The Great East–West,
Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge
4452.2.27 Interstellar
The maintenance area was empty when Janus and his team left their cabin. He and Lira were still pretending to hate each other, and Lira appeared so hung over that Mick had offered her a pill and some water to cure it, which she’d refused. All three of the Prime Dome team members sensed the emptiness of the large bay, however, and they grew quiet, unable to speak for fear of the cameras and microphones, and unable to be at ease.
“Let’s get suited up,” Mick said.
Janus nodded. It almost felt superstitious, but he wanted several layers of kevlar, mylar, and teflon between him and whatever foreboding he was feeling. He half expected the lockers to be empty, but everything was in order. Their suits had been maintained and cleaned, but a brief inspection told him their equipment and belongings had not otherwise been touched.
Janus, Mick, and Lira dressed by the numbers, checking each other over like their lives depended on it even more than they normally did.
“Invarian!” Martial said cheerfully as he entered the compartment, with Terra and Syn in tow. Terra sported a black eye and a bandage on her nose. “Is your lot ready go?”
“We’re not his lot,” Lira said, but Martial ignored her.
Janus caught Syn’s eyes, but he thought the former Betan shook her head so slightly he might have imagined it. “What’s the plan? Getting some B-roll on the way to Beta Station?”
“Of course not,” Martial said with too wide a grin, as if Janus had made a funny but slightly impolitic joke. “The Trials are serious business, and we’re going to need to be on our game if we’re going into the sealed-off sections of Beta.”
“We’re what?” Lira asked, only to be ignored again.
Janus frowned. “I’m not sure that’s what we discussed with Agent Murkinson.”
“Who?” Martial asked. “Handshake agreement, Janus. Terra and I helped you, and you’re going into Beta with us in the spirit of the Trials.” He stuck his gloved hand out, and Syn’s drone camera swung around to take the shot from the side.
Janus looked at Lira and Mick, then said, “Okay, man. What the hell is going on?”
The friendly mask on Martial’s face cracked. He snapped his fingers at Syn. “You. Blank us out.”
Syn looked uncomfortable. “I’m not supposed to—”
“Do what I fragging tell you,” Martial snapped, and Syn accessed her wrist-comm.
Static danced in front of Janus’s eyes as his retinal implant stopped functioning, and he felt his suit settle more heavily on him as the artificial muscles stopped synchronizing with his motions.
Martial glowered at him. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, Invarian. Control group? Like Survivor’s Grace is some sort of defective experiment instead of the leading settlement on the planet?”
Janus stayed calm and stood his ground. “It was only an observation. You have to admit—”
“Nothing!” Martial said, getting in his face. “I have to admit nothing! You think you can come in here, have your pet Hunter assault my teammate—”
“He didn’t assault me, Martial,” Terra interrupted, looking at Mick. “I gave as good as—”
“Shut up!” Martial shouted at her. “Your bruises are on your face. I don’t care if you scored a few points in your ridiculous sparring match. Survivor’s Grace has been shamed, and that stupid mechanic spread the word among the support staff. We may have to replace all of them, unless we can prove we’re every bit as good as this Primer trash. We could do the Trials their way if we wanted to, and we are going into Beta, end of discussion!” He turned back to Janus and said, “We planted explosives in your buggies. Nothing that will harm you, but I can disable your vehicles at any time, and if you try to open the casing, they’ll go off. I’ll disable them after we get what we want. Do you understand that much, you backstabbing son of a bitch?”
Janus looked at the Gracian aspirant without flinching. He’d seen privileged men and women like Martial get angry before, but his experiences during the past weeks, between his training and the Trials, had given him new eyes. He thought about his own anger, all those years, at being treated like less than nothing in Prime Dome. He understood that Martial’s anger wasn’t because Janus had spoken something that was obviously true, but because it had exposed Martial’s impotence. No matter what Murkinson said about the illusion of power being as good as the real thing, that only held true as long as the illusion did.
Martial’s anger was another mask, and underneath it was fear. “I understand.”
“Good,” Martial said, thinking he’d won the point instead of losing whatever esteem Janus had left for him. “Switch us back on.”
The static disappeared.
“What do you say, Janus?” Martial said with a grin and an offered hand. “Partners in helping the people of Beta Station?” He radiated confidence.
Janus saw only weakness. He gave Martial an easy smile that made the Gracian’s face twitch and shook his hand for the camera. “Partners, Martial. Happy to lead you in.”
Martial dropped Janus’s hand like he’d found something solid in the recycling vat. “Whatever. We’ll dub you over in editing.” He started to walk away, and Syn moved to follow but Martial stopped her. “Stay away from me, Betan. You can ride with the Primers. You’re already contaminated.”
The Gracian aspirant left the room.
Lira and Mick looked at Janus, but Janus looked at Syn. “You can blank us out? A way to stop us from being recorded?”
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Syn nodded and flicked it over from her wrist-comm.
Janus accepted the file and installed the program, SYNcope, whose title he assumed meant something, but he was more interested in what it did.
“It stops the recorders in your suit as well,” Syn said. “Cult won’t like that, so don’t do it too often.”
Janus turned it on, relieved to see the little flecks of static in front of his eyes. “Okay, so what the hell just happened?”
Syn started to say something but Lira spoke before her. “We won. They were trying to get us on the record for lying and make us look unprepared and unqualified.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Janus said. “But why would they do that?”
“You two like each other now?” Syn said, frowning.
Mick crossed his arms and leaned against the bulkhead. “They were doing a bit. At least, I assumed and really hoped they were doing a bit,” he said, looking relieved.
“We were doing a bit,” Janus confirmed, also relieved. “Lira? Thoughts?”
“Things are either not great back in Survivor’s Grace, or they were going to spread the footage to weaken Prime Dome’s status. Maybe both. What I don’t understand is what you did?”
Janus glanced at Syn and then answered, “I may have implied that the only reason the cult allows them to do this is because they’re the control group in a planetwide experiment.”
Lira laughed out loud. “Void’s mercy, Janus! I knew if I covered for you, you’d wreck them.”
“You did?” Janus asked.
“What did you think I was doing?” Lira asked.
Janus stared at her. “Getting us out of the trap, or whatever was happening.”
Lira laughed again. “I was the bait, Janus. You were the trap. I knew if I left you to your own devices, you’d break something. It’s in your nature.”
“I don’t…” Janus looked to Mick and Syn for support. “I fix things for a living!”
Lira looked at him, deadpan. “Not when it comes to politics, you don’t. Do you remember your big speech in front of the Council? The one where you accused Bennin the same day his son died?”
“Oh,” Janus said. “In that very narrow field of study, you’re one hundred percent correct. Eat the rich and down with the administration and all that.”
They both laughed, then. It felt good to be a team again, even if they were headed into an unknown amount of danger because of it.
That left one unknown in the room. He looked at Syn. “What about you?”
“Me?” she said with a laugh. “Oh, I’m screwed. They’re blaming me for the whole conversation.”
Janus winced. “So what does that mean, pragmatically?”
Syn shrugged. “Probably nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” Janus asked. “Murkinson didn’t strike me as someone with a sense of humor.”
“Yeah… I’m pretty sure Rosa, that mechanic you talked to, earned herself an extra two years in the caravan.”
Janus’s gut ached. He’d screwed over the little gal for his own ends.
“As for me,” Syn continued, “my parents are Betan scientists, so they’re more valuable than I am. Murkinson can’t hold their citizenship over my head, but I guess he could have me exiled.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Mick asked.
Syn smirked. “I’ve spent four years out in the dust scouting routes and recording aspirants’ fake adventures. I can handle myself as well as a Hunter.”
“You write that blank-out program yourself?” Janus asked, sensing an opportunity.
Syn gave him an are-you-serious look. “Slow your crawl, Prime Dome. I’m not ready to jump onto Team Invarian yet. Apparently, you pulled some kind of scheme on Gracians, of all people, which makes you all the biggest con men on the planet.”
“I prefer confidence woman,” Lira said with a grin.
The four of them looked at each other and laughed.
***
The two teams raced across the dust, with Martial and Terra in the lead, pushing to almost dangerous speeds to stay there, while Lira, Janus, Mick, and Syn followed a few hundred meters behind. Syn had her own buggy slaved to Mick’s. It was a utility model, with the cargo bed converted to a launch bay, and she was operating four separate drones to record their progress from several angles and speeds. They outstripped the crawlers, going nearly twice their speed on the flat open road, and after a few minutes the large, lumbering vehicles disappeared below the horizon.
“What do we know about the collapsed sections of Beta?” Janus asked his team—which in his mind included Syn—over the comm. “Anything?”
“There wasn’t anything in the briefing,” Lira answered. “The whole plan was to trade our cargo and keep moving.”
“That’s been the Hunter approach as well,” Mick confirmed.
“What about you, Syn?” Janus asked. “Aren’t you from here?”
The former Betan—and perhaps now former Gracian—didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice was husky. “Honestly? I left this place four years ago for a reason. My parents tried to get others to follow. I’ve lost friends, cousins, uncles, even an older brother to this, and the only thing I’m wondering is which of my parents’ warnings, all of which were ignored, finally killed them.”
“Harsh,” Janus said.
“Pretty fair, from what I’ve heard, boss,” Mick commented.
Janus grunted. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He shook his head and focused on the road. The Gracian mechanic’s assorted parts were working as advertised, and his buggy was riding smoother and faster than before. Still, it would be a shame to go through all that work only to wreck his or one of the others’ vehicles, and he wasn’t sure how hard of a bump the buggy could take without setting off the explosives in the casing.
The road forked, and they took the smaller path west toward Beta Station.
“You’re heading toward Beta Station,” his mother, appearing unprompted. “Listen to me carefully, Janus. We’ve tried to work with the Betans in the past, but they have no sense of risk or ethical boundaries. Pass through if you can, trade with them if you must, but do not under any circumstances settle here or allow yourself to get dragged into Betan affairs. They’re one mistake away from a complete collapse, and they’re damned well going to give themselves that chance.” His mother was frustrated and angry, he thought, but she was also a few years younger than she had been in the other recordings. Ironic that Prometheus Base collapsed over a decade before Beta Station, Janus thought. Had his parents changed their minds and taken more risks? Were they right about Beta Station and the collapse of Prometheus Base had been some unrelated external factor, unavoidable and unpredictable at the same time?
It was at least encouraging that his parents hadn’t intended to do something as risky as Beta Station at that time, although he’d refrain from sharing that with Lira since they were doing well right now. Just the thought of it might set her off down the wrong path.
After two-and-a-half hours, Janus demanded they stop, and he and his team ate and drank while Martial and Terra stood by their vehicles impatiently.
“It’s not going to do them any good to get there tired,” Mick said, but Janus wasn’t about to make an issue of it. They were less than a full leg away from their destination, and the two Gracians could take care of themselves as far as he was concerned.
Instead, he called up Syn on the team channel, excluding Martial and Terra, and asked, “If you don’t know exactly what happened, what do you think might have happened?”
“What always happens during a collapse?” Syn answered. “People grow too fast, or try to do it with too few resources, or they do something stupid. I’m betting on stupid.”
“Such as?” Lira asked.
“Gray goo,” Syn said. “Self-replicating nanites start using everything around them to make more of themselves, and pretty soon there’s black sludge leaking from every vent and pipe. Or polyphages. Did you know the Betans were working on making anaerobic bacteria that could eat everything from meat to metal?”
“I did not know that,” Janus said.
Syn scoffed. “They thought they were going to ‘solve’ the junkyard outside of Mercuria, and instead they solved themselves. Get it?”
Janus and Lira groaned.
“I didn’t get it,” Mick said.
“Solvent…” Janus said. “Never mind. But it could not be those things, right?”
“You’re right!” Syn said gleefully. “It could be worse.”