Expendable Heroes, page 7
He said, “All the information we need is probably in the base’s log, including where they took the craft.”
“Like they recorded where they were going,” Rollo said with a snort.
“Of course. If you wanted to be rescued, you’d do the same.”
“There is a log file,” Jack said, looking over his shoulder. “Vehicles and major items of equipment have their own entries that tell Xander where they are and what their charge level is.”
“Wouldn’t Jeremy already have that file?” Steven asked.
“Obviously not,” Jack said.
“Do you think that is what we’ve been sent to collect?”
“I don’t know. One of the things.”
They arrived back at the buildings and after a quick lunch, they agreed that Luciane would start on combing the computer systems for the logs. It sounded simple enough to ask Xander for it, but he kept sending them to a diary written by the scientists that, yes, they also had to go through but was not the thing they wanted.
Jack would spend some time talking to the Marmoset in orbit about their needs, including the fact that the ascent craft was missing. Luciane went to collect her gear from the descent craft while Jack disappeared into the base’s communication room.
Meanwhile, Steven and Rollo started on the lab.
Cleaning up outside had been a relatively easy job.
But it was hard to figure out where to start with the lab. There was just too much stuff there. Boxes and boxes of samples spilling from shelves, stacked on the floor and the benchtops.
Now that they could make a light, it was clear just how much dust and grime and mould had collected on the surface of everything.
“It might be an idea to clean the benches first,” Steven said to Luciane, who had returned and was about to put down her computer on a benchtop.
Luciane ran her finger over the bench. It came away black.
The storeroom also contained a number of drums of disinfectant, and now that the water purification plant was working again, Steven used one of the first buckets of clean water to mix some disinfectant so that they could clean the benchtops and the floors. He even found a couple of small patches of weeds growing in corners. The leaves were fragile and yellow, and he didn’t think the plants would have survived for long in the darkness, but it showed just how invasive this weed was.
While Luciane looked for the log files, the others took everything out of the cupboards and off the shelves. This process didn’t uncover anything shocking.
The research team had been investigating the biology and physiology of life on the planet, to see if there was anything useful for humans, and to see the biological requirements of the flora and fauna.
There were cupboards overflowing with samples, files, and files of data, tables of results with abbreviations that would take time to decipher. Results of experiments where they would have to find out about their aim.
Steven scrolled through reams of notes about biology and cultivation of local plants.
The plan was, apparently, to start growing local plants and build a village.
One of the scientists had studied the physiology of the plants to see if parts were edible. They hadn’t found any component particularly harmful, except when crushed, the stems of the fast-growing weed exuded a persistent and very slippery slime. The slime did not survive cooking. But the scientists had also noted that other plants from further in the forest showed more potential.
A note said, It looks like the slimy creeper is a highly opportunistic plant. Populations explode when the vegetation or soil is disturbed and then it grows extremely quickly.
Steven had definitely seen that.
Jack had some difficulty, but eventually managed to send his report to the Marmoset with the comment that interference was wild here.
Luciane didn’t find the log files. She did, however, find the Merlin company’s logo on a lot of official documents, which confirmed Steven’s feeling that they were the driving force behind the settlement, even if they had tried to hide behind the Space Settlement Authority’s back.
In the next few days that they combed through everything in the lab, someone had to go out every day to make sure that the solar panels, the paths and the craft remained uncovered.
If they’d been cultivating the field, Steven could see that the scientists would have spent a lot of time fighting the slimy creepers.
And Jack passed Luciane reams of data he unearthed in the base’s system, and she turned out to be good at detecting patterns and anomalies. Because while finding the reason the ascent craft was no longer there proved hard, there had to be data that pointed out why they had tried to leave.
Although Luciane became of the opinion that the scientists had made it back to the Marmoset and everyone up there was watching how the four of them struggled to survive.
For funsies.
Except they had several arguments over it.
Steve tasked a program with analysing the research data in the base’s systems. While the program ran, and it was amazing how much data people could collect in just a few months, he and the rest of the team went through all the shelves and drawers and cupboards in the lab to make a catalogue of the type of samples that were there.
The cargo hold of the descent vehicle contained so many vacuum sealable bags, they could, in Luciane’s words, “Bag up the entire fucking planet.”
Jeremy must really want samples, Steven concluded.
Except most of the samples were already in those bags, and in general, the the team of scientists seemed to be well aware of risks associated with letting foreign matter into the settlement.
It was almost as if everyone had an obsession with those bags.
Steven thought about themselves arriving here, and that they had been much more careless, with Rollo taking a dive in the vegetation, and them not being able to wash properly afterwards on the account of there being insufficient water. Those pioneers had been much more careful.
So he made the team observe better hygiene.
They cleaned all the samples out and carted them into the storage area, which grew so full, that they had to move some of the tools back into the lab, after cleaning them, of course. They were more likely to need those, anyway.
The team of scientists had consisted mostly of biologists, some geologists who had taken a lot of samples of the soil, and also some atmospheric scientists who had taken measurements of air samples.
Steven judged the geologists’ data the best, because they had recorded in quite a lot of detail where samples had been taken, and they also seemed to have been the ones who travelled furthest. They were two geologists, one called Leo Purcell, and another called Nali Kawane. Steven later found out they were husband and wife.
It seemed that the company liked to employ couples on these missions because they weren’t the only pair in the crew.
This thought made Steven angry. If they were going to punish him by sending him here, they might as well have sent Lette along to keep him company. But on the other hand, he didn’t really want her life to be in danger either, even if by this time, she might now be living with another man.
Xander had finally finished its analysis, and they all stood around the central bench in the lab to look at all the points of interest it had found.
There were some very quirky scientific notes that nobody knew what to do with, such as atmospheric anomalies that were merely observations. Methane plumes from within the forest? Whatever.
One point of interest it identified was that apparently, the base had an unofficial diary that all of the scientists contributed to. It was a line by line recount of all the things that they had done for each day. It was not formal, and not recorded in Xander.
Steven scrolled through the entries.
It started pretty much in the same way as Steven and his team had started, with them arriving on the planet, finding all the prepackaged elements there to build the base—they mentioned the ascent craft—and then constructing the building and making sure it was operational and safe.
“Look, they even said things about the plants,” Steven said.
“I hope they were not good things,” Rollo said. The rash on his neck had spread to his bottom jaw. It looked raw.
“It says that they found that dousing the skin with a weak solution of acid helps.”
“Yeah, right. Not sure that’s something I want to try.”
The scientists had started working only a week later, because apparently the contract with Merlin had been for six months, after which they would return to the company to report on their findings and hand over the base to a more permanent crew. The official mission statement for the project was to investigate the potential for discovering resources useful to the company or humanity in general.
That was pretty vague, but to Steven, it read like a classical company statement where the company basically gave their employees a free for all to do whatever they wanted as long as it made them money. He had seen the type before. Company, not-for-profit organisation or military, these people were all the same. Find something to exploit and exploit the people you bring with you. Because it’s not like if you’re on a ship or planet, you can leave and find another job.
For a while, the scientists had settled into some sort of routine.
“It says here they worked in the experimental plots outside the building in the mornings. Did you see these plots?”
“Yeah, we saw those, remember, underneath a layer of these infernal plants,” Luciane said.
Then, about four weeks after arriving, and three weeks after starting to work, there was an entry that said Had some problems with Leo this morning. He took the buggy off into the forest and hasn’t come back. Will send out a search party tomorrow morning.
The next day stated that they found Leo, that he had gotten confused through the strain of work, and had a fall, but that he was now all right. The buggy was damaged at the bottom of a cliff. They didn’t know if they had time to fix it because those plants covered everything so quickly and they also affected the operation of the buggy.
The scientists held a meeting where they planned an expedition to go into the next valley, because the geologists had reported that there were not so many slimy creepers. And also because they realised while that this particular spot might be flat enough for landing a craft, but it also didn’t have a natural water source, because they found that even if they collected rain water, it quickly became contaminated with slimy sap.
A few days later, there was another entry reporting back on an exploration by most of the team into the next valley. They reported that it was lush and green, that they were not so many of those nasty sticky plants, and that it had a small lake. That it seemed perfect for relocating the base.
They had a meeting about it, and decided that this was what they would do. Instead of beating their way through the jungle, they would take the ascent craft and simply put it down in the next valley.
When Steven read that line out, everyone looked at each other with relief on their faces.
“Well, that was easy,” Rollo said. “They just moved to the next valley. They might have told someone, but.”
“That means they could all be alive over there,” Luciane said. “If so, what the fuck are we doing in this fucking stinking jungle?”
Steven said, “I hate to disappoint you, but if they were alive, would they not have responded to the ship’s messages? And if so, what indeed are we doing here?”
Rollo cast a suspicious look around. “We’re not here to solve the company’s industrial pay dispute, right?”
Luciane snorted. “Fuck, I hope not, because if they’re sending a bunch like us, I doubt they expect we’ll be welcomed with cups of tea.”
“Yet, they didn’t provide us with weapons,” Steven said.
“I wish to fuck we had some.”
“Everything can be turned into a weapon,” Jack said.
“Smartarse. And also, I bags the laser. And you can shut your smug fucking piehole.”
“Luce…,” said Steven and Rollo at the same time, and then glanced at each other.
Luciane snorted. “Well, he’s a fucking arsehole, that’s what.”
“There is no point arguing,” Steven said.
Luciane snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. She obviously disagreed and frankly, Steven could see her point. There was something weird going on. This all began to resemble a stupid game to him, with the four of them as pawns.
And he realised that they’d been through the entire lab and had not located the second laser. That made the list of missing equipment somewhat longer: the ascent craft, the buggy, eleven suits and now a laser.
CHAPTER 10
“So, basically, we are screwed,” Luciane said. “They sent us down with the promise that there would be an escape vehicle here, but they must have known that the scientists decided to take it off to the next valley.”
She was pacing around the table in a way that was starting to annoy Steven.
“They would have told mission control, right?”
“They can’t have known, because they had communication problems,” Jack said.
Luciane whirled at him. “Why are you always harping on about that? If the reception is so bad, why don’t you go and fix it? You’re supposed to be the communication fixing boy.”
“You would know it’s not that easy. There are many other factors that go into successful communication. If there is a lot of interference from the planet, you can’t get good reception. And now we’re so far from the ship that the sun is starting to interfere. I don’t need to say this. You should know that.” For the first time, his voice lost its smugness.
“It sounds like you’re trying to defend the company.”
“I’m not!”
But the vigour with which he said that made Steven think that probably Jack had a different function from the rest of them. Steven had always felt that, starting way back when Jack refused to talk about his past and the reason he’d been included in the team. First, it was about being a pilot, then about knowing about communication. He’d been in charge of reporting to the Marmoset on what they had found so far. What had he told Jeremy? What had Jeremy told him? More importantly, what had Jack neglected to tell everyone?
“Since we established that the ascent craft is in the next valley, we need to go there,” Steven said.
“There is no point. We are all screwed, that’s what I’m saying,” Rollo said. “They’re playing games with us. They want us dead.”
Steven started, “If they wanted that, they could have just—”
“I know!” Rollo called out. “They could have shot us on the spot. But they want something, and our survival is not that thing.”
He was still scratching his arms.
“Stop it, you two!” Jack said.
They fell silent.
“No, not the fight. Stop that, too, but the scratching and the pacing.”
Luciane stopped.
“Something is happening to us,” Jack said. “Sure, we’re a group of misfits, but we’re getting on each other’s nerves.”
“You would get on your own nerves, too, if you could listen to the smug shit you say,” Rollo said.
“Oh. Stop it with the conspiracies,” Luciane said. “It’s just those fucking plants. If you get the sap on you, the shit itches and burns and walking around makes it better.”
“Does it cause arguing, too?”
“Yes!” Luciane and Rollo said at the same time.
Steven just thought of something. “Did any of you remember to charge the suits for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow, when they would have to tackle regrowth over the solar panels and if they had time, the descent craft, because it was about to disappear under a layer of plants.
Luciane gave him a look of thunder, but strode off to the suiting room, anyway. Keeping the building powered was too important.
“The diary said something happened to Leo,” Steven said in what he hoped was a calming voice into the silence when Luciane was gone. “They weren’t specific about what. Could it be that he got so irritated and itchy that he ran off and wanted to kill himself by driving the buggy off a cliff because we know he did that, and they left it there?”
“Could be,” Jack said. “And after that, the others decided that they’d had enough and they’d go to a place where there weren’t as many plants.”
“And where there was fresh water.”
“To wash away the plant poison.”
“Yeah.”
That was a fragile truce. Luciane rejoined the table.
“So, what are we doing now?” she asked. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life clearing those fucking plants off the shed and the path to the craft and the solar panels.”
“No, we go and find the ascent vehicle,” Steven said.
“How do we get to the next valley?”
“We have the buggy.”
“No, we don’t. It’s in the forest somewhere.”
“We can find it. We collect it, we fix it, and then we take it into the next valley. We get the ascent vehicle. We make weapons to retrieve it if necessary. Then we fix it or refuel it or whatever it needs, and then we get the hell out of here.”
Luciane snorted. “Do we know where the ascent craft and the buggy are?”
“Xander knows everything.”
“Not where it went. They had no reception.”
“It knows where the cliffs are in the area surrounding this building, where the buggy could be, since the report specifically mentioned a cliff.”
Jack looked distinctly uncomfortable. “It’s our brief to find out what happened to the scientists.”
Luciane whirled at him. “Do you really believe that anymore? They’re dead. Or they’ve taken off into the next valley and have started a nude hippy commune. I don’t care. Whatever. If these people were important enough to the company, they would have sent important people to rescue them. I just want to get out of here alive. That’s all.”
