by Guy Haley
He struggled to keep his wakened emotions in check, tried to smile back. “I see,” he said.
He told Marina he was going to go out from the camp to scan the nearest beacons again, and to see if he could find anything of use in the cargo containers scattered across the landscape. He walked with his head away from the others, hiding his tears. He let the sun burn his neck as he stared at the screen of the tablet, a private penance.
An hour later, composed, he returned from his slow circling. “I’ve rechecked the manifests of the nearby containers on the tablet. Nothing useful,” he said. “Not to us right now. I marked their positions, in case the contents can be retrieved later.”
“Are we ready?” said Marina.
“Nearly,” said Sandra. She had coaxed the stranger to walk. The girl was dazed, but mobile.
Bernhardt and Bo said yes. Tomek had lashed their supplies to the sleds as best they could.
“Which way do we go?” said Tomek quietly.
“Away from the sun,” said Bo.
“Why not follow the trail of debris?” said Bernhardt. “Our chance of rescue will be better that way.”
“We can follow the debris trail while it goes northwest, if we assume the sun in is the south,” said Dariusz. “It is a longer route, but we are guaranteed more supplies in further decks as we go. We might pick up other survivors also, and it could be some of them have had contact with others.” He did not say that they might happen on his son. Everyone knew.
“Sure, sure,” said Bo. “But we will have to cut away from the trail eventually. The last thing we need is to be caught in the desert without supplies.”
The group voted, and agreed.
They left the deck segment without ado. They checked nervously, at first, for signs of whatever might have harmed the other colonists, but eventually the effort of moving through the desert overcame their fears, and they fell silent one by one.
It was in this state that death found them.
THEY WERE FOUR days into their trek. The group had settled into a routine of walking for five hours a day, stopping to investigate whenever they came across a beacon signal. They were disappointed in their hope for further survivors, finding three more smashed segments scattered across the landscape. One yielded a locker full of welcome emergency rations. A fourth segment was intact, but empty of people and stores. Arguments broke out over whether or not they should divert from their path and strike directly north. Dariusz, naturally, insisted they stick to their plan. The last deck segment they had passed had been 37B. They were drawing closer to his son.
The arguments receded as each broken deck receded. None were in the mood for talking, and more than one of them were displaying signs of inChip withdrawal. Tomek suffered this the most.
Dariusz caught movement from the corner of his eye: a dark, deltoid shape flowing across the dunes. In the featureless desert, his peripheral vision felt preternaturally sharp, although half the time it found things that were not there. Like his network-starved mind, his eyes were hungry for stimulation, and he did not trust them.
He turned toward the motion and blinked. There was no sign of the shadow. He was about to return his gaze to the sand around his feet when the shadow returned, a stark triangle on the side of a low dune. He swung his head to the south. His spine chilled. He shielded his eyes against the sun and searched the sky.
A black shape sailed on the breeze, wings wide.
The others noticed what he was doing, and turned to look.
“What is that?” asked Sandra.
“I don’t know,” said Dariusz uneasily.
“It is a rescue craft!” shouted Bernhardt. “Don’t you see, it is a rescue craft, they have come for us!” He ran, stumbling from the line, tearing his makeshift headdress from his sunburned scalp and waving it madly. “Hey! Hey!”
“There’s no engine noise,” said Dariusz. “A glider?”
Marina squinted against the flawless blue. “I don’t recall any atmospheric craft like that in the ship’s manifest.”
“What about aboard the Goethe, or the other ships?” said Tomek. He was listless. All of their voices were harsh, roughened by sand and thirst.
Marina shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
The shape executed a wide, lazy bank, and approached. Dariusz picked up the tablet on his chest; the radio was making a peculiar noise.
“Do you recognise this?” he said to Marina.
She frowned. “No. Not at all.”
“You said they would not come, you said they would not come!” Spittle flew from Bernhardt’s lips. He jabbed an accusing finger at Dariusz. His voice wavered between joy and fury. “You said! You said no, but oh, they are here now! They are here now! They have seen us! I told you we should have stayed where we were. They’re coming to rescue us!”
“I don’t think that’s an aircraft,” said Marina. All of them stirred, instinctively moving apart. The shape grew bigger. The flatness of the sky, the glare of the sun, the reach of the desert made it impossible to judge the thing’s size. The strange signal picked up by the tablet increased in volume, a regular, jarring ping.
“Hey! Hey!” shouted Bernhardt. He ran further out into the sand, away from the group.
Bo let his rucksack slip from his back. “Bernhardt...”
The shape drew closer. It let out an unearthly, polyphonic call, a rumbling whale song overlaid by an earsplitting screech that rose higher than human ears could follow.
Bo was sprinting now. “Bernhardt! Bernhardt! Get down!”
The rest of the group scattered, ancient prey responses driving them away from each other. Dariusz ran toward Bo and Bernhardt. Bo launched himself at the German, who had stopped, rooted to the spot, mouth agape. Bo hit him square in the middle, sending them both crashing to the ground, as the thing dipped to the earth.
Dariusz’s impressions of the creature were fragmented; a light blue belly, lighter topside, a pair of wings at least twenty metres across. There was the smell, cinnamon like the wind, but far more intense, overpowering in a way cinnamon is not. There was a scream, a human scream, and it was gone.
Dariusz ducked as the thing flew overhead. He followed the creature with his eyes as it passed over them and on, dwindling rapidly. He saw appendages trailing in the wind, and thought he saw, struggling in their grip, a human form. He squinted, and he could not see it any longer.
He turned back to where Bernhardt had been shouting the thing in, drawing it down on them. He lay in the sand, his face contorted in horror as he watched the creature’s progress into blue obscurity.
Of Bo there was no sign.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Danieł
THE GROUP MOVED more quickly after Bo was taken, one of them tasked with scanning the skies at all times. They kept, where possible, to shelter: the slipfaces of dunes, the slacks between the hills of sand, staying away from the open unless tempted out by the promise of supplies or other survivors. They pillaged deck segments where they could, but found no others alive. Dariusz went alone as often as not to scout these locations, for with Bo gone, no one else was willing to accompany him. He kept close watch on the nameless girl, to see if she reacted to the flying monster. She did not, leading him to suspect something else may have been responsible for the deaths of her colleagues.
The crescent barchans gave way to endless seifs, the sign of deep, deep desert, although Dariusz did not mention this to his fellows. If they were unaware of the change in the dunes and what it betokened, far better that they remain ignorant. They saw an increasing number of the aerial lifeforms as time went on. At first they were always alone, but five days after the death of Bo they saw their first flock. When the black shapes cut the blue of the sky, the group cast themselves to the ground and waited until the creatures had flown past. No one spoke of rescue any more.
They grew weaker. Tomek became delirious. Their dehydration worsened. Marina reduced their liquid rations. Their solid food ran out.
They began to lo
se hope.
The wind strengthened, switching round to the north, and became cooler. At first this brought some relief from the lidless glare of the sun, but as it gathered speed the wind threw the desert up into their faces. Eddies of blown sand became sheets. Dust clogged their nostrils, dug into the corners of their eyes, stuck to their chapped lips and scoured their sunburned skin. They fashioned scarves for their faces from the spare smartsuits they carried, but these helped little: powered, the torn fabric contorted itself, unsure of its role, and unpowered, it was too light to stay in place easily. They plodded in single file, the moan of the wind and the hiss of the sand mocking them. They no longer broke their journey to investigate wreckage. They stopped watching the sky. They slept in huddles, jumpsuits tented over their faces, sleds end-on as feeble windbreaks. When they woke, they had to dig themselves from the sands.
The wind blew harder and the light grew dimmer as dust was thrown up into the atmosphere, bringing a kind of brown twilight on them. They abandoned most of their sleds and formed a chain, hands on each others’ shoulders. They took it in turns at the front to lead the way, the others wrapping scarves around their eyes to protect them.
Such was the noise of the gathering storm, Dariusz almost missed the message from the tablet. The signal was preceded by a string of pops and cracks, like water dripping into hot fat.
“This is deck segment 46B. This is a recorded message. We are two hundred and ninety-six in number. If you receive this, please follow our signal origin and lock onto our homing beacon. This is deck segment 46B, awaiting rescue. This is deck segment 46B...”
The signal looped twice, before it was overtaken by the whoop of interference. Dariusz stumbled to a halt, picked up the tablet and stared dumbly at it. Its diamond-hard screen was unscratched, but fat grains of sand crowded the device’s every cranny.
“Dariusz!” shouted Marina. Her voice was weak, the wind was loud, and he did not hear. She broke from the line and ripped her scarf from her face. She gestured urgently at Dariusz. “The radio! The radio!”
The group stopped, dropping their loads. They slunk into the shelter of an escarpment half-drowned by a towering dune. Sand streamed around the rock on either side, but in the lee of the outcrop was a measure of respite. Tomek sank to his knees. Bernhardt crouched with his face buried in his arms. Marina dashed to Dariusz and grabbed the unit, tugging his neck painfully with the strap.
“H-h-hello?” She licked her lips. Her throat was so dry her voice died in her throat. “Is anyone there? This is Marina Vodička, junior ship’s engineer, survivor of deck segment 14A. Is there anyone there? Hello? Hello!” They all waited, staring at the radio. Nothing came, only the eerie howls of static. Marina glanced nervously at Dariusz. He could not make out her face too well. His head pounded. He did not think it possible to be so thirsty.
“Hello? Hello. This is Artur Kościelniak. Hello?” The voice faded in and out, then strengthened and stayed true. Marina laughed and cried at the same time. The others smiled. Fear retreated, just for a moment.
“Where are you? We are getting no fix on your beacon,” she said.
“We boosted our radio, we got a real transmitter up and running. We haven’t yet figured out how to crack the beacon unit without destroying it.”
“How do we find you?”
“Marina? That’s your name?”
“Yes!”
“Don’t worry Marina, we’ve triangulated your position. You’re not far. Stay where you are. We’ll come to you. We’ll be with you in half an hour.”
The voice cut out, leaving the group giddy, afraid the voice had been a desert phantom.
Half an hour passed, and then another. They became despondent. Some of them slept. Dariusz watched shrouds of sand rush over the sun, obscuring it in a dance of veils.
There was a high whining that at first he took to be another trick of the wind.
Engines.
Sandra was on her feet, rushing from around the rock to stare up the steep side of the dune. She cupped her hand around her mouth. “They are coming!” she called. “They are coming!”
Dariusz scrambled to her position, and she pointed to the dune’s summit.
A large, broad-wheeled ATV rolled toward them. A second crested the ridge like a ship breaching a wave, electric motor shifting pitch with the effort. It skidded sideways on the soft sand, sending up sprays of dust that seemed oddly flat in the heavier gravity.
The lead ATV pulled up level with their shelter. Its six tyres were the height of a tall man, a blocky passenger unit perched atop it. The driver’s door opened, and a man got out onto the running boards over the tyres. He leaned over to address them. An environment suit mask covered his face, but his smile radiated from behind it.
“Hi, there,” he shouted over the wind. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder back to the ATV’s cabin. “The name’s Corrigan. Do you guys happen to need a lift?”
“THIS IS WHAT we’ve managed to salvage so far,” Kościelniak waved a hand through the window at the stacks of containers surrounding the base. “First Landing’s got a regular shuttle run coming down here, bussing most of it back up to the liminal zone, but it’s been decided to maintain this as a forward facility. We don’t want too many eggs in one basket, as the English say.”
Corrigan nodded. “That we do.”
Kościelniak was an Anglophile, and keen to impress upon the others his use of idiomatic British rather than simplified Lingua Anglica. He seemed a decent man, genuinely overjoyed to see more survivors.
“It’s a bit premature to call this meagre collection of prefabs a town, yet,” Kościelniak said, “but I’d be willing to say it’ll be one day. We can’t all live in one place.”
“Where would the fun be in that?” said Corrigan.
Corrigan was English. He wore the black, paramilitary garb of the Pointers’ bodyguard. The group were all wary of him. He was observant, and caught Dariusz appraising him. “Does this bother you?” He glanced down at his uniform.
“Do not worry, Dariusz,” said Kościelniak in Polish. “He works for them, but he is a good person, and the only one of theirs here now.”
“That’s not fair. You know I have no translation facilities anymore.” Corrigan tapped the side of his head. Their inChips were still useless, their few native functions aside. No data network existed here either.
“Then I suggest you learn,” said Kościelniak with a grin. “Polish is a beautiful language, and there are far more of us than of you.”
Corrigan did not look convinced. “Don’t do it again. We have to be open with each other. Pull that trick on one of my less enlightened colleagues and you will have a problem on your hands.”
“Is that a threat?” said Kościelniak.
Corrigan leaned back. He was heavily muscled. “No, no! Friendly advice.”
“One of the good ones, as I said,” said Kościelniak.
They sat in a utilitarian prefab cabin of forty square metres, with one wide window. The space was divided into two rooms. From the smaller room, tubular tunnels led across to similar buildings – five in all – that made up the outpost; Desert One, they called it. The five survivors of 14A and the girl of 30A had been issued with fresh smartclothing displaying their mission specialties, but they looked and felt dishevelled compared to Kościelniak and Corrigan. They drank their five-hundred-year-old soup gratefully.
“We’re still pulling in cargo containers out of the desert. The location data you’ve given us is invaluable, and will save us a lot of time. We’re fortunate, I think; or rather, we owe Captain Posth a great deal, as she jettisoned much of the cargo and a lot of it came down in one piece. Some of it’s been smashed to bits, but...” He shrugged. “In the circumstances, we’re doing rather well: many of our prefabs, vehicles, a lot of the hydroponics, basic food supplies... All lying around, waiting to be picked up.”
“How many colonists have you saved?” asked Dariusz.
Kościelniak looked uncomfortabl
e, his eyes drawn to the deck segment he’d arrived in. It had come down at an angle on the side of a dune, and was being buried by the storm. “That is a less happy story. There were two hundred and ninety-six of us here, in deck 46B. We had a fatal accident, one death from internal injuries sustained in the crash, and two disappearances – perhaps one of these raptor things that took your colleague – so there were four less when First Landing made contact. We’re right on the edge of their transmission range, so it’s no surprise they never found you, that’s the primary reason we’ve kept this forward base occupied.
“The decks came down in two clusters. The bigger ones, and therefore the majority of colonists, landed close to First Landing. But the smaller, sternward decks finished up out in the desert. We’re here for people like you. Most of the original occupants of 46B have gone on to First Landing. We’ve had” – Artur checked his personal unit – “two hundred and forty more come through here, or picked up by our ATVs. We’ve been doing sweeps of the desert as best we can, but the sand plays havoc with our solar arrays, and there’s not much water here, as you might have seen. There’s only so much we can wring out of the air” – another friendly smile split his black beard – “so we’ve not done as much as we want. With this storm, I doubt we’ll find many more. It’s building, you know. They say it could last for days. You were lucky. Twice. It’s understood a lot of the sternward decks got smashed up badly.”
“Captain Posth?” asked Marina.
“Dead, it is assumed. Along with most of the Mickiewicz’s crew. They stayed to the end to get as many out as they could. They were brave.”
Dariusz set down his mug, shaking. He hoped the others would put it down to fatigue. “There were fourteen thousand people on the Mickiewicz,” he said. “What are our total numbers of survivors?”
“You’re very interested in population statistics for a geoengineer,” said Corrigan.
“We all should be interested. Aren’t you?” said Marina.
