The Dust, En Route to Prometheus Base
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.3.10 Interstellar
The next evening, after some brief introductions, the group set out together. It was Janus’s team of four and an additional four Hunter buggies carrying two Hunters apiece. Their escorts were all older, surly, and six of them had the middle name Haven. Janus supposed this was a homecoming for them, as well.
They didn’t talk much or respond to Janus’s orders. In fact, they didn’t listen to Janus’s orders at all, and they had to take their cue off the Hunters when it came to their first stop. Janus asked Mick about it, and the Hunter fiddled with his glove seal. “You remember how I wasn’t technically allowed to be your bodyguard in Mercuria, right?”
“Yes?” Janus answered.
“Well, you couldn’t have hired these chaps either, which is a shame because they kind of need the money,” Mick said in a stage whisper, even though they were on a private channel. “What you are, though, is the oldest living Promethean who’s not suspected of being a scum bag, so I had you pay Prometheus Base’s tribute, and these lads and two lasses just happen to be going to clear the route at the same time as we’re driving there!” Mick finished with a big grin.
Janus groaned. In some ways, Lira and Mick were very different people—one stiff, the other loose—but in others, namely in subverting the rules if necessary to get what they want, they were rather the same.
The key difference here seemed to be that Mick enjoyed the bending of the rule as much or maybe more than getting what he wanted.
“Any reason why they’re all old?” Janus asked. Their escorts weren’t geriatric, but they were certainly into the fifties.
“They expect to die,” Mick said with a shrug. “Best I could get you. They’re all Hunters in good standing who know their way around a shatter-gun. They’ve all made mistakes that left them worse off than they’d want to be at this point in their lives. One big payday will either buy them a second chance or serve as an apology to their families.” Janus opened his mouth to speak, but Mick stopped him. “This is their choice, Janus, and it’s our way. My dad made sure we didn’t get dead weight, but you need to respect what they’re doing. We’ll get them—and us—safely home if we can.”
“And if we don’t, they get a payout and a glorious death?” Janus asked.
“Now you’re catching on,” Mick said, punching him in the shoulder.
During the second stop, Janus made time to talk to Syn and Lira privately, the way he had with Mick. In Syn’s case, he was mostly just grateful and surprised she’d agreed to come with them after they told her the basics of their plan. He’d wanted to give her an out, but she’d refused. “You helped my people recover their home—maybe not right away, but within my lifetime. That, and you really stuck it to the Gracians,” she said with an impish grin. “Am I exiled because of it? Maybe. But there are better places to live on Irkalla, and my parents can come visit if they decide they want to stay part of Survivor’s Grace.”
As for Lira, Janus could tell that their current cooperation and truce would only hold depending on what they found in the ruins.
“What if your uncle really did this?” she asked.
Janus sighed. “I thought we agreed something changed.”
“He still betrayed them. Your parents, my mother,” she pointed out. “What if he’s responsible?”
“Look, Lira, none of us know what we’re going to find up there. Maybe my parents were doing something dangerous and my uncle was right. Maybe he was wrong, and your mother sided with him. Let’s focus on getting there safely and getting real answers. I can’t handle all the hypotheticals right now.”
“Fine,” Lira said, tense and looking for a fight.
And that was when the trilith attacked. There was no warning. One moment, the group was shaking their legs out and grabbing water and protein. Then next, a gray shape the size of a buggy and the same color as the surrounding wastes charged straight into the middle of their group, knocking one of the Hunters to the ground. Shatter-guns came out of holsters and the creature was quickly dispatched, but by then it had torn the Hunter’s suit open, cracked his helmet, and crushed his left arm and left thigh under its rocky bulk.
The Hunter died before they could get the patch kit open.
“That’s going to draw others,” Fred, the leader of their escort, said stoically. “Shorter stops; harder to hit us on the move. No more stops without setting a watch, and your lot stays within the perimeter, Aspirant.” He grabbed the dead man’s shatter gun and tossed it to Mick.
“Right you are, Fred,” Mick said, checking the weapon before stowing it on his buggy.
Janus’s shock at the attack wore off as they drove on, replaced by sadness. He couldn’t have prevented it, not without knowing more about hunting or returning to the original route, but he still felt responsible. A man had died, and Janus got the feeling he wouldn’t be the last.
A group of a dozen juveniles chased them during the last leg of the night, but they peeled off after the Hunters killed more than half of them.
“What’s to stop them from coming for us in the tents?” Syn asked nervously as they settled down for the day.
“Heat slows them down, makes them go dormant,” Mick said.
Janus nodded. He’d known that. It was hard to tell a trilith from a rock when they overheated, at least without cracking them open, and they liked to bury themselves to avoid direct sunlight if they could.
“There’s no reason for them to go after us if we’re careful,” Mick said. “There are plenty of carbon and water deposits up here for them to burrow into. The ones we’ve seen so far are pretty small, and probably just defending their space. Big ones will stay near where the food is.”
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“You mean like by Prometheus Base?” Janus asked wryly.
Mick waved his hand. “That’s the thing, right? The rumor was, Haven had this formula they sprayed in the dirt, kept triliths away. I guess we’ll find out if they still work.”
“That’s really comforting,” Lira mumbled sarcastically from her sleep sack.. “Could you two shut up?”
Mick grinned at Janus. “Tink-tink, boss.”
Janus shuddered and rolled over to go to sleep, but every time he heard one of the others shift he came fully awake, bracing himself for a tent breach.
They were powerless out here. It didn’t matter to the triliths that he was coming home a Prime Dome aspirant, an emissary of the cult. The only thing that mattered to them was that they were better adapted to the void than he was, and he was on their territory. The only things that were keeping them alive were the speed of their buggies, eight shatter-guns, and their primal, human fear of the dark.
***
There was another attack during the first leg of the next night, another pack of triliths but bigger ones this time. They were adults, fully grown but not yet weighed down by the extra layers of rock that built up over years, and they were fast. They came at Janus’s convoy at an angle, from roughly four o’clock, where neither taillights nor spotlights angled to the side lit them up until it was too late.
“Decoy!” Fred shouted, peeling off to the right and lighting a flare while Janus and the others killed their lights and took a quarter-turn to the left. Janus was terrified he was going to collide with one of the others, but the maneuver worked.
The triliths went after Fred and his flare.
Then they caught him, and they pulled him and his driver apart while the rest of the convoy ran, although not without reaping a furious harvest as they fled. They must have killed nearly twenty of the creatures, but it wasn’t enough. They were down to five escorts, six guns counting Mick.
“Lights on! Back on course!” Ava Zoedottir said, taking command.
Janus ground his teeth, but he pressed on. They would reach Prometheus Base in two more legs, if they held together.
He hoped they weren’t going there to die.
Janus almost did only an hour later. They were running slow, only 80 kilometers per hour because they were crossing a stretch that was more rubble and gravel than dirt, when a lone adult exploded from its hiding place among the rocks. It missed Janus’s head by centimeters, landed on the trailer, and wrenched it loose. Janus’s buggy shot forward under the lighter load, wheels spinning and buggy fishtailing before they caught. They’d just lost all their supplies and tools except for a spare day tent and whatever they had in their packs.
“Janus?” Lira asked, dropping back to drive alongside him. “Are you all right?”
He started laughing.
“What is it?” she asked, concerned.
He glanced over at her, then he laughed again. “I was right?”
“About what?” she asked.
“About the auto-disconnect!” he said, barely keeping it together.
If he hadn’t kept the automatic release system engaged this whole time, the trilith would have flipped his buggy over and killed him when it got the trailer.
“You’re an idiot,” Lira said, speeding up.
Yeah, maybe, Janus thought, grinning in spite of how his heart was beating and the absolute terror he’d felt. But I was right.
Somehow, that made the five hundred kilometers they still needed to cross seem bridgeable.
In the lonely hours that followed, Janus thought of his uncle making this trip in reverse with nothing but a couple of frightened kids and what he could carry. Had he known he might have to run and planned his escape? The man from before the collapse had seemed grimly determined, confident he would see his plan through or die in the attempt. The man after that was grieving, remorseful, and broken. Over the next twelve years, Ivan Invarian became secretive, irritable, and obsessed with the cult. Should Janus hate him or feel sorry for him? Why had Ivan run from and hidden from the cult if he’d been working with them all along?
“Stay in our tracks, Invarian,” the Hunter escort admonished him, and Janus got his mind back on the road. They suffered three more attacks in the next hour. For the first two, they were forced to leave the road and run while the Hunters thinned out packs of dozens of adults and juveniles. Discipline and short, controlled bursts of rock shattering power saw them through. On the third encounter, the pack was composed of very young triliths, juveniles, and older mature bulls who were too slow to keep up with a buggy, so the convoy just accelerated until their pursuers gave up the chase.
“We’ll stop here,” Ava Zoedottir said.
Janus frowned and pulled up alongside the Hunter leader. “Shouldn’t we press on? We’re only an hour from Prometheus.”
She shook her head. “That pack of alphas we just passed will keep smaller groups away, and I want to reach Haven as close to sunrise as possible. We can survive a few rads of exposure if it stops a pack from following us inside.”
“What if we can’t get inside?” Janus asked. “What if the triliths already have?”
Ava shrugged. “I was paid to clear the road, Aspirant. If we can’t get in, we pitch our day tents outside and we move on come nightfall. I don’t have the people or the firepower to fight through.”
It made Janus clench his jaw, but he knew she was right. To have come so far, lost three people, and not make it into Prometheus Base was hard to swallow, but it wasn’t the only way he could get answers.
He could confront his uncle.
Even if Ivan denied everything, refused to talk, they could present the evidence they already had, and, in time, mount a second expedition, this one larger and better armed so they could thoroughly explore the ruins…
Deep down, Janus knew that wasn’t true. The cult had killed to keep this secret, and they would do so again. He was hanging his hopes on what he’d noticed about Wayfinder Mayhew—that he’d wanted to help, but he’d had to jump through hoops because of the Trials.
With luck, that meant the cult wouldn’t send a signal to their aspirant suits to cut off their air, at least not until the Trials were over.
***
Gemini Point
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.3.12 Interstellar
Ryler sat back, feeling drained as he disconnected from the satellite feed. “That’s it, then. They’ve done it.”
“It looks like it,” Nikandros answered. “I think we can be cautiously optimistic.”
“Do you really think the compartmentalists left enough evidence behind to force them to act?”
“That’s the whole wager, my boy,” Nikandros said, steepling his fingers. “We know they were… thorough in their cleansing of Prometheus, but Anika Invarian was a force of nature, and her husband a brilliant researcher. I can’t imagine they didn’t plan for contingencies or leave some sort of record behind. If the opposition didn’t believe that, they wouldn’t have put so much effort into keeping people away.”
Which meant Janus’s return to Prometheus would be like stomping on top of a trilith burrow. “They’ll want to kill him,” Ryler said.
“Yes,” Nikandros answered. “Provided at least one member of that team survives what they find inside Prometheus Base and makes it here, we’re going to have the devil’s own time keeping them alive.”
Ryler nodded. He hung onto the belief that what they were doing was ultimately better for the millions of people living in Survivor’s Refuge under the cult’s guardianship. Sometimes, as Ivan Invarian had no doubt discovered, doing the right thing could be ugly, but that was the burden he’d been called to take on. “I’ll start making the arrangements.”
“Go tell his uncle first,” Nikandros said, looking toward the passenger cabins. “We’re going to need Ivan’s cooperation if we’re going to keep his nephew alive.”