Predator - Incursion (14 page)

“There’s always something,” Palant said, and she heard her father’s voice again, telling her that space would never truly be known to humanity. That they were trespassing there.

“So what do you think happened to Svenlap?”

“It’s weird,” Palant said. “I saw her the day before she disappeared. Last time you and I were out here together, the day the dead Yautja arrived. She seemed fine then, if a little tired, and she loved her job, was as passionate about their history and society as I am about their physiology and tech. Then, nothing. Her rooms were ransacked, but there’s no sign of where she went, or why.”

“Yeah, weird.”

“I’m still hoping she’ll be found. It’s been a long time, but Love Grove is a big place, and there are lots of sections that have been shut off for a while. Since the processor construction was finished, in fact.”

“Those sections have been searched,” Rogers said. Isa knew that. He and the other indies had done much of the searching, with nothing to report apart from empty rooms and failing structures.

“Still, she might be hiding.”

“No,” he said, “she’s gone.” He took another drink and passed it back to her. Isa could feel the warm glow permeating her torso, the gentle tiredness settling over her. She didn’t want to get drunk because she had so much work still to do, yet sitting out here with Rogers, isolated in the rover, getting drunk seemed like a good idea. Isa had many colleagues, but he felt like a true friend. Warmth in the coldness of space.

“What do you mean?”

He waved at the windscreen. They couldn’t see much, because today’s storm was harsher than most. Sand scoured the transparent surface, grit rasped against the rover’s hull. Its exhaust had been fixed, but the chassis still creaked and groaned in complaint.

“Out there… Wandered out, got lost, died. Doubt there’s much left of her now.”

“I don’t believe that,” Palant said, even though it had always been a possibility. She’d spent some time considering whether it could have happened, and she didn’t like where her imagination took her. Angela would have likely suffocated from the low oxygen levels before anything else killed her—the cold, thirst, the violent storms.

“Seen it before,” Rogers said. “Space madness. Sometimes people start dwelling on where we are and how far away everything else is. The scale and scope of things get inside your head, the pressure of nothing, and your mind goes
pop
.”

“‘Pop?’ That a scientific term?”

He smiled sadly. “We should be getting back.” He started the rover, and the growl of its motor was a friendly sound.

Palant watched from her window as they moved across the desolate landscape, imagining Svenlap lying out there somewhere, almost buried in dust. It would be a sad end for a clever woman, but space madness was a very real condition. Sometimes it got to her, too—the mere contemplation of the insignificance of things. It occasionally made her jealous of the few who still clung onto old religions, but mostly she saw through their belief to the cold fears underneath.

Everyone had their way of handling things.

It took twenty minutes to crawl back to Love Grove Base, and in that time Palant’s mind went from the missing scientist to the work that still awaited her back in her labs. She’d left McIlveen toiling there, and hoped that by now he might have retired for the night. It was true, she couldn’t help liking him, but she liked working on her own more.

“O’Malley’s?” Rogers asked. Isa hadn’t been for some time, and she’d feared that he would suggest it. Though she had been determined to turn him down, she nodded and smiled. Maybe the single malt had chilled her more than she’d realized, but right then a glass of the indies’ potent brew and a game of air pool felt like the best idea ever.

“I don’t think I could do this without you,” she said. The statement surprised her, though the words’ honesty did not. It wasn’t like her to open herself up like this. She thought of it as one of her faults, being closed in and introverted, and she supposed it went with her work. Such an obsession, such focus, removed her from the world.

“Pussy,” Rogers said.

“You wish.” She smiled, he laughed, and the rover hit a rock and jolted them both against their restraints. “I so fucking wish you’d learn to drive properly.”

“You want a go, Yautja-girl?”

“You ask me now, when we’re back.”

“Sit on my lap and I’ll let you park.”

The banter continued as they approached the ramp leading down to the subterranean garages. Isa loved being out with her friend, loved even more returning to the base. The desolate wasteland of LV-1529 frightened her, and some time back she’d pushed a proposal to name the planet. Nobody really wanted to. The terraformers who had built the processors fifty years before hadn’t bothered, so why should a bunch of scientists and indies? Rogers had mocked her. A name would make the planet seem somehow tamer?

Really?

“Open the doors please, navigator.”

“Yes, Sir. Right away, Sir.” Isa flipped the switch that sent a signal to open the garage doors, and Rogers drove quickly down toward the ramp. Isa winced. Every time she expected the rising ramp to scrape across the top of the rover, and every time Rogers timed it perfectly.

Inside, the screaming winds and abrasive, grit-laden atmosphere disappeared, replaced with the comforting drone of the rover’s engine. Lights flickered on in the cavernous space, shadows danced.

One of them moved.

“What’s that?” Palant asked.

“What?”

“Over by the fuel tanks. There, again!” She pointed. The shadow flitted between two of the larger fuel tanks, then appeared again beyond, slinking along the base of a wall toward one of the doors that led up into the single-level base.

Rogers sounded the rover’s siren. A brief, shattering horn, it echoed within the garage space, amplified and repeating.

“Svenlap,” he said.

“You’re sure?” Palant squinted, leaned to the side to get a better view through the dust-smeared windscreen. He was right, it was Svenlap, but she was a wretched wraith of the woman she had been. “What the hell…”

“She’s let herself go,” Rogers said quietly. “Come on. She looks scared, we’ll take it easy.”

He cut the engine and the rover’s glaring headlamps died out, leaving the garage bathed in the softer ceiling and wall lights.

The woman had reached a door. Svenlap tugged at the handle, but it would not open. Personal ID tags were needed to open most electronic doors throughout the complex, and everyone wore them on a small bracelet almost without thinking. Svenlap must have lost hers—but more than that, she must have forgotten that it was even required.

Palant jumped from the cab. A gust of wind struck her right side, carrying dust and sand that stung the exposed skin on her arm and face. She gasped, squinted, and glanced that way. The rover was still within the heavy garage door’s sensor zone, and the door was only halfway closed.

“Angela,” she called, facing forward again. She took a few steps forward, leaving the rover ticking and creaking behind her as it cooled down. Svenlap turned and crouched, her stance so animalistic that Palant caught her breath and stopped walking.

“Lost it,” Rogers said from just behind her. “And what was she doing by the fuel tanks?”

“Hiding,” Palant whispered.

“Better places to hide.” Rogers jogged over toward the tanks, and Isa let him go. Her focus was on the woman.

“Angela, it’s me, Isa. Everything’s okay. You’re safe, there’s nothing to worry about, so why don’t we all—”

Svenlap ran. Considering her physical condition, her speed was surprising, and she ran with a spidery gait that dragged her shadow scampering behind her. Isa glanced across at Rogers, then gave chase. Svenlap was heading for the far corner of the garage, where another doorway led to an unused staircase leading up into the ruined sector of the base.

“Svenlap!” Rogers called.

Palant turned and saw him running toward her. He looked very serious, and his side weapon was drawn. As he drew alongside her he slowed, but did not stop. “She’s been doing something,” he said, passing her. Palant ran after him.

As Rogers approached, Svenlap changed direction, disappearing behind the rover and out into the blasting storm.

“Wait!” Rogers shouted.

“Rogers, what is it?” Isa said. She was keeping up with him, but her lungs were burning and her legs aching. She should have paid more attention to her fitness. She should pay more attention to everything, and not let her work consume her. Rogers had been trying to tell her that for months, sometimes to her face, and more often with subtle suggestion.

“She’s planted something by the fuel tanks,” he said. “A device. I can’t see exactly what. And she’s been missing for some time.”

They passed out from the safety of the garage and into the storm. Rogers tried shouting something into the comms band on his wrist, but she didn’t know whether he was successful. Her senses were battered—blasting wind abrading her skin, ears clogged with grit, eyes stinging, sand grinding between her teeth and the taste of sulphur on her tongue. She attempted to keep up with him, but he soon drew ahead of her, and past him she could just make out Svenlap’s shadow sprinting directly away from the base.

Then Svenlap stopped.

“Put it down!” she heard Rogers shouting. “Svenlap, slowly, put it down, and we can talk and—”

Svenlap’s voice cut in, surprisingly loud in the storm, as if carried by the airborne grit.

“I will illuminate their way.”

Rogers shouted something else. Isa never knew what it was, because a booming blast erupted behind her, the landscape glared alight as if by a lightning strike, and a hot fist smashed into her back, lifted and carried her forward, melting her into the air.

Something solid flipped past her and struck Rogers, and it was strange, she couldn’t quite understand what happened, but where he had been one now he was two, a small part of him bouncing across the hard ground, the larger part falling flat.

Beyond, Svenlap was spreadeagled on her back with flames rising from her hair.

Palant struck the ground hard. Light gave way to dark and everything went away.

* * *

Get up, it’s only a graze
, she heard her father say. He was looking down at her, smiling his kindly smile and holding out his hand, but behind the smile was the impatience that had always been there. He loved his wife and daughter, Isa was certain of that, but he loved his work more.

But it hurts
, she thought.
My back hurts, and my head, and my legs where they were scraped across the ground when the explosion
…

Her father vanished into smoke, and his final whispered words were roars of flame, the pained squeals of crumpling metal structures, the dull thump of more distant detonations.

Palant was lying on her side, left arm trapped beneath her. She rolled onto her back, clenched both fists, tensed and turned her feet, ready for agony but relieved when there was only intense discomfort. Cuts and lacerations, but no broken bones, at least.

“Rogers,” she whispered, words stolen by the destruction.

The sky was on fire.

Almost a mile away, the first of the processor towers seemed to be alight, but it was only the dull, damp metal framing reflecting flames from closer by. She had never seen the towers so clearly, even during days when the storms were reduced to blustery gusts and showers. It was almost beautiful.

Closer, more horrific, so confusing that it took her a while to understand, and longer still to believe, Love Grove Base was burning.

Someone shouted, voice rising into a scream. It sounded agonized, but quickly broke into a high, staccato laugh.

Palant sat up, rolled onto her side, stood. Her knees were shredded and bleeding, filled with grit and stinging. Her gloveless hands were similarly slashed, but she could work her fingers, and closing her eyes she tried to balance herself, get her bearings so that—

Rogers!

The scream had not come from him, she was sure.

Palant opened her eyes again and turned around, looking away from the burning base. Her shadow was cast before her, long and twitchy, and within its lengthy grasp stood Svenlap. The hair was burnt from her scalp, one eye swollen, blackened and closed. Her mouth hung open and emitted a continuous laugh, rising and falling as she drew air into scorched lungs, again and again.

“What have you done?” Palant tried to shout, but she had no voice.

Between her and the still-smoking Svenlap, Rogers lay on the ground. His head was gone, sheared off by the flying debris, and Isa stepped forward and started looking for it.

It’s over here somewhere, I saw it come off and bounce away and if I can only
… Her thoughts trailed off and she sobbed once, loud and shuddering. Her lungs ached. She drew in a big breath and coughed, then shouted.

“What have you done?”

Svenlap drew a gun from her jacket pocket. It was a squat, ugly thing, and Isa recognized it as an indie sidearm. A laser pistol. Rogers had let her fire his once, and she’d sliced a rock in two at one hundred paces.

She had nowhere to run.

The weapon was not intended for her.

With a loud hiss and a flare of white light, Svenlap pressed the barrel beneath her chin and laser-blasted her head into a red mist.

Palant turned away and crouched down, and when she lifted her head again she saw what had become of her home.

Distant screams punctured the air. Tortured metal or dying people, she did not know.

The place where the subterranean garage had been was now a volcanic pit of boiling flame, smoke, and intermittent explosions, the building structure slumped down all around as if sucked into the fiery hollow. The fires reached further afield, wavering fingers reaching for the sky and being flitted away by the strong winds. Flames spread. Other explosions might have occurred, or perhaps the conflagration had spread rapidly, flowing with the spilled and burning fuel from the tanks.

Shock was waiting to take her down, but buffering her against that was the knowledge that so many people would need her help. If anyone else had survived.