by Gary Gibson
Sam nodded and pressed the back of one hand against his mouth, feeling a rush of nausea.
‘You managed to get back home to warn us,’ said Traynor, putting one hand on her shoulder. ‘You did good.’
Jess made a sour face. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever feel as happy as I did when I saw that fucking lander. I couldn’t even tell you how I got back. I just kept walking, and walking, and walking…’
‘We need to go find her,’ said Sam with ill-concealed urgency. ‘Now.’
‘I’m all for that,’ said Irish, ‘except how do we keep from getting lost as well?’
‘Mark trees the same way I do,’ said Sam, ‘so we can find our way back.’ He shifted from foot to foot, his nerves singing with adrenaline. Every second they stood around talking instead of looking for Sun was wasted time.
‘Hey,’ Joshua exclaimed, ‘what about that drone Kevin built? Couldn’t we use that to look for her?’
‘Shit, yes,’ said Irish, her eyes growing wide.
Traynor frowned. ‘What’s this?’
‘Kevin cobbled a drone together from parts that he scavenged,’ Sam explained. ‘He was still working on it when we left this morning.’
‘I’ll go get him,’ said Kim, hurrying towards the lander.
‘All right,’ said Sam, looking around at the rest of them, ‘here’s my suggestion. Once we’re out in the forest, we spread out in a line while we look for her. As long as we can see each other, nobody’s going to get lost. We can cover a lot of ground that way.’
‘Hey!’ said Traynor, standing now. ‘Did you forget something was following them—possibly even hunting them?’
Joshua put out a hand. ‘Vic—’
Traynor made a motion as if brushing him away. ‘It’s going to be dark soon. Running after Sun’s all very noble, but you’re crazy if you think we won’t wind up losing even more people to whatever’s out there.’
‘We can’t wait,’ Sam spat back at him, his temper fraying. ‘She’s out there somewhere!’
Traynor’s eyes narrowed, and he gave Sam an appraising look. ‘Everybody knows the two of you got close. I don’t want any of my people to get killed because you don’t know how to think with your brain instead of your dick.’
‘Fuck you, Traynor!’ Ethan shouted, his voice full of outrage. ‘We all want to save her!’
Sam imagined taking Traynor by the throat and squeezing until his eyeballs bulged. ‘You know what?’ he said, ‘perhaps you want to sit this one out, Vic, if you think it’s going to be too dangerous.’ He looked around at the rest of them, ignoring Traynor’s furious gaze. ‘Volunteers only. Who’s coming with me?’
‘I’ll go,’ Irish said, without hesitation.
Karl’s eyes flicked towards Traynor, then back to Sam. ‘Me too.’
The air filled with more ayes, from all around the campfire.
‘Fine,’ said Traynor, his gaze still hard. ‘I still think you’re crazy, but I’m not going to sit here while the rest of you take a risk. I’ll come as—’
‘Hey!’
Sam turned to see Kevin came hurrying over, his drone again cupped in both hands, and Kim following in his wake. ‘I made some adjustments so we can get a live video feed running from its cameras,’ he told them as he came to a halt. ‘We should be able to monitor the feed from inside the lander.’
‘I trained as a drone pilot,’ said Karl. ‘I can set up and program a search pattern, assuming the interface is anything like the one I used.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Kevin. ‘Amit’s still up inside the lander—he’ll show you how to operate it.’
Karl glanced at Traynor, who nodded stiffly. Sam watched as Karl ran towards the lander.
‘Hey!’ Kevin said to Sam, ‘catch anything?’
‘No,’ said Irish. ‘We did find that herd Vic mentioned, except something slaughtered a bunch of them. We found dozens of them dead all along both sides of a river, but they’d been stripped of all their meat.’
‘We also found paw-prints all around the carcasses,’ said Sam, then nodded back to where they’d entered the clearing. ‘You ought to know we found the same prints near here. Almost in sight of the lander, in fact.’
‘Those things from last night…?’ asked Kevin.
‘Can’t prove anything,’ said Sam, looking around the rest of them, ‘but that’s my guess. We need to find Sun fast, then get the hell back inside the lander before nightfall.’ He turned to Jess. ‘How about you tell us which direction you went in?’
* * *
Jess insisted on leading the search despite her exhaustion, and before long they had organised themselves into a rough line that swept through the darkening forest, calling to each other as the sun drifted lower across the sky. Sam could see DeWitt to his right, barely visible amidst the dense foliage, Ethan several metres to his left. If any of them lost sight of their nearest neighbour on either side, a shout was all it took to bring them back together.
Jess led them south-west of the lander, and the terrain rapidly became rugged. The forest in that direction was denser as well, the trees packed closer together than anywhere else Sam had seen, leaving the ground beneath the canopy bathed in perpetual twilight. To make matters worse, the undergrowth hid a multitude of treacherous pits and gullies, into which one might easily stumble and break a leg or worse.
The trees in this part of the forest looked a lot older as well, their roots gnarled and twisted and difficult to traverse. At times, they grew in such proximity to each other that the search party was forced to make long detours that made it very clear how easily any one of them might get lost.
Every few minutes, Sam stopped to mark a tree before moving on, and on one occasion passed a warning about a patch of blue flowers growing next to a tree. From time to time, they caught sight of Kevin’s drone, dropping in and out of the canopy as it searched.
Eventually, they found their way to another, much smaller clearing that Jess seemed to recognise. They tried ascending a hill on its far side, but the foliage proved so dense and the hill so steep that they were forced to work their way around it instead. They soon called a halt, all of them tired, thirsty, and hungry.
‘You sure you came this way?’ asked Traynor, breathing hard as he leaned against a boulder.
‘Pretty sure, yes.’ Jess wiped the sweat from her forehead with the heel of one hand, then peered into the deepening shadows. ‘I mean, I think so. I’m sorry—it’s sometimes hard to be sure.’
Traynor looked around at the rest of them. ‘Anyone seen or heard anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Pretty sure half this damn forest heard us,’ said Wardell, ‘the racket we’re making.’
Traynor glanced up at a stray shaft of sunlight that had found its way through the canopy. It had been getting noticeably darker. ‘I don’t like the idea of leaving anyone out here on their own, but we need to head back soon, or we risk getting stuck out here ourselves.’
No one looked like they were going to offer an immediate objection. Not even Sam.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Joshua, his expression stony, ‘but I still don’t like it.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Ethan.
‘Karl can operate the drone the entire night if we need him to,’ said Traynor. ‘He can probably do a better job of searching through this forest than we can.’
‘Either way,’ Sam muttered, ‘let’s call it a night.’
‘We could still—’ Joshua began.
‘No,’ said Sam, cutting him off. ‘Believe me, I want to keep looking. But it’s too dangerous for us to stay out here any longer.’
It was, thought Sam, as they wearily retraced their route, one of the hardest decisions he had ever made.
* * *
They straggled back into the clearing where the lander was just as the first stars began to show themselves in the great vault of the sky. They collapsed by the campfire, its flames burning low but still offering some meagre heat. Light spilt d
own the ramp from inside the lander.
‘That’s one person dead and another missing,’ said Traynor, looking around at the rest of them, ‘and we’ve been here, what, four days?’ He shook his head wearily. ‘If there’s something out there tracking us, we need real weapons. Something more substantial than spears, bows or knives.’
‘Bows and knives are just as lethal in the right hands,’ Irish pointed out from where she squatted before the flames, warming herself.
Traynor nodded. ‘Sure, if you know how to use them. But we don’t all have your level of training with a bow and arrow. What we need are guns.’
Sam listened to the murmur of agreement that spread around the campfire.
‘Except Kevin’s had no luck printing any,’ Joshua pointed out.
‘There was enough metal to make knives,’ Angel noted.
‘It’s not just making guns,’ said Jess, stabbing at the fire with a stick as if she could beat it into submission. ‘You also need gunpowder, and that’s a whole other proposition. Even if we were able to print guns, they’d be useless with no explosive materials to propel the bullets. And if there was ever any of that on board our lander, it’s gone now.’
‘So that’s it,’ said Angel miserably. ‘Any time we leave the clearing, even if it’s only to fetch water, we’re at the mercy of whatever’s stalking us.’
‘I’d say it’s worse,’ observed Kim. ‘If it’s the same creatures that attacked that herd, then they’re likely as smart as we are.’
DeWitt chuckled and shook his head. ‘If all they’ve got to use against us is some itty-bitty pieces of rock, I’m not worried.’
‘Really?’ Kim shot back. ‘And if there’s a hundred of them? Or a thousand? Will that be enough to worry you?’
DeWitt’s face darkened, and he looked away from the biologist.
Sam thought of the way Sun’s hair had brushed against his chest when they made love and pushed the thought away. ‘This,’ he said, ‘would be a good time to start talking about our long-term plans.’
‘We need to relocate,’ Kim said immediately. ‘There’s no reason for us to stay here just because it’s where the lander happened to touch down.’
‘Except there’s no way to move the lander itself,’ said Jess, ‘and it’s got things we need, like that fabricator bay. Plus, it’s the only protection we have.’
‘But we’ve got a truck now,’ Kim reminded her. ‘With that, we’ll be able to move much further than on foot. We should find somewhere more easily defensible, with easy access to running water and shelter from the elements. Some place that’s suitable for growing crops as well.’
‘Really?’ Angel muttered, pulling at the not-grass with one hand. ‘That’s how you see our future here—as farmers? Or didn’t you notice eating a bunch of alien potatoes nearly killed a couple of us?’
Kim regarded him with undisguised loathing. ‘While you were running around with a spear attempting to slaughter what are probably the first alien life forms encountered by humanity, Amit and I found some roots yesterday and experimented with them.’
‘You mean, you ate them?’ asked Jess in surprise.
‘They’re perfectly edible,’ Kim continued. ‘Or at least, we haven’t been ill.’
‘When were you going to tell us?’ asked Traynor, peering over at him.
‘I’m telling you now.’
‘Even if we found somewhere to settle,’ Sam pointed out to Kim, ‘we’d be starting over from scratch.’
Kim shook his head abruptly. ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ He nodded towards the lander. ‘Ask Kevin. The shipboard fabrication unit is made from modular components designed to be easily broken down and transported. The same goes for generating energy: the lander and everything inside it runs off of portable fusion reactor systems that should be good for another fifty years, even longer if we manage them well. We’d hardly be starting from scratch.’
‘Well, in that case, then perhaps we could relocate,’ said Joshua.
‘How about our missing memories?’ Traynor asked Kim. ‘You’ve been up on the command deck with Amit most of the time. Did you figure out any way we can get them back or at least an explanation for why they’re missing?’
‘Amit’s attempting to trigger the computer systems into a reboot,’ said Kim. ‘He hopes that might get around certain glitches he says are preventing him from accessing parts of the ship’s memory. It may be there’s vital information locked inside there somewhere, and with time and luck we’ll find some more answers there. Or it could be the same information is up in orbit aboard the mothership.’ His expression grew troubled. ‘We’ve been trying to communicate with it, but it won’t respond.’
‘Why not?’ asked Sam.
‘It could be we’re not sending the right signals, or using the right frequency,’ Kim explained. ‘But Amit seems certain that’s not the problem.’
‘Or maybe,’ said Jess, ‘you’re wrong about there being a mothership up there at all.’
Kim ignored her. ‘There is something we found you should know about: operational documents that suggest the lander was intended to transport a crew of specialists to the surface of Aranyani prior to a full colonisation attempt.’
Traynor raised his eyebrows. ‘So that means we’re some kind of landing party?’
‘That’s how it’s starting to look, yes.’
‘And if there really is a mothership,’ asked Ethan, ‘then there’s more people up on board it, waiting to come down or to hear from us?’
‘If by people,’ said Kim, ‘you mean frozen embryonic tissues and memory backups, then again, yes. Enough, one assumes, to establish a sizeable colony, given enough time.’
The flames snapped and popped, stark against the growing shadows between the trees. ‘How big a colony, would you say?’ asked Ethan.
‘I asked Amit the same question,’ Kim replied, moving a little closer to the heat. ‘He said he thinks there may be up to thirty thousand colonists waiting to be born.’
Sam stared at him in shock. ‘Thirty thousand?’
‘According to Amit,’ Kim reminded them. ‘But we don’t know anything for sure until we can contact the mothership.’
Sun’s still out there somewhere, thought Sam, staring into the darkness, and we’re sitting around talking about a malfunctioning computer. He fought down mute rage, knowing there was nothing to be done, and reminded himself that Kevin and Karl were still searching for her with electronic eyes.
And even if they found Sun alive and well—what then? For all Kim’s talk, the future felt like a vast unknown stretching out ahead of him. Would they really spend the rest of their lives farming strange roots under an alien sun, while four-toed beasts lurked and howled in the forests?
It hardly seemed like any kind of life he’d have voluntarily signed up for—yet that other him, the one he had become yet could not remember, had done so willingly, driven by motives that tested his younger self’s comprehension.
But if Sun were a part of that future, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so unbearable.
Something suddenly occurred to Sam. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘Amit mentioned he had root access—that’s how he kept the rest of us locked out of the lander. Surely that means he can access any part of the ship’s memory that he wants?’
Kim winced, looking almost embarrassed. ‘Please understand that I’m only reporting what Amit told me, but when I asked him this very question, he suggested in all seriousness that the computer systems might have been…well, sabotaged.’
‘Excuse me?’ Irish exclaimed, clearly nonplussed.
‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s why Amit’s been so hidden away the last day or two, trying to puzzle all this out. He says what he’s trying to do shouldn’t be this difficult, even taking into account the fact that the lander’s computers are several decades more advanced than anything he’s familiar with.’
They all looked at each other, the only sound the hiss and pop of burning wood.
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‘It seems like the more we try to find out,’ said DeWitt at last, ‘the more questions we get instead of answers.’
‘I have a suggestion,’ said Jess, her face full of angry determination. ‘Instead of relocating and letting something we haven’t even seen chase us away, how about burning back the forest all around the lander? That way if anything comes near us, we’d see it coming from a long way away. Plus, it’s going to make it a lot easier to kill.’
Ethan laughed derisively. ‘Are you serious? You can’t start a forest fire and think you can control it. We’d burn along with everything else!’
Kim stood, clearly emotional. ‘I’ve stood by while you hunt and kill native creatures over my and Amit’s objections,’ he shouted. ‘But if you try to massacre them, I will refuse to…to cooperate with the rest of you in any way!’ He stared around wildly. ‘And I know I speak for Amit as well when I say that!’
‘Kim…’ Sam stood and touched his shoulder, afraid the Korean might set off a more serious confrontation, but Kim angrily shook him off.
Jess gaped at Kim. ‘You almost sound like you want to protect whatever was chasing us!’
‘Yes, Miss Underwood,’ Kim replied, his gaze bright and hard, ‘we very much do need to protect them from us. We are guests here, and the Initiative was very clear—’
‘Fuck the Initiative!’ Jess shouted, her face reddening in the fading daylight.
‘We are the intruders here!’ Kim yelled back. ‘We do not belong on this world!’
‘Now hold it!’ said Sam, taking a hold of Kim’s arm and twisting him around until they were face to face. ‘You’re the one who kept telling us there’s nowhere else for us to go. Surely you can’t object to us wanting to defend ourselves!’
Kim abruptly pulled himself free with enough force that Sam almost his balance. He watched, speechless, as Kim marched off towards the lander without another word.
‘Forget it,’ Joshua said quietly. ‘He’ll come around eventually.’
‘Is he crazy?’ asked Jess. ‘And I’m asking seriously.’
