Terror World, page 14
part #5 of Zombicide Series
“Holy Mount Mons,” Grayson said between coughs. “Tell me we’re done with testing this stuff, because I ain’t in this to get my head blown off.”
“I don’t think we need any more ballistic tests,” Dizzie assured him. “Figuring out how to take it from its current form and use it as fuel will take a lot more work – actually, Six.”
They turned and looked at the Caridian, who had just finished wiping down – ugh, wiping down his eyeballs with the fuzzy ends of his own antennae. How did that not hurt? Did his eyes not have pain receptors? “Maybe you can make that your research priority? I know you can’t let us look at the Telexa’s inner workings, but maybe you can do some comparisons between your engine and what they’d built here and see if they’d already modified these ships to use Xenium as fuel.”
“Certainly,” Six replied. “Once we get you and Dr Lifhe well situated in your lab, of course.”
Aw, how nice of him to remember that. “Of course,” Dizzie agreed. They were excited at the prospect of really getting down to work on the mystery that was Xenium. The discoveries on the verge of being made! This was following in Dr Rigby’s footsteps in the purest way possible.
Well, except for the Xeno problems Dr Rigby had had to deal with, but given the volatility of this climate, it seemed less and less likely that mold would be a problem here. Dizzie was both relieved and a little disappointed by that. After all, when would a chance like this ever come around again?
Chapter Twelve
Corinus Lifhe
The moment the fight between Grayson and Divak broke out, Corinus got a headache. It wasn’t merely the fact that the Martian and Thassian were thinking vile thoughts and having vile feelings toward each other – even among Centaurans, there were rivalries that sometimes erupted into violence. Corinus understood that, had dealt with that in his youth, just like all of them learned how to. It was more the fact that these thoughts were coming from two separate species, all while Corinus was trying to deal with the stubborn blank spot that was Six living rent-free in his mind, along with surges of near euphoria from Dizzie that should have buoyed him up, but instead made him feel like he’d eaten something that disagreed with him.
It was too much. It was just too much, and he couldn’t handle it anymore, but he couldn’t turn it off either. All his usual tricks for filtering out others’ thoughts and feelings weren’t working right now. Mason Bane’s five bickering brains, all of them very active now whereas on the ship they’d been largely passive, didn’t help. Four of those minds had the vocabularies of precocious human toddlers, but that just made them more annoying.
Corinus waited until Dizzie and Six were ensconced in the far corner of the lab trying to get power to the tables that held the equipment before reaching into the bag at his waist and pulling out the drug that would turn off his telepathy for a while. Now, to inject it right into his third eye and–
Oh, wait. He’d have to take off his helmet for that.
What does it matter? Almost everyone else in the expedition has done the same. You can put it right back on. You’ll be fine. You don’t want to wait until you get back to the other ship for this, do you? You’ll be useless for the rest of the day.
With a sigh, Corinus unsnapped his helmet and gently set it aside. Then he reached up and, very carefully, inserted the needle into his skin and pressed the micro-syringe to the soft, painful pulse-point of his third eye. Within seconds, it was like a cloud had been pulled across his mind’s vision, blocking his view of everyone else’s too-bright, repugnant thoughts.
The relief it gave him was so visceral he slumped down onto the floor, his back legs collapsing completely and his front only barely holding his head and torso upright. He hoped Dizzie and Six were too busy to come looking for him now. For the first time in their partnership, he hoped that Dizzie had forgotten about him, just for a while.
The blankness stayed with him through the rest of their work that day, making the setup of the lab into a slightly clumsy process. Dizzie and Corinus had only brought the barest bones of their own equipment along with them from the ship on this initial foray, but what they had they found places for, as well as planning where the rest of their equipment would go. In the end, as tempted as Dizzie was to further investigate the ancient Caridian tech that had been left here, they’d come to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense to spend time on it when they already had what they needed to do most of the experiments they could think of.
The only thing they got to work conclusively that had already been here, other than the lights, was the energy field in front of the testing chamber. Six had managed it somehow, and shown them how it could be cycled through different settings to block concussive force, radioactivity, light, specific particulate matter – definitely useful if they were studying a fungus or a… or a…
There’s no mold here. There were a few bodies, and plenty of mysteries surrounding where the rest of the bodies had to be, but there was no mold. And with his telepathy spread wide and not dampened by the drug, Corinus would be the first one to know if something risky went down. He would be able to get to safety, if it came down to it. Keeping himself safe was his first, and most important, duty to his people.
Don’t forget Dizzie. He didn’t think it was possible for him to forget Dizzie, but he knew the importance of prioritization as well as any Centauran. He and his own kind always had to come first. Once their interests were secured, then he could worry about people who were unconnected to the wellbeing of his species.
Corinus tried not to dwell on how Dizzie would feel if they knew he considered them disposable. The practice didn’t go both ways – Dizzie would risk death to save him. He knew that like he knew the shape of their thoughts, the gentle push of their mind. He knew that what they felt for him wasn’t reciprocal. He wished it was, though, for his own sake more than theirs. He knew he had to stand firm, like Dr Yoche said, but he didn’t like the way the inequality made him feel like less, instead of more.
The whole point of the injection was to avoid being tormented with thoughts! Stop moping and get back to work.
Only there was little work left to be done on site. It was getting late, the distant red sun slowly wending its way toward Sik-Tar’s rocky horizon. The mist had finally cleared, and the brilliant brightness of the sunset reminded Corinus of the light shows he used to go see with his rearers when he was very small – so vast to such a little person back then, it had terrified more than tantalized him. This was also vast, and even more terrifying.
Finally, it was time to head back to the ship for the night. Everyone was exhausted, but a lot of good work had been done. The Bane brothers had mapped out the ship’s ventilation system, sending one of Mason’s arms in through the ducts above the mining machines and along over a kilometer’s worth of piping. The batteries powering the ship were set into the walls and fed by geological reactions churning deep below the surface of the planet, the same reactions that made the ocean so inhospitable. Now that those batteries had been turned back on, there was little fear of the lights shorting out any time soon.
Divak had looked around one more time and, to her great disgust, failed to discover any hidden caches of weapons or an interment area for bodies. The only thing of note she mentioned was, while sitting outside at the base of one of the stacks – which she’d freeclimbed up to like a fool, did none of these people have any survival instincts? – she’d noticed that the deep gouges in the landscape around the monolith were surprisingly regular. “It looks like they were cut there deliberately,” she said.
“Perhaps it has something to do with the mining operation,” Six suggested, moving without any suggestion of exertion despite the steepness of the last hill they had to climb before getting back to his ship. “Boreholes or spots for more equipment to dig down or something.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dizzie said, panting a little inside their EVA suit. Corinus leaned in and offered them a shoulder to hold onto for stability, and they smiled gratefully at him. “Initial scans show no signs of Xenium on the surface of the planet except what’s already been mined and the particulate matter in the air, and no indications of more for half a kilometer down. I’ll break out the ground-penetrating radar tomorrow; that should get us a read as far as two kilometers underground. Still, I’m thinking the Xenium might be even farther down than that. The gouges Divak shared footage of don’t look conducive to reaching that kind of depth.”
“They might have been mining something else,” Grayson put in. “Reckon there’s precious metals on this planet? Lanthanum? Neodymium?”
“I’ll check for those tomorrow, too,” Dizzie promised.
Conversation dropped off as soon as they were back at the ship. People split up – some to change and shower, some to prepare food, some to check their equipment and get ready for tomorrow. Corinus took advantage of everyone else’s distraction to slip out of his EVA suit and lie down on his bunk for a moment. He shut his eyes and tucked his knees in close to his chest, perfectly composed in his own cocoon, still alone in his mind and finally, for once, alone in every other way, too. It was bliss, to lie there in solitude and just be.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before Dizzie touched him on the shoulder, drawing him out of his reverie. “Shower’s free,” they said, toweling off their fluffy brown hair. They sat down on their own bunk, right across from Corinus’s, and asked, “Do you feel better since shutting all the extra noise out?”
Corinus’s eyelids fluttered guiltily. “How did you know?”
“I can always tell when you’re on your meds,” Dizzie replied. “Your face gets dreamier, and your movements become less… careful, I guess. When you’re aware of everyone, you never, ever bump into people. You bumped me twice in the lab today.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I–”
“It’s not a problem,” Dizzie assured him. “I just want to make sure you’re not having a problem, and if you are, I want to be able to do something about it.”
“I’m fine,” Corinus said. It felt good to be able to tell them the truth. “I just needed a bit of distance today. There were many… fraught emotions.”
“Fraught. Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” Dizzie agreed with a grimace. “If I never see that many tentacles coming out of one person again, it’ll be too soon.”
Corinus blinked. “I believe they’re called extensors.”
“Eh, close enough.” Dizzie rolled their shoulders out and sighed. “Never mind. Listen, it’ll be better tomorrow. We’ll all have our tasks ready to go, we’ll split up almost as soon as we get there, and we won’t have to see each other again until it’s time to come back here.”
“Can we take our helmets off tomorrow?” Corinus asked meekly. “It’s just, it got so stuffy after a while, and I hate the nutrient paste that those things feed you.”
“I hear you.” Dizzie turned their head to the side until their neck made a faint cracking sound. “But I also don’t want a lungful of this weather if I can help it.”
“Just inside, then?”
Dizzie grinned. “Fine. Just inside. Preferably where the rest of the group can’t see us being hypocrites.”
“All right.” They sat in silence for a moment before Dizzie got up.
“I’m going to go make us some dinner and pack up the equipment we need to take along for the lab. Grayson is working on the rover now. He says he thinks we’ll be able to use it tomorrow.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Dizzie smiled. “Go get a shower, then come out and join me when you’re ready and we can talk through some of the experiments I want to set up.” They left the sleeping cabin, and Corinus felt a warm pang in his heart as he watched them go. They were always looking out for him.
Silently, he promised himself that he was going to do all he could to look out for Dizzie as well.
Chapter Thirteen
Grayson Bane
There was value in being able to do things that others couldn’t. For Grayson, that had meant making himself and his brother into the most amazing, unstoppable team of thieves the galaxy had ever seen. To do that, he’d had to become proficient in everything from neurosurgery to electrical engineering to computer programming, in both human and alien languages. There was no shortage of artifacts out there that others were happy to pay the Banes to steal for them.
Doing so meant prestige for the new owners, a growing reputation for them, and Coalition credits or the currency of choice for wherever they were based out of at the time. The harder the job, the more of everything everyone got. It hadn’t been an easy life, but it had been a satisfying one.
Then had come their first tour in prison when a client turned on them, then them breaking out and going on the run, then being recaptured and doing another stint in prison. It became a pattern that Grayson didn’t fight too hard because they ended up getting as big a reputation for breaking out of places as they did for thieving. Plenty of people were willing to pay top credit to learn the ins and outs of the various Guild and Coalition penitentiaries, and the Bane brothers were more than happy to pass on what they’d learned for a price. What did they care about “compromising galactic security” and all the other loads of shit the prosecutors piled onto their cases against ’em? The galaxy had never done much for the two of them, after all.
Then came the job that landed them in the Bor-Turia Penal Colony, an escapade that went bad thanks to a group of Water Guild bastards installing new security just a day before the heist Grayson and Mason had been paid for. And now… hell. Here they were. Living in close quarters with a crazy Thassian and a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears scientists, on this moist bunghole of a planet, trying to figure out ancient tech that might blow you up as soon as work the way you expected.
Well, all right, that part was actually pretty neat. Not that Grayson would ever admit it.
[Aww, but it’s cute!]
“Shut it,” he muttered, tightening the last few parts on the newly reinforced axle of the rover. Fixing that had taken the longest, much of it spent waiting around for compounds to meld and stick together, so Grayson had redone the tread on the wheels in the meantime.
[No, really. We love your hobbies. We would never have thought to model the tread after the Martian dune-rollers you and us used to play around with as kids.]
“If you don’t shut your head up, I’ll beat you about it until you do.”
[You wouldn’t do that to us,] Mason crooned. [Especially not after we saved you from the bloodthirsty Thassian.]
He was right, of course, but it didn’t do to let him get a big head about it. “Saved me?” Grayson scoffed. “You were about to get us thrown back into the clink, and this next time might be our last! What do you want to bet they’d throw me into a hole so deep I forget what light looks like, and you’d get stuck as a footrest under the warden’s desk permanently?” Not that Grayson wouldn’t do everything in his power to keep that from happening. From the feel of his brother’s amusement across their connection, he knew it.
[So overprotective,] Mason laughed. [You know we could always have escaped once we got back to the home system. You worry too much.]
“Maybe you don’t worry enough,” Grayson muttered. Maybe none of them did – except for the Centauran, who seemed to do enough worrying for the lot of them. “How long do you reckon we’ll be out here anyway, eh?”
[The original contract said one standard Earth lunar month. More for travel, of course.]
“God, I hate having to measure everything in Earth standard.”
[Yes, you’ve complained about it before, shut up now. That leaves us with twenty-nine more days of exploration here.]
“Ugh.” Twenty-nine more days mucking about this red-tinged hell with this lot? It couldn’t get much worse.
[You’re so dramatic.]
“Shut up and get in so I can test whether the new welds will hold.” If the rover could carry Mason’s weight, it could carry the rest of the group with no problem.
Grayson watched as his brother shuffled over and clumsily pulled himself into the center of the rover. Gotta work on smoothing out his movements next. The rover’s shocks whined a bit, but nothing broke. “Good enough. I’ll tell ’em to load up.” Grayson opened the door between the rearmost storage compartment of the ship, where the rover was stored next to the ramp it would drive down, and shouted, “Hey! Get your arses back here, we’re ready to go!”
[So classy.]
“Shut up.” Did Mason have to have an opinion on everything? “You’d be getting us into ten times the trouble I ever have if your mouth survived the fire, you know that?”
[Yeah, yeah.]
Shortly thereafter, the rest of the crew filed into the storage compartment and took their places on the rover. Six took the driver’s seat for himself, then activated the exit and deployment of the ramp. As soon as it was stable, he drove the rover down it and took off for the distant refinery – ship – whatever it really was to a bunch of ancient Caridians.
Grayson might have mused on it more if he wasn’t being jostled around so hard he almost fell over the edge of the bloody rover. “Holy Mount Mons, slow the hell down!” he shouted.
“I merely wish to be as efficient as possible!” Six said over the noise of the motor, clacking his mandibles cheerily. Too cheerily – this lunatic was enjoying driving like a maniac. Grayson was about to tell him off again, when the next bump hit hard enough that Dr Drexler – who hadn’t had time to fasten their seatbelt – flew into the air.
Mason caught them before they could fall off. “Nice catch,” Grayson muttered as his brother resettled the flustered doctor in their seat.
[We’re a gentleman, ask anyone.]
