The Eighth Continent: A Hard Science Fiction Thriller by Rhett C. Bruno & Felix R. Savage

Author:Rhett C. Bruno & Felix R. Savage [Bruno, Rhett C. & Savage, Felix R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2023-09-18T16:00:00+00:00

35

Maddy came back while Nick was adjusting the fit of his new cast. Priya had printed it on the spot from lightweight plastic. Bungee cords ran through little holes in the top of the cast, like shoelaces.

“Look,” Nick said. He stood up, arms outspread.

Setting the bones had hurt more than breaking them in the first place, but he could feel the difference inside his foot—a sense of rightness where there had been an inflamed mass of wrongness before.

Priya rolled her eyes. “Don’t walk on it—though I don’t know why I bother, you will anyway. Do you want pain medication? No, of course you don’t. Get out of here.”

Maddy slid her arm through Nick’s elbow and dragged him away. In a low voice, she said, “Yangsook doesn’t know anything about it. She never got our emails. She’s talking to Luxembourg now, but what do you want to bet they don’t know anything about it, either?”

Nick remembered his conclusions in the silence of the X-ray cubicle. “Kurtis set us up.”

“Or Aaron did.”

“Yeah.” Kurtis could have easily been Aaron’s unwitting dupe. On the other hand, there was an advantage for Kurtis in sending Nick and Maddy to ILI. Two less mouths to feed. “Could be the rover was meant to break down. We were never supposed to get here at all.”

“Jesus, you have a twisted mind.”

“Am I wrong?”

“You’re wrong about Kurtis, anyway. He guessed the situation was hinky. We talked about it before we left.”

“I know—”

“No, he talked to me about it.”

Suddenly, Nick remembered Maddy coming out of Kurtis’s room. He’d thought she was just borrowing his rucksack—the same rucksack she now clutched to her chest as they squeezed around the partitions.

“Yup. He figured there was a chance they’d back out of the deal or find some excuse to not give us anything. He said if that happens, just take what we need.”

“Just take it?”

“Right.” Maddy’s cheeks were flushed. Her eyes flicked from right to left. She was patrolling through the ILI hab as if it were hostile jungle. Her left arm held the rucksack, and her right hand was free to punch, jab, or snatch.

“We can’t just take shit,” Nick said.

“Why not?”

“Because… because there’s about fifty of them and two of us.” Nick offered the most obvious practical objection, since she’d clearly already dismissed the moral ones. And who was he to object to stealing on moral grounds, anyway?

“Not about numbers out here,” Maddy said. “It’s about who wants it more.”

“Maybe. But here’s the other problem. We’ve had the grand tour of this place.” They were presently edging through a module half filled with fish tanks. A man and a woman tended the dimly lit aquariums, chatting in Italian. Fish mouthed at the glass. “Where’s the stuff? Have you seen anything that looks like ration packages? Or suit spares? Electronic components? We can’t take it if we can’t find it.”

“Um. Point,” Maddy said.

“There you are.” Dr. Hofstadter rejoined them. “I can’t understand how this happened. There has to be some explanation.”

“I’m sure there is,” Nick said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.