The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “Then it’s over,” Beth says, grim. “Unless the Landing happens to find us in the next seven hours, this whole ecosystem will collapse, and it will be my fault.”

  “Yeah,” Leela says. “It will.”

  “Excuse me?” I say, turning on her. “This is not Beth’s fault. She didn’t know about—”

  “If she’s just giving up now, it’s totally her fault. Yours too,” Leela says, cradling her swollen hand. “And mine. All of ours. We’re pioneers. We don’t give up. Especially you two. You’re Watsons. You’re not allowed to have doubts. It’s in the Project bylaws, remember?”

  I swallow hard to stop myself from bursting into tears at the stupid old joke. I remember what it felt like, to be so sure of everything. It’s such a long way from how I feel right now.

  “I’m not giving up,” Beth says. “I’m facing reality. Our flyer has been destroyed, and we have no way to communicate with the Landing. We’re stranded.”

  “What about the Rangers’ hot spots?” Chris says.

  The words are like a light switching on in my brain.

  “What hot spots?” Leela says as I pull Dr. Brown’s flex out of my pocket and shake it out.

  “There’s a map of these mountains saved on this thing that’s way more detailed than the one in the survey report,” I say, opening the file as I speak. “Her team set up a ton of hot spots out here. We may be close enough to get to one of them.” I pull our coordinates from the flyer’s autopilot history and enter them into the map.

  An orange dot marks our location as in a broad puddle of green that’s closer to the ocean on the western side of the mountain range than it is the prairie and the Landing. I can see the distinctive waterfall with its shining cliff wings. That’s our valley.

  And there’s a green plus sign a little less than a centimeter away.

  “Is that close enough?” Jay asks.

  I double tap the waterfall, then the plus sign. A jagged yellow line pops up as the map suggests the quickest route between the two.

  A tiny, relieved sigh darts through my lips.

  “That’s less than an hour hike,” I say, amazed by our luck. “We can definitely make it there before the Landing initiates Stage Three.”

  “Are you sure we can network that thing?” Leela says. “It’s ancient, and it looks like Dr. Brown tried to set it on fire.”

  “All its other systems work,” I say, but I pull up system preferences and open the wireless settings anyway. “I’ll run a diagnostic, but . . .” I trail off, staring at the flex in disbelief. “It doesn’t have comms.”

  “What?” Chris says, grabbing the flex from me and swiping through the wireless settings menu. “All flexes have comms.”

  “Nope,” Miguel says. “Fun fact: They made a couple of models with no wireless connectivity, back in the day. Mama Alejandra still has a bunch. She uses them for movies and games and stuff ’cause they have sweet battery life.”

  “And that’s exactly what Dr. Brown has saved on this one,” I say, trying to keep my panic to a dull roar. “It’s useless.”

  “Isn’t there a spare flex in the medical kit?” Leela says.

  “There’s no medical kit,” Beth says. “Mom prioritized arming the marine squadron over properly kitting out the flyers.”

  “We’ll search the wreckage then,” Jay says. “There has to be a flex somewhere in this valley.”

  Beth throws her arms wide to encompass the sea of night-black grass that stretches between the high cliffs behind us. “Somewhere in this valley isn’t exactly helpful, Jay.”

  She’s right. It was dumb luck that we found the chief, and that was in daylight. Finding the rest of the bodies in that grass could take all night. And who knows if their flexes even survived the attack. I can’t remember if I saw Chief Penny’s flex on her wrist or not. When I try to think back, all I see is the look on her face as she watched Chris cry for her, knowing she was dying with every red pulse of the flex draped over her neck.

  Jay’s flex. He left it behind when he went to get Beth’s first aid kit. Then we abandoned the chief’s body. Which means . . .

  “I know where we can get a flex with comms,” I say. “Jay, come help me. Miguel, see what you can do to keep Leela from keeling over before we get back.”

  “Copy that,” Miguel says.

  “I’m coming with you, too,” Chris says.

  “No!” The word pops out of my mouth like a burst bubble.

  “Why not?” Chris says.

  I really don’t want to tell him that Jay and I are about to go scavenge his mother’s corpse. I don’t have to. I can see the realization pour over his face, transforming his indignation into horror.

  “Oh,” he says, choked. Fighting tears.

  “Come on, bro,” Miguel says. “I need you and Beth both to help me scrounge for medical gear.”

  “Just find me a couple of dozen pain patches,” Leela says. “I’ll stay in the flyer and sleep it off until you guys come back with reinforcements.”

  “We aren’t leaving you behind,” I say.

  “I’m not walking two klicks,” she says. “Not like this.” She’s leaning against the side of the ramp, sweating and shivering at the same time. She looks gray under the flyer lights.

  “You’ve got an infection,” I say, panic jabbing at me. Whatever Tau bacteria got into her wound, it’s moving fast. And her immune system has no antibodies to fight it.

  “Duh,” she snaps. “Stop worrying about me. That’s Miguel’s job. You need to go find the stupid flex and save the world.”

  She’s right, but I don’t care. If Leela already looks this bad, we can’t risk waiting to deal with this infection. Who knows what it might do to her? Even if we get in touch with the Landing and get her back to medical before morning, it might not be fast enough.

  I turn to Tarn. “Could you heal her?”

  “I am no Giver,” he says. “And my understanding of the process is theoretical at best.”

  “Try anyway,” I say. “Please. I know you’re meant to go back and follow Pel. But saving a life can’t be wrong.”

  Tarn’s shielded gaze meets mine, and he rumbles a moan that makes my muscles clench like a sob. Then he says, “I will try.”

  “Excellent,” Miguel says. He turns to Leela. “May I?” She waves her good hand weakly in a whatever gesture, and he scoops her into his arms. “C’mon, Chris. I need your help clearing a place for Tarn to work in the flyer.”

  “I’ll plan our route to the hot spot,” Beth says, following them up the ramp.

  I turn to Jay. “Let’s get this over with.”

  It’s easy to retrace our steps. There are swaths of thinned and broken grass left behind where we walked and ran. Was that really just yesterday? I feel like a different person. Again. How many different people is it possible to be in seventeen years of life?

  “Tau to Joanna,” Jay says.

  “Sorry,” I say, dragging my brain back into the moment. “Did you say something?”

  “Nah,” he says. “But I could tell you were wandering.”

  “I was just thinking about . . . I don’t know,” I say. “The attack. The Sorrow. Ord . . .”

  “You think we’ll stay?” he says. “When everything’s said and done?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Respect for indigenous species was built into the GFP’s charter from the beginning. No one wants to repeat Earth’s history of colonial atrocities out here. That’s why the Rangers weren’t supposed to approve occupied worlds for E&P teams. But we’re already here, so . . .”

  “Do you want to go home?”

  Wow. Talk about questions I don’t know how to answer. Tau Ceti e is so much more than I ever imagined. More beautiful. More dangerous. Harsher and sweeter at the same time. But so many people have died because we’re here. Not just humans—Ord is probably dead, and who knows what will happen to Tarn?

  But does that mean I want to go home?

  “No,”
I say. “I don’t want to go. But I don’t think Pel’s going to agree to share Tau with us, and we should respect that.”

  “Yeah,” Jay says. “It’s a bummer, but—” He cuts himself off, his voice abruptly sharp. “Is the grass getting thicker?”

  “Huh?”

  I look down. He’s right. We’re surrounded by pristine, waist-high grass.

  “I think we’re past the point where we found the chief,” Jay says, turning to look behind us. “The grass should all be beaten down between the flyer and her body. We walked back and forth on that route a couple of times.”

  “And we’ve never walked through here,” I say, dread closing around me like a fist.

  “Did we miss her?” Jay asks.

  “Maybe.” I circle back toward the beaten-down grass behind us. “But I’m pretty sure we . . .”

  My boots slip-slide on something. I stumble back a few steps to find my balance. Then I look down.

  Sour bile rises in the back of my throat. I have to swallow it back to get the words out. “She was right here.”

  Jay follows my gaze to the blood-smeared hollow I nearly fell into. This is where we left the chief’s body. It’s gone. And so is Jay’s flex.

  “You’d think there’d be more left,” Jay says in a choked voice. “If they ate her.”

  I’ve seen big predator kills in the extinction-reversal preserves back home. They don’t look like this.

  “There would be,” I say. “Just like the flyer would have been ripped to shreds if the phytoraptors were the ones who destroyed it.”

  “You think the Sorrow took her body?” Jay says, catching up with my train of thought.

  “No . . . yes . . . I don’t know. Maybe,” I say. “But if Tarn is right, and Pel wouldn’t care about stealing our technology, then why would she steal our bodies?”

  “We aren’t going to figure it out now,” Jay says. “We need to start looking for another flex.”

  “It’ll be faster if we split up.”

  Jay shakes his head. “Not fast enough. Remember, Ord said even the darkest hours aren’t safe up here.”

  “If there are phytoraptors out there, we aren’t any safer together than we are apart.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says. “But it makes me feel better to pretend that’s not true.”

  “Jay—”

  “You know what’s not going to find us a flex?” he says, cutting me off. “Arguing about this. Come on.”

  I give in.

  Most of the bodies should be near the Wagon’s fuselage, given what Leela and Miguel told us about the phytoraptor attack. But we don’t find anyone, just a lot of blood in the grass. We look in the wreckage of the passenger cabin next, but it’s empty, so we move on to the cargo pod.

  Jay leaves me to stand watch as he climbs the side of the pod and crawls through the emergency hatch on top. I bounce a little to keep warm and distract myself from the despair that’s winding up my insides. It’s still dark and getting darker as the moons set, but it won’t be for long. Morning is coming. And Stage Three is going to be initiated in four hours and fourteen minutes.

  There’s a small thud as Jay shoves the cargo pod hatch open and pulls himself up and out.

  “Did you find a flex?” I call up to him as he walks to the edge of the pod and jumps down.

  He shakes his head. “There’s nothing in there. Someone took the cargo, the float carts, the manifests. Everything.”

  “It has to have been the Sorrow,” I say. “But when did Pel and her Takers find time to come out here and steal it all?”

  “I don’t think Pel did this,” Jay says.

  “You think Ord had his people salvage the crash site?” I say. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but it makes sense. Ord carries a gun, and Tarn said that Dr. Brown had printed other technology for them. “You think he was planning to recycle this stuff with Dr. Brown’s equipment?”

  “Something along those lines,” Jay says. “With the added bonus of being sure we needed him to save us.” He looks around and sighs. “It’s going to be light soon. We should get back to the flyer. If we seal it up, we can keep the phytoraptors out until it’s dark again.”

  “By then, it’s going to be too late to stop Stage Three,” I say.

  “Maybe not,” Jay says. “We made it this far. Maybe we can figure out another way to get in touch with the Landing in time. Or maybe Dr. Howard will put it off. After all, with Chris and the chief both MIA, he must be pretty distracted. He might just hit the pause button. Wait to find Beth.”

  “Beth doesn’t think so,” I say. “Beth thinks Stage Three is going to destroy everything.”

  Jay takes my shoulders and turns me around so I have to meet his eyes. “Beth is brilliant, but she only sees what’s true. You see what’s possible. So don’t stop looking now.”

  A tear slips down my cheek. He wipes it away with his thumb. I move closer and wrap my arms around his waist, burying my face in his shoulder.

  He sighs like he just walked into a warm house on a cold day. His arms settle around me, pulling me closer. It feels weird and good and kind of embarrassing. This is so not the time to be getting all gushy, but I can’t seem to give this moment up.

  Something catches at the corner of my eye. I pull back. There’s a bright-orange light in the grass maybe a dozen meters away. It fades and then swells again, but this time it’s purple. Then blue and then green.

  “What is that?” I say, pointing.

  Jay turns to look. Then he swears and starts running.

  “What?” I demand, racing to keep up. “What is it?”

  “My flex!” he shouts back. “I set the flashlight to celebration mode the night before we left. The squad was out partying—last night on Earth and whatnot. I haven’t used the flashlight since, so I never changed it back.”

  I can’t believe we actually found it. And we’ve still got more than three hours to get to the hot spot and call the Landing. We’re going to stop Stage Three. We’re going to save Tau.

  Jay slams to a stop so fast that I run right into him.

  “What are you . . . ?” The question dies as I look over his shoulder and realize we’re less than a meter from a phytoraptor. It’s sitting on its haunches, watching us. Its chameleon skin has gone blue-gray, blurring its body into the night sky at its back. I’m not sure we’d be able to see it at all if not for the strobing light from Jay’s flex, which is wrapped around one of its powerful forearms.

  “Turn around and walk back to the flyer,” Jay whispers without looking away from the phytoraptor. “Don’t run. Predators chase things that run.”

  “On Earth,” I whisper back. “We don’t know how a phytoraptor is going to react to anything.”

  “Joanna—”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  Abruptly, the phytoraptor rears up on its hind legs, throwing its powerful arms wide. The strobing light of Jay’s flex catches on its huge claws as they unsheathe from its thick fingers.

  Jay spins, wrapping himself around me and burying his face in my hair. Braced for attack.

  I can’t look away from the towering form outlined in the pulsing rainbow light. My heart thuds against my rib cage, once, twice, three times as the beast looms over us. Then it sinks down again into the deep grass and ambles away, the flashing light of the flex on its arm dwindling and disappearing into the night.

  Twelve

  A Sorrow song scratches over my skin as Jay opens the rear doors of the flyer. The sonar that flows under the sound feels hot and ragged. What is Tarn doing to Leela?

  I vault onto the ramp before it hits the ground and hurry inside.

  Leela is sitting in one of the passenger chairs. Miguel is checking her vitals. I can’t see her hand, but the gray tinge is gone from her skin. Beth and Tarn and Chris are gathered around Dr. Brown’s charred flex, watching something. The terrible sound is coming from the flex.

  “Amazing,” Tarn says, taking it from Beth and turning it over in his han
ds. “The recording is imperfect, but the shape of the sound is there. Even that which your people cannot perceive.”

  “If Pel’s Takers had not destroyed my flex, I could have captured the higher frequencies more completely,” Beth says. “But this is an old model, and in disrepair.”

  “You recorded Tarn healing Leela?” I ask.

  “With his permission,” Beth says. “It was an excellent opportunity to expand our understanding of his people.”

  “It was not a true healing,” Tarn says. “When a Giver heals, the body is restored to its true state. My attempt was a poor substitute.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Tarn,” Leela says, holding up her hand. It’s still bruised and purple, but the wound has closed and the swelling is gone. “Our doctors couldn’t have done what you did, even with a full medical suite.”

  “You were gone for a long time,” Chris says. “Did you find a working flex?”

  “Sort of,” Jay says.

  “Woot!” Miguel crows.

  “Don’t get too excited,” I say. “This is going to suck.”

  While Jay explains that his flex is currently on the arm of a phytoraptor, I switch the wall screens to three-sixty mode. The moonless predawn darkness outside snaps into place around us.

  I pivot, searching the grass until I find what I’m looking for.

  “There!” I say, pointing to a flare of hot-pink light. “That’s Jay’s flex. It’s less than a dozen meters away. All we have to do is get it back from that phytoraptor.”

  “That’s an ambitious use of the word all,” Miguel says.

  Beth turns to Jay. “Would your stun gun knock it out long enough to grab the flex?”

  “Not an option,” he says. “Pel’s Takers destroyed it.”

  “I lost my laser welder during the phytoraptor attack,” I say. “But it was pretty effective. Is there anything else in here we could use as a weapon?”

  “It would have to be formidable,” Tarn says. “The Beasts are very hard to kill.” He pulls his robe back to reveal a molded body suit like the ones Ord and Pel wore to fight. It’s made of layers of something smooth that shifts from blue to green to a charcoal gray that almost matches his black robe as the light hits it. “Their skin is nearly impenetrable. We use it as armor.”