Chương 92: 2.33 Remnants of the Past

"I told you I wasn't working for you, Miss Sparling," Sass said, looking up and down the path. Nothing stirred in the warm lamplight, but some kind of night bird fluttered in the boughs of one of the tall trees.

"Well, that's funny, because when you left Redwick, I distinctly recall you agreeing to check in with me."

"Yeah, well, that was before I realized you wanted me to help you keep tabs on Hector. I'm not a rat." Sass's eyes shifted to the disconnect icon, but even without video on her end, Iris Sparling must have sensed her intention because she rushed to say, " Wait!" Her tone was totally different—gone was the smug superiority, and in its place was palpable desperation. Sass hesitated.

"What?"

"You know there was an attack on the rift, right?"

"Yes." Sass licked her lips. You know something about it, pretty lady? She edited the thought a little and asked, "Do you know who it was? I mean, who was behind it?"

"Things are starting to come to light, but, well, it's getting dangerous around here. I honestly wanted to be sure you're safe. I know you don't want to work for me, but that doesn't mean we can't help each other out."

"I'm safe."

"And your friends? Hector's people? Have you heard from them?"

"I spoke to them earlier—" Sass caught herself. Clever bitch!

"Anyway, I gotta go."

"Just…" Iris hesitated, and her eyes darted to the left as though something had caught her attention.

"Just be safe, Saskia, and if you hear anything or if you need help, then please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm sending you an address. Please don't share it." A message icon flashed on Sass's AUI, and she said, "Got it. Now I need to—" Before she could finish, Iris cut the connection. Scowling, Sass stood and started down the path, the little suitcase trundling along behind her, the treasure—whatever it was—secure within. That was weird. Iris was a rich, powerful woman. What did she need with her?

It wasn't like Sass could even keep tabs on Hector if the guy was on the other side of a Sisters-blessed rift! Not for the first time, she wished she had someone she could confide in. Briefly, she considered calling Lemon, but she didn't want to look foolish, and she sure as hell didn't want anyone else on the "team" knowing she'd been talking to a fancy lady like Iris Sparling. That was the kind of thing that made folks like Orin and Demon shoot first and investigate later.

She was so preoccupied with the call and the vague sense of guilt —even though she hadn't done anything wrong—that she hardly noticed the rest of the walk to her villa. Once there, however, she quickly forgot about the troubling situation and became lost in her first taste of genuine luxury. She couldn't fight the smile that stretched her lips, numb though they were with the cream she'd applied."

Sisters," she whispered, exploring the plush sitting room, the full kitchen, the two bedrooms, and the ensuite bathroom that was bigger than her old apartment. She kicked her boots off and let the thick carpet wrap around her bare feet as she explored, and when she padded into the bathroom, she laughed in delight when the floor warmed beneath her toes. There was a full-sized fridge, stocked with things like real fruit—with the skin still on!

—cured meats and cheeses, and exotic things like yogurts and green, leaf-wrapped rolls. There were a dozen different flavors of sparkling water, and little bottles of beer, champagne, and cocktail mixers. Well, Hector said to enjoy myself… Grinning crookedly, Sass took out one of the bottles of champagne and a "passion-fruit" cocktail mixer. With the two bottles in hand, she retrieved a glass from the cabinet and walked toward the rear patio where the brochure said a hot-tub awaited.

"Might as well see what the view's like." ### Hector crouched behind the outcropping, staring at the right angles of the structure, utterly out of place on the alien landscape. There wasn't any doubt that it was made by people, but something in him wouldn't believe it. Some part of him thought it must have been left there by an ancient civilization or one of the mythological other species that came through the rifts when they were phased away from the Sol System.

He didn't believe in such things, or he hadn't, but the squat, square structure jutting out of the hillside was so bizarrely out of place that his imagination was running away from him. The exposed side was exactly ten-meters across, according to the range-finder on his helmet's AUI, and the gray-black blocks that comprised it were uniformly fifty centimeters square. The visible parts of the side walls were the same—featureless block walls.

There was some debris on the roof, and he hoped that was where he'd find an opening. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. If he didn't, he supposed he could cut his way in. He'd been watching the structure for nearly ten minutes, and had seen no sign of life. There were rift denizens nearby, but none closer than a hundred meters. One spine-bag had drifted by while he'd been there, but it hadn't lingered.

Even so, it had passed close enough for him to hear the gas bladders it used for propulsion whistling through puckered sphincters as it lurched and bobbed through the air. The approach was clear, though, and Hector renewed his Shadow Stalk ability and charged over the stony terrain to the structure. When he reached the side, he reached up and pulled himself onto the roof. The blocks were as solid as they appeared, unyielding beneath his grip.

When he crouched on the roof, he saw, beneath piles of scattered debris, a heavy airlock hatch. Unlike the stone blocks, though, the metal wasn't made of pure rift-world material. Maybe whoever had created the structure had intended to maintain the hatch with a biofilm like Mathews's team used to keep their gear from degrading on the rift world. If so, they'd failed; the metal hatch was pitted and eaten through; the housing was sagging against the weight, and the gasket beneath was reduced to black dust.

Hector tugged on the handle, and it broke off, pitted and hollow. A minute later, he set the remnants of the hatch to the side and dropped into what had once been an airlock. The room was thick with dust, no doubt leaked in through the perforated hatch, but also a result of materials decaying. In the light thrown by his helmet, Hector relaxed, recognizing human designs in the remnants of polymer wall panels.

The inner hatch was sagging on desiccated hinges, and when he pulled on it, the door came apart, falling in pieces. He advanced into a long, low-ceilinged room, entirely composed of the strange gray-black blocks. It seemed the designers hadn't bothered trying to line these walls with polymer—just the little airlock chamber.

Still, there was plenty of evidence of former equipment—piles of broken down metal and alloy, polymer sludge, and about halfway through the room, four human skeletons, their flesh and clothing a distant memory. The bones were black—somehow petrified in the rift world's alien atmosphere. Hector approached, but when he was still a few meters from the bones, he froze. The left-hand wall was puckered with a score of raised circular openings. He knew immediately what they were: clicker nests.

Clickers were insect-like rift denizens that ranged in size from a few centimeters to nearly a meter in length. They were shaped roughly like roaches, and when they flew, their wings made a distinct clicking sound, hence their moniker. The thing about clickers, though, was that they didn't just fly. They burrowed to hibernate and lay their eggs, and you could never be sure when a hive might be right under your feet.

Either the people who'd built the little bunker had been exceedingly unlucky when they chose the site, or the clickers had been drawn to the bunker as a nesting ground. Hector felt sweat trickling down his neck as he stared, holding perfectly still. To his relief, it seemed the nest had been abandoned; clicker swarms didn't stay in one place; they hatched their brood and flew on, devouring anything that crossed their paths.

Despite his relative certainty that the swarm was gone, he started to back away, but then his gaze passed over a pile of what he'd at first taken as debris. Something in the pile reflected his light with a faintly iridescent sheen, though. Evie, analyze that. //Already working on it. // Strings of data flashed through his helmet's information feed. //You were right. It's similite. // Hector's breathing quickened as he approached the pile. He glanced at the nest again.

"They didn't come back for it. Scared of the clickers?" It wouldn't surprise him; the damn bugs could eat anything. Looking back at the ore, he muttered, "Has to be ten kilos here." //Yes, and it's refined. I believe the debris piled atop and around it was an extraction smelter. // Hector bent and brushed the debris aside, revealing a neat pile of ten-centimeter metallic bricks that glinted and shimmered with rainbow hues as his light passed over them. I'd say you were right.

The machine did its job before the air got to it. He picked up one of the ingots. It was heavy, though nothing like gold. It didn't matter, though, because it was vastly more valuable than gold or any other Sol-based metal.

"Enough here to make Mathews happy," he muttered. He didn't have a bag, but his magazine pouches were just about the right size for one of the ingots, and he wasn't carrying any ammo. He stuffed as many as he could into those, then found space in his unused "cargo" pockets for the rest. Thus weighted down, he scanned the room one more time, suppressing another shudder when his gaze passed over the clicker nest again. As he stepped toward the airlock, he opened a comm link with Mathews.

"You still awake?"

"Yeah, but I'm about to switch with Freddy," she replied.

"I'm heading back."

"Find anything interesting?"

"I think it was an IG forward base of some kind. They put a lot of money into it, but clickers found them."

"Damn. Poor bastards. I take it there's nothing left?"

"Well," Hector said, grinning, "I found some similite." There was a pause, and then Mathews growled, "Don't jerk me around, Hector! How much?"

"Enough to make you happy."

"Need someone to come—""I've got it."

"Right. Well, I'll see you when you get back." As the comm link went quiet, Hector asked Evie, "I'm good, right? Enough time to get back before my system hits me?" //Yes, but you need to eat again. Aren't you feeling fatigued? The system's doing a number on your reserves. //"I'll eat as soon as—" Hector clamped his mouth shut as something scraped against the stone in the airlock chamber.

He lifted his hands, assuming a natural fighting stance as he circled to his left, scanning the dark opening that used to be a door. His light barely penetrated, but his helmet was scanning every band, and as soon as he sliced the angle, gaining a line of sight toward the right-hand side of the airlock chamber, he saw what he'd heard: a large reaper was there, its tail still sliding through the hatch in the ceiling as it oriented itself toward the inner door.

Hector had time to curse and push five aura into a Speed Boost, and then the thing was hissing and gnashing its teeth, throwing itself at him through the doorway—a streak of black oily flesh, razored claws, and jaws that could take a man's head off, helmet and all.