Chapter 18
PSD 29-213: 1300 hours
Hauling the toboggan across the terrain was a lot harder than Landry had anticipated. For a start, he couldn’t afford to have it tip on its side. If the solar panel fell awkwardly it could crack, or another component could break in a way that Landry couldn’t repair—even with his magic roll of gaffer tape. With that in mind, he needed a relatively smooth surface on which to pull the load, and that meant clearing a path where none existed. There were spots where he found a good run—perhaps ten or even fifteen meters of clear ground that wouldn’t slow him down, but those were few and far between. More often than not he was forced to stoop and wrestle with rocks and small boulders, prying them free of the dirt and hauling them aside so that the toboggan could slide past.
It was a time-consuming and exhausting process, and before too long Landry felt as though his back was about to give out. Turning around, he saw the wreckage and Gus’s cairn perhaps only fifty meters away.
“Good progress,” he huffed, taking a sip of water. “Fifty meters down, two hundred and ninety-nine kilometers to go.”
“Your calculations are short by nine hundred and fifty meters, Landry.”
“Thank you, HAIRI.”
His other problem was the elevation of the ground. There were sharp inclines and drops all over the place, and Landry had no choice but to backtrack and go around them or risk the load rolling over.
He tried not to think of the distance, just simply kept placing one foot after the other, dislodging every obstacle in his path. He took regular sips from his IDB, but some part of him kept thinking that, any moment now, he was going to suck and find nothing coming through but air. The bag carried a decent amount of water, but the way he was going through it, there was no way it was going to last.
Not for three hundred whole clicks, he thought.
He was also feeling decidedly weak from lack of food, but in the big scheme of things, that didn’t even seem like an issue. Still, his tummy rumbled at the thought of it.
“Sure could go for a batch of chocolate rolls right now,” he muttered. “In fact, I could eat a whole crate.”
“Chocolate rolls? Please clarify.”
“The cafeteria down on Minus Four at the outpost makes them. They’re like a chocolate cake smeared with icing, rolled into a tube. Nothing special, to be honest, but they remind me a bit of the ones Grandma used to make when I was a kid.”
“Those sound high in sugar content,” HAIRI said. “In your current situation, I would suggest something with more nutritional value. A protein bar perhaps.”
“Sure. Go ahead and magic me up a protein bar. Make it appear on the rock over there and I’ll eat it.”
“I’m sorry, Landry, but the expansion card that facilitates my use of magic is not currently installed.”
“Okay, smart-mouth,” Landry said with a grin. “Thanks for nothing.”
He kept going, and the next thing he knew, he was back at the ridge where he had seen the Argoni the evening before. Down the slope lay the rear section of the scout, which had stopped smoldering. He stood there watching it for a moment, deciding what to do.
“We have found the other piece of your vehicle,” HAIRI said, obviously watching through his helmet cam.
“Yeah. That’s it.”
“Do you believe you can salvage parts from it?”
“Nope. Not really.” Landry started down the incline. “But I’m going to run an eye over it anyway.”
“I should point out that this is not the direction in which you need to travel. There is no pathway out of this area. This will result in a delay in reaching the outpost.”
“Yeah. Just call me curious.”
When Landry got closer, he could see a multitude of tracks around the wreckage, and they clearly weren’t human. Looking over the cracked fuselage, he could also see that more panels had been removed, more parts of the ship taken.
“That piece of dirt,” he muttered. “It’s been back here.”
“Please elaborate.”
“The Toad.” He pointed to the gaps in the scout. “It’s stripping the Seagull piece by piece.”
“Curious behavior.”
“I didn’t understand it before, and I don’t understand it now. These parts won’t help to fix the Argoni ship it crashed in.” A thought occurred to him, and he held up a hand in mock excitement. “HAIRI, that’s it! I know how to get out of here!”
“You do?”
“Yeah. We just sit on that boulder over there and wait for the Toad to strip every part of the Seagull and then put it all back together again. Then we just fly right outta here.”
HAIRI paused for a moment. “This is a joke.”
“No, man. I’m deadly serious.”
“I was not born yesterday, Landry.”
“There! Now that’s the correct cliché to use. We’re making progress here.”
“I am pleased.”
Landry glanced back up the slope. “But, seriously. What does it want? I don’t get what it’s up to.”
“I have a comprehensive repository of knowledge pertaining to the Argoni, if that helps.”
“Why didn’t you say that already? Let’s hear it.”
“Where would you like to begin?”
“Just start throwing things at me and I’ll tell you if I want to know more.”
“Very well. The aliens were first discovered in the star system Gliese Four-Twelve almost seventeen years ago. Although the colloquialism ‘Argoni’ has become prominent in recent times, as well as the slang ‘Toads’, their scientific name is
Xeno Gliese Four-One-Two dash Zero-One
.”
“Yeah. I wonder why that never caught on?” He shuffled forward, ducking lower to examine the scout. “I know this part, anyway. Keep going.”
“The name ‘Argoni’ was first coined by William Sheldon, a comms officer aboard the warship
Atlantic
in the Sirius system in the first year of the war. Sheldon claimed that he heard the word while intercepting a transmission he believed to be of alien origin. Since then, this claim has been widely disputed, as it is believed that the Argoni are not capable of uttering human-like speech patterns. However, the name has persisted through the years, to this day.”
“Okay. That’s all very nice, but give me some information I can
use
,” Landry said.
“It is a common misconception that the Argoni are amphibians. This has never been verified.”
“They’re reptiles.”
“This has never been verified either. Their skin is scaly in places, but that is all we know.”
“Wait a minute. Surely we’ve captured these things before? Hasn’t someone taken a scalpel to one of their carcasses and figured it out by now?”
“This has never been done,” HAIRI said.
“Why not?”
“Argoni that have been captured have, in every recorded case, displayed an accelerated rate of decomposition. Their bodies break down at the cellular level within a matter of minutes, leaving behind no trace of their internal organ structure or anything else.”
“So you’re telling me that every time we capture one of these things, it just turns to goo?”
“A clumsy analogy, but that is the basic idea.”
“Is this an evolutionary thing, or an intentional way of concealing their biology?”
“Unknown,” HAIRI said.
“Okay. Next question. I saw that thing walking around here without any kind of breathing apparatus. Do they breathe CO
2
?”
“Unknown.”
“What does it drink? Is it going to survive out here without water?”
“Unknown.”
Landry made an exasperated sound. “Then what does it eat?”
“Unknown.”
“
What?
I thought you had a comprehensive repository on these things.”
“My repository is comprehensive in that I know as much as any human does about the Argoni. The truth is, we know very little about them. We have never found their home world, so we do not know the conditions in which they evolved.”
“Okay, forget about that side of things. What can you tell me about their strategies? Surely their behaviors have been observed.”
“I can tell you what I know. The Argoni seem to be singularly focused on attacking Earth. Their interest in the outposts we have created in neighboring systems is minimal. From time to time, one of their attack clusters is detected impacting an outpost planet, but in all cases, the fortifications they attempt to build are quickly wiped out by the UEM, leaving no survivors.”
“Like what happened here last week, except it looks like they missed one.” Landry said.
“Yes, so it seems. This Argoni you encountered must have been the sole survivor from that spore cluster.”
“So, given that we know that, what’s its next move?”
“Unknown.”
“Well. This certainly has been an informative discussion.”
“This is sarcasm,” HAIRI said.
“No, really. I feel like I’m two steps ahead of the Toad already. Three, even.”
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Landry.”
“I’m pretty sure I can go lower.”
“I should warn you that this discussion may result in my feelings being hurt.”
“What are you talking about? You were being sarcastic yourself ten minutes ago. Remember the magic expansion card thing?”
HAIRI said nothing.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Let’s move on.”
They weren’t going to be able to predict the behavior of an enemy they knew nothing about. While it was evident that the thing was still hanging around, Landry hoped that he could somehow avoid it as he made his way back toward the outpost. Tethered to the bulk of the toboggan, he sure wasn’t going to outrun it if it came after him.
Even putting up a fight is going to be a problem
, he thought.
It will be like battling an ogre with a ball and chain locked to my ankle. My best chance is to run. To stay out of its way.
He needed to find the quickest way out of this area.
“Come on,” he said, glancing along the rise and out toward the west. “Let’s find out what we can see from the top of that ridge.”
Chapter 19
PSD 29-213: 0819 hours
The bulkhead door opened and the corridor beyond was pitch black. Cait reached for the lamp on her helmet, and a beam of light shone into the gloom. Beside her, Spud followed her example, and together they swept the corridor looking for signs of damage.
“The integrity of this segment looks okay,” Cait said. She tapped on her omni-device. “Only trace amounts of CO
2
in the air, too. I’d say the breach is beyond the next bulkhead. It probably snapped shut as soon as the epidermis was compromised, before the outside atmosphere could seep inside.”
“This is what they do,” Spud said, his voice coming to her through the comms in her helmet. Cait turned to see a grim expression behind his visor. “The Toads. They turn the lights out first.”
“You’ve got an over-active imagination, Spud.”
“They like the dark. That’s what I’ve heard. You always know they’re coming when they kill the lights.”
“Right before they start sipping brain juice from your ears, huh?”
“You bet.”
Cait sighed, consulting her omni-device again. “I’m betting there were some electrical systems damaged during the breach.” She scrolled through the schematics for the area. “We have subsystems that run right through here. That’s why there’s no light.”
“We should go back,” Spud said. “Wait for the Marines to give the all-clear.”
“I told you, we’re not going to do that. We have orders to repair damage as quickly as possible. We need to seal the epidermis again before the damage can spread. With the pressure differential between here and outside—”
“All right, all right,” Spud said. “Let’s get it over and done with.”
“You take the trolley,” Cait said, gesturing behind him to the mobile unit they’d taken from the repair closet. It housed a range of tools, including a mechanism the Optechs commonly referred to as the “bender,” a device used to manipulate buckled steel plating back into the appropriate shape.
“Right behind you,” Spud said, gripping the trolley and rolling it forward.
Cait walked ahead into the darkness, then waited by the control panel for Spud to pass. When he was through, she lowered the bulkhead. After it hit the floor, the two of them were left alone inside the corridor.
Spud stood there, staring ahead, as if expecting something to jump out at him any moment. Cait ignored him and pushed on, striding confidently down toward the next bulkhead. She thought Spud’s fear of the Argoni was preposterous; the Toads never bothered to attack outposts. She’d never heard of it happening elsewhere, and it had certainly never happened here.
Yet, a small part of her was creeped out by the strangeness of this situation. As the darkness pressed in around her, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease stirring in her belly.
What exactly caused the breach, if not an attack of some kind?
Stop it
, she chided herself.
Get a grip.
Reaching the bulkhead at the other end of the corridor, she turned to see Spud ambling along hesitantly some distance behind.
“Today, Spud.”
He waved dismissively at her, but increased his speed nonetheless. Cait checked the panel on the bulkhead. As she expected, it was dead due to the power outage in the area. Tugging at a tab on the wall, she released the manual hand crank and attempted to turn it. It was resistant at first, but she gritted her teeth and gave it everything she had, and a moment later it succumbed. The crank began to rotate, protesting with a loud whining sound as the bulkhead creaked upward.
Air hissed around her ankles as the pressure equalized, and light spread across the floor. Glowing numbers on her HUD flickered rapidly as sensors in her suit detected the change in conditions around her.
“Careful!” Spud said, trundling up behind her. “Watch out what you’re letting in, won’t you?”
“Relax,” Cait grunted as she grappled with the crank. She continued to turn it until it was high enough to admit Gus, herself, and the trolley, then locked it into place before they moved through to the next section.
They found themselves inside the epidermis, a narrow, curving structure that was a buffer between the interior of the outpost and the outside environment. The place was constructed entirely of steel plating and diagonal struts that ran from floor to ceiling for additional reinforcement. The area was compartmentalized, like other parts of the outpost, to minimize the impact of any breaches that might occur. It was also cramped and claustrophobic, with very little room to maneuver.
To their left, near one end of the epidermis segment, light was streaming in through a jagged hole in the exterior plating just above head height, illuminating a shaft of swirling dust. Cait thought she could see the reddish sky of Proc-One beyond.
“There’s your breach,” Spud said.
“Looks that way. Take the trolley ahead while I close this bulkhead.”
Spud trundled forward, and Cait used the crank on the side of the doorway to seal the passage behind them. As the bulkhead thudded against the floor, she heard Spud let out a terrified shriek.
“What is it?” she said, whirling.
“Dead people! There’s dead people here!”
She scowled, figuring this was simply more of his foolishness. “What’re you—?” Then she followed the beam of his flashlight and saw that he was right. There
were
people here, lying on the floor and slumped against walls. Cait saw three of them, all male, although she didn’t recognize their faces.
Their eyes were unfocussed, and they lay unmoving. It was clear that they were dead. Exposure to Proc-One’s atmosphere for any longer than a couple of minutes was fatal.
“The Toads got ‘em,” Spud whimpered, his tone indicating that he was bordering on hysteria.
“You don’t know that. They died from exposure, most likely,” Cait said. She walked over and knelt by the nearest one, a balding man with swirling tattoos on his cheek. She put a hand on his chest, feeling for movement, but there was none. She felt immense sorrow for him, imagining the terror of his last moments as he was trapped in the epidermis, slowly suffocating. “We’ll have to get the medics in here when we’re done.”
“Why are we still standing here? Let’s get out of here. We don’t get paid enough to do stuff like this.”
“This is
exactly
what we get paid to do,” Cait said, straightening. She gave the other victims a cursory glance, making sure that none were still alive. She noticed an overturned storage unit and several backpacks among their belongings, but nothing to indicate who they might’ve been.
Then she made her way back over toward the breach.
“We’re staying?” Spud said, horrified.
“Let’s get this done.”
“Maybe we should scope out the area—”
“Spud, I told you before. We’re on the clock here. Time is critical.”
Cait watched as Spud reluctantly turned his attention back to the breach. She also turned to look at it, noting that the hole was perhaps a meter long, the steel twisted outward in several directions. It was a nasty-looking gap, but more troubling was the location: it was in the corner of the wall, with a bulky conduit beneath, so it was going to be an awkward job.
“We need to get the bender in there,” Cait said. “We’ll use the arc welder where we can, but otherwise we’re going to have to patch it with nano-webbing until we can fit more plating from the outside.”
“No chance,” Spud said. He glanced back at the corpses before continuing. “You won’t get the trolley close enough. Not a hope in Hades.”
“So we take the bender off and lift it against that conduit.”
“Are you crazy? That thing weighs a ton. We’ll never lift it.”
“Two people can carry it. We’ll do it together.”
Spud grunted. “These old bones aren’t—” He stopped and cried out as something moved just outside the breach, momentarily blocking out the light.
A figure of some kind,
she thought.
Even Cait staggered back in surprise. “What—?”
“It’s
them!
”
Cait moved, attempting to catch sight of the figure again, but it had disappeared. Spud was already heading toward the bulkhead.
“What are you doing?” she snapped.
“What do you think? I’m not hanging around here.” He gestured wildly as he cranked the handle. “Don’t you see the dead people? The creature outside? What do you think this all
means?
”
“Calm down.”
“I’ll tell you what it means. Just like I—”
There was a noise from the other end of the segment. They turned to see shadows moving and heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching. Spud yelled incoherently and dropped to the floor, moving as if in slow motion in his EVA suit, and scrambled under the narrow gap he had opened in the bulkhead, banging and scraping his way through in his panic.
“Spud!” Cait yelled, but it was too late. Spud’s feet disappeared, and then he was gone. She took two steps toward the bulkhead, intending to chase after him, but stopped when she heard the footsteps coming closer.
She peered into the gloom, but whatever was making the noise was still out of sight around the curve of the epidermis structure. She wondered briefly if perhaps Spud had taken the prudent action; she wasn’t a soldier, after all. If one of the Argoni was wandering around the epidermis, she should probably try to avoid it.
Still, she knew that she’d come here to do a job. An
important
job, one that she didn’t want to give up on unless absolutely necessary.
“Hello?” she called. “Is someone there?”
No response.
She made up her mind.
Taking three quick strides, she made it across to the bulkhead and turned the crank, lowering it to the floor again. She had to make sure that when Spud activated the door at the far end, the outside atmosphere didn’t leak into the Ag-rooms.
In a few seconds, the bulkhead door hit home.
She went back to the trolley and grabbed the biggest wrench she could find.
Then she stood, panting, and waited for whatever it was to show itself.