bates said. “What’s he doing, cataloguing his toothbrush collection or something?”

“No, he’s dead,” Cait said flatly.

The corporal began to laugh, then choked it back upon seeing their deadpan expressions. “Are you for real?”

“What do you need us to do, Bates?” Cait said.

“Uh, right.” He pointed across the hangar. “Three dropships failed their diags this morning. My guys are tied up right now, do you think you could look at them?”

“Yeah, we can do that,” Cait said.

“Numbers thirteen, seventeen, and twenty-one.”

“We’re on it.”

“I’ve got more, if you’ve got the time,” Bates said. “But those are the crits.”

“I think that should keep us busy,” Cait said. “I’ll check in with you again when we’re done.”

The two Optechs made their way across the hangar, careful to stay out of the way of the Marines. This wasn’t the first time Cait had been called upon to work on UEM gear, and she knew better than to get in their way. The UEM had their own techs, but at crucial times they also possessed the authority to bring civilian resources under their command. The days before a Marine withdrawal from the planet definitely qualified as such an occasion, so it was no real surprise that they’d been called for.

“That thing with Landry,” Pasternak said. “I heard that Gus was out there with him.”

“The pilot? Yeah. You know him?”

“Sure. Had a few drinks with him at Dive now and again. Good pilot, too,” Pasternak said wistfully. “He could land a Seagull like dropping you on a feather mattress. Smooth as a baby’s butt. You know how some pilots make you feel like you’re in a tin can that’s rolling out of control down a hill?”

“You mean like Samson? I feel like I need a chiro appointment every time I go out with that guy.”

“Exactly. It’s a shame that Gus got mixed up in that mess. He didn’t deserve it. I think some of the other guys are meeting up tomorrow to have a few brews for him.” Something caught his eye, and Pasternak gave a wave of his hand, spotting dropship thirteen. “Over there,” he said.

Cait nodded. The dropships were Thunderbolt models, tall, white, and cylindrical with tapered noses pointed to the ceiling. A silver lightning bolt was etched vertically on the fuselages. The lower sections of their hulls were blackened from multiple reentry drops through the atmosphere, but apart from the unsightliness of the markings, that wasn’t necessarily a problem. Thunderbolts were rated to make close to a thousand drops, given the proper care and maintenance, and most of them hadn’t even done a tenth of that.

However, it wasn’t the hulls that required the most work, she recalled. More often than not it was the electronics on this particular model that gave out. The forces exerted on the craft as they plummeted through the atmosphere caused a great deal of vibration, and this tended to play havoc with the internal fittings.

“Fire up the diags and let’s see what spits out,” she said as they reached it.

Pasternak did as she told him, clipping his omni-device into the diagnostics panel inside the doorway, and then they waited for the system to step through the procedure.

As she stood there waiting, Cait couldn’t help but think of Fraxa again. Of Landry. She clenched her jaw as she stared out over the hangar, thinking about the choices she had made in regard to the two of them that day. She wondered if she’d done the right thing, if there was some other path she should have taken. Something kept nagging at her, interrupting her train of thought, making it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand. Either she—

“It’s just a bad day,” Pasternak said. She glanced up and saw him regarding her from the door of the Thunderbolt.

“I know that.”

“You’ll feel better tomorrow. Believe me.”

“Yeah. I know.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Sometimes I wonder why I came all the way out here, Nak.”

“The same reason we all did. The
cash
.”

“I don’t know. Not really. For me, it was more about getting under my dad’s skin. Coming out here was basically the last thing he’d have wanted me to do.” She shrugged. “So I did it.”

“You can’t let yourself get weighed down by that stuff, man. It’ll eat you up.”

“I know, but sometimes I can’t help it.”

“Think of it this way,” Pasternak said. “We’re at war with a hostile species that seems to have limitless resources and no weaknesses. Earth could be reduced to nothing more than a
cinder
tomorrow, and the day after that, the same thing could happen to us.”

“Are you trying to cheer me up here, or what?”

“I’m saying that life is too short to get caught up in the negatives. Be happy. When you leave here tonight, go and do something fun. Get wasted. Have a complete
bender
. Forget about Dodge, or whatever it is that’s eating you up. We’re out here to enjoy ourselves. That’s my motto. Let somebody else do the worrying. You could be dead tomorrow, so have fun today.”

She smiled wearily. “You should be a motivational speaker, Pasternak.”

“Y’know, we still haven’t had a rematch from that night at Dive a couple of months back.”

“Oh, no. Not the schnapps.”

“So you
do
remember!

“I remember you were cheating your butt off. You kept emptying your shot glass on the floor when I wasn’t watching.”

“But you still won! You still drank me under the table. That was the amazing part of it.”

“No, the amazing part was when you passed out with the shot glass still in your mouth.”

Pasternak rubbed at his jaw, wincing. “Hey, don’t remind me. I knocked a tooth right out—”

Something beeped, and Pasternak glanced down at his omni-device.

“What’s it say?” Cait said.

“Knew it. Failure in the FPROM. This stuff is like clockwork.”

“Well, at least it’s an easy one. Get to work on the housing, and I’ll find a replacement.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

“And Pasternak?” she said. He turned back to her expectantly, and she smiled. “I’ll take you up on that rematch.”

Chapter 38

PSD 29-213: 1710 hours

The ropey black tubes in the walls and the roof seemed to throb, their membrane-like exteriors writhing like snakes, Landry thought. He once again had the impression that he was inside a living thing; that this was not just some subterranean passageway, but the innards of some great slumbering creature buried beneath the soil. He was inside a great artery, a conduit that led to the heart of the beast, and every minute he sat there drew him closer to his demise.

A part of him knew that his imagination was running away with him, that he was dreaming up horrific scenarios that couldn’t possibly be true, but another part seemed to tell him the opposite. He felt there was something alive about this place. Perhaps it was the organic nature of the alien technology that made him believe as much, but somehow he believed it to be true. This
was
a living thing, just something so strange that he couldn’t hope to describe the nature of it.

His suit was getting hotter, and there was still nothing from HAIRI. The OXEE had still not come back online. Landry wondered why he was even bothering to stay there. Surely he would be better off coming up with another plan.

The problem is, there
are
no other plans. This is it.

You’re not leaving here
, a voice told him.
You’re going to die down here.

He tried to get up but found that strength had fled him.

Perhaps this was the end, he thought. This was as far as he was going to go.

He sat up, pushed up against the wall behind him. Stared at the mist still falling around him.

Landry wondered when it was that his life had gone wrong. When was it that he had taken the first step toward this lowly demise? First, the journey to Proc-One and his joyless existence toiling away in the workshop. The crash, his exile in the wasteland. And now lost and alone and facing certain death in this utterly alien, terrifying hole in the ground.

When had his life gone off the rails?

He knew. He knew
exactly
when it had happened.

And suddenly he was there.

He stood in the little white room at the Lifeblood Fertility Clinic. The doctor’s office. He stared at a blank patch of wall because he couldn’t stand to look at the posters that adorned the majority of the space: cheery collections of images and meaningless slogans that had been dreamed up by creative types in advertising firms, designed to elicit the desired emotions from the prospective parents who came here.

But they failed to provoke anything within Landry, apart from perhaps an old sort of weariness. He had grown tired of looking at this stuff, tired of waiting and hoping and ending up with nothing.

He had grown tired of all of it.

“Mr. Stanton, sorry I’m late.” Landry turned to see Dr. Daley entering the room. He crossed quickly to his chair and sat down behind his desk, then indicated for Landry to take a seat opposite him. “Please, sit down.”

Landry nodded and crossed slowly to the chair, lowering himself into it almost unwillingly.

He hadn’t wanted to return here.

“Is there something I can get you?” Dr. Daley said. “Pieter on the front desk makes a mean cappuccino.”

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

“All right. Good, then. Let’s get on with things, shall we?” He flicked through a few screens on the display panel before him, then swiveled it so that Landry could see. “I’ve got your records right here. Let’s take a look.” He scrolled through several items. “Ah, yes. I remember. We have a beautiful five day blastocyst in storage for you. A fine specimen. Over ninety percent probability of being a boy, our lab says. From my recollection, we were awaiting treatment for your partner, Ms. Cooney. Has there been—?”

“She died. Last week. The funeral was this morning. I just came from there.”

“Oh dear, I’m very sorry. Please accept my condolences.”

“Sure.”

“I must apologize. We should have been sent an update on her condition to add to her records, but I can’t see any sign of it here.”

“That’s okay.”

“The Medi-base system hasn’t ever been the same since the war started. Things get missed—”

“Doctor, if it’s all right with you, I’d just like to get this over with.”

“Of course, of course. This must be a trying time for you. We can reschedule for next week or next month, if you’d prefer.”

“No. Let’s do it now.”

“Very well. Let’s see here.” Dr. Daley returned his attention to the screen. “There are any number of options—”

“Options?” Landry said, more heatedly than he’d intended. “What options
are
there? Freida is dead. How can there be options?”

“What were Ms. Cooney’s wishes in regard to the blastocyst?”

“We didn’t talk about it much. Not after she got sick.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Freida had tried to bring up the topic of the embryo numerous times, but Landry had always shut her down.

We’ll talk about that when you’re better
, Landry had always said.
There’s no point talking about it now. Not yet.

They had left it too late. Whatever she’d wanted to tell him had gone with her to the grave.

“Well, in that case, the decision will be yours alone, Mr. Stanton,” Dr. Daley said. “Fortunately, with a healthy specimen, we have many avenues to pursue. The advancements in a-womb technology in recent years have really created a whole new world of opportunity for people such as yourself.”

“A-
what?
”

“A-wombs. Artificial wombs.”

“Oh,” Landry said disdainfully. “Those robot things.”

Dr. Daley tapped on the screen and a video began to play—a flashy advertisement that depicted a row of the contraptions containing human fetuses in various stages of growth behind the translucent skins of the mechanisms.

“This technology is not something to be dismissed lightly, Mr. Stanton. Recent studies have shown that the chance of a successful pregnancy actually
increases
when a-wombs are used in preference to natural births. It’s all in the monitoring, you see. The a-womb is able to detect even the slightest change in the condition of the embryo, and it adjusts the environment accordingly—”

Landry waved dismissively at him. “I don’t really care about that.”

“Many women are choosing a-wombs now so that their careers suffer fewer disruptions,” Dr. Daley went on enthusiastically. “Female Marines are even placing their embryos into a-wombs before going on tour. When they return a year later, the child is already—”

“Just
stop
,” Landry all but shouted. “I don’t believe in this stuff.”

Dr. Daley stared at him, wide-eyed. “I do apologize, Mr. Stanton.”

In truth, Landry had nothing against the technology. Plenty of people he knew had used systems such as this a-womb tech, and the results were excellent. The children were healthy. His outburst was more due to the fact that he didn’t want to hear what the doctor had to say. He had only come to formalize arrangements that he’d already decided upon.

What’s the point of bringing a life into the world when no one cares anymore? What is one life even worth?

“I’m leaving Earth,” he said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “I’ve signed up to work in one of the outposts, and I’m not coming back. Ever.”

“I see. Well, that does make things difficult.”

“Yes. So, I won’t be proceeding with any a-wombs or anything else. I just came to fill in the paperwork to end all of this.”

Dr. Daley gave him a direct look. “Are you asking me to terminate the embryo, Mr. Stanton?”

Landry looked away from the doctor’s gaze and leaned back in his chair, sighing. He wanted to say yes. That was what he’d come here to do, after all. But when he thought of all the time and energy, the long years of time he and Freida had spent trying to bring this child into the world, he wasn’t sure he could do it. He wasn’t sure he could give the command to destroy it.

And he knew, without any doubt, that Freida would disapprove of him doing that. She would never have forgiven him.

“What other options are there?” he asked finally.

“You could donate it. There are always those who are unable to conceive their own child who would gladly take it.”

Landry thought of their child walking the Earth with different parents, and that didn’t sit well with him. “I don’t think so.”

“Or you could do nothing.”

“Huh?”

“Do nothing. Leave the embryo in stasis. With current cryotechnology, it can last for five, maybe even ten years.” He shrugged. “Maybe one day you’ll change your mind about coming back.”

Landry knew that he would not be coming back, but this seemed like a good compromise. He wouldn’t be forced to live with the guilt of terminating the embryo this way.

He would be taking the coward’s way out. He knew that, but at this point it seemed to be the best option.

“Okay. I’m happy to approve that. What do I need to do?”

The memory faded, and he was suddenly back in the Argoni hive, far beneath the surface of Proc-One. His suit was stifling, his visor fogged. He could barely see the misting precipitation at all now.

He thought again of that day at the clinic, when he’d decided to turn his back on the life he’d once known. The day that he’d decided to flee from it all.

If he could turn back time, would he still make the same decision?

Maybe he would. Maybe there was no other choice he could have made.

He sat there, waiting to die, and suddenly heard a voice in the darkness.