Edge of the Wire by Scott Kenemore

Author:Scott Kenemore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945863882
Publisher: Talos
Published: 2024-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“I’M JUST NOW THINKING OF SOMETHING,” ROWE SAID AS THEY WALKED. “How fast do you think you could take off your enviro-suit? You know, if you had to?”

“Pretty fast,” Waverly said. “Faster than you, I bet.”

“Yeah,” Rowe said thoughtfully. “So if something happens out here that doesn’t seem quite real. Like if I turn into a monster and look like I’m about to attack you. Or if Noyes suddenly starts saying you should kill me . . . Do me a favor and get down to your flight suit before you do it, yeah? Make sure I’m still a monster when the enviro-suit’s off, then shoot me in the face. If Cortez is being straight, I don’t want us to fall victim to something projected through the Goo.”

“Agreed,” said Waverly with a grin. “When I kick your monster ass, it’ll be Greco Roman style, with full nudity if you want.”

“Great . . .” said Rowe.

The windstorms stirred the silt as the men walked. The lightning above stayed bright and steady.

“Do you suppose this place has seasons?” Waverly asked. “Maybe the lightning has fall colors, and then turns greener in the spring.”

“Do you really want an answer?” Noyes asked. “Because I could give you one.”

“Do you think I want an answer?’’ Waverly growled at the hologram.

Noyes folded his hands and returned to a forward-facing position, looking out across the blasted plain.

At junctures, they passed tall clumps of rocks where Cortez could theoretically have been hiding, yet neither man concerned himself with that possibility. They saw nobody waiting in ambush. The scanners in the enviro-suits detected no sign of movement or life.

Soon, the cave came into view. It was in the side of a rocky cliff where the land rose up into a cratered hill. They did not see the Marie Curie’s captain anywhere. The mouth of the cave was dark.

“Hell of a place,” Waverly said as they approached.

“She must have thought it was her best option,” Rowe said. “If the Marie Curie is haunted somehow—poisoned, infected—then wanting to go totally off the grid like this makes sense. But it also makes sense if she’s crazy.”

They drew within twenty yards and still saw no movement.

Waverly cupped his hands, and looked to Rowe for the go-ahead. Rowe gave a shrug and a nod.

“Martha Cortez!” Waverly called. “Want to come out and talk to us? I’m even more fun than my man Rowe who you met. I’m handsomer too! Much . . . Handsomer . . .”

Waverly allowed himself a quiet laugh. His words echoed across the lonely planet. No response came back.

“Fuck it; let’s go inside,” Waverly said.

“All right,” said Rowe.

The men activated their helmets as a defensive measure. Rowe had seen no weapons—either on Cortez’s person, or among her supplies in the cave—but this was not a situation in which he wanted to take chances.

At the entrance to the cave they also activated their suit lights, casting the beams forward. There was equipment piled within the cave, and the silt on the cave floor seemed recently disturbed.

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