Nickolai reached into the emergency pack and retrieved the flare gun. It was the last in a long list of signaling devices stowed on the lifeboat and, being the one object not reliant on electronics, it was the one that had survived their lifeboat’s impact. Unfortunately most of their high-tech equipment had either taken too much of a beating or was burned by the same shielding breach that had fried the internal electronics of the lifeboat itself. Only the ship’s distress beacon survived all of it, and they couldn’t take that without taking the whole lifeboat. So they only had a single flare gun that was included in the sparse survival kit almost as an afterthought.
He handed it, butt first, to Kugara.
“Let’s hope they see this,” she said. “We have only, what, three more flares for this thing?”
Nickolai nodded.
She backed up, looking upward, as the sound of aircrafts’ maneuvering fans receded. She held the gun two-handed, pointing up and away from both of them while looking for a hole in the forest canopy. She smiled as she looked up to a ragged blue opening in the green above them.
She aimed the gun upward and fired.
Nickolai heard a click followed by a sharp snap. Nothing happened. Then the gun started hissing.
Kugara screamed, “Shit!” and tossed the flare gun away from her, running toward Nickolai. Before the gun hit the ground, a horribly bright red flame shot out the barrel in a continuous stream. Even with his eyes auto-adjusting, the forest was briefly turned into a two-tone image in blazing red-white and ink black. The air filled with the smell of molten metal, burning leaves, and the toxic smell of melting synthetics. The hiss grew into an insistent low-level roaring, not quite as loud as the aircraft engines in the distance.
Kugara, running blind, tripped on a dead branch. Nickolai stepped forward and caught her before she fell face-first into the dirt.
“Damn Mosasa,” she shouted into his chest. “You’re supposed to check those things periodically!”
The air choked with acrid smoke as the light died, finally sputtering out. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
She pushed away from him. “I’m fine.” She turned around and stepped over to the smoldering crater where the flare gun had landed. She stared at the remains of the gun. The barrel was still recognizable, but the mouth was black, fading to a series of rainbows back toward where the handgrip and the trigger used to be. Those parts had been synthetic, and were melted where they hadn’t burned away completely.
The smell of it made his nose itch. His eyes watered, but while he expected his eyes to itch, he realized he didn’t feel anything at all. Like my arm . . .
“Well, that’s a lost cause,” she said. She looked up at the wisps of smoke trailing up through the trees. “And if they see that, they’re better spotters than I’ve seen. Back to Plan A.”
Kugara picked up the pack she dropped, looked at her compass, and resumed the walk to the outpost. He followed. If luck and the terrain was with them, they’d reach it within the hour.
Forty-five minutes after leaving the smoldering remnants of the flare gun, they found the first sign of civilization. About five hundred meters from their destination, they faced a ten-meter-high fence. The fence was shiny new and dotted with signs saying, “Restricted/Warning/No Admittance.”
Kugara looked at the signs and said, “I guess they speak English here. Dr. Pak will be disappointed.”
Nickolai looked up at the top of the fence. Small black spheres topped fence posts, sign of either a stun field or surveillance devices. Probably both.
Kugara stepped back from the fence and looked around. “Left or right?”
“Most of the buildings were clustered on the eastern end.” He pointed.
“Right it is, then.”
After walking a minute or so, Nickolai said, “This is recent.”
“I noticed. Those trees are still bleeding whatever they use for sap where they cut the overhangs.”
“What are they protecting?”
“You know, I don’t really give a shit. We obey the signage and get the guards to call in the cavalry.”
Nickolai looked through the fence as they walked, but the woods were still too dense for him to see much of anything on the other side. “Then what?”
“What?”
“What do we do then?”
She spun around. “You know what I want? I want you to shut up.” She turned and marched off along the fence. Nickolai followed without asking any more questions.
Not vocally, anyway.
The fact was they were stranded nearly a hundred light-years away from Bakunin. The Eclipse was most likely destroyed, along with their nominal employer. Nickolai doubted that a far-flung colony like this would be willing to expend the time and resources to return them—if the Fallen here were even willing to deal with a nonhuman like him. . . .
Dying would have been simpler.
There was a gate only a few hundred meters farther along the fence. It opened to a rough road that was little more than a muddy track. There were signs of a couple of heavy tracked vehicles traveling this way not too long ago. The weight of them had left trenches six to ten centimeters deep in the earth. He saw some sign of foot traffic around the gate, but none that went more than ten meters away from the fence. All of the tracks were the club-shaped boots of the Fallen.
A guard shack sat about five meters inside the fence, to their right. The gate itself was designed to slide aside for the large traffic on the road. Inside the sliding gate was a smaller human-sized doorway, hanging open.
“Hello?” Kugara called out.
Nothing stirred. The guard shack was apparently empty.
She looked around. “I don’t get it.”
Nickolai took a deep breath and shook his head. “No humans here, not for hours. But . . .”
“But, what?”
“I smell old fires, explosives. Human blood.”
“Jesus. And they just leave the door open?”
“Maybe there’s nothing left to protect.”
Kugara pulled her small flechette gun and pointed it at the ground. “If you would do me the favor?” She nodded to the open gate.
Nickolai supposed that he should be grateful that she did him the favor of at least making the pretense of asking. He walked over to the door. There was some logic to being the experimental subject here; any traps were going to be scaled for a human intruder and might not affect him as badly. Even so, he suspected that tactics was only a secondary consideration in having him take the lead.
He pushed the gate with his artificial hand, and it swung inward. He had to crouch and step through sidewise to avoid touching the frame of the door, which could still be charged.
No traps were sprung on him, no sudden stun fields, and no guards emerging from the trees. Nothing happened other than leaves rustling in the breeze and the door slowly creaking shut. He walked over to the guard shack. It was a small temporary structure with one-way windows, barely twice as wide as he was; just tall and deep enough for a human to stand comfortably inside.
Around back was the entrance, which hung open like the gate. He opened it, and no one was inside.
“Nickolai?” Kugara shouted, still on the other side of the fence.
“No one’s here!” Nickolai shouted back from behind the guard shack.
There wasn’t room for him inside the building, but its shallow depth put the control panel within easy reach. He touched the panel and called up a series of small views of the perimeter fence. A few more taps, and he was looking at a series of views, presumably from inside the fence. He saw a number of temporary structures, and what looked like a landing area, but no people and no vehicles.