Neptune Crossing (The Chaos Chronicles) (7 page)

/// A long way from the law—? ///

the quarx mused.

/// You mean, like in the Old West? ///

/Huh? What are you talking about?/ Bandicut shook his head, feeling as though he had skipped a beat. /The Old West? You mean, the
American
Old West?/

/// Right.

Outlaws and sheriffs.

Like on TV. ///

Bandicut rolled his eyes up, and for the first time today, laughed out loud in genuine amusement. /
Christ
Charlie—give me a break! Now, let's go!/ He straightened his collar and headed out into the corridor with brisk, floating strides, as the quarx muttered to itself in quiet puzzlement.

*

Things seemed pretty subdued in the ops center when he walked in. If any excitement had been generated by his disappearance, it seemed to have died down by now. Two of the mining dispatchers glanced his way in momentary curiosity, but he just nodded back with his very best expression of unconcern, and they didn't give him a second glance. Only Georgia Patwell, who had apparently just taken over the exo-op comm seat, flashed him a brief, quizzical smile before turning her attention back to her console. It would have been nice if he could have reported to her, but there would be no such luck.

Lonnie Stelnik was hunkered down in the back of the ops room, drinking coffee and poring over sector reports. He was tall and lanky, with vulturous eyes, a beak-shaped nose, and an expression that discouraged conversation. When Stelnik looked up, the expression changed from boredom to condescension. As the exo-op who'd been on duty, he was Bandicut's super for the work shift and therefore the one to whom Bandicut had to explain himself.

/// You don't like this man? ///

/No./ Bandicut nodded to Stelnik.

/// May I ask...why not? ///

/Let's just say he's not afraid to step on people's necks to get to the top./

/// ??? ///

"Bandicut." Stelnik crossed his arms over his chest. "What the hell happened out there? You vanished without a word. And we interrupted a lot of work to go looking for you. Then here you come, riding in like a knight from battle."

"What, would you rather I hadn't made it back?" Bandicut snapped. "I had an equipment malfunction!" Great, he thought, it takes exactly ten seconds to blow up at this jerk. Gotta keep a lid on it.

Stelnik shrugged. "We sent out the robots, didn't we? Now, do you mind telling me what you were doing way out past position Wendy?" Stelnik leaned back, stretching out while peering down his nose at Bandicut. His eyes glinted. "Plus, I've got this report here from Rawlins in maintenance, saying you did some
serious
damage to your rover. You want to tell me about it? Jackson's not gonna like this, you know."

Bandicut felt a second flash of irritation. "
I
didn't do anything to the rover. Don't blame me for equipment failures, all right?" He swallowed at the half-truth.

Stelnik shrugged, unfolded his arms, and flicked on a holoscreen. "Okay, you can give me the whole story in a second. You can tell Cole at the same time."

Bandicut groaned inwardly.

/// What's wrong? Who's Cole? ///

/Cole Jackson. Director of Survey Operations./

/// You don't like him, either? ///

/Let's just say, between Stelnik and Jackson, it's hard to say who's the more self serving. Cole's going to be mad as hell, because we screwed up his nice, neat work charts./

The quarx seemed to twitch nervously.

/// You aren't going to try to tell them

about me, are you? ///

/These guys? Not on my deathbed. If I turn you in, it'll be to somebody I trust a lot more than these two./ That answer did not entirely soothe the quarx, he realized. He shrugged inwardly. /I hope you've thought of a good explanation for that damage to the electronics./

/// Uh...working on it... ///

Bandicut cleared his throat. "Listen, you mind if I sit?" It wasn't really necessary, in one-thirteenth Earth gravity, but he wanted to call Stelnik on his bad manners.

With an annoyed look, Stelnik twisted around and found a short stool under the counter, which he hauled out for Bandicut to perch on. Meanwhile, a woman's face had appeared in the holoscreen. "Janie—get me Jackson, will you?" Stelnik said. He tapped his fingers on the table until the screen blinked and a middle-aged man's face appeared, wearing old-fashioned eyeglasses. "Cole," said Stelnik, "I've got Bandicut here with me."

"So I see," said the face in the screen.

"He was just about to tell me how he fried the electronics in that rover. You got the report, right?"

"I did. I must say, John—I hope you have a good explanation." Jackson peered out of the holoscreen, stroking the underside of his chin with his fingertips.

Bandicut cleared his throat. "Well, I—"

"It says here that you were out of the approved sector, as well," Jackson said sharply. Stelnik, his eyes shifting back and forth between Bandicut and the screen, barely concealed a smirk. Was he hoping to add the firing of a negligent driver to his record of tough-minded management?

Bandicut stirred and tried to think fast. "Well, as I said, I had an electrical malfie. I was just telling Lonnie here, I don't know exactly what went wrong. But the first thing that went was my nav. I missed the markers—and I, uh, don't know that particular stretch out there as well as some of the others." That last part, at least, was true.

"Nav, huh?" Jackson did not look entirely convinced.

"Nav and comm." He was thinking frantically now. "Something crisped itself in the electrical system, and eventually stopped me altogether for a while. And I, uh, just had to patch it together as best I could to get home. Napoleon came along right after I got the thing running again." He felt his face hot with anxiety as he struggled to sound convincing.

/// You're doing fine. ///

/I'm a lousy liar. I don't like lying. Why am I doing this?/

/// Because if you tell people about me,

our chances of success will diminish markedly. ///

/Success?/

/// Saving the Earth.

I promise, I'll explain later. ///

Bandicut sighed, not replying. Neither Jackson nor Stelnik had responded to his explanation. Stelnik's gaze was slanted down his nose again; Jackson looked worried, as though he might have to log something inexplicable on his reports, and how would that look on his job review? It was Jackson who spoke first. "The report from Pacho Rawlins called it the most...
unusual
... malfunction he'd ever seen."

Stelnik cackled and rocked forward. "That wasn't the way he phrased it in the report
I
saw."

"Well,
weird
might have been the word he used," Jackson said.

"
Fucked
was the word he used, Cole. He said it was the most
fucked
power compartment he'd ever laid eyes on."

Jackson adjusted his eyeglasses. "Whatever. There's certainly no need to repeat Mr. Rawlins's vulgarity." His gaze shifted. "In any case—John, what can you tell us about that?"

Stelnik rubbed his nose.

Bandicut thought hard, and a possible explanation welled up in his mind. "I'm hardly an expert, Cole, but I figure it might be that some of those components, like that cable that broke loose that I had to arc-weld back together"—he couldn't believe he was saying this—"weren't quite as cryo-ready as they were supposed to be. You know, we have had trouble with that sort of thing before."

Stelnik snorted, looking away. But Jackson squinted as he met Bandicut's gaze in the screen. "Well..." he said after a moment, "it's true, we have had our fair share of low-temperature problems."

And if that were the explanation, it would make the work audit a lot simpler, wouldn't it? Bandicut thought, waiting for Jackson to bite. He could see Jackson trying to decide whether it was sufficiently credible for
his
superiors to accept.

"I don't recall the robot's diagnostic report saying anything about cryo-failure," Stelnik said, making a sucking noise with his lips. "I'm not saying it's impossible, Bandicoot, but—"

"But what? I had the thing running again by the time the robot got there." Bandicut shook his head in exaggerated disgust and hissed silently to the quarx, /What is Napoleon going to report? If it says that
it
fried the circuits, that won't square with what I'm claiming!/

/// Napoleon has no memory of what it did.

I took care of that already.

It's a very simple machine, very easy to reprogram.

We're okay, I think. ///

/You
think?
/ Bandicut cleared his throat again. "Anyway, Napoleon didn't run his diags on it until I'd fixed it already. I mean, as much as I was able to." He held out his open hands as if to rest his case.

Jackson peered out of the holoscreen. "John, the robot's name is Recon Thirty-nine, not Napoleon. Use nicknames in the field, if you must, but please—when we're trying to get our information straight—"

Bandicut caught himself about to roll his eyes in exasperation. "Recon Thirty-nine. Right, that's what I meant."

"Well..." Jackson said with a shrug. "It seems as though we might have to credit you with a field repair." Stelnik's eyes bulged, but before he could interject, Jackson continued, "Nevertheless, until we complete an investigation, I think we'll have to reassign you from survey to mining ops. As a temporary measure, just so there are no questions. Fair enough?"

Stelnik relaxed and smiled faintly.

Bandicut swallowed. Mining ops. Great. Bad enough he'd been demoted from piloting because they'd fried his neuros; now he was going to be dropped from survey driving and put in the mines. He cleared his throat. "You're saying, just until we have a report, right? This isn't some kind of demotion, is it?"

"John, if the report puts you in the clear, we'll have you back out there as fast as we can," Jackson promised. "Lonnie, you'll forward John's written report to me ASAP, won't you?"

"Yeah, roger wilco," Stelnik said.

Jackson peered at him for a moment, as though trying to decide if he were being sarcastic; then the screen went blank. Stelnik grunted and swung a keypad terminal around to Bandicut. "Type, please. If you don't mind," he said. No question this time; he was being sarcastic.

Bandicut nodded and poised his fingers over the keypad. He looked at Stelnik, who was continuing to stare at him, and said, "You can be the first to read it when I'm done, okay?"

Stelnik shrugged and wandered away. Georgia, working the exo-ops communications, barely concealed her irritation as he hovered over her shoulder. Nevertheless, she caught Bandicut's eye and winked in sympathy.

Bandicut typed a cryptic, fictional account of events, thinking the whole time that he had never before lied on an official form, and he didn't like starting now. He stared at what he had written.

/// Looks good.

That should jibe with the robot's diagnostic.

Will they buy it? ///

/How the hell should I know? Do you mind if I just add, "P.S. Discovered alien artifact and living alien"? It would make me rich, you know. We could retire to Costa Rica./

There was a sound like a sigh in his mind.

/// If you file what you have now,

will it be possible for us to go somewhere

and talk quietly? ///

/I guess so./

/// Then...may we do that, please? ///

Bandicut scowled, hesitated, and pressed FILE. He caught Stelnik's eye, hooked a thumb at the terminal, and left the ops center without another word.

Chapter 5

Some Answers

The dorm room, thankfully, was empty. Crawling into his bunk, Bandicut pulled the curtain flap closed around him for privacy from the other five bunks. Lying back, he drew a deep breath and sighed, closing his eyes to a sudden, overwhelming weariness. He had a thousand questions to ask the quarx; but really, for just one moment, all he wanted to do was rest his eyes and his mind.

It was impossible, of course. Visions of the ice cavern rose in his thoughts like ghosts haunting him even in the privacy of his own mind. And not just the cavern: the artifact danced before him like a jeering clown, its spheres whirling and eyes winking. /Jesus!/ He sat up abruptly, bouncing to the ceiling of his bunk, blinking his eyes in the near-darkness.

/// I'm not Jesus. I'm Char— ///

/I
know
you're not Jesus!/ he snapped. /It's just a fucking figure of speech, okay?/ He sank back again groaning, feeling that he was floating, even though he was motionless in his bunk.

/// Oh. ///

The quarx seemed puzzled.

/// You seemed disoriented and confused.

I thought maybe you thought...

Never mind.

Do you want to talk? ///

Bandicut drew a deep, slow breath. The darkness was crowding in around him, making him suddenly, extremely nervous. He knew what that meant: he needed the neuro, badly. He was on his way into another silence-fugue. /Charlie!/ he whispered urgently. The darkness was crowding closer still, and he heard the distant muttering of unreal voices...

/// What is it?

Are you in distress? ///

/Uh...oh damn, I need the neuro...if only I could link into something...can you, can you stop this—
ohhhhhh, jeeez—
/

Before his outcry was finished, everything around him changed with a flash...

>

 >>>

  >>>>>>

    >>>>>>>>>>>>

  >>>>>>>—<
alpha-connect
>—>>>>>>

   >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

  >>>>>>>—<
full-neural link
>—>>>>>