Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4)

by Scott Rhine

  “Coincidence?” Zeiss asked.

  “Probably not. The sand is probably a supply depot for Magi robot repairs. When we melt the sand into glass and apply it to the rough edges, the desired color can be projected to the rim of each scale of armor. We can’t build our own panels yet, but we can extend the illusion for what we captured.” She paused before raising the final subject. “Now that I’m actually rested and have two brain cells to rub together, I can spend less time herding the shimmer team and transition to the pandas like we planned.”

  Zeiss sighed heavily. “About that . . . we could let you take the twenty-first shift so that things divide evenly, but the other crew members have let me know that giving you more monitor duty would be a mistake.”

  Mercy’s face drooped. “Is it about feeding Stu on duty? I promised Risa I wouldn’t do it in front of Herk again, but I didn’t know anybody else cared.”

  Zeiss waved the idea away, drawing attention to the weights he wore strapped to his wrists, ankles, and waist. “You don’t belong on that duty. You’re probably the best people manager we have. We want to expand your managerial duties to the panda project. Pratibha has her hands full optimizing the landing project. She finally admitted that we were all playing chicken with the schedule, but everyone else was afraid to swerve first. You made a good call.”

  “I thought Red was managing the pandas.”

  “She’s putting in a lot of hours on the flight simulators. The Labyrinth weather patterns can be pretty extreme, and we’re going to be screaming out of the lens when we leave here. She’s trying to find a safe way down with all the extra cargo we keep adding. On our present orbit, it’s particularly hard to do missions any closer than an L week apart.”

  “I’ll have to ask Lou.”

  “Red already did. He said he’ll sign up if you two get a date night every Friday, starting tonight. He said you kept promising him a date after you took the last job. This time, he’s writing it into the contract.”

  Her eyes sparkled as she smiled. “I had every intention. I even had a couple sitters lined up. He wanted to walk to the Honeybee Meadow where we first kissed. It’s just taken me a while to build up my endurance to the point where I can travel that far. Being in a wheelchair for so long, combined with slicing those muscles, took a while to recover from. Yvette and Oleander have both been pushing me to exercise more. Hell, the trip up here once a week exhausts me.”

  The commander shrugged. “I’ve been in Olympus more than anyone but Toby. We all need to work out daily to maintain bone density.”

  “I used to swim for that, but Lou and Stu can’t join me. Snowflake has also discouraged my taking risks. I can’t run with these.” She pointed to her breasts. “And I’m no good at fighting. I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Well, you’ll be coming here every day. You can carry the equipment from the nanofabricators and the forge.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. Auckland gets too winded to carry them, and it’s a waste of Herk’s time to haul little things for a couple-hour round trip.”

  “We really need to send the doctor out through the regeneration cycle as soon as possible.”

  “He’ll meet us in the landing bay after Herk and the others are safely on Labyrinth. He’ll be Toby’s replacement as the emergency medical staff during the final phase.”

  “Good. I suppose I’m in. This is what we’re here for, after all.”

  Zeiss shook Mercy’s hand and called out to his wife in the other room. “Red will brief you on what we’ve learned so far about the aborigines. I need to catch a nap. I have graveyard shift tonight.”

  Red bounced into the dining room wearing the same weights as her husband to prepare for the increased gravity on Labyrinth. “Where is that gorgeous little guy? I haven’t seen him since he was born.”

  “He’s grown,” Mercy said.

  They chatted for a while before Red got down to business. “It’s a lull right now. The L pandas prefer to work when the sun isn’t as bright. Concentrating on one extended family group, we’re coordinating the satellite, lens, and rover cameras to create three-dimensional images of the aliens.” The commander’s wife brought up a picture on the central bubble in the control room. The close-up revealed that the nose and nostril slits were part of the head slope, not separate cartilage like humans. Molars were visible in the grimace, but the menace of the canines dominated the picture. “The ears flatten back when they’re angry.”

  What really caught Mercy’s attention were the eyes that gave the illusion of drooping. “The aborigines have bright-green irises?”

  “No. That’s a reflection from some sort of membrane they have,” Red said.

  “Like flash photos of a cat. Why don’t you filter that out?”

  “It’s a very distinctive color, and Yuki trained the computer to use it to differentiate abos from the other wildlife. It saves us a ton of time investigating rover trigger events. This makes it easier for the rover to travel in stealth mode. According to Toby, even though they eat a lot of vegetation, the L pandas are still carnivores. They eat mostly grasses, tubers, berries, honey, eggs, and fruit. They prefer the bamboo analogue, but that’s pretty rare in this jungle because they strip a patch bare when they find it. We’ve also seen them eat fish, birds, rodents, and carrion. The L pandas can eat anything that doesn’t eat them first. They’re just too lazy to catch meat most of the time. Toby says it’s because the bulk of their diet doesn’t give them enough energy.” She showed several still shots of aborigines eating a variety of foods. “Here’s one of a young male eating the leftovers from some sort of predator. You can tell he’s a male by the mane. Males have thicker hair in the pubic areas, butt, and mane. Even young males have ear tufts, sideburns, and a beard. The females have an extra nap of chest fur. They all seem to have extra hair from the elbow to the back of the hand. This is their most simian feature.”

  Mercy was already on the comm to Sojiro. “Yeah, drop what you’re doing and conference into Red’s managerial briefing. You need to see this code for the shimmer project. Yuki has a program that can filter monkeys and iguanas from the real deal. Sure, you can skip the dog-and-pony show and call her directly.”

  Initially annoyed at being ignored, Red said, “Wow, we should have caught that before. I never considered reusing the code for another project. Nadia was right—you are good.”

  “Thanks. Believe it or not, my sole goal in life hasn’t been to block your progress.”

  “I never thought . . . okay, maybe a little.”

  “Never mind. I want every person on this crew who will be landing on Labyrinth to spend at least two shifts per week observing with you guys.” Mercy scribbled notes on her computer pad.

  “We may pick up more synergies,” Red said with excitement.

  “Maybe, but I want everyone to have a sense of what they’re getting into. The green-eyed monsters are more catlike than I thought and a lot more deadly. I’m sorry I interrupted. What natural enemies do they have?”

  “There are big snakes but no crocodiles in the jungle. The water seems pretty tame. We’ve seen a few small, fast mammals we call saber-toothed bobcats. Watching a kill was like seeing that bunny in the Monty Python movie chew through all those guys in armor, which is probably why the not-so-little green men sleep in groups or up trees.”

  “The L pandas can climb?”

  “Yeah, and swim. Although, they just do everything in slow motion and rely on their dappled colors to hide from predators. They’re hard to see when they don’t move, which is the common case. We’ve seen fur in gold, brown, black, white, and even a little green. Toby swears that’s from rubbing their backs against trees to scratch and not a sign of natural chlorophyll.” Red showed a photo of an aborigine with a green-streaked back crouching like a gorilla.

  “That does it,” Mercy said. “I’m code-naming this tribe the Greens. Abo is too disrespectful, and L panda sounds like a Chinese wrestler or neurochemical.�
��

  “Okay,” Red agreed with a grin. “Like Earth pandas, the males aren’t monogamous and don’t usually stick around to see the children raised. We haven’t seen them hibernate or make permanent dens. In the days or L week it takes to strip a given crop, they make nests of grass. In contrast to the Earth variety, the face is less elongated, but the brain pan is wider. They also have no tails and shorter claws.”

  “I still wouldn’t want to face one in hand-to-panda combat. How does this mesh with the roofs we saw by the lake?”

  Red jumped ahead several slides. She showed a photo of a panda digging up tubers with a bamboo tool. “In the hills the aborigines pick berries. In the forest, they forage fruit and nuts. On the flats they harvest grasses, and on the river they trap crawdads. Once they have enough of any given staple, they build a raft.” The next image showed a male on a log craft and females loading sheaves of some grain.

  “Why ship it elsewhere?”

  “The lake area is sterilized. They have to send food in by boat. One of the males accompanies the raft back, and more males join them over time. They stand guard to watch for predators. We name them and program the computer to tag the men so we’ll recognize them next time. The main one we call Bubba. They all look like Buddha statues when they sit. We’ve named the one with big hair Elvis.” She flipped through a range of images until they began to blur together. In one image, pelts were stacked on a raft.

  “A hunter-gatherer society,” Mercy said.

  “Now that we know what to look for, we’re scanning other areas. We have a potential tribe of almost twenty on the other side of the same river. The satellite picked up evidence of another group near a stretch of exposed obsidian, which matches the spearheads we found in the avalanche. Maybe we should call the obsidian site the Black tribe.”

  “This is all so overwhelming.”

  “Toby is convinced that the similarities to Earth can’t be a coincidence. He thinks someone has been playing Dr. Moreau with Earth samples and planted them here.”

  “Maybe,” Mercy said thoughtfully. “Or it’s the other way around. Perhaps the pandas on our world started out this way and got too lazy because bamboo is so plentiful there.”

  When Red completed her briefing about the monitoring project, she asked, “Any other questions, manager?”

  “Can I use the showers here? I understand I have a date tonight, and I need to get ready.”

  ****

  When Mercy returned to the house, Lou had everything ready for a private picnic in the meadow. He was still adjusting to the new wooden structure, but Nadia was happier sleeping in the bedroom next to the laboratory. Lou said, “I made it just like the basket you packed for us on our first date,” he said.

  “It wasn’t really a date,” Mercy insisted.

  “We have different definitions. Any time I make a woman moan by touching her in a secluded place, I call it a date.”

  Stu was down for a nap, so she wrapped her arms around her husband as she said, “I have several places on my body that have been secluded for too long.”

  Lou actually pushed her away. “Not so fast. Make Stu a bottle, and when your friends arrive, we have hours to do this right.”

  Mercy growled affectionately, but when Stu stirred, his cry made her milk leak out, staining her shirt. The damp sensation and her need to unburden ruined the romantic mood. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll feed Stewart now and leave them with the diaper. I need to change anyway.”

  After she removed the shirt, she slipped into the lab coat. That way she would have some discreet cover in case a man came in while she nursed. As she did so, Mercy felt the weight in her lab-coat pocket. She’d forgotten about the cloak detector she’d borrowed. Scooping the sock bunny into the same pocket, she said, “We want you to have your favorite toy if you get fussy.”

  When Yvette and Oleander arrived to help, Mercy gave Yvette the lab coat with the instructions, “Everything you need is on the changing stand or in that front pocket. It’s very important for you to use that when you get in trouble.”

  Mercy handed the baby to an eager Oleander, who rubbed noses and traded smiles with the child gleefully. “You look so big. Is Mommy sneaking rice into your milk yet?”

  “That’s not until the six-month mark,” Yvette insisted. When the nurse put on the heavy lab coat, she seemed puzzled, but Mercy urged her husband to a light jog as they fled the prison with the white, picket fence. Lou needed little encouragement. The faster they arrived in the meadow, the more time they would have for serious picnicking.

  “That’s his bunny,” Oleander explained, barely audible.

  “No the other thing,” Yvette asked.

  As Lou and Mercy left the Hollow, he proclaimed, “Freedom!”

  Giggling, Mercy knew that, as the primary scout, Oleander would explain exactly how the heavy little box could be used in relation to Magi camouflage materials. She also knew her new dress might have a green streak like one of the pandas if Lou didn’t let her get the blanket out first.

  When the couple returned, their spirits and the lab coat were both lighter.

  Chapter 26 – Gilligan and Gibraltar

  Though they needed a thunderstorm in order to approach the planet without native witnesses, the magnitude and eddies of the wind shook the shuttle so much that they couldn’t get near the mesa. Toby was terrified. If anything went wrong, they would end up in the river below. He barely survived the crash simulator in a swimming pool and still had nightmares about drowning. In full gear in a high-gravity environment, he’d be dragged through the rapids with no chance of escape. The door between the cockpit and passenger sections was open, clogged with bulky equipment for delivery. If Toby focused on the drama in the cockpit, he could imagine it was a view screen. He could pretend he was safe in his cell. No one saw him wrap both arms through wall straps because the Herkemers were doing the same thing. Sometimes scared shitless was the right response.

  Red said, “There should be enough shelter in the lee of that rock formation.” She jerked the vessel down into the sheltered zone.

  Toby burped queasily but didn’t dare complain because everyone else on the team, including Yvette, was watching this monumental event from Olympus.

  As they approached from below, Zeiss said, “Up close, this reminds me of the air-tram ride up the side of Gibraltar.”

  For a moment, looking up through the window, awe overcame Toby’s fear. Green trees and vines clung to the mesa’s sides wherever the rock wasn’t vertical, spilling off the edge like foam off the top of a beer—over four kilometers wide. The green on the canyon walls to each side stopped at cloud level, as if it were the ring on a giant bathtub.

  Mercy’s voice warned over the radio, “Don’t feed the monkeys. They bite and steal anything that’s not tied down.”

  Only Zeiss laughed, as he was the only other crew member to have visited the tourist site. “Well I don’t sense any high-order mammals on the mesa or nearby. Proceed with the next phase.” He radiated confidence in Red’s piloting skills, which calmed the others enough to attempt their assigned tasks in the bumpy chaos.

  Nadia fired bursts of the COIL a few times and cursed. “There’s too much airborne dust to level the area effectively. We can burn off the vegetation and melt a little sand, but the dust will prevent us from cutting a proper foundation for the spaceport.”

  “Do what you can, and we’ll land the shuttle when it’s clear,” Zeiss said. “Concentrate on the bigger rubble. The last thing we need is a dent in the undercarriage.”

  “Without a deep bore, we won’t have windproof housing or easy access to the caves,” Herk complained. They theorized that the caverns in question had been caused by water droplets seeping through cracks in the mesa over thousands of years. Sand and limestone eroded as the water sought exit. Yuki had mapped the system of caves and tunnels, and the landing team had voted unanimously on this location as a first base.

  Lou’s voice came over the radio. “How deep b
elow the surface do we need to dig?”

  “Less than eight meters.”

  “In addition to the COIL, we have a prototype missile,” Lou reminded the others. “If I remember the specifications, the projectile is molten metal, self-forging, and can penetrate almost anything.”

  “The most convenient location for a hole would be up against the outcropping where the shuttle needs to land,” Herk suggested.

  Lou mused, “For maximum impact you’ll need to be a good kilometer up. Any higher and the accuracy of the shot drifts. I’m not sure a girl will be able to hold it steady enough at that distance.”

  “Bite me,” Red replied.

  “How long till we can land afterward?” Zeiss asked.

  “No radiation or fire expected—as long as the roof doesn’t cave in. I’m not really sure how big the explosion will be. We just need to wait for the dust to clear,” Lou judged.

  “How much more fuel will we burn?”

  Red replied, “Firing the missile will lighten our load considerably. It’s what’s been making this bird front-heavy. We were planning to hover for a while with the COIL, so this won’t cost much more. If we can hold the off-load time to under ten minutes and keep the engines hot, we should be good. Long term, it will actually improve our numbers.”

  “I could even use the extra metal for base construction,” Risa said.

  “Sounds unanimous,” Zeiss said. “Authorized.”

  Lou said, “The missile is a little finicky. You have to warm her up in the right sequence, or she’ll freeze up on you.” He talked Nadia through a series of steps and then recited a code sequence that she keyed in.

  Following that, Zeiss added his cryptographic approval.

  Building up energy to activate the weapon took over ten minutes and dimmed the lights in the shuttle. When Nadia was finally able to lock in the target and squeeze the red trigger, the entire ship bucked. A loud clap of thunder resounded through the sky of Labyrinth, and Nadia’s face lit with satisfaction as a new, ring-shaped cloud formed on the mesa. “That was impressive. I wish we had more of those.”