Expendable Heroes, page 4
He knew that the first thing the authority did was to land an ascent vehicle and fuel and a shipment of components for constructing the base. These construction kits were very similar. They consisted of one or two prefab buildings. The configuration might change according to the circumstances, for example, if the base required an air control system, the two building shells fitted inside each other so that they could deal with the pressure differences.
This base didn’t need that, so the twelve crew had set up the large and slightly smaller buildings behind one another, with a covered walkway connecting them. The front one housed the living quarters and maintenance workshop. The back one was their research work space.
He showed a series of satellite photos where the two buildings, the ascent vehicle and the storage facility were clearly visible. In some pictures, there were little plots of land with vegetation.
“They grew a lot of their own food,” the man said.
“Everyone here is talking as if all the scientists are dead,” Rollo said to Jeremy when he rejoined the group. “I mean—with all the surveillance you have, has anyone actually seen the bodies?”
Jeremy shook his head. “No, because if we had seen those, we wouldn’t be sending you. You’re absolutely right. We don’t know that they’re dead for sure because we haven’t seen bodies, but having seen no sign of life for months, we don’t assume that any of them are still living. If they were still alive, we would have expected them to have come out when we sent the drones. Those things are not exactly silent.”
While that was true, Steven could also think of a few situations where the crew couldn’t react to notify a visiting drone. And none of those thoughts led anywhere good. Because even an immobilising injury would have led to death if no help turned up over a time of eight months. The thought made him shudder. If this job failed, this would likely be their future, too. The company would not spend money and resources to send anyone down to rescue a bunch of prisoners.
The exploration base module kit had a lot of features, so the session wasn’t finished until well after dinner, after which Steven went to his cabin and fell into bed, knowing that he’d really feel his the muscles legs the next morning.
And he did.
There was more suit training with his sore legs, and another lecture in computer systems.
During this afternoon session that spread into the evening, he noticed that Luciane seemed bored, unlike Jack and Rollo, who were both listening intently. When Jeremy spoke, she was either staring at the ceiling or doodling curly drawings on the edges of the instruction documents with her stylus.
Jeremy noticed after a while. “I see that someone isn’t paying attention. I might remind you that the information I give you now can literally be the difference between life and death down there.”
“You’re telling us only what you want to tell us,” Luciane said. “I know how a base is set up, and I suspect you picked us out of the prisoner pool because we all know this. None of this is new to us. But we don’t know if you’re telling the truth about anything. We don’t even know if there is a base down there, or if maybe the scientists have gone feral and you’re sending us to control them with some sort of shit story.”
“Believe me, if we wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t spend all this time and money getting you to the ground.”
“Then why us? We’re just a bunch of political prisoners.”
His stare was ice cold. “You’re here to do a job, so that you can be released. Why all the questions?”
When they walked out of the room to go back to their cabins—which were close to the meeting room but not next to each other—Luciane caught Steven’s eye. She mouthed something, but he couldn’t figure out what she was trying to say.
To be perfectly honest, he was too tired to care.
She was angry, and he was angry, too, but there was nothing she could say that was going to change his situation. Sophia was eight and by the time he came back, she would be at least twelve. Would she even want to see him? Lette would probably have found another man. That was only fair, and he would do the same. He couldn’t expect her to wait for him to come back while she probably had no idea where he was, or had even been told he was dead or no longer wanted to see her.
There was nothing he could do to change that. Except doing the job and hoping Jeremy would stick to his promise of freedom. But in Steven’s experience, promises like this were hardly worth anything. Especially not without a contract, and he had no hope that they would be offered one.
The last day before arriving at the planet was set aside for a full medical examination during which, Jeremy said, the four would receive medications that made them more resistant to infections and unknown diseases.
When Steven came into the hospital room for his turn, a tray full of syringes was the first thing he saw.
“What are they all for?” he asked, looking at them.
“For you, lucky bastard,” the medical officer said.
Yikes.
“What are they supposed to do?”
“Just your regular vaccinations.”
“But I’m up to date.”
“Tough, sunshine. You were up to date. You’ve been in stasis for four years. Your immune system is struggling. You will need these, let me tell you. They won’t kill you.”
Well, phew, that was a relief, not to put too sarcastic a point on it.
Steven sat on the examination table and let himself be measured, prodded and poked. The row of syringes grew shorter until there was only one left, a very big one.
From the moment the medical officer plunged that needle in his arm, a feeling of burning acid spread through his upper arm, his shoulder, his side, his neck. His eyesight went funny.
Steven rubbed his head. “Damn it, what is this stuff?”
“Just a big boy full of goodness that will protect you against alien diseases.”
“Well, let’s hope it works, then.” His tongue felt rubbery and the words echoed inside his head. He couldn’t get up, so the officer told him to lie down until he recovered enough the slide from the table and not immediately collapse on the floor.
When the officer was satisfied, Steven stumbled to his cabin. He didn’t go to dinner. All night, he tossed and turned, feeling feverish.
When he got up the next morning, he still had a headache and he felt very hot. Not fever hot, but like he had just run a marathon.
He looked at the others at breakfast to see if they felt the same, but they didn’t show any discomfort. It felt silly to complain, because they had more pressing things to worry about.
Breakfast was taken up by the last of the briefings by Jeremy, before they got changed into their flight suits. Everything was checked, double checked and triple checked, and they finally marched out to the descent vehicle.
Steven walked next to Luciane. She looked very self-assured and tough while he still didn’t feel completely his usual self.
She pulled a grim face and said in a low voice, “Isn’t it funny that they want us to be a team, but never allowed us to spend time with the four of us together without a minder?”
CHAPTER 6
Steven followed Jack through the narrow access tube that led from the main ship to the descent vehicle.
The team had been told that Jack was accredited to pilot the craft, which meant he was going to be good for something, because in the previous few days while Rollo and Luciane had shared small snippets of their professional lives, Jack had remained much of a mystery.
During the limited time they spent together, mostly at lunch, and almost always in the company of someone else, they’d chatted about innocent topics, about jobs they’d done.
Steven had learned that Rollo had worked as a delivery driver before deciding to become an electrician and that a connection with a cousin had allowed him to enter the competitive space program as a maintenance engineer, but that he’d found the work very stressful.
“Look, I don’t think I’m a bad technician, but man, these buttoned-up idiots think I can do miracles, and even if I said I could try, they just wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Buttoned up idiots? Were you in the military?”
“Briefly. Didn’t last long.”
Steven suspected his dismissal had something to do with why Rollo was in prison. That and his temper.
He’d learned that Luciane’s family was of Chinese heritage, but that they’d lived in the Philippines for many years. Luciane was well connected with political advocacy groups and, yes, hackers. She had been a government-sponsored hacker, although she didn’t say which government.
Steven had talked a bit about growing up in a military family, moving schools every few years, about how his parents’ relationship had not survived that regime and how he’d started work on a farm when he was fourteen and that had kindled his interest in learning about how to grow things. And how being in the farming community had led to his activism that had made him a political enemy of powerful people. He didn’t talk about Lette or Sophia, because they were too special to him and he wanted to protect them from whichever people thought they could blackmail him.
Jack… had said nothing. Not about himself or about the task they were about to do. He didn’t chat with anyone either. He’d not asked any pointy questions.
So, if he was going to be the pilot boy—as Luciane called him to his great annoyance—then maybe he would have some use after all.
That, and being responsible for the communication with the ship that would remain in orbit.
Because that’s what Jeremy had told him about Jack, and Luciane was absolutely right: for that they were meant to be a team, they’d spent no time together to coordinate what each of them would be doing.
They’d have to make that up on the fly. And now they were on their way with frighteningly little training or preparation. Into the den to meet the dragon, or whatever else waited for them on the surface.
The long and rather wobbly tube had several small windows. Most of the view was taken up with the surface of the planet, a wild green and blue ball with no signs of human habitation.
Eden indeed.
Steven wondered if this was what Earth would have looked like many tens of thousands of years ago, before humans started building and slashing and digging and frankly ruining the place.
And that thought, of course, brought him back to thinking about his family, and he wondered what Lette and Sophia would have been doing in the past four years during his absence. Whether they were still waiting for him to return. And also whether, when he came back from this mission in the ascent craft, there would be a way of contacting them. Promising freedom was a one thing, but getting together the funds to return to Earth was going to be another.
A single Space Settlement Authority officer stood at the door of the descent vehicle, busy keying in something on the door panel. The door was open, and although Steven had been inside the vehicle before, he was again struck by the thought that, although Jeremy had said they would be well equipped, he was wondering whether they would have the knowledge to operate all the things that were in here and how to use them in case of an emergency. Processes were supposed to be automated, but automation often got things catastrophically wrong and didn’t they say to err is human but to completely fuck things up requires a computer?
Not really a helpful thing to cross his mind right now.
They went in and settled in three of the six passenger seats in the cabin. Jack took the pilot’s position at the front.
There was also a separate compartment at the back that contained all the supplies and their suits. That cargo hold was loaded to the ceiling, and it was rather cramped in there.
The vehicle itself had only limited engine capability, enough to return from an aborted mission before entering the atmosphere, but not enough to lift off the surface and return to the ship.
It was standard practice for surface missions to drop an ascent vehicle and fuel first, together with the materials to build the shelter and set up a base. The scientists had never used the ascent vehicle and it would be the way they returned to the ship. If there were technical issues with that craft, Rollo had the knowledge to fix it.
So, they floated in on a craft that was a glorified parachute with a cargo hold containing only spare parts.
Steven strapped himself in and put on his helmet and turned on the air supply.
Jack sat behind the controls, but most of the descent would be automated, so he wasn’t likely to have to do much.
Luciane sat in front of Steven, and Rollo sat next to him.
When they were all seated, the Authority officer gave a thumbs up in a fake cheerful way, and shut the door.
“So, we are off, eh?” Rollo said.
“Shut up, clown,” Luciane said.
“What? I’m only saying. It’s true, right?”
“Clown.”
Rollo crossed his arms over his chest.
Well, this was going to be a fun trip with this lot.
With a very small bump, the vehicle detached from the main ship, and they were off. The point of no return. They might as well disappear altogether for all the slim chance they’d come back here again. If this was an easy mission, these cowardly agencies and companies would already have done it. They were not sending prisoners here with the expectation they’d be successful.
In that moment, as the craft floated free of the large ship, Steven decided that for as long as he was alive, he would make sure that he returned, that he saw his daughter again, and that he got to the bottom of why he was sent here and someone was held to account.
Nobody said much while the vehicle floated down and then entered the atmosphere. After that bumpy ride, air rushed around the vehicle, making an unfamiliar rumbling background noise.
Steven looked out the window. The jungle was now much closer. From lower altitude, it seemed even denser and bigger and taller than it had in orbit. Those trees were huge. They were so very green. He couldn’t spot a single break in the dense vegetation.
Were they even at the right spot?
Closer, they came, and closer. Jack sat fairly relaxed back in his seat, checking the coordinates on the screen.
“All going according to plan?” Steven asked.
Jack turned his head as if annoyed. “Of course. This thing knows where to go. It’s us that don’t.”
But when they came even closer, there still wasn’t an obvious spot where the craft was going to land, even if a landing spot was marked on the projection on the screen facing Jack.
By now, both Luciane and Rollo were looking over Jack’s shoulder as well.
“I thought Jeremy said the scientists had constructed an airstrip,” Luciane said.
“He did say that. I can’t see it,” Jack said.
For the first time, he sounded a little bit worried.
Steven squinted at the screen that projected the view of the outside camera. Nothing but dense jungle. But wait—there was a tiny dip in the tree cover.
“There is little clearing, just ahead,” he said.
“That’s just a dip in the vegetation,” Jack said. “Not big enough to land. We can’t be there yet.”
“What is the Marmoset saying about it?” They would get the feed on board the ship.
Jack listened. Then he sent the ship in a sharp turn.
“They say it’s the spot. They say to push ahead. It may be a bit rough, but the vegetation is not very dense, and it grows so quickly on this planet, that’s all we’ve got. We don’t have the time to find another landing area.”
Rollo squinted at the screen. “I don’t see anything. No buildings.”
“They’re there on the map.”
“I can’t see the ascent vehicle either,” Luciane said.
No, Steven couldn’t see it either.
“There, I think.” Rollo pointed at a spot on the scan.
Steven still couldn’t see it. The whole area was a riot of green. He could only hope with all his might that the buildings and the craft were underneath the greenery, or this would be the last thing he’d ever do.
There was no stopping the mission now.
Had Jeremy known this? And if he’d known this, he wouldn’t have spent all these resources just to send them to their deaths, right?
As they came closer to the green canopy, Steven braced himself.
But as he was holding onto the seat with white-knuckled hands, afraid that he would rip a hole in the seat cover, the craft’s descent engines kicked in. They slowed the craft and then brought it to a hovering stop. The craft slowly sank down.
Through the distortions of hot air moving past the window, Steven could see only a carpet of vegetation.
Jack guided the craft down into it.
As he had said, the cover wasn’t very deep.
The undercarriage sunk into the vegetation and with a rough bump, they landed on the surface.
The engines powered down, and when quiet had returned, Rollo said, “Right, we are here. Let’s find those bastards. The less time we spend here, the better.”
CHAPTER 7
Rollo was the first to have undone his safety harness, and to be out of his seat and on his way through the middle of the cabin to the storage compartment.
The four mech suits stood in the cramped space, strapped into the side wall, complete with their battery packs and toolboxes.
The suits were in a position where they could be taken out without the need to unpack other stuff, but they had to be shuffled into the cabin one by one. It was hot work, especially since the craft’s on-board artificial assistant Xander deemed that the outside air was safe to breathe and had turned off all air supply “to conserve resources”.
But Luciane was adamant that no one should leave the craft without the suit and its emergency breathing apparatus, so the door remained shut until they were all suited up.
The suits took up a lot more space when people were wearing them than when they were stowed, so it got very cramped in the small space. Cramped and sweaty. Steven hit his head on the ceiling.
