Toxic (79 page)

"But it's a nuclear reactor!"

Jon sat at his side.

"I know. The sheik had delusions of grandeur, but he wasn't stupid. To cool down his installations, he needed an out of the ordinary electrical power source in the area. The alien's coordinates put your friends at six kilometers from here. We have vehicles hidden in the area and the road takes us right there."

"There are no radioactive leaks? These things have a limited lifespan and need human supervision."

"Listen, I shouldn't talk about this, but it seems like we tried to nuke the aliens. The warheads never worked. Whatever they did, we think that it had an effect on all civil and military nuclear sites on the planet."

"They definitely wanted to avoid mucking up their new playing field."

"Something like that, I guess."

The trafficker drank a sip of coffee.

"We're almost there," the leader of the expedition said, handing him a gun by the barrel. "Can I trust you?"

Hector nodded: "
Sí
."

I
f it had been bigger, the fourth planet would have had a different destiny and they could have killed two birds with one stone, Naakrit thought from the gangway of his tamer. The red planet, according to humans' usual name for it, was more brown and orange, but it must have seemed strange to them, maybe even menacing, with its dirty, trembling glow, at the far end of their first observation instruments.

By adding water to it and therefore mass, it would have taken on an appearance similar to his world of origin. The comparison stopped there. With an average temperature that would crack stone, it definitely wasn't a welcoming place for the members of his species.

The decelerating vessel traced an elliptical route. On his display, Mars grew before his eyes. The three-dimensional projection offered him a panorama of its thin clouds, made up of condensed dry ice particles at high altitudes.

The Primark addressed his four equipped troopers in their interactive demi-spheres. The advantage of these highly automated ships was that they needed a reduced piloting crew, which meant less employee management problems, less logistics and in the end, lower expenditures.

The display split in two. On one side, Mars continued to grow. On the other, a window showed a feed from a recon drone. The device was flying over an impressive canyon, which slashed along the equator. Images and information confirmed his initial intuition. If doubts had remained, they were now gone. The construction, of undetermined origin, was curled up in a cliff almost ten kilometers high, beside the abyss.

Naakrit's claws closed against the scales of his palms.

Humans had managed no more than to send robots to their neighboring planet. They had dreamed of setting foot on it and establishing themselves there. Their failure was not a technological problem - they could have done that trip - but more of a desire to do so and to overcome obstacles.

The mercenary watched the images of the scanner, looking for additional evidence. Who could have built this base? The platform suspended in the open seemed to have the dimensions to accommodate an apparatus the same size as a T-J.

Naakrit whistled his orders and entrusted the ship to his troopers.

They had a few octains of minutes left before the arrival of the Poisoners. The Battle of Mars was approaching... and they needed to win it.

The hallway led to the hangar where a T-J lay in wait in its launch pad. After a fast checklist, the doors opened and the magnetic ramp propelled it out of the vessel.

The T-J drew a silver streak in the pink sky. It swerved around a volcano of colossal proportions. Reaching a low altitude, the ship aligned its trajectory with the geological crevasse that humans called
Valles Marineris
. Then, it ducked under the line of peaks in the direction of the central region. On the left, the chaotic valley stretched as far as the eye could see. Clouds of condensation lounged above the scattered rocks and swells of a tormented terrain. On the right, the T-J flew alongside the slopes stratified with red, beige and brown. Obvious signs of sedimentation, Naakrit thought.

After a large turn, the ship slowed down and stopped directly above the hexagon-shaped plateau linked to the rocky wall by a beam. The reptilian ordered a half-turn and then the T-J moved backwards slowly, its landing pads deployed.

A light tremor preceded the complete stopping of the motors. This world had an advantage, he realized, leaving the pilot's seat. The gravity was lighter than that of Earth, to which his body had eventually adapted.

In the cargo hold, he put on a pressurized armor suit and then fitted himself out with a vibroblade and a Trystel saw. He added an automatic cannon fixed to the shoulder of his outfit. Even though the scanners weren't detecting any presence in the area or any threats, he kept to the normal precautions, which advocated caution and firepower. Once his visor's verification was carried out, he emptied the ship's air and stepped onto the ramp.

Frost appeared on his joints. The layer of ice sublimed just as quickly. Naakrit got out and started along the bridge, which had a basic railing, a simple bar that ran along it. The breathtaking view plunged towards the foothills, the bases of which were lost in the hazy bottom. It resembled a mineral cauldron, a chaos of concretions that took on a tawny color in their lack of distinction. The far end of the bridge widened into a platform. An arch in the wall marked the entrance to the base, or at least its buried part. The blue glow indicated the absence of atmosphere on the other side of the airlock, which didn't react when he placed his gloved hand on the touch pad. Naakrit released arachnid robots from his suit's compartments. Once of the bots attached itself to the control box and then, after having thwarted the electronic protection, the armored door slid open.

Once inside, it closed once again in silence. The information projected on his visor informed him that he was still in a hostile environment. The strip of carbon dioxide dominated the table of the composition of gases in the environment. Despite the low temperatures and the low atmospheric density, the place was tolerable for Lynians, whose skin could harden into a protective bark in the case of a drop in pressure.

Luminescent diodes lit up a hallway, which ended in a bend. Or an intersection. It was hard to say, given the superimposition of layers of sediments, whose colors mixed with one another, therefore forming a sort of optical illusion. The best thing was to move forward.

The mercenary grabbed the handle of his vibroblade, ready to draw it at the slightest sign. The strange atmosphere could only barely transmit sounds, and as a result, he had to go without that precious sense. The information was replaced by images of bots sent as scouts. In front of him, there was a second obstacle. A second airlock.

This time, the orange glow signaled a pressure differential. Naakrit pressed on the pad and waited for the cycle to complete before entering.

Once he was inside and while the system pressurized the room, he moved towards a thick skylight to give himself an idea of the purpose of the premises.

His bony lips revealed his fangs. His tongue vibrated.

"
No'ka, mund kyll ottomansshy
," he whistled.

Infected products. How had they gotten all the way here?

The scrawny bodies wandered around what resembled a laboratory. The airlock let out the jingling noise of the end of the cycle. Naakrit checked the information. The atmosphere had clearly been heated up but its composition hadn't changed: a clear dominance of carbon dioxide. The pressure was equivalent to six-eights of that of Earth.

"Damned Lynians!"

The most important jump since his arrival, Jave told himself.

The T-J surfed on a tongue of fire in the direction of the Gulf of Mexico. Jool's presence had turned his plans upside down. His former friend had arrived on Earth before the mercenaries' invasion.

His presence explained so many things, he reflected.

The ship crossed the layer of cirrus clouds and dove until sea level, where he changed course, raising a geyser of foam. Pony Field emerged on the horizon after a few octains of seconds.

The platform at the top of the structure on stilts seemed fragile. Too fragile. The calculator proposed that the ship remain stationary to allow them to disembark, which Jave accepted.

The ship made a spiral ascent around the metal island and then slid parallel to the landing area. It turned ninety degrees and then the ramp lowered. The troopers would detect this suspicious activity sooner or later. Protocol forced them to tell Naakrit, who must be very occupied at the moment. Therefore, Jave had room to maneuver,

The emissary presented himself first. The Säzkari whistled in confusion.

"I imagine that you know what you're doing. The Primark's anger would be horrible if he found out what you're scheming behind your scales."

Jave's nasal vents spread in the human equivalent of a smile. Naakrit had other stones to lift. He was more worried about Kjet's orders. And that of the Kathari.

"Masks always end up being removed, right?"

His attention turned to the far end of the platform and to Jool. The two humans who accompanied him seemed ridiculous at his side. His rootlets shivered when he recognized Elaine's silhouette. At the same time, her presence at Jool's side troubled him. This seemed like an attempt to show him that she was cooperating with him. Had she joined his side? Two groups of soldiers were pointing at them with their guns. He noted the position of a double-barreled gun battery on a mount. The caliber was larger but that didn't change anything. At the slightest detonation, the confinement field would envelop him and stop any projectiles.

He put his foot on the grating. Through it, he spotted waves dancing around the pillars, forming whirls.

"I hope that this isn't going to collapse," the practitioner said. "I always have trouble trusting their building standards."

The emissary ignored the remark. Jool moved towards him. His trip to Earth had cost him, he judged, spotting the olive color of his skin and discreet plaques at the base of his neck. Oxygen saturation ended up wearing out even the most prepared organisms. Like him, he wore a light mask that didn't block his communication functions.

"
Psipili koro jirifara toli
," Jool said to him.

Jave greeted him and then waited, considering himself to have the upper hand. He could get back in the T-J and fly away at any moment.

"You won the confidence of the Orbikha butcher. I'm impressed," the sick Lynian continued. "Did you bring the precursor with you?"

As a response, Jave showed him the vial.

"Is the Säzkari in your service?"

"We found a common ground. That's how things are, even if you don't like it."

"Negotiate, off-load tasks, prosper... Those sound like the words of a Merchant Prince addressing an inferior species. You and me, we know the cost of that in reality."

"This isn't the time or place for this type of debate. We need to save this species."

"On that, at least, we agree."

"I would like to talk to the human."

Jool's nasal vents dilated.

"Of course."

T
wo titans face to face above the waves, Elaine thought. It was both fascinating and frightening at the same time. Even Richardson's colossal men seemed ridiculous with their guns pointed at the aliens. The aliens didn't seem impressed, as if the threat was meaningless to them. The leader of Site A looked tense, showing his alarm, his gaze locked on the inconceivable scene.

"What do you think they're saying?" he asked.

They could hear the snippets of a conversation made up of high-pitched and guttural sounds, phonemes that a human would be incapable of reproducing.

"I have no idea."

"Where did that one come from? It sounds like a mini-dinosaur."

The disembarkment of a third alien, so different from the other two, remained an extraordinary surprise to their eyes. Up until then, they thought that they were facing one sole species of aliens. That didn't change their situation, which was worse than catastrophic; however, his presence gave an indication of the diversity of the Collective mentioned by Jave.