by J E Loddon
“Breathers! Breathers on!” Liberty suddenly started shouting. I panicked for a moment, trying to remember where it was, then saw Tasia taking hers out from under her chair. I grabbed mine, and fumbled with it, trying to remember the right way to put it on. My heart started to race. As I began fastening it, it started to feel a lot more intuitive, and I felt confident I had it on correctly. Then, I fastened it to my oxygen cylinder. It was lucky Liberty had remembered to tell us to put them on. Then, it occurred to me that she should have reminded us before the descent had actually begun. We hadn’t even made planet-fall, and our leader had already screwed up. It was weird to be feeling a sense of relief that we’d almost met an unfortunate end for the silliest of reasons, but somehow Liberty making a mistake made me feel a lot better about the mission. I might well make costly mistakes whilst we were down there, but at least I wouldn’t be the only one that had put us in danger. I was just starting to feel better about myself when the world suddenly felt like it was collapsing in on me. The ‘smooth, gentle slide at landing’ was anything but. I was crushed down into my chair, and the world spun around me before everything went completely black.
CHAPTER FIVE
I might have passed out. To be honest, I’m not really sure. Everything was black, and then I could hear coughing. I looked up to try to see who it was coming from, and I could see a thin strip of light coming from my right, which I assumed was still the back of the pod. The coughing was coming from behind me, and it sounded like Casper.
“Casper? You OK?” I asked, though it came out as more of an unintelligible murmur, with the breathing rig muffling my already weakened voice.
“OW!” Casper shouted out, though I’m not sure if it was in response to my question. It still had the sound of dry wit about it, so I assumed he was OK. Not convinced of my ability to properly speak, I reached my hand over to the seat beside me to check if Tasia was moving.
“Whoa, Milo! I’m not sure this is the time for that!” she cried out, and I quickly pulled my hand back, not sure where it was that I’d touched. I felt my face flushing.
“Sorry! Sorry! I was just checking you out!” I blurted out.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you were…” Casper called over teasingly.
“I’m kidding, Milo. Wow.” Tasia said.
“Liberty?” I shouted. “You with us over there boss?” I called out.
“Yeah,” she croaked out unconvincingly. “I can move, and I don’t seem to be bleeding anywhere.”
“Yeah, thanks Milo, I’m fine too!” Antonia shouted over, sounding a bit pissed off. “Don’t worry everybody, I’m OK,” she continued sarcastically.
“Well, someone had to be last!” I pointed out. “You’re the furthest away from me.”
I tried to shake the cobwebs out of my head. The practical part of brain was starting to kick in. If there were nearby hostiles on the planet, we’d probably already taken too long to get out of the pod. I struggled with my harness, trying to unhook it. Tasia reached over to help, having already fully released hers. It must have gotten jammed in the landing, cos it took a fair few seconds for us to release it. I rose unsteadily to my feet, then turned as a rifle was thrust into my arms. It was Liberty.
“Let’s go, soldier,” she said, handing one to Tasia. She picked up her own, and led us over to the door at the back, which Casper and Antonia were already in the middle of opening. It seemed to have held up all right. There was a canopy in the roof that could be opened if the door had become too damaged to open, but the front of the pod, as designed, had taken the brunt of the landing. As the door opened, though, I could see that the entire inside of the pod looked in pretty good shape. It may have been cheaply made, but the design was obviously pretty strong.
As the full light of the outside flooded into the pod, I had to shield my eyes. Not only had we not seen proper daylight for a week, we’d been in the very dark pod for a few hours. If anyone was waiting for us outside, they’d have a distinct advantage as far as visual acuity went. Remembering my training, I took up a cautious stance as were slowly left the pod, each scanning an area of the planet around us. It was pretty barren. I came from a planet that was mostly dirt, but was used to at least seeing habitations every day. This looked like the ground I’d covered with Chris the time we’d tried to walk to Invalon. The ground around us was level, but striated. There were several rock formations around us, some quite high. I wondered if we’d even be able to traverse this kind of terrain. There was, so far, no sign of danger.
“OK, Casper, what you got?” Liberty asked. I looked over at Casper, who was fiddling with the less portable of the scanning equipment. After several minutes, Liberty began to get a little impatient. “Casper? What’s going on, talk to me?” she demanded.
“I’m trying, I’m trying,” he said, looking up at her.
“Well, did it get damaged in the landing? What’s the problem?” she asked irritably.
“I… I forgot what some of these symbols are,” he admitted sheepishly. Liberty sighed. “Anyone else know what they’re doing with this thing?” she asked, turning to face the rest of us.
“No, no, it’s OK, I got it now,” Casper said quickly, “I have remembered, I’m just trying to work out which one is the anomaly the probe picked up. We need to get to higher ground so it can see further.”
“Well good, we’ve been standing around here too long already,” she announced, sounding tense. Casper slid the strap of the unit over his shoulder. It looked heavy, but it didn’t seem to bother him very much.
“Can someone get that?” he asked, motioning to a box on the ground. “It’s got the rifle torches in it.” I quickly scooped it up, and threw its strap over my shoulder. The torches should have been under my control from the beginning, and I wasn’t about to let someone else have them.
Liberty led us across ground, heading for a relatively high, but gently sloped hill of rock. It was hard work walking over the uneven ground, and I nearly tripped several times. Having not been the first one to make a mistake, though, I was equally determined not to be the first one that was clumsy. We advanced cautiously, though not as slowly as we probably should have been, and I for one was pretty jumpy. There was no wind, though, and no plants or animals. Everything was still, and the only sounds were our own footsteps. As we made our way up the hill, I looked out to try to pick out anything that might be dangerous or threatening. There wasn’t much to see, though. It was grey as far as the eye could see, and because of the proliferation of outcroppings and mountainous terrain, it wasn’t possible to see very far in any direction. Once we got to the highest point of the mountain, we stopped, and Casper started using the scanning equipment again.
“Make it quick this time Casper, will you? We have the high ground, but that also makes us pretty visible,” Liberty told him.
“How’s the ship gonna land on this rocky terrain?” Tasia asked uncertainly. Liberty looked around.
“There are level areas,” she said, “it doesn’t need to land completely flat, it can land on struts, remember.” Tasia looked around, and didn’t appear entirely convinced.
“Boom!” Casper said. “We are going in… that direction!” he announced, pointing back towards the pod.
“Seriously?” Antonia asked, unimpressed. “We just walked all this way?” Casper glared at her, packing up his scanning equipment.
Liberty led the way back down, but insisted we skirt around the pod, in case someone had taken an interest in our crashed vessel. We walked for ages. The journey took longer both because of the amount of rocky ground, and because of the extreme level of caution we were using. After about an hour, though, we relaxed a little bit. There was no sign of movement of any kind, and it really didn’t seem like the kind of planet where any race would voluntarily spend a significant amount of time. Liberty still insisted on complete silence, though. Whilst it was fair to say the hard terrain would probably allow the sound to travel some distance, especially with the lack of ambient noise, the ma
sks meant that our voices were somewhat muffled, so we were hardly loud.
Eventually, we took a rest in a secluded area, and Casper scanned again to make sure we were still moving in the right general direction. He look puzzled for a minute, and I worried that somehow we’d started going in the wrong direction. Liberty noticed his confused look.
“What is it, Casper?” He said nothing for a few moments. “Casper?” she asked, more insistent.
“The readings, it’s… well, I’ve picked up another anomaly, similar to the first one,” he replied. Liberty looked alarmed.
“Duplicate, uniform readings could suggest they’re artificial!” Tasia said, clearly rattled. “They could be Matan bases. We could be walking into a trap!” Liberty held up a hand to quieten Tasia, but also looked concerned herself.
“Just two?” she asked Casper. He shrugged
“So far,” he replied, “but who knows what I’m not picking up. We’re not in the ideal spot for scanning.”
“It’s the ideal spot for hiding,” I offered. Liberty just glared over at me.
“I don’t think we should jump to any conclusions,” Liberty said. “If it’s a rich vein of ore, or something like that, there could easily be more than one. If the terrain is conducive to it, it stands to reason it would occur more than once.”
“It wouldn’t really be an anomaly if that were the case,” Casper pointed out dryly.
“It’s an anomaly because you wouldn’t usually find something that large and that dense on the surface of a planet,” Liberty shot back. “It’s unusual, but if it is a feature of a particular planet, then it’s going to occur on that planet. It would be more unusual if it didn’t occur more than once. Can you imagine a planet with only one hill? Or one lake?” she asked him.
“I’m not sure that’s really the same, Liberty, but I get your point,” he replied diplomatically. She eyeballed him for a few moments, then walked over to Tasia.
“What do you think?” Liberty asked her. Tasia looked up at her, confused for a second.
“You’re asking me?” Tasia asked her. This time it was Liberty’s turn to look confused.
“Strategy? It’s your job?” Liberty replied. “Do you think we should hole up here, go back to the pod, or make our way to one of the anomalies?” Tasia raised her eyebrows, and started to look flustered. She looked around at the rest of us, as if looking for someone to help her out of the situation.
“We could vote on it?” Tasia suggested. Liberty sighed, audibly. “Look, I did say I wasn’t up to speed on strategy!” Tasia pointed out. “We agreed that we would all have input,” she reminded Liberty.
“That’s fine,” Liberty replied. “I have no problem with that. But you need to offer an opinion first. We’ll reach the right decision together, but you need to go first.” She turned to face all of us. “We all need to start taking responsibility for doing our jobs properly. We’re a team, and we’ll work together, but we all need to take the initiative in our own fields. That’s the only way this is all going to work.” Everyone fell silent. She wasn’t yelling, and she wasn’t telling us off. She’d also made her own mistake, so she couldn’t start pointing fingers at people.
“We follow the original plan,” Tasia asserted. “Nothing has happened to justify changing it. We approach carefully, and not from between it and the other anomaly Casper picked up. If they are synthetic structures, then any enemy presence will more likely occur between the two.” She looked at Liberty to see if that was acceptable.
“Good,” Liberty said, “let’s get moving again then.” We all got our weapons and gear, and cautiously made our way back out of the cul-de-sac that we’d climbed into. Tasia was looking particularly pleased with herself. As plans went, it was decent enough, but I think it was the fact that she’d summoned the courage to suggest a specific course of action that had given her heart.
We were walking in a sort of spiral again, to avoid being between the two anomalies as Tasia had suggested. After a while, Casper was on the hand scanner, announcing we were getting very close. The way ahead was rockier than anything we had encountered up to that point, and it was difficult finding a way between the steep peaks whilst still approaching from the direction that we had chosen. After a little while longer, Casper stopped us.
“It’s just over the other side of this face,” he whispered. Were were skirting around a rocky face that sloped up at about a thirty degree angle, and curved around in front of us. “If we climb up this slope, we’ll probably be able to see it,” he announced. Liberty looked up at the slope, assessing it.
“OK, I’m gonna climb up, see what I can see. You guys stay down here, but be ready, in case someone shoots my head off!” she said. Casper snorted at this, but it sent a shiver down my spine. My stomach started to tighten up, and I was nervous again, having relaxed considerably over the past couple of hours in the face of no sign of opposition of any kind. Liberty put both hands onto the slope, and lowered herself down onto it. She slowly, quietly started to climb up it, being very careful to keep all four limbs on it at any one time. It looked to be nearly ten meters high. It was very tense, and she was going painstakingly slowly. Our eyes were glued to her, guns held tightly in a ready position. Finally, Liberty gestured to communicate that she was at the top, and she carefully poked her head over.
CHAPTER SIX
I braced myself for the sounds of gunfire. A moment passed, then two. After a whole minute had gone, with seemingly all of us holding our breath, Casper eventually called out.
“Can you see anything?” he called up.
“Shh!” Tasia said, literally putting a finger up to his lips. He just stared at her.
“I think if there was an issue, she’d have said something by now,” Casper said to her. “Either that, or her bloody carcass would be rolling back down the slope.”
“Seriously, Casper!” Antonia snapped at him. Before she could say anything else, our attention was drawn back to Liberty. She was in a controlled, and impressively graceful, slide back down the slope. Within seconds, she hit the floor in front of us, and stood, flicking the dust out of our hair. We all looked at her. She continued to stand there, brushing dust out of her hair and off of her armour. It took several moments for her to notice that we were all staring at her expectantly.
“Oh,” she said in momentary surprise. “OK, you can go ahead and call the shuttle for extraction,” she said to Casper matter-of-factly.
“Well?!” Casper said to her impatiently. “What was it?!”
“It’s just some kind of crystalline structure,” she said shrugging. “Looks a bit like diamond, but I’m no chemist,” she added.
“Diamond?” Tasia repeated. “Couldn’t that be useful? Shouldn’t we take a sample, or something?”
“No, no,” Liberty replied. “Our orders were very clear. Check it, then check out.” She looked at Casper again. “Go ahead, call the shuttle,” she told him.
“We still need to check out the other anomaly,” he pointed out, frowning.
“It’s the same,” she assured him. “It’s a bit of a valley, stretches all the way out to where the other anomaly is that you picked up,” she continued. “I could see it. It’s pretty far, but it’s clearly the same.” Casper continued to look at her, seemingly unconvinced. He paused for a few moments.
“OK, you’re the boss,” he said finally. “You don’t want me to scan again, see if I can pick up anything else?” he offered.
“There’s nothing here,” Antonia asserted. “There’s no point wasting any more time on this dead rock. There’s no threat. No sign of life, of any kind. We might as well just get going.” Liberty nodded at her, and Casper just shrugged.
“Seems a shame to just leave without getting a sample,” Tasia opined quietly, sounding almost sad. Liberty just shrugged at her.
“We have our orders,” Liberty reminded her.
Casper was searching through his equipment belt, frowning. He looked over at me, then at the metal bo
x I was carrying, and reached out for it.
