Plot Medics 

It’s all about the balance sheet, as Prentice told me in our last, strange conversation. I killed a man and I got caught. I had my reasons, but Explora Ltd protects its most valuable property, and Morgan was Project Manager. There’s no resources to bang up guilty men and feed them when they’re not earning their keep. They forced me into a armoured scuttler with a month’s worth of nutrition and sent me out into the Howling Wastes to look for Annabelle Tinker’s mobile base.

You want to set up in a place like this long term, you need someone who knows how to work with rocks and dirt and plants. That’s why I’m here. I’m a mason and a smith and a farmer. Everyone here’s got to be a multipurpose tool. The first thing they had me do was put in a well with an Archimedes screw for a water supply and start growing crops. Seemed pretty low tech, but I wasn’t complaining. I trust low tech.

Tinker’s an engineer and a biologist. She was out in the Wastes with boxes that beep and flash, looking for money. She might not see it that way, but you can bet Explora does. Prentice told me Explora had once made a fortune from some alien cocoon polymer, so it’s worth the expense of keeping a biologist on the staff.  While she was out tracking some big, gliding creatures the worst storm recorded blew through, Tinker stopped calling in, and they couldn’t make her base come back by remote command. The company lost a lot of expensive kit. Tinker is Kate Prentice’s sister.

On a nice day out in the Wastes you get blue sky over grey dust, and it’s fuck-I’m-dying-of-heatstroke in the shade. On a bad day the roaring winds are freighted with grit that’ll strip you to the bone. If I go back without finding the gear, I’ll be shot. And if I die looking, the scuttler’s biosense will pick it up and stomp back on its pistoning legs to HQ, so no loss to them. They could send the scuttler out on its own to look, but there’s always the chance that a pair of human eyes will make all the difference.

It’s kind of restful out here. The first few days, I can’t see anything out the cockpit but roaring sand. Now it’s day twenty, the storm’s settled and it’s wide open blue and grey. I’ve thought over my killing Morgan, and I still don’t regret it. I know he killed Prentice. Our last conversation, she and I were playing chess in what passes for the bar, Prentice playing worse than usual.

She kept looking at me, taking in breath to speak, and sighing it out again.

“What’s up Prentice? Books looking bad? No bonus for us this turn? What about those big beasties your sister was following?”

Prentice stared at me, frowning fiercely. “Bonuses? Fat chance. It’s always about the balance sheet with this company. D’you know how much it costs to send a ship out here? S’a lot. More than all of us’re worth.”

“Uh huh. You’re pretty drunk. Want to skip the chess and get properly shit-faced?”

She shakes her head. I don’t think it’s no to the drink. “Remember the Nightside stock crash? Th’company took a big hit. There’s accounts for everything, if you look hard enough.” She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “I found something.”

“What is it?”

“The first time...” She jumped as Morgan appeared at our table, bad enough to spill her drink.

“Need a word,” he said. “Just got a message from your sister.” 

That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Morgan proclaimed her dead of a heart attack. He’s also the doctor.

I knew enough to program the scuttler for a spiral sweep, starting at Tinker’s last known location. I’m now on the far arm of the arc, furthest from HQ and I am sick of rattling about in this metal pod. I open the door, and step down. The heat presses against my skin. The air is still, and it’s so quiet it makes my ears ring.  I start walking, kicking up puffs of dust. I can see all around to the curve of the horizon. It’s stupid to talk about this place like it’s malevolent. It just is what it is,  and it is completely fucking obvious that it’s a place in which people are not supposed to be. So why did I get out here? I look around again, and see the faintest set of caterpillar track marks in the dust. The storm didn’t get this far. I get back in the scuttler and point it in the direction of the trail.

At first I think it’s just a speck on the cockpit glass. High up, a kite shape, sailing in the breeze. As I follow the tracks, and the grey dust shades into red, there are more of the creatures, wheeling in a flock And in the distance, on the ground, something glints. It’s Tinker’s mobile base rumbling into the distance.

Puffs of dust spurt up in front of the scuttler. Some kind of volcanic activity? A tiny dust devil forerunner to a storm? No, Tinker’s base is firing on me. I don’t know if her comms are bust,  but  I buzz her anyway.

”What the fuck? Tinker, if you can hear me, it’s Crewkerne. I’m here to help you.”

No response. Tinker’s base squats on its tracks, motionless. For the second time today, I get out of the scuttler. I stand with my arms outstretched and turn around slowly, so if she’s looking she can see it’s just me, no weapon, no tricks.

A ramp lowers from the base and I let out my breath. A lean sunburned woman stands at the top, holding a gun on me in shaking hands.

“Pleased to see me?” I shout across the distance.

“Come closer. I’m not getting out,” she says.

I walk up to the bottom of the ramp.

“Crewkerne?” she says, squinting at me.  “You’re, uh, you were Kate’s friend.” She lowers the gun a bit. “She said you cheat like a bastard at chess.”

I shrug. “How can you cheat at chess?”

She looks down. A drop of water splashes from her eyes to the metal of the ramp.

“So, what’s wrong with your base?” I ask.  “Comms out? Nav busted? I’m not so great with that, but the scuttler’s repair systems can fix it.”

She shakes her head. “Comms are fine. And I took out the remote command. But you – you can’t fix this. ”

“Alright.” I wait in silence.

“I have to show you something. Come up.” I follow her up the ramp and into the cockpit. I see now that the tracks go on, she’s turned the base around to come back and meet me. It trundles on, and ahead of us is a thin, bright ribbon of water edged with flourishing trees. It marks the edge of the Wastes. In the distance, the land gets motivated enough to throw up a few green-furred mountains. And by the river is the scorched skeleton of a touchdown shanty town. The company usually sets one up for an initial exploration. Scorched, bent struts from semi-permanent tents and the twisted frames of flat-pack shacks poke out of a drift of red dirt. Bleached white branches lie scattered by the wind. When we are closer, I see they aren’t branches.

“I told Kate I found this,” said Tinker. “She called back. She said she’d looked into it and found some things out and I shouldn’t be here.” Tinker shivered. “I was on my way back and then someone told me...”

She lets me pat her shoulder, takes a deep breath. Then she lowers the ramp, and we get out.

There’s not much and too much to see. Blackened metal, melted plastic, scorched bones. Now and again, the odd remnant that survived, a cracked mug with “Sharon” painted on, a half-melted plastic horse on wheels. Tinker huddles close behind me as we look around.

“How did a fire get this out of control?” she asks.

“This site can’t have worked out. If they’d found anything worth having, we’d be digging here now.” I think back to the conversation with Prentice. “Remember the Nightside crash? Kate told me the company took a hit. It must have been cheaper to let people starve here than hire a ship to pick them up or drop more food. Especially if it’s not on a scheduled haulage run. When Explora could afford to come out here again, they started somewhere else. Then they burned this place and buried it in the dirt.”

“I was out here in that big storm. It must have uncovered it again.” says Alice. She bites her lip. “We’ve got to tell somebody.”

I think about the Archimedes screw, about the agriculture program, the stone buildings. Not a touchdown town. Things to keep the base independent of the yearly scheduled ship visits. Things a Project Manager would be responsible for. “Morgan knew. I don’t know about anybody else.”

Alice’s lets out a scream of rage. “I’m going to rip that bastard’s throat out.”

“Already done. I killed Morgan. But I used a knife. They sent me out here to look for you as punishment.”

She looks right into my eyes. Hers are a bright silvery grey. Then she says, “So we can go back?”

I shrug.  When Alice and I go back to her base, my scuttler has gone. HQ have called it back.

“No going back then,” says Alice. If she hadn’t disabled her remote command, her base would be gone too. Somebody else knows, and if we go back they’re going to kill us.

We pick up tools and collect metal and anything else that looks useful from the ruined site. There are plants and animals on the green foothills. We haven’t got much food left, but I can grow things and build things and Alice is a biologist, with a base full of analytical kit. The haulage ship isn’t owned by the company and will be here in six months. Maybe that’s enough to add up and tip the balance our way this time.