Dawn of Procyon (8 page)

Chapter 14

PSD 29-213: 0803 hours

Cait made it to the workshop early the next morning. She was expecting to find Landry there, armed with excuses about why he’d been absent the day before, but there was no sign of him. Over by Cait’s new desk, Landry’s bag of crap sat untouched.

It looks like he hasn’t come back to the workshop at all
, she thought.

She put it behind her and got back to work. She wondered if perhaps Landry had been intercepted by officials immediately upon his return and had been escorted into custody, or if he might now be under interrogation to find out the nature of his excursion. Annoyingly, these musings frequently interrupted Cait’s train of thought, and she eventually got up and headed to Dodge’s office.

She tapped on the frosted glass and let herself in. “Boss?”

Dodge was sitting behind his desk, an egg roll clutched in one fist and a steaming mug of coffee in the other.

“What is it, Underwood? I’m trying to finish breakfast here.”

“I just wanted to check to see if you got the notification I sent through last night about Landry?”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it. No sweat.”

“Did you know he had a family?”

“Didn’t know, don’t care.”

Cait nodded, unsurprised by Dodge’s flippant attitude. She knew there was little that interested the guy beyond the contents of the lunch menu and planning his afternoon nap. He was a complete waste of space. She glanced around the cluttered office, thinking of the improvements she could make if it was her name on the desk.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s the latest on the whole situation? Landry’s gear is still sitting beside my desk—”

Dodge waved a hand to interrupt her, then spoke around another bite of egg roll. “I was going to come see you about that. There’s some work for you to do.”

“Oh? What like?”

“Landry’s dead,” Dodge said flatly. “So that means you–”

“Wait a minute,” she said, horrified. “What?”

Dodge dumped the egg roll impatiently on his desk, then wiped his fingers on his sleeve. “Landry’s dead. Officially. He’s been missing for a full day with no authorized leave, and no clue as to his whereabouts. That means we put a line through his name and move on.”

“Is that for real?”

“That’s the policy.” Dodge burped loudly and took a swig of coffee. “Shame. He was the best Optech I had, but it’s his own dumb fault for running off—”

Cait thought of the photographs she’d stashed in her coveralls. The red-haired woman, the embryo. “They can’t just declare the guy
dead
. Are they sending out a search party? Anything?”

“Now? With the Marines heading out and the outpost in lockdown? No. Not a chance. Besides, if he was alive, we’d have heard something by now.”

Troubled, Cait wound her way through the junk on the floor and took out the photo frame. She placed it on Dodge’s desk. “I found these pictures in Landry’s desk last night. Did you know about this woman?”

“Woman?” Dodge said. He flicked through the photographs out with a swipe of his greasy fingers. “I’ve never seen her in my life.”

“Well, that’s what I was thinking, too, but maybe she lives in Landry’s apartment—”

“No, no. This is ‘shopped, for sure. I could whip this up on my omni-device in about three minutes flat.”

“Huh?”

“It’s two different images put together. A forgery.” Dodge held up the photo of Landry and the woman kissing. “Landry probably sits staring at this every night. Uses it to make himself feel like he has a life.”

“I don’t know about that—”

“Listen, Underwood. This isn’t your concern.” He pushed the photo frame back toward her and picked up his egg roll. “I’ve got plenty of other stuff for you to worry about.”

“Like what?”

Dodge tore another chunk off the egg roll with his teeth, a devious smile touching the corners of his mouth. “Fun stuff.”

“Oh, great. This sounds good.”

“It is, it is.” He tapped on the console on his desk. “With Landry having officially croaked, there’s some paperwork coming your way. For a start, you have to lodge a death certificate and inform the next of kin.”

“
Me?
Why am I doing that? That’s your job.”

The humor left Dodge’s rotund face. “You want this supervisor position or not?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“Then do your job.” He leaned back in his chair and spread his hands. “What? You think this job is all rainbows and puppy dogs?
Get real
. Most of the time, being a supervisor is one of two things: bureaucratic garbage or mind-numbing boredom. There’s no middle-ground here. Welcome to low-level management.”

Cait glared at him, sullen. “Yeah. Okay.”

“So I suggest that if you have any intention of keeping your shiny new desk, you might want to do what I tell you.”

Cait was still reeling from the thought of Landry being dead, and tried her best to keep up. “Uh, so where do I find the next of kin?”

Dodge’s mouth gaped in exasperation. “Do I have to do everything for you?” He waved at the door. “Go and talk to someone in Outpost Control. Talk to HR. They have files on all of this stuff.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“But before that, make sure those boneheads in the workshop have their task lists updated.” He swiped a finger across his console. “I’m seeing low priority jobs being handed in when there’s criticals sitting around unassigned. These twerps
do
know that the Marines are shipping out tomorrow, don’t they?”

“I’ll talk to them about it.”

“Assign the crits, make sure they get done. Or I’m going to have someone cleaning out
your
desk next.”

“And the situation with Landry—”

“Is not your concern,” Dodge interrupted. “That’s in the hands of OC, now. Leave it to Barakula.”

Cait took the photo frame and closed the door behind her. “Fat jerk,” she muttered.

She arrived back at the workshop just as Pasternak showed up, trying unsuccessfully to slink through the door unnoticed.

“You’re late,” she snapped.

“Hey, it’s the new supe!” Pasternak said conversationally. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

She thrust an omni-device into his hands. “You’re working back late, Nak. And I’ve got a truckload of crits heading your way that need to be done pronto.”

His smile vanished. “Oh, for the love of—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Just get to work.”

“You used to be one of the good guys, man,” he grumbled as he walked away.

She opened her mouth to offer a retort, then thought better of it.

Don’t get into a slanging match. Not here. There’s no point.

She returned to her desk and grabbed the remaining omni-devices, handed them out, and then made her way over to Outpost Control.

Chapter 15

PSD 29-213: 0704 hours

“Okay, so give me a sanity check on this,” Landry said. “This is basically going to run like a full OXEE replacement procedure. Simple.”

“This is not a simple procedure,” HAIRI countered pleasantly.

“Don’t tell me that.”

“From the information you have provided, I see a number of problems. Since you are off-site, you do not have the approved tools to perform this operation.”

“I have my toolkit. That’s all I need.”

“Additionally, you are attempting to remove the Oxygen Environment Enhancer whilst it is still in operation, which is not something it has been designed for under any—”

“Don’t tell me the things I can’t do,” Landry snapped. “I didn’t bring you online to pee on the tiny ember of hope I’ve still got burning here. Tell me what I
can
do.”

“I should advise you that I am not physically capable of urinating, and even if I was—”

“It’s just an expression. Let’s get on with the procedure.”

“In order to free the OXEE intact, you will be required to remove the entire assembly from the hull of the scout, one panel at a time.”

“Good. That’s more like it. How do I do that?” Landry said.

“With great difficulty.”

“Okay, thanks for the wisecracks, buddy. I need to know which one to remove first. I have a pretty good idea already, but if you can verify it, that will make me feel a whole lot better.”

“I suggest the panel labeled three-six-one-eight-dash-two. Below the avionics.”

Landry hunched over, trying to find it. “I don’t see it.”

“It is there.”

“Well, HAIRI, I don’t see it,” he said testily.

“Perhaps you cannot see the forest for the trees.”

Landry straightened, then blinked as if he’d been slapped. “What did you say?”

“I said that perhaps you cannot see the forest for the trees.”

“What are you, an AI system or a philosophy major?”

“I am neither. Did I use this phrase incorrectly?
See the forest for the trees
. My metadata indicates that this phrase pertains to lack of vision—”

“No, the phrase doesn’t fit.
At all.
Your metadata sucks.”
Is this some kind of malfunction?
“Wait a minute. What service release are you running?”

“I am equipped with service release fifteen point two, revision one-one.”

“I knew it,” Landry breathed, exasperated. “That explains it.”

“What are you referring to?”

“That’s an illegal code release. Did you know that?”

“I did not,” HAIRI said.

“Who installed it?”

“One of my former pilots performed this upgrade. He felt it made me easier to talk to.”

“Yeah.” Landry shook his head disparagingly. “Well, he’s a jerk. There’s a good reason why that release train was squashed.”

“Why?”

“Because the tweaks that were supposed to make the AI interface more ‘relatable’ only ended up making it more unstable. That’s why you’re spouting this ‘forest for the trees’ stuff.”

“I should not have said this phrase.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“In that case, I’m as sorry as a drunk with no whiskey—”

“Just out of curiosity,” Landry interrupted. “Is there any way I can roll that patch back to a standard release? It would be really handy if I could do that.”

“Rollback would result in a sixty-three percent chance of system failure. If this were to happen, I could not be brought back online without a total software rebuild.”

“Which can only be done back at the outpost, hooked up to the mainframe.”

“Correct.”

“And that means I’d be all alone out here again.”

“Yes.”

Landry chewed his lip. “I’m still tempted.
Man
, am I tempted.”

Progress was slow. Together they eventually found the panels that needed removing, but the larger problem was cutting away the housing in order to extricate the ducting from the innards of the scout. There was a hacksaw in Landry’s kit, but it wasn’t exactly suited to heavy industrial work, and he worked up quite a lather as he ground away at one obstacle after another. He also put his hammer to good use, crushing and peeling back aluminum edges on the fuselage in order to free up the OXEE hose.

Despite the annoying personality modifications, HAIRI turned out to be a godsend, advising a number of shortcuts that saved Landry several hours’ labor. With Landry’s helmet camera streaming through to the comms link, HAIRI was able to give visual cues as well as reference the Seagull’s schematics in his database.

After almost four hours, Landry was finally able to tear through the last part of the housing and delicately extract the OXEE from its mounts. Taking the backup battery solar panel and OXEE with him, he climbed down from the hull and laid all the pieces on the coppery soil next to the scout. The components looked more like a taped together pile of junk than lifesaving equipment.

He straightened and stretched, working his aching shoulder, then took a few small sips from his IDB, conscious that he had to make it last despite his raging thirst.

“Well,” he said, smacking his lips, staring down at the gear before him in satisfaction. “I’d say that’s a job well done.”

“Yes. We did indeed kick some serious butt.”

“Hey, don’t get carried away yet, HAIRI. This is only the beginning.”

“What is the next part of your plan?”

“Good question.” He stared down at the disparate collection of tubes, panels, and battery components at his feet. There was also HAIRI’s hardware module, still hooked up to the power. “Despite our best efforts, I’m still not mobile. There’s no way I can carry all of this gear. It’s not like I can sling bits over my shoulder. Can’t risk damaging a critical component.” He pointed to each module in turn. “If any one of these devices dies, I die.”

There was a pause. “I think I may have a suggestion, Landry.”

“Well, let’s hear it.” He glanced around for signs of the Argoni, but there was nothing out there but rocks glinting under the midday sun. “I’d like to get out of here while I still can.”