The Dead Fields, Sun-Side Plains
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.25 Interstellar
Janus snarled as yet another bead of sweat ran along the side of his face. The pack straps were digging into his shoulders, his mouth was dry, and Fury kept pulling on the leash.
They were in the Dead Fields. He was trying not to think about that because this was one of the most notorious aberration zones on the planet.
Being in an aberration zone wasn’t like most demarcated Janus had investigated. There was no way to detect an aberration. Their effects were random, ranging from a slight sensation to instant and violent mutations and death. Aberration zones were like minefields in that they were usually discovered when somebody died. They were unlike minefields in that no one knew how they worked, you couldn’t disarm them, and sometimes they moved.
“How do we stop from dying?” Lira asked.
“I don’t know,” Janus said. He looked at Ryler. “Does the Cult know anything?”
“The only thing we know about aberration zones is to stay out of them.”
Janus nodded and adjusted his shoulder straps. The compartmentalists were coming after them in waves, in groups of ten or twenty spread out to cut off all escape. It was like a red stain spreading across the map behind them, coming down from the hill, and it was getting closer.
Some of the landscape was quite beautiful, and in other circumstances—with more time and more safety precautions, Janus would have loved to spend months here. He saw seahorse-like creatures flit between tall, vertical fronds on diaphanous dragonfly wings. A colony of burrow-dwelling lizards chirped at them in alarm, and a seed pod the size of a forklift exploded into light, drifting seeds the size of umbrellas. There were some places they obviously should avoid: plants that were actively roiling and growing things like eyes and snapping mouths before molting into other things, or patches of dead earth where not even weeds would grow. Twice, Janus had felt a sort of chill as he stepped forward, and he froze.
“Janus?” Lira asked, worried.
“Maybe step around this patch,” he said and moved on.
There were only so many “chills” he could catch before one of them did something—if something hadn’t already happened. His implants would tell him, surely.
Fury planted her feet, and his feet almost slipped out from under him. “Come on, girl,” he said, tugging on the leash.
She growled at him, throwing herself back against the pull.
“What’s gotten into her?” Mick said, stopping next to them.
“I don’t know,” Janus said.
He looked ahead, but there was nothing to distinguish the ground ahead of them from anywhere else.
“’Ere, mate. Try this,” Mick said, handing Janus a gumjaw fruit he’d picked.
Janus ran his thumb across the fruit’s rough brown skin, then pitched it underhanded.
The gumjaw fruit slowed as if it passed through an antigrav field, like in the legends, and it unraveled into spirals of repeating geometric patterns.
“What in the ancient stars…” Mick said, looking at the unraveled object, but Janus and Ryler stared dumbfounded at Fury, who was still obstinately trying to pull him back.
Janus and Ryler both looked at each other and said, “Fury can sense aberrations!” at the same time.
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A moment later, Janus added, “We’re actually going to make it.”
From that point on—after a few more tests, just to be sure—they were able to pick up the pace, trusting the jungle dragon to keep them from harm. They were moving at a jog, with Lira, Mick, and Ryler carrying the heavy packs while Janus focused on finding a way through with Fury, and Koni did her best to keep going. It took every bit of stamina they’d developed during the training sessions before the Trials, but they were doing it, trail running across an aberration zone, and Janus had hoped they’d be opening the distance between them and their pursuers.
That wasn’t the case.
“How are they keeping up with us?” Lira asked, sweat dripping from her face.
Janus looked at the uplinked map again, and then he saw it. A red dot disappeared, and then the other dots behind it flowed around that spot and kept going. It made him feel sick. “They’re having some of their people run ahead to find the aberrations.”
Lira looked at him. “You don’t mean…” Her eyes glowed blue as she accessed the map herself. “Survivor forgive them…”
The compartmentalist team wasn’t keeping up with them because they had technology or superior conditioning. They were keeping up with them because they had people to spend, and they didn’t care.
“How are you feeling?” Janus asked Koni.
“All right,” she said, already showing signs of fatigue. “Some of the pain is getting through. This isn’t going to end my dancing career, is it?”
Janus gave her a sad grin. “It’s not going to set right. It may hurt for the rest of your life, and I’m sorry for that.”
Koni let that sink in for a second, then said, “Better than dead.”
“Better than dead,” Mick agreed. “Let’s keep moving.”
It almost felt pointless. They were heading deeper into the zone, and the aberrations were getting bigger and more frequent. They were going to get caught. If they let themselves be captured, at least the compartmentalists people, whoever they were, wouldn’t die for nothing, like him, like Irkalla. It would have been easy to let despair take hold.
Janus shook his head, remembering the time his uncle had marooned him at the experimental farm, and he’d had to run back in a full void suit and almost got cooked by the Irkallan dawn. “You’re right. Maybe something will change to get us out of this.”
The race carried on. Janus and Fury ran ahead, the little flame dog seeing it as some kind of game, maybe, although she took to the task seriously. Every once in a while, Ryler would check his records of the Dead Fields and adjust Janus’s general direction, although they had no set destination. The particularities of the Dead Fields helped, as random growths of tree cover or crystalline structures broke up the ground, and both heat hazes and mirages distorted line of sight. Just a matter of time, Janus knew as the net of red markers closed in. No way out. No way out. His mind was racing. As much as he hated the compartmentalists’ tactics, he had to admit they had the right idea. If they’d slowed, assuming they didn’t have the same intelligence feed he did, Janus could have found a way to slip the net. As it was, he was getting ground between the heart of the aberration zone and a wall of armed troops.
There was a crash that shook the ground.
“Look out!” Lira shouted, and Janus looked to where she was pointing.
The sight took his breath away. It looked like a menhir—a lone standing stone raised by Ancient Earth tribals—except its surface was made of glistening black organic matter. It was also a giant foot. Janus could make out the hazy outline of the rest of the creature in the mist that seemed to billow around it. The thing was massive, at least half as big as the megalith they’d found in the ruins of Prometheus Base. “It’s a morant,” he said.
“Is it going to fight us?” Mick asked.
“No, they’re docile,” Janus said as a second fleshy menhir seemingly floated through the air and set down with a thud, rippling as it absorbed plant matter and nutrients from the soil.
“No time for study, then,” Mick said. “We need to go.”
A shot cracked between them and kicked up the turf. Janus and Mick dove for cover.
The compartmentalists had caught up with them.
Janus pulled up the map and saw the closest unit was a mere 300 meters away.
“What do we do?” Lira asked. “Run or fight?”
“We should run,” Janus said, frustrated. “We just don’t have anywhere to run to.”
“I may have a solution to that,” Ryler said, eyes glowing blue. “There’s an old research facility here, in the Dead Fields. I’ve found a service entrance not far from here. The problem is, I’ll need time to get it open, time we’ll be stuck out in the open with no cover.”
Janus clenched his teeth. On a normal day, if there had been a dozen pursuers or even two dozen, they would have stood a chance. The compartmentalists had no choice but to come after them, and Janus’s team could detect aberrations. They could have whittled the comps down until a direct confrontation—supplemented by traps and Janus’s chemical arsenal—would have worked in the Irkallans’ favor. If only the Survivor would toss us an ideal scenario from time to time. Not only were there too many of the compartmentalist troops, but most of Team Invarian’s weapons had stayed behind in the buggies. They never would have made it this far carrying the extra weight, but now that they were stuck, Janus would really have appreciated the additional firepower.
“I might have an idea,” Mick said, dropping his pack and digging through it. He fished a bulging plastic bag of purple powder from his kit and grinned. “Tell me more about this morant thing.”