by Gary Gibson
Sam stared at him for several long seconds. ‘We’ll do our best,’ he said at last.
* * *
They made their way towards the boulders against which the lander had come to rest, coming to a halt near where their pods still lay open.
Sam gave Kevin a look. ‘An announcement? What the hell was that about?’
Kevin shrugged. ‘Call me cynical, but I can’t imagine it’ll be good, whatever it is.’
Sam glanced back towards the ramp. ‘Maybe now isn’t the time for me to—’
‘No.’ Kevin shook his head brusquely. ‘I wasn’t sure at first, but now I am: you need to go out there. I keep thinking maybe Joshua’s still alive somewhere out there, like Sun was.’
Sam nodded: the same thought had occurred to him. ‘Water first,’ he said.
It took more time than Sam would have preferred for them to get to the stream, following a safe route that had been marked out. That didn’t make it any less of a necessary detour: Sam knew he wouldn’t last long in the burning heat of day without fresh water. Once they’d filled his bottle, Kevin helped him secure it between his shoulder blades with vines ripped from nearby branches.
‘Okay,’ said Kevin, reaching into his jumpsuit and pulling out a fresh copy of the drone map before passing it to Sam. ‘I guess you’re as ready as you ever will be.’
Sam pushed the folded paper inside his jumpsuit, and they shook hands. ‘What are you going to do when you get back?’ Sam asked him.
‘Get the truck back outside and check it over. Then I’ll talk to everyone about packing as many of us as we can onto it before heading for the mesa.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, you might end up coming back to an empty lander.’
‘I’ll take that chance.’
They shook hands again, and Sam was off, skirting the north side of the clearing and staying out of sight of the lander. He moved at a steady pace to keep from tiring too quickly, stopping only to adjust the water bottle until it sat more securely between his shoulders.
It felt strange to run through the forest knowing that the Howlers were lurking somewhere out of sight, hiding from the daylight. After the first hour, Sam stopped long enough to study the map and check the position of the sun: one thing living in the jungle had taught him was how never to get lost, and the rules were the same here, however many light-years from home he might be.
The light beneath the canopy faded the further he got from the lander until he moved through a perpetual twilight, broken only by occasional shafts of light that streamed through breaks in the foliage. It was almost like being underwater: as if the glades and ancient groves were subaquatic caverns of luminous blues and greens and reds.
Sam’s new muscles powered him along, and memories came to him of running through another forest with a spear in one hand, clad in little more than a pair of torn-off combats.
Sometime later, he paused at a cluster of rocks, slinging the bottle down from between his shoulders and taking a long swig. Then he climbed up and over the boulders, breathing hard as he made his way back down the far side.
Something small and brown darted out from under one foot and through mulched leaves, before shooting up the nearest tree trunk with remarkable speed.
The ground gradually became steeper, then flattened out. He’d started to lose all sense of time, something he also remembered from those long-ago hunts. He came to a valley and saw that it had been marked on the map as a narrow pass between two steep-sided hills. Pebbles and rocks skittered down from on high as he negotiated tangled bushes and roots to get to the valley’s far slope.
At one point, he found his way to the summit of a hill to try and get a sense of how far he’d come already. He thought he could see the lander far away to the east, lost amidst a sea of green and red, and a moment’s glance to mark the position of the sun told Sam he’d already covered more than half the distance in just a couple of hours.
He pushed on, doing his best to ignore the growing cramp in his leg muscles.
At one point, he thought he heard something following him through the undergrowth, and felt his heart freeze at the thought a Howler might be stalking him in precisely the same way Jess and Sun had been stalked. He ran towards a tree with low-hanging branches and managed to jump up and grab hold of one, pulling himself on top of it and scrambling closer to its trunk.
He pressed himself down flat against the branch, his heart beating wildly as he listened to the creak and snap of trees and bushes being pushed aside or trampled over. Eventually, a creature of a type he had never seen before came shambling past, mountainously huge and sloth-like and covered in brown and red mottled fur. It kept moving, paying him no attention, veering towards some deeper part of the forest. The tree on which Sam hid shuddered at its passing, and he stayed where he was until he was sure it was gone.
He climbed back down and drank more water. Soon he encountered more valleys, and more cliffs, each requiring a precarious ascent or descent. By the time he heard a steady, muffled roar from somewhere ahead of him, the sun had tracked some distance across the sky. He pulled out his map, now sweat-stained and much-folded, and consulted it, thinking that the sound might be the river Traynor had mentioned.
So far as he could tell, he was still headed the right way.
A few minutes later, Sam pushed past a cluster of tall weed-like plants that reached higher than his head and found himself at the edge of a broad river that rushed by at a furious pace. It would be very easy to be swept away in such waters, he thought, especially if you had suffered a twisted ankle.
He followed the river’s twisting course northwards, keeping one eye on the map, until he came to a point where the opposite shore could be reached by climbing across a fallen tree that formed a natural bridge. Once on the opposite shore, he saw another tree that matched Traynor’s description of the one he and DeWitt had hidden in.
It was far larger than almost any other tree Sam had yet seen on Aranyani, and, he suspected, far older. Its trunk had been split wide open and hollowed out, and he could see how a few bodies might squeeze down inside it.
He drank the last of his water and refilled his bottle from the river. The others, back at the lander, would soon become aware he was missing. But with any luck, they were more focused on heading for the mesa. He hoped so, anyway.
He soon left the river behind and made his way up a steep-sided slope dense with foliage. North and south of him, huge, jungle-strewn buttes rose out of the land like the huddled bodies of sleeping giants.
He froze near the top of the slope, seeing what he at first thought was some kind of animal, gazing down at him from further up. Then he relaxed, seeing it was strung with vines and covered in thick moss. A stone outcrop, perhaps, that his eyes had made into something it wasn’t.
He worked his way closer, seeing that neither was it a rock. It was a construction robot: identical, so far as he was able to judge, to the ones back at the lander. Except this one was draped in dense vines, its carapace streaked with dirt and rust.
He stared at it in utter disbelief. It was impossible that such a thing was sitting out here, so far from the lander.
Yet here it was, regardless.
He tore at the vines draped across its body to get a better view of it. The machine was much more badly rusted than he had at first taken it to be. It stood tilted to one side, its long, flexible arms folded in against its body as if it had settled down to sleep.
He gaped at it, perplexed and strangely frightened. It looked like it had been standing there for years. Perhaps even decades.
As impossible as it was, it was also undeniably real.
Sam let out a shaky breath and looked past the machine and up the slope beyond it. Presumably, if there were answers, they were to be found somewhere ahead.
He had to force himself to keep moving. Part of him, Sam realised, didn’t want to know the answer to the questions posed by the machine: was afraid of what he might find. His traitorous feet insisted on carrying h
im onwards.
His eyes soon picked out a trail in the undergrowth, perhaps trampled down by the local wildlife. He reached the summit and saw that the opposite slope descended towards a glade half a kilometre away. A huge and bulky structure rose out of the gloom to one side of the glade: like the robot, it was so thickly draped with vines and moss it was hard at first to make out much more than its approximate shape. Yet it was undoubtedly the building or structure they’d spotted in the drone footage.
But now that he was close to it, Sam saw it wasn’t a building at all. It was another lander. He had a feeling that, were he able to sweep aside the moss and vines, it would prove identical to the one that had brought him and fourteen others to Aranyani.
He worked his way down the slope, his feet squelching loudly as he traversed muddy soil. His heart beat faster and louder, panic gripping him as his eyes took in the bulky metal shape rising on four squat legs, the upper curve of its hull brushing the treetops. He passed a second robot, in even worse condition than the first, and hardly paid it any attention.
Then he dropped to his knees and stared up at the lander they had all mistaken from afar for a building. He had seen enough by now to be certain it was identical to their own—but, like the robots scattered ruined all around it, it was old. Very old.
He wondered for one terrible moment if he had somehow become unstuck in time, and this was, in fact, his own lander, but centuries in the future.
But that, too, was impossible.
23
THE BRIEFING
Think.
There had to be an explanation, thought Sam: some reason for there to be more than one lander, but none would come to him. He stayed where he was for some minutes, still breathing hard, his legs burning from fatigue.
He took several long, deep breaths, then moved closer, seeing the lander’s ramp was lowered.
There had to be a reason Traynor had lied—and the answer, he was sure, lay within.
Heading towards the ramp, Sam caught sight of a scrap of brown fabric poking out of the soil. He dropped to one knee and discovered that it was part of a jumpsuit. He scraped at the muddy soil all around it, pulling up clumps of not-grass until his fingers touched something smooth and white. More digging soon revealed a half-buried skull.
A human skull.
He stood again, finally noticing things that had somehow escaped his attention until this moment. A cluster of crude metal crosses stood close by one of the lander’s legs, each made from mismatched pieces of metal.
He moved closer to them, seeing that whoever had made them had also used a drill to scrawl a name on each: Ethan, Joshua, Irish, Sun, Kevin…
When Sam saw his own name, written on the last cross, it was too much. He staggered backwards until he collided with the nearest of the lander’s legs, one hand pressed to his mouth, his skin prickling with horror. The world seemed to sway around him.
Was it possible, he wondered, that this was the reason Traynor had called a meeting, rather than tell them outright about everything they had found? Perhaps he and DeWitt needed time to process everything they’d seen, and so had held back on the truth until they were ready to talk about it.
If it had been him who first came out here, instead of Traynor, maybe he wouldn’t have been in much of a hurry to tell the rest of them just what he’d found either.
Sam took a deep breath and then, despite the heavy foreboding in his heart, willed himself to make his way up the ramp and into the lander’s lightless interior.
Just enough daylight found its way inside the lower bay that Sam could make out a second skeleton slumped beneath the ramp controls. It was dressed in torn rags that, again, closely matched his own jumpsuit.
He nearly choked on the stink of decay and mould. The air inside the bay was close and sticky and much too dark for his nerves, but soon his fingers found the switch he’d been looking for: pale red emergency lights running off of an emergency backup system came online, illuminating the dirt-streaked walls and bulkheads around him.
Better. The door leading into the lander’s interior was jammed halfway open. He squeezed past it and climbed the access shaft, trying not to think how much it felt like exploring a haunted house. He breathed shakily, seeing ghouls and faceless creatures in every red-lit shadow.
He quickly discovered that all the bays were not only intact but filled floor to ceiling with neatly shelved supplies—more than enough raw material, he realised, to fabricate almost anything they could need. Perhaps enough to keep them self-sufficient for many, many years.
He let out a yell born of shock and nerves when small, dark shapes scurried under his feet and into the shadows of another bay. Following them, Sam found a truck identical to the one Kevin had salvaged, although this one had been gutted of its engine, batteries and seats. The small, ultralight helicopter parked next to it looked to be both intact and in good condition, its blades folded and pointing up at the ceiling.
Sam soon found another surprise: a bay containing nothing but functional-looking weaponry.
He counted a dozen rifles mounted on wall racks, while storage bins directly beneath them were filled with boxed ammunition. Some racks, he noted, were empty, but there was no sign of the weapons they would have held. There were also hoppers containing plastic explosives, while shelves above these held what looked to his inexpert eyes like primers or blasting caps.
He worked his way through to the back of the bay, where he found several gun-mounted aerial drones stacked one atop another like dishes in a pantry. Several more drones set on the deck next to them had been fitted with nozzles and tanks that made him think of fire-fighting equipment. They looked as new as the day they’d been manufactured.
Sam turned and looked back down the length of the bay. It contained enough weaponry, ammunition and hardware to start a war—albeit a very one-sided one.
When Sam finally reached the command deck, he found it had been gutted of much of its electronics as well. Most of the screens were gone, and wall panels stood discarded, their machine-innards dissected and removed.
But not all.
Pale light shone from the screen of one of the few consoles that remained intact. Sam went over and saw the image of a man’s face frozen on it, as if someone had paused a video halfway through, with the expectation of returning to watch the rest.
Someone like Traynor.
The face on the paused video was lined, with pale blue eyes and receding grey hair. It wasn’t anyone Sam recognised or had seen before. Something in the set of the man’s mouth made Sam think whoever he was—or had been—he’d been used to having his orders followed.
Reaching out, he hesitantly touched the screen and the video burst into sudden motion.
‘-er instructions to follow,’ said the man in the video, before fading to black.
It was clear whoever had last played the video had paused it mid-sentence. Sam touched the controls, and the video ran backwards at speed, the face jerking into reverse motion. When he lifted his hand, the recording resumed from an earlier point.
‘-arameters of your mission have been changed. You will have the support of infantry who, like you, were secretly placed inside the ship’s memory and gene banks. You should soon be brought up to speed on any specifics I don’t mention here.’
The man on the screen cleared his throat. ‘However, there are a few generalities you should be aware of. It wasn’t possible to delete all of the civilian element of the landing party as we initially hoped. Doing so would have risked alerting the primary AI that it had been compromised, triggering a mission abort. Therefore, you are to secure both the landing site and, if possible, the aid and support of the remaining undeleted civilian crew members. But if they resist, or refuse to cooperate, deal with them by whatever means necessary.’ The figure leaned closer to the lens. ‘Further instructions to follow.’
The video faded to black.
Sam’s legs grew weak beneath him and he sank into the rotted remains of a cha
ir, pressed his fingers deep into his calves as if trying to hook them through the muscles beneath his skin.
It came to him that the video must have been intended for Traynor: somehow, he and a few others like Jess had been inserted into the ship’s memory for some very specific reason none of the rest of them were ever supposed to know about. It certainly explained the missing crew members.
Except, of course, that didn’t explain this second lander. Or the crosses planted in the soil outside. He remembered Sun suggesting they might all be in Hell, but didn’t know it…
Don’t think about that. He clung desperately to the notion there must, had to be, some rational explanation for all of it.
Instead, he forced himself to focus on the advantage the derelict would give him and the others back at the other lander. Despite its outwardly ruinous state, the ship was clearly in far better condition than their own, especially given the fact it had all its supplies and equipment intact.
It might even take off again—and if so, he realised with a rush of excitement, then maybe they could fly it to some part of Aranyani far from the Howlers.
Sam glanced again at the screen. The time indicator at the bottom of the video told him he’d seen only a short segment of the whole. He moved to watch the rest, then noticed a red light blinking on a half-gutted console across the deck.
It hadn’t been blinking a moment ago.
He stepped over to it, brushing dust from the console’s screen and touching the keyboard beneath. The screen came to life, displaying a view of the forest around the base of this second lander. The exterior lenses were grimy with dirt, yet he was startled to see a figure moving close by the open ramp.
A human figure.
A prickle of fear ran down Sam’s spine, his throat turned paper-dry in an instant. He touched the keyboard again, and the camera zoomed in on the source of the movement. The figure was in shadow, making it impossible to see their face: they moved swiftly from tree to tree, clad in browns and dark reds that rendered them, whoever they were, nearly indistinguishable from the surrounding forest.
