Chapter 24
The following couple of days were uneventful for us, and barbaric for Zavir.
The droids went on vacation due to Zavir taking over every duty imaginable. Do the laundry. Wash the dishes. Scrub the toilets and the floors and the walls and the ceilings. Extra laps, extra everything, mostly under Roys’ harsh scrutiny where he pointed out Zavir’s every flaw.
The poor guy returned to his bunk every evening twitching and passed out the moment he hit the mattress. It was utterly hilarious, and admittedly, a huge turn-on. Apparently, I liked Roys in ultra-commando mode, so long as he directed that persona at anyone other than me.
The survey team soon had a routine, creating monotonous days that were made better by the late nights I spent with Roys.
There probably wasn’t a surface in his office that we hadn’t fucked on.
The botanists spent time in their lab studying specimens previously acquired, while the geologists and mineralogists talked Roys into taking them to the cave system we accidentally discovered.
Because of our “experience,” Roys and I tagged along. Why they counted our being lost in the caves as experience was beyond me. The geologists weren’t as talkative as Galya, though. They directed most questions at Roys while taking scans to discover how deep the cave system went.
We were exceptionally grateful for our rovers.
The scientists brought a scanning device, nearly too large for the rover, that Ryker thought was a drill until Korb, one of the geologists, explained, “This is a Photon Scanner with a depth and width of 20 clicks, though we are uncertain if it can map out the entire cave system, considering the disruption to your commlinks. Something about Illionxonah-14356 interferes with our equipment, which we are theorizing is within the minerals themselves.”
“We’ve been struggling to keep scans of our smaller samples too,” the other geologist muttered.
Korb spun his torso around the drill, stretching higher to inspect that everything was in working condition.
Sckocks were the flexibility champions of the universe.
I wasn’t entirely sure they had bones, and with abnormally long limbs, their bodies reacted like stretchy putty.
All of them had four eyes, similar to Zavir, except in entirely different colors and two drooping ears, rounded like a rabbit’s with varying colors denoting a variety of information about themselves. None of which I could recall.
“Why didn’t you grab this to get me and the cap out?” I whispered while Korb fired up the scanner.
“We had no idea what half the shit in there was,” Ryker replied.
The scanner hummed. A light, tinted a pale green, erupted beneath the structure.
“Iylene ordered the droids to grab a drill and a scanner that the survey team wouldn’t kill us for breaking, so I suppose this is the one that, if broken, would cause our demise.”
The light condensed into a beam that shot into the soil.
Smoke filtered out of the ground that morphed into sludge.
Korb and his colleagues observed their commlinks, muttering softly.
Roys watched, his visor blacked out. Ryker and I retreated when the runny soil came toward our boots.
We stood there waiting, rather impatiently on our parts, for an hour.
“So, how did it go?” Ryker asked after the scanner shut off. He and I stood further away, having withdrawn in increments throughout the hour.
The geologists were less caring about the goop, standing perfectly fine in it.
I wasn’t certain Roys wanted to stay in the sludge or chose to be the good little captain, keeping close to the geologists, especially after our satellite warned of a storm.
Based on the satellite readings, it wasn’t upon us but could turn.
“The scanner struggled to obtain a full scan; however, based on our calculations, it mapped 72% of the structure,” Korb replied.
“Fascinating,” said his colleague as they took to loading up the scanner.
We made the mistake of asking them why they didn’t have the droids join us for that kind of work where Korb fell into a long rant about all the equipment droids had scratched—not broken, just scratched—while he prepared to descend into the cave.
He wanted samples. Roys agreed on a short trek. Ryker would join them, but not me.
I would not go back there. They were fools to go at all.
We brought outdated communication — a type of commlink unused for centuries.
They had a far shorter range and crackled consistently.
However, The Planet didn’t affect them as badly.
Zavir thought of using them when he was cleaning storage yesterday.
All habitats had them for situations like this.
Equipment acted differently depending on where they were, so there were always multiple options.
Ryker tested them earlier when he set up the weyline, and they were functional.
With the weyline attached to his waist, Ryker descended first. Korb and the other geologist followed with Roys taking the rear. I stepped forward and then stopped myself.
Telling them not to go wouldn’t change Roys’ mind. If he wanted to be stupid, so be it.
Roys’ visor cleared, showing his usual stern expression. “Keep an eye on things up here.”
“I was planning on taking a nap, actually.” The hem of my shirt stuck to my neck even with the exoskin’s air-con. “What’s the point of being captain if you can’t order some other poor bastard to go in there in place of you?”
Roys tugged on the weyline connected to the front of the rover. “I have experience down there.”
“Experience isn’t the word I would use.”
Roys wore a smile more sugar filled than his candy treats. “It’s sweet you’re caring for me again, but I’ll be fine.”
“Care isn’t the word I would use, either.”
“We’ll be right back, and I am sure Ryker will be more than happy to yap your ear off while we’re down there.”
Roys descended, and my stomach sank with him. I recalled the interior of the cave, the walls closing in, crushing them. Ryker’s voice crackled through the old commlink, sharing extreme details of what they saw. His voice proved they were fine, but my labored breathing wouldn’t relent.
I didn’t understand how Roys could be down there, how nonchalant he was about returning to what was nearly our tomb. Thinking about it made me ill. I removed my visor, believing I would be sick. I coughed and coughed, a hand over my stomach and eyes switching between the drop and my blurred feet.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The mantra did little to calm me because Roys was down there. He was fucking down there like a fucking idiot and he could die and he should be up here. Idiots, all of them.
I wanted to scream but I kicked a nearby flora instead.
When I put my visor back on, Ryker was still talking over the old commlink, and my holo screen flickered.
I tapped the visor. The militia didn’t update our equipment unless absolutely necessary.
They kept all the good shit for higher ranks, so it wasn’t unusual for equipment to malfunction.
Even more normal to malfunction here, considering what the geologists said, except my screen kept flickering, and the last thing we needed was for them to be down there and the equipment to malfunction.
“Are your visors glitching?” I asked.
“Ours aren’t working at all, just like before. Why?” Roys responded.
“Mine is flickering.”
“I’m telling you, our equipment is shit and the minerals probably have nothing to do with these issues,” Ryker said, going on about the time he got lectured for his cargo vessel ramming another ship at the docks.
The sensors malfunctioned, and he couldn’t see anything behind him, which was true.
They did an inspection afterward, and Ryker remained salty that no one apologized for their accusations.
A bright flash came from the left, followed by the telling boom of a storm.
I jumped from a gale that unsettled my footing.
Flora bent beneath the wind’s wrath. The humidity cooled in an instant.
Another flash came, so bright that my visor blackened to protect my eyes.
The following thunder sounded like a crash.
“Roys, this storm is closer, and I am not picking anything up from the satellite. I can’t even ping it,” I said urgently. The air-con in my suit shut off from the rapidly descending temperature. I went from sweating to shivering.
“How? Yours should work fine above ground,” Roys replied.
“Don’t know. Don’t care, but,” I bounced from another resounding crash far too close for my liking. The wind sped up, making the flora creak and crack. “I suggest we get the fuck out of here. The storms we’ve seen on the scans weren’t pretty.”
And were rare along the equator, the north had them worse. The Planet had been under watch for five years, and they noted an average of three equator storms a year. However, I assumed the storm was why my visor glitched. The satellite had to be attempting to contact us but couldn’t get through.
“Returning now,” Roys said.
I rushed to the rover where I could yank them out on the weyline if necessary. The wind became so strong that it ripped smaller flora from the soil. Lightning struck the forest one after the other. Sparks caught in the gale and the forest took to flames.
“Shit, hurry up!” I shouted, ears ringing from the thunder rattling through my bones. Then the rain came, a deluge that rid us of the fire, but made everything worse with the lightning closing in.
The rover’s headlights flicked on. I inched the rover closer to the manhole while tugging in the weyline to prevent any slack. Korb ascended first, followed by his colleague, shouting, “The captain said to leave the set up!”
“I was planning on it,” I shouted, fingers twitching on the handle of the weyline.