Dawn of Procyon (21 page)

Chapter 41

PSD 29-213: 1733 hours

“A nursery? What do you mean by this statement, Landry?” HAIRI said.

“There’s a room full of plants here, attached to the walls. I think these tubes must be . . . some sort of irrigation system? The plants are growing
out
of them.”

“What kind of plants?”

“Nothing I’ve ever seen before. Definitely not from Earth.”

“How many?”

“At least a hundred, just in this one cavern.” He looked around again. “Enough to feed a whole army.”

“Do you think that might be the purpose of this place?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s like you said, an experiment. They’re figuring out how to grow their plants in an Earth-like environment. Practice for when they take over Earth.”

“But once again, the question remains—why do it here? Why not somewhere closer to their home?”

Landry didn’t answer. He reached out and put his hand around the stalk of the nearest plant. There was the slightest amount of give in its trunk, like a ripe banana. He drew his hand down sharply, and the entire plant snapped off at the base.

A trickle of clouded liquid spilled onto the floor, both from the plant and from the spot on the black tube where it had broken off. Landry leaned closer to investigate.

“
Ohhh!
” he exclaimed after a moment.

“What is it?”

“This juice smells amazing. Sweet, like a mango or something.” Landry was suddenly reminded of how thirsty, and how
hungry
he was. He hadn’t eaten in two days. His mouth began to water.

“I have to try this.”

“That is not advisable. Alien plant life could quite possibly be harmful when consumed by humans. It may be poison.”

“Okay, I’ll just take it to the nearest lab for analysis first, huh?”

“That is an excellent idea.”

“Look, I’m going to die of thirst anyway, so what’s it going to hurt to try a little bit? It’s not like I’m going to find a stash of chocolate rolls out here.” He leaned down and touched the tip of his tongue gingerly against the fluid, then drew back, smacking his lips. There was no numbness, no reaction from his skin. And the stuff was
delicious
. He assumed this was just extreme hunger and dehydration at work, but it might have been the best thing he’d ever tasted.

Giving in to temptation, he sucked on the juice, getting a good mouthful. Then he swallowed it.

His knees almost buckled in ecstasy.

“Landry, I hear slurping noises from your comms.”

“You better believe it. This stuff is
amazing
.”

He examined the rest of the plant, then went ahead and took a bite from its bulbous top section. The flesh was unlike any fruit he had ever eaten—coarse and a little stringy, but the flavor was exceptional. There were tougher sections, like some sort of rind, that he had to spit out. Even so, he had to force himself to chew each bite a few times before swallowing.

“If you are going to eat the plant, you should rub a small amount on your lip first, then wait an hour to see if any adverse reactions arise.”

“Yeah,” Landry said between mouthfuls. “Might be a bit late for that.”

At that moment Landry heard noises emanating from deeper within the tunnels for the first time. A scraping, sliding sound in the distance followed by a rhythmic thud.

Something was coming in his direction.

“Landry—”

“Not
now
,” Landry whispered hoarsely. He looked around, searching for a place to hide, but the cavern was far too exposed to offer any hope of concealment. He only had two choices: stand where he was or run.

He wanted to plant his feet in the ground, face up to whatever it was that was headed his way. He wanted to show it that humans weren’t pushovers, that they could fight.

But he was afraid. He was
terrified
. He knew that he didn’t have the strength to overcome it, that standing against it would end in disaster.

He dropped the plant and tugged at the toboggan, headed for the nearest exit tunnel. The footsteps were getting louder in the opposite direction. He tried to run, but his gear felt like it was made of lead, and at best he could only manage a fast walk. His arms strained as the toboggan jostled and bounced across the uneven floor. It snagged and ground to a halt like a recalcitrant dog refusing its walk, and Landry was forced to go back and pull it free again.

The footsteps behind him were gaining in tempo. The thing was running.

It knows I’m here.

Landry struggled on, venturing along a corridor he had not traversed before. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that he was going to become disoriented, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was running blindly and he didn’t care where he ended up. He just had to get
away
.

A short distance later he found another glowing cavern, this one with more of those strange plants growing from the black tubes, although they were decidedly larger—more mature, it seemed. As he ran, Landry vaguely noted that the branches were thicker, their trunks sagging downward under their own weight. Some of them had grown to a meter or more in height, and now presented rounded nodules in places.

He made it through to the next tunnel, but he could already hear his pursuer in the cavern behind him.

It is literally within spitting distance
, he thought.
So close
.

Landry struggled and strained, grunting as he tried to haul the toboggan, and for a moment he considered ditching it, cutting it loose and continuing on without it, but as he looked back, he saw a monstrous shape looming out of the darkness.

He heard that awful sound like stones grating together, and his blood went cold.

He screamed, tried to turn and run, but something hit him across the back, and then the floor was rushing up at him.

Chapter 42

PSD 29-213: 2223 hours

Cait allowed the hot water to flow over her, scalding her skin and seeping into her bones in a kind of delicious agony. It was a purifying torrent that washed away the aches and pains of the day and made her feel human again, if only for a little while.

In the midst of her enjoyment the water suddenly went cold, and she gripped the faucet to shut off the flow, muttering to herself under her breath.

She stood there staring at the steel floor of the shower, feeling unsatisfied. Again. There was never enough hot water in this place. Every night was the same.

She should have been thankful that she had the luxury of even a brief moment of indulgence, she knew. Water wasn’t always easy to come by out here, and nor was the energy to heat it. Everything was regulated, monitored, cut up into miniscule quantities and distributed among the masses.

There were some outposts where conditions were even worse. She shouldn’t complain.

Yet, as she stood there, one hand on the tiles and her hair wet and dangling, dripping water as she stared at the floor, she didn’t feel thankful. She was angry at everything and she wasn’t even sure why.

She stepped out, toweled off, and slipped into a nightie. She was exhausted and figured she could use a good night’s sleep. She sat on her bed and began flicking through channels on the cyber-display. They were all reruns, and she hadn’t liked most of them the first time around, so she turned it off again.

She picked up her omni-device and began to flick through it, hoping to find a diversion there. The first thing she saw was the notification in her message center, and she knew immediately what that was. It was the contact details for Barakula, the guy from Outpost Control who had interviewed her yesterday about Landry’s disappearance.

Landry
. Here she was, thinking about him yet again. Reminders of the guy seemed to be everywhere. He was inescapable.

She ignored the notification and found herself looking through her photo folder. Here she finally found a way to divert her attention. As she flicked through the contents she found dozens of pictures of the insides of various machines: the engine block of a Groundswell T1-X; the exposed nacelle of a Silverwing Raven; another Groundswell vehicle, this one the smaller S2, sitting on mounts with its wheels removed.

Cait had developed a habit of taking these photos during her time at the workshop. To her it was like documenting her life at the outpost, one maintenance task at a time. Even though she had never bothered to flick back through them again, she figured that one day she would sit down and look at them and remember what it was like to have worked here.

How pathetic
, she thought ironically.
Some people travel and take pictures of the rings of Saturn, an eclipse over Proxima Centauri. I snap images of broken machines in some dusty workshop. Oh, the excitement.

She kept going, and found a photograph of Pasternak, a selfie that he’d taken without her knowledge. She deleted it, then saw that the next one was an image of his naked buttocks—a smiley face etched by a black marker pen on one cheek.

She felt horrified and violated, but laughed out loud at the same time. “You gross imbecile,” she muttered. She deleted it, then found another butt pic, this time from a different angle. There were more than ten in all—including four that were zoomed in on the smiley face—and she removed them all, still laughing.

She wondered how long ago Pasternak had taken them, how long he’d been patiently waiting for her to notice and mention it. Maybe she would ignore it, just to annoy him.

Cait continued through the album, and the next photo was one that included Landry in the shot.

Great. Just what I needed to see.

He was working on a Himura Seagull, like the one he’d disappeared in, sitting in the cockpit as he did something to the avionics panel. His expression was one of surprise. Cait remembered the photo. She’d been teasing him that he secretly wanted to be a pilot, and that this was as close as he was going to get. Landry had given her a patient smile but refused to join in the banter, as usual.

He had always been so distant, she thought. Caught up in his own little world.

She exited the photo album and sighed. Dodge wasn’t going to do anything about Landry, that much was obvious. Someone in his position surely should have shown more responsibility toward those under him. A real manager would have handled this whole situation very differently, no doubt about it.

As that thought stuck in her head, an idea came to her. Maybe there
was
someone in authority here at the outpost who would do the right thing.

She brought up Barakula’s details and called his number. It was late, and his office would be unattended, but at least she could leave a message.

I can tell him what I know. After that, I can rest easy knowing I’ve done what I can. I–

The call connected almost immediately, and Barakula’s handsome face appeared on the screen.

“Ms. Underwood,” he said. “Nice to see you again.”

“Oh,” she said, taken aback. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone would answer. I was going to leave a message.”

“I work late hours,” Barakula said with a wry grin. “Too late, most of the time, but unfortunately this outpost won’t run itself.”

“Yes. I see.”

“What can I do for you, Ms. Underwood?”

“Uh, yesterday you told me to contact you if I found out anything more about the Landry Stanton situation.”

“Yes?” He seemed to edge forward, as if eager to hear what she had to say. “Have there been any developments?”

“Kinda. I’m not sure. I’ve been trying to get through the paperwork—organizing a death certificate, notifying kin, and so on. This afternoon I came across something weird.”

“Really? What is it?”

“We had a maintenance request come through to the workshop today. It was about an array tower a few hundred clicks east of here. It’s been inactive recently, but today it came back online and started behaving erratically.”

“Go on.”

“Well, here’s the thing. Usually the towers work or they don’t. If there’s a faulty component, they fail. They don’t tend to magically come back online by themselves if that happens. But this one, it started coming back online, then began shifting its frequency modulation back and forth. And there was a pattern. When I put it through a graph, it was like Morse code for an SOS signal.”

“An SOS signal?” Barakula said thoughtfully. He leaned back in his chair. “Could this be some kind of glitch?”

“Not one that I’ve ever heard of. I haven’t been getting any help from Mr. Dodge
at all
on this. He’s really dropped the ball, like he does on most things. That’s why I thought I’d get in touch with you.”

“Very curious.”

There was silence for a moment, as Cait waited for Barakula to put the pieces together. When it appeared that wasn’t going to happen, she said, “I was wondering if that might be Landry and his pilot Gus out there. If this is a cry for help.”

Barakula watched her carefully, tapping his finger on his wrist as he considered. “It seems unlikely to me.”

“But, I just told you—”

“You’ve impressed me, Ms. Underwood. Do you know that? The way you’ve handled yourself throughout this whole ordeal has been exceptional.”

Cait was a little taken aback. “Well, uh . . . thank you.”

“You’re just the kind of person who’d do well in Outpost Control, I think. You know how to get the job done, and you don’t mind being ruthless when you have to. I can really see you going places.”

“Outpost Control?” She’d never even considered working there and wasn’t sure what to make of the suggestion.

“Absolutely. But let me explain something to you,” he said. “This outpost is a government-funded operation, as are all the outposts, and money is tight. We don’t have many luxuries out here, as you know. We can’t afford to. The war effort is like a black hole for cash. It’s my job to help run Proc-One on a shoestring budget, and that takes a lot of work. A lot of planning.” He shrugged. “And even cutting a few corners here and there.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Although it’s a tragedy that Mr. Stanton and his pilot have perished out there in the wasteland, there’s still a silver lining for this outpost. Those two men were engaged in criminal activities. They stole a scout-class vehicle and presumably destroyed it in the process. This means that we can bring charges against them. We can recover the cost of our losses through legal avenues.”

So that’s what this is about
, Cait thought bleakly.
Money
.

“We’ll recover the cost of the scout through Mr. Stanton’s and his pilot’s estate. There will also be hefty fines levied against them, and various other administrative fees.”

Cait thought of how Landry had given away most of his salary to charity. “But what if Landry didn’t have much money? You might be trying to get blood from a stone, so to speak.”

“Not at all. We have the power to seek compensation through his family back on Earth. He won’t get out of it that easily.”

Cait thought of the woman with the red hair, and felt sick to her stomach. She pictured her sitting in a house back on Earth, a baby cradled in her arms, as the news came in that she was about to lose everything she owned.

“We can’t just do that—”

“I think we should just let sleeping dogs lie on this one, Ms. Underwood,” Barakula said, offering her a smile that did not touch his eyes. “I appreciate the thoroughness of your investigation, but there’s no need to go any further.”

“‘Let sleeping dogs lie?’” she said, a note of incredulity in her voice at his flippant dismissal of the issue.

“Yes.”

“You’re really going to—?”

“Is that all, Ms. Underwood?” he said more firmly. “Is there anything more I need to know?”

“No. I guess not.”

She hung up the call, sat there stunned for a few moments. Then she went to her wardrobe, slipped on jeans and a low-cut top. She was still tired, but there was no way she was going to hang around the apartment all night by herself, stewing over the day’s events. And thinking about Barakula’s cold brush-off of Landry.

Cait had done what she could for Landry. She was out of ideas, and now she just wanted to forget about him. She wanted to get on with her life.

She needed something to divert her attention from everything that had happened, do something that made her feel better about herself. Maybe if she went to the Cross, she thought, and had that rematch with Pasternak over at Dive . . .

No, that’s not the way. You’re only staving off the inevitable. Tomorrow morning you’ll be right back where you started.

She had to deal with her problems, and as she stood there contemplating, she realized that she knew exactly where to start.

She strode to the door and headed out into the darkened tunnel outside, headed for the Infirmary.