Minnie stood and scrutinized the immobilized Hynka, ensuring no one was about to spring up and grab her horror-film style. Satisfied by their dead or dyingness, she strode to Ish’s body where it’d come to rest at the edge of the clearing.
Oh, perfect.
The head had come to rest facing down. No quick pluck and run for Minnie.
She knelt down, breathed through only her mouth, and focused on the mechanics of lifting, turning, and setting the head down. That face… the expression…
She had to keep going, get it done, unclip multitool, flip open scoop tool, finger the eyelids open, ignore vile peeling of flesh bonded by dried fluids, insert tool at outside corner—no looking at face, stop looking at face—pry fone from housing.
The ball dropped from her fingers into an empty cargo pocket. Pocket sealed.
Minnie ran back to the skimmers, hopped up, and stopped her hands before they touched anything. Her gloves had been tainted in the worst possible way. She thought she could feel both germs and creeps burrowing through the fabric, dead-set on reaching her skin.
She tore out the release lines and yanked the gloves off, flinging them behind her.
The skimmer pressed up at her feet, the paired units launching as a single unit, straight up in the air. First to the west, instead of directly back north. Hynka would definitely see her leave, and she didn’t want to guide them back toward the mountain cave.
The controls had a nice, grippy rubber texture she realized she’d never touched with bare skin. It was dumb to have left her gloves. Purely an emotional decision. They could’ve been cleaned of any dangerous or disturbing matter. Now she had an unsealable suit. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Should she turn back? Was there still time? Perhaps, but she didn’t alter her course for 15K, at which point she veered north toward “home.”
3.1
Agitated sand and dust shifted outside the cave, but without the usual accompaniment of a hollow wind tone. John pulled in the corner of his survival bag to have a peek just in time to see the white edge of a skimmer touchdown outside. Minerva was back. She’d made it, of course. The endless string of speculation that tormented his mind had all been silly.
“Sorry I took so long,” Minerva’s voice echoed through the cavern. “How we doing? Where’s your pain at?” She crouched down beside him, set a hand on his shoulder.
The question struck John funny. He chuckled a little, felt a dull pressure in his right ribcage that would’ve normally been pain. “I don’t know… two?”
Minnie’s compassionate smile disappeared, replaced with fret. “Oh no… you didn’t—” She sprang to her feet and surveyed the area, frantic. Her cute little fairy face left behind ghostly tracers as it darted about.
She really was cute. But not in a lusting older guy kind of way. More of a “You know, I can admit that’s a good-looking girl” kind of way. He’d seen her coming out of the shower half-covered (and not really caring) enough times to assemble an imaginary full picture if he’d wanted to, but this line of thought assailed him with an instant bout of self-loathing.
“Sorry,” he said, but her concerned face thought he was talking about the drugs. That was good. No need to correct her. Mind purged.
She squatted back down, lifted the top of his survival bag, and found his stash. “How many did you take? How long ago?”
He tightened his arm around the little case, though she had yet to try and pull it away.
“You’re cute.”
Oops. That was out loud. Stop it! What’s with this cute stuff?
“That’s great, John. Appreciate it, really. How many damn pills did you take?”
It was two. Well, two recently. How many at the EV? One. No, one on way there, one on way back?
“Sorry,” he said, trying to unmuddle his thoughts. “I think… how long’ve you been gone?”
“About four hours. You took one a little before I left, and I gave you two more for—wait, how did you even—” She peered back outside, probably spotting the drag trail leading to the EV. “Oh no… John… I’m so sorry! How bad was it? I can’t believe you pulled yourself all the way—Oh crap, your wounds! Let me look at you!”
She unzipped the survival bag to the bottom and carefully peeled away the top. The case of meds slid from his cradling arm, tossed aside to a pile of supplies on the opposite wall. As she hunched over him, examining the damage he’d done to all her hard work, his hypnotized eyes hovered on her orange hip. Beyond that curve lay his meds. Not so far. He could get there in a quarter the time it took to reach the EV. If she left them there. Oh, but there was no way now. He’d never see that case again.
“Wrecked, John,” she murmured, dragging the medkit across the floor. “Just wrecked. It’s all my fault. We can’t head north tomorrow. Not now.”
A cloud floated aside, exposing a small patch of clear thought. He looked up at her as she tried to sop up his leaky body with sponge pads.
“Hey,” he said. Fraught eyes locked onto his. “Not your fault. I said five. Was much worse. Thought I could handle, I guess. Stupid.” She dabbed the sweat from his head with a clean sponge. “Listen… I have to tell you something. A secret I’ve kept a long time.”
Minerva’s face scrunched. “Oh please, no. I don’t need any secrets right now. Save it for when your judgment’s on a bit more solid ground.”
“No, nothing weird. There’s nothing like that. I promise. Now listen… listen before I start swimming again. A decade—no. A decade and a half after launch, a pod was sent up. Special pod. Huge. Inside, an RRM—Rapid Return Module. Major upgrades all around. All over. Back to Earth in almost half the time to take to get here. To took. Ah, dammit… half the time it took! Eleven years.”
Minerva’s expression had morphed into a familiar chilly intensity. “When is it supposed to arrive?”
“Fourteen months.”
Calculations seemed to scroll across her eyes. “Fourteen months until orbit. Until it attempts to dock with a nonexistent station. A hell of a lot of good it’ll do us down here.”
“No, that’s the thing…” A wave of euphoria drifted through his brain. He shut his eyes for a second… juuuust a second—a light slap from Minerva on his good cheek. Eyes open. “Right… look, it has a lander. Full escape capability. If it can’t dock with station, it automatically sends the lander to our original rally point.”
She considered this information. “BS. Why exactly are you feeding me this crap? We hadn’t even arrived when your supposed RRM launched. I didn’t set our rally point until seven years later.”
“Retro update, Minerva.” He smirked. “Remember that whole thing we all learned about the speed of light? Laser comms?” The term escape capability struck him funny. He murmured it to himself. “Escape capability. Escape cape. Scapecape.”
“So this isn’t a load of crap?” Her hopeful gaze searched his face. “Then hang on. How long have you know this?”
“Only a few years.”
“Only? Dammit! Do you realize that none of this would have happened if you’d just shared this tidbit of info? If that looner bitch knew there was a way home—an escape from walls and tiny rooms and monotony—she wouldn’t have felt the need to blow the place up! She’d still be alive. My friends—Aether—would still be alive!”