the pale orange sky, and we stood outside Pattee’s pod, a little stunned, a little concerned, and a little disjointed.
“Ladies,” Pattee’s calm voice grounded me, and I turned to look at her. “Would you feel weird if we held hands and had a moment of silence?” she asked, and I held out both hands.
Everyone stepped close enough to join hands, and we bowed our heads or looked up at the sky; some closed their eyes, others not, and we breathed in and out and felt our combined emotions and strength join for a couple minutes.
As for me, I prayed.
“This feels very weird,” Joan said after a minute, and the others nodded. “Not the handholding,” she clarified. “The guys being gone.”
“I’ve been with them for what feels like my entire life,” Esra said with a short laugh. “Guess I should be happy that I graduated Predator Planet 101.”
“God, if this 101, I’d hate to do the graduate program,” I muttered, and they laughed.
When our clasps broke, I put hands on my hips and looked around at the glade that had been mentioned a few times by the others.
The pod stood next to a low outcropping of rocks. A huge tumble of them formed a semi-circle around it, suggesting they’d collapsed around it at one time. To the south was a steep drop off, and I could hear the churn of water below, presumably a river. To the north was a field flanked by a thick stand of trees, and to the east was a natural barrier formed by some brushy overgrowth and a creek. A lone tree and an odd vine-covered structure sat in the center of the field around which were strewn more rocks and unkempt tussocks.
With more vines growing up the pod, it had an abandoned quality, but as far as a home base went, it was defensible.
“This is a great spot,” I said.
Pattee beamed, and my smile widened. “What, did you land here on purpose?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I wanted a defendable position; the river at the south was a natural boundary, as well as what used to be a rock outcropping to the west–before the earthquakes.” She grimaced.
Nodding, I gave her a fist bump and bent over to pick up a rock. “Where do you want these?”
We worked for two solid hours, clearing the rocks and using machetes to shorten the grass. I discovered the odd structure was, in fact, the rib cage of an enormous animal: the rokhura. Greenery had overgrown it, and spongy moss had grown inside it forming an irresistible fort.
With the glade cleaned up and new traps set at the tree line, we gathered dried wood from the forest and stacked it near Pattee’s fire pit.
We squeezed inside the pod and took off our helmets, drinking our fill of filtered water and taking a break.
“VELMA, can we hear a report of every breach in the nanosatellite array in the last twenty-four hours?” Pattee asked.
“See monitor three for the breach report,” VELMA said, and we looked.
“Oh cool, here it shows the coordinates,” Esra said. “Is that the other hemisphere? Are those hunters?”
“Affirmative. If you look at the Y axis, I have included icons to represent meteorites, Theraxl ships, and unidentified objects.”
Stunned, I shot a look at the others who were as perplexed as I was.
“Unidentified objects?” I said.
“There’s one here,” Esra pointed. “VELMA?”
“It breached the array at 0900 hours at the shown coordinates,” she said. “Scanners label it as space debris, yet augmented digitization specs indicate otherwise.”
“Do you have a digital model of it?” Joan asked.
“Affirmative. Monitor two.”
A black-on-white diagram resembling an EEP X215 showed up on the second monitor.
“Is that a pod?” Amity asked.
“No,” Pattee and I said at the same time. “It’s an executive class skimmer,” Pattee further explained. “If you look here and here—"she pointed to two inconspicuous protrusions— “you can just see the engine inserts. It has both interplanetary and extraplanetary capabilities.”
“Ah Fuck,” Esra said. “IGMC found us.”
“I thought we’d have more time,” Joan said. “But I guess if they were tracking the radiation trails from the very beginning ….”
“VELMA, where’s the skimmer?” Pattee said.
“With any luck, they tried to land in the Agothe-Fatheza,” Joan said with a scowl.
“Unfortunately, the vehicle must be employing scrambling technology,” VELMA said. “I am unable to detect it. It may also be in the Magnetic Burst Field.”
“VELMA, lockdown and scramble outgoing transmissions,” Esra said. “We need to be as invisible as possible.”
“Would detonating the remaining FQBs help?” Joan asked.
“It’s too late,” Pattee said. “The half-life is long enough it would still be detectable.”
“What about stopping the excursion, though?” Amity said. “If we could just get them off the planet or destroy them, couldn’t that stall the excursion out?”
“I think it’s the magnetic isotope quality that triggers the geomagnetic activity, and like Pattee was saying, even with the physical FQB gone, the radiation decay remains,” I said.
“Damn,” Joan said. “The best we can do is hold off whoever is coming after us until our mates come back.”
“A skimmer can only hold a couple people,” Pattee said. “I don’t think it’s the Hostile Recovery Corps. Yet.”
“You’re right,” I said. “The HRC has its own ships and weapons. When they deploy, it will be with their full force. They’ll come in hot with guns blazing, intense firepower, no respect for ecosystems or environments, and with high-tech explosions. We can use the skimmer and its occupants as the test run. Because when the HRC lands, we can’t afford any mistakes.”
“Miners,” Pattee said with hands on her hips. “It’s time to set those traps.”