He turned his head and looked at Orion as the boy skillfully piloted the small skiff over the land.
Orion was still in his hunting kit, which was a patchwork body glove made out of leather and ceramic plates, carefully crafted to give maximum mobility with modest protection from thorn, tooth, and claw. It was still a little big for him, but he’d soon fill it out well.
Though the boy had been born in the grinding industrial society of Grotto and had spent his early years in the cramped living quarters of corporate housing, space stations, and starships, he had blossomed in the rugged environment of Longstride. It was amazing what open air and clean food could do for a child. Samuel felt a surge of pride as he watched the youngster deftly maneuver around the large trees and massive moss-covered boulders that covered the forest floor.
Sura had insisted that Orion accompany Samuel on this journey, and though she declared that it was so the marine wouldn’t have to overexert himself, Samuel knew it was more for Orion’s benefit. Riding with the marine to unearth something that was sure to be trouble, carried a risk that none of them could ignore. Samuel himself was fully suited in his Reaper armor and cradled his combat rifle with deadly purpose. In fact, it was when she had seen the marine preparing himself for possible violence that Sura had encouraged Orion’s participation.
Samuel knew what she was doing, and though it darkened his thoughts to consider, he found himself in reluctant agreement. Sura had been forced to become a different person when Helion troops attacked Pier 16. She had fled with Orion and found a place on the freelance, ink-rock prospector ship, Rig Halo as a refugee, though by the time she stepped off the ship she’d been transformed into a warrior and ink-rocker herself. Through the many hardships of life in necrospace, Sura had fought her own war even as Samuel endured his on the Ellisian front. The assault by the Tasca slavers had rattled everyone, and Sura clearly wanted her son to take a step towards being prepared for the larger and much more grim reality that lurked beyond the boundaries of their forest paradise.
Orion was scared, that was easy to tell, like any child would be, though he was excited too, and in that excitement, Samuel could almost see the man that his son might one day become.
The boy had been a baby while on Grotto and a toddler on Pier 16. It was aboard the Rig that his mind had begun to take shape, amidst the rough crowd of laborers, adventurers, and outcasts that comprised the Halo’s crew. His most formative years had been here, on Longstride, where he’d learned to build, to hunt, to grow, and to fend for himself just as much as his family. Orion was old enough his mind had begun to thirst for knowledge, yearning for experience beyond the green world and his parent’s homestead.
In the settlement, there were girls aplenty to turn the head of any boy, and Samuel had seen the spark in Orion’s eyes at the last festival, but this was something different. It was that same glimmer the boy’s eyes had when his father would tell him tales of the mighty ganger, Vol, or the mercenary mystic, Imago, the daring of Reaper Ben Takeda, and countless other tales from Samuel’s Reaper life. Stories wiped clean of the blood and misery, given the shine of heroism and adventure. Orion knew there was more to it now, and he was hungry for that truth.
They were wearing armor and carrying weapons, moving through the woods for no festival or hunt, but to unearth some piece of a distant war. Or not so distant, Samuel reminded himself, as he ejected the combat rifle’s magazine and re-slotted it, an old habit from his early days as a salvage marine. There was violence in the air, and the memory of firefights and lost comrades were as fresh as the wind. It had only been a week since the fight with the Tasca, and though Tanya had done her best to field strip and clean the Reaper armor, Samuel could see traces of blood and smears of gun grease on parts of the interlocking plates that protected his body. The pilot had done her best, but she was no marine.
Nor was Orion, thought Samuel, feeling guilty for a brief moment that he’d agreed to bring the boy. He then recalled his last sight of Sura as the skiff had pulled away when he’d left to fight the slavers. She’d been standing on the porch, her hair falling across her shoulders, face delicate and beautiful, but her eyes as hard as the metal of Vol’s heavy revolver, strapped to her thigh. Sura had learned how to survive, how to fight back, to protect what was hers, and Samuel knew it was high time Orion began his own education in that regard.
“One minute out,” said Samuel as he pointed towards a cluster of trees just across a stream that they were rapidly approaching. “Set us down over there, we make the final approach on foot.”
“Yes sir,” responded Orion, his voice the awkward mix of high and low tones that boys of his age possessed, as he guided the skiff around a boulder and down the slope towards the tree cluster.
The skiff was small, only large enough for two passengers and a modest amount of gear, which in this case was a force-shovel and Cragg. The vehicle, which hovered several feet off the ground, smoothly eased to a stop just at the trees, and then gently lowered itself onto landing stabilizers as Orion shut the turbines down.
Samuel dismounted the vehicle and made a security sweep of the area moving in a tight circle. He came around to Orion’s side, holding the skiff steady as his son clambered out andgot his rifle ready. Cragg leaped out of his perch onto the loamy ground.
Samuel turned to Orion as he held his combat rifle in the ready position, making a display of disengaging the safety.
“If I move, you move. If I stop, you stop. If I shoot, you shoot,” said Samuel flatly, easily falling back into his squad leader’s demeanor as if it had not been half a decade or more since he’d been an active duty marine. “Copy?”
“Um, yes, sir,” stammered Orion for a moment, visibly shaken by the sight of his father’s helmeted face and armored body, as if only now realizing how real this story had become. “I mean, copy.”
Samuel gave his son a curt nod and turned to march deeper into the woods, flanked by Cragg as the saurian joined them. It was easy to see the disturbed earth where the other Longstriders had unloaded a digger from their cargo skiff, and as the marine approached he could tell just how hastily it was all done. They hadn’t tried to cover their tracks, which was just as well since they’d told him where to go, but it was clear from how badly they tore up the terrain that everyone had been in a rush. He did not blame them, as the entire area pulsed with menace, and as Samuel walked onwards he noticed how the saurian grew more and more agitated.
The trio crested the ridge after another five minutes of trudging through the underbrush, following the crude trail hacked out by the heavy machinery used to deposit the cryo-crate. Below them, Samuel could, at last, see where the crate had been buried. The frontier folk had used an agri-class force shovel, likely mounted to one of their skiffs, to tear a vast chunk of rock and dirt out of the land. From the ruts in the ground, it looked as if they’d shove the crate into the crater and then, perhaps not so gently, released the field on the shovel and allowed all of that earth to fall back down into the massive hole. The entire process, while crude, would have taken only moments.
Cragg hissed with aggression and what, to Samuel seemed like fear as the saurian moved in a wide circle around the crater. While the sauropod was unwilling to go further it also appeared unwilling to turn its back on the area. Samuel swept his eyes across the area, and after deciding that there weren’t any unwanted eyes watching them, he moved forward. Once he was right at the edge of the crater, the feeling of menace felt like a gale force wind blowing against his mind, and as he looked at Orion, he saw that the boy could feel it too. He suspected, however, that others, including his son, did not feel it quite as potently as he did. Orion was uncomfortable and knew he was in the presence of something that could only be described as evil, and yet Samuel could tell it was not pushing against the boy’s psyche the way it was for him.