River of Pain Page 5

  As Curtis unlatched his restraints, Draper grabbed his shoulder from behind.

  “What are you doing, Finch?”

  “Don’t be brainless!” his brother said. “You’ll die out there.”

  Otto snatched up the handheld radio, stretching the cord. Wireless didn’t work out in these storms.

  “Admin, come in, this is Otto Finch,” he barked into the radio. “Come in!”

  They all froze, listening to the static that sputtered in response. For just a sliver of a moment the line cleared and they heard a burble of language—just a few unintelligible words. Until the atmosphere calmed down, communications would be nigh impossible. They might be able to get their message through, but admin would have trouble tracking them. With all of the mineral dust and volcanic ash whipping around, external instrument readings were always tricky.

  “I’m not suicidal,” Curtis said. He pointed through the windshield. “Look out there.”

  “What am I looking at?” Draper growled.

  The storm had kicked up again. The crawler rocked on the ridge, then slid a bit further. The tower Curtis had seen before had been blotted out by the blowing grit.

  “There’s a processor tower about a hundred yards ahead,” he said. “Processor Six. We hunker down there until the wind quits. Once we get through to admin, they’ll send someone out to help. Even if we can’t get through, they’ll find us by tracking our personal data transmitters. We’ll be fine.”

  He turned to his brother, saw the fear in his eyes, and actually felt sorry for him.

  “Otto,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”

  6

  THE LADDER

  As they ran through the storm, scoured by grit and brutalized by the wind, Otto kept his head down. Goggles protected his eyes, but he felt safer looking at the ground.

  A dreadful fear had been building in him for months, a kind of chasm opening up in his gut. In his nightmares, fissures split the surface of Acheron and dark things stirred down inside the planet’s guts. Any time they left the colony, he felt as if he were standing on the edge of a roof a thousand feet up, looking at the ground far below. The urge to just fling himself over the edge, to plummet to his death, tugged at him. Every logical part of him fought that urge, but still it teased him forward, seductive as the voice of the serpent.

  Thanatos, it was called. He’d read it somewhere. The death urge.

  A tiny voice inside Otto Finch had grown steadily more convinced that Acheron meant to do him harm, and tempted him to surrender to its malicious purpose.

  “I don’t want to die here,” he whispered, his words stolen by the storm.

  He glanced up, saw Curtis’s back, and kept trudging ahead. Draper and Yousseff were behind him, but he couldn’t be sure they would pick him up if he fell. His brother, though—he had to believe that if he cried out, if he stumbled, Curtis would save him. They were brothers, after all.

  Please, God, he thought. Please, God. Don’t let me die here.

  Yet it felt like a hollow prayer. He hadn’t always believed in God, but if such a deity existed, he couldn’t escape the feeling that He lived far, far away from here.

  A loud scrape of metal made Otto look up.

  Ahead, Curtis had reached the processor and as Otto staggered toward him, nearly blown off his feet by a gust, the heavy door rose up into its housing. It occurred to him that without Curtis they wouldn’t have been able to enter—all surveyors knew the override code for these things, but Otto had forgotten it.

  Thank you, my brother, he thought.

  But then he staggered inside, out of the storm, and suddenly he felt a lot less grateful. He tore off his goggles and spun around, staring at the cylindrical ductwork that ran up the walls and overhead. The outlying atmosphere processors scattered around Acheron were tiny in comparison to the huge, arena-sized Processor One back at the colony, but the building was still impressive. The interior of Processor Six was fifty feet in diameter. In the corner was a small control room full of levers and gauges, a communications array, and a pair of computers that did most of the work. Pipes and ducts and ladders went up into a vast sphere—the core processor—and then into the darkness fifty or sixty feet overhead.

  Otto didn’t need to climb or use the control room to see that there was a problem. Steam hissed from the joints, and as he approached the nearest of the two-foot-wide ducts, he could see that the metal surface was vibrating. A clamorous buzz filled the interior of the station, the micro-rattle of thousands of feet of ductwork shaking against the brackets and rings that held it in place.

  “Jeezus,” Draper said, stripping off his coat. “Why’s it so hot in here?”

  Normally the innocent curiosity on his face—after what they’d just been through—would have made Otto want to laugh. But he wasn’t capable of finding anything funny just then.

  “Curtis,” Otto called, loud enough to be heard over the hiss and rattle inside, and the roar of the storm outside.

  Back toward the door, Curtis had removed his own heavy protective jacket. He stood with his goggles on his forehead, grimed with dust and sweat, and spoke quietly to Yousseff. The Colonial Marine sergeant seemed to ignore his flirtations half the time, and the other half she spent indulging him with the arch of an eyebrow or a slanted smile at some idiocy he’d spouted.

  Otto hated her for that. He understood that his brother found the woman beautiful—with her dusky skin and those big, hypnotic brown eyes, anyone would have been captivated by her at first. But Yousseff had never seemed like anything but a cold bitch to Otto. Her half-smiles mocked Curtis for his lonely but hopeful heart.

  “Curtis, damn it!” he shouted. “You’ll have time to make a fool of yourself later!” He hated the crack in his voice, the edge of panic that lurked there.

  Only when his brother glared at him, hostile to cover the sting of truth, did Otto realize what he’d said.

  “You know what—” Curtis began, moving toward him.

  “Stop!” Otto snapped, shaking his head and holding out a hand. “Just… stop. Be mad at me later, okay? We’ve got a problem.”

  Draper had dropped down to sit on the floor, knees drawn to his chest and his back against the wall. Now he laughed.

  “Shit, just one?”

  Otto felt like he couldn’t breathe. When he and Curtis had been small boys, their father had punished them for misbehavior by locking them in the closet. The darkness had frightened him, but the closeness had been worse. Sometimes he had imagined that the thick air had a presence, that it did not like intruders—especially naughty little boys—and that it wanted to suffocate him. There in the dark, lying on a pile of his parents’ shoes, with his mother’s long coats brushing the back of his neck, he could feel it sliding over him in a heavy, dusty embrace. It would get warm very quickly and sweat beaded on his skin. He never dared pound on the door—his father had warned him many times about that—but he would cry and beg to be set free, and when at last he lay quietly on top of those shoes, he could smell the oil from the factory where the old man worked.

  The inside of the processor had the same oil smell. Dark and hot, the air close. He stared at his brother as Curtis moved toward him, searching his eyes and wondering why Curtis didn’t understand.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Otto asked, running a hand through his tangle of red hair. “Can’t you feel it?”

  Curtis froze, listening.

  Draper glanced at Yousseff.

  “What? D’you hear something?”

  Then they all heard it. A chugging, grinding noise coming from overhead. Curtis pushed past Otto and put his hand on the same duct, felt the vibration, and then tried to see up into the darkness.

  “It’s machines,” Draper said. “Just friggin’ machines.”

  “Of course it’s machines,” Curtis said, shooting him a withering look. “Machines that are breaking down.”

  Yousseff perked up at that. No arched eyebrow or flirty half-smile now.

  “W
hat do you mean ‘breaking down?’”

  “Clogged,” Otto said, his hands fluttering nervously. He pulled at the small curls on the back of his neck, a painful habit he’d picked up recently. “The unit’s clogged. Too many storms lately, too long since the last maintenance. Draper said it’s hot. Well, he’s right, but it’s more than that—it’s overheating. From the sound of it, the unit’s choking up there, all the filters need flushing and venting…”

  Otto put his hand on the duct. It had grown hotter.

  “…and it needs to be done in the next few hours, I’d say. Probably less, though.” He tugged at his red curls. “I’m an optimist.”

  “Or what?” Draper demanded. “So the unit breaks down—that’s not our problem. Soon as this grit-storm’s over, we’ll be able to get a signal through, and they’ll send someone out from the colony.”

  Otto glanced at his brother and then lowered his gaze.

  “Curtis?” Yousseff said, worry in her voice.

  “Best case, Draper’s right,” Curtis replied. “The core’s supposed to shut down if the filters clog enough—if the sphere is hot enough. But it’s pretty hot in here already, and that hasn’t happened.”

  “Do I want to ask what happens if the core doesn’t do its automatic shutdown?” Draper asked.

  Otto put his hands together and sprang them apart.

  “Boom.”

  Yousseff cursed, turned to the door and unlatched it. She peered outside for just a second before shutting it tightly again.

  “No sign of the storm letting up, I suppose,” Curtis said. The look on her face was the only reply they needed. The four of them studied each other for several long moments. Otto saw beads of sweat on Draper’s forehead, felt it on his own back, and knew the temperature had gone up just in the few minutes they’d been inside.

  “Curtis!” Otto shouted.

  His brother stared at him.

  “I know, okay?” Cursing under his breath, Curtis hurried over to a ladder that was clamped to the wall just beside the door to the control room.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Draper demanded, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  Curtis shot him a look. “You know how to flush the filters, vent the clog and send it outside?”

  Draper threw his arms out, drawing attention to his uniform attire and his heavily muscled form.

  “Do I look like a maintenance man?”

  Curtis nodded upward. “That’s why I’m climbing. I’m the only one here who knows how to do this. If I can clear the filters, this place doesn’t blow up. If I can’t, we take our chances with the storm.”

  “Well, hell, then… climb away,” Draper said, gesturing toward the ladder.

  Otto could see the way the rungs vibrated in his brother’s hands as Curtis climbed the first few feet. Must be rattling his bones, he thought.

  Yousseff came and stood at the base of the ladder.

  “Be careful.”

  Curtis shot a grin down at Otto as if to say, I told you so.

  The grinding and chugging grew louder above them. Otto could feel the place shaking under his feet, right up through his body. He clenched his jaw, watching his brother climb, and his teeth chattered from the tremor in the floor. His heart raced, and another bead of sweat ran down his neck.

  “Hate this planet,” he said quietly, convinced he spoke only to himself. “I hate this godforsaken—”

  “It’s a moon,” Yousseff said.

  Otto spun on her, practically snarling. “Hate this planet!” he screamed, eyes burning with tears he refused to shed.

  Then something banged inside the core, metal giving way under pressure. The boom that followed rocked the entire structure, as if some giant had given it a thunderous kick from the outside. Up on the ladder, Curtis shouted and Otto looked up to see his brother slip, fingers frantically grasping for the rungs.

  Otto shouted his brother’s name as Curtis fell. He ran toward the base of the ladder. When Curtis hit the floor, the sound of it froze Otto in his tracks. He knew that noise from childhood—it was the sound of breaking bone.

  Curtis let out a cry of pain—just one—and then fell so silent, so quickly that it seemed as if a guillotine had cut off his voice. He slumped there at the base of the ladder with the whole processor rocking and banging around them, more and more steam misting the already hot, close air, and Otto feared he might have died.

  Draper shoved Otto roughly aside, saying shitshitshitshitshitshit as if in time with his racing heartbeat, and ran to kneel by Curtis.

  Yousseff took two steps toward the core.

  “Draper, this is not going to end well,” she said. “We need to get out of here!”

  With two fingers on Curtis’s neck, checking for a pulse, Draper turned to glare at her.

  “You don’t think I know that?” he said. “What’s your plan? Try driving in the grit-storm? If we don’t wait for it to subside, we’re dead out there.”

  “We’re dead in here if we don’t purge the throat of this beast!” Yousseff shouted.

  Otto could barely hear them. He shuffled toward Curtis and fell to his knees beside Draper, shaking his head. His thoughts had been muddled with anxiety and fear for so long—a profound and growing sense that they were all in terrible danger—that it felt strange to have sudden clarity.

  “Curtis?” he ventured, and he nudged his brother’s shoulder. Curtis did not stir.

  Otto’s hands fluttered to his mouth and he turned to stare at Draper, breath hitching in his chest, horror spreading through him, eradicating all other emotions.

  “Oh God,” he said. “I did this. I did this! He didn’t want to come to the colony and I talked him into it. This is my fault. I killed my own brother!”

  Draper reached up and flicked Otto across the nose. The pain made him jerk backward.

  “What the hell is—”

  “Have I got your attention?” Draper shouted, and suddenly the sound of the storm sandpapering the outer walls and the thunder of the groaning processor flooded back into Otto’s ears, as if he had somehow turned the volume down on the rest of the world for a minute.

  Otto nodded.

  “Moron’s not dead,” Draper said, nodding toward Curtis. “His leg’s broken from the fall. Banged his head pretty good. If he’s lucky, he passed out from the pain, and not brain damage. The big question is, can you do the job, Otto? Can you climb your ass up there and clear those vents?”

  Shaking his head, Otto reached out to stroke Curtis’s hair.

  “Damn it, man, do you know how to do the job?” Draper roared, poking him in the chest.

  “No!” Otto shouted, lower lip quivering. “I don’t have the first clue!”

  Draper turned toward Yousseff.

  “I know the storm’s causing interference, but you’ve gotta call us in. Get someone out here in the heavy-crawler!” Outside the wind howled even louder. The grit scouring the metal seemed almost to sing a high, mocking melody.

  “No way we’re getting a comms signal through this!” Yousseff barked at him. “We’ve got to go back out, take cover inside the crawler!”

  “Keep trying, damn it!” Draper roared. “There’ll be a lull in the storm. You’ll get through.”

  Yousseff spun away from them and marched toward the far wall, covering one ear as she slipped on her headset. Otto stared at her, and he knew there would be no signal. They were going to die out here, and Acheron would swallow them up. The grit would strip them to the bone and the bones would be buried in dust and they’d slip down into the hell he always saw in his nightmares—the hell at the heart of this planet.

  “I hate this planet!” he said loudly, trembling. He turned to look at the slack expression on his brother’s face. Curtis’s head lolled to one side and for the first time Otto saw the huge bruise on his left temple, red and swollen.

  “Curtis!” he whined, unable to help himself. He shook his brother’s hand, nudged his shoulder. “Curtis, please! I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorr
y!” He rocked back and forth, closing his eyes. “I hate this planet! I hate this—”

  His eyes sprang open as Draper grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

  “Shut your mouth!” Draper shouted, and he swung his fist.

  The blow silenced Otto, bloodied his mouth, and broke off a tooth. Shocked, he stared at Draper, who still held him by the shirt, fist ready to land another punch. Tears sprang to Otto’s eyes and this time he could not fight them off. They began to slide down his cheeks as he spit out his broken tooth and then used his tongue to probe the sharp edges in the hole where it had been.

  “You’re going up there,” Draper said, gesturing to the ladder. “You and your asshole brother are inseparable. I don’t believe for a second that you don’t have at least some idea of how to stop this. So you’re going up, Otto. Could be my life depends on it, which means you go up, or I shoot you in the head.”

  Otto’s breath hitched. His shoulders shook.

  “I hate this pla—”

  Draper’s fist crashed into his face again. Otto sagged in the marine’s grip, sobbing, and spit out a big gob of his own blood. Then he nodded.

  At least up on the ladder, he would be out of reach of Draper’s fist. And maybe from up high, Curtis would look like he was only sleeping.

  Regaining his balance, he went to the bottom rung. With the whole processor clanging and screaming around him, Otto began to climb.

  On the third rung he froze, and then he let go, dropping down to land with a thud.

  “What the hell are you—” Draper began.

  Otto turned to him, tears running freely.

  “Shoot me,” he said as he flopped back against the wall and slid to the floor, anguish tearing him apart. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it. I’d rather be dead than be here.”

  Draper swore and leveled his gun.

  Yousseff grabbed his wrist, gave a quick shake of her head, and then walked toward Otto.

  “Curtis is injured, Otto,” she said. “If you don’t do something, there’s a good chance we’re all going to die out here—your brother included.”

  Otto looked into her brown eyes, glistening and beautiful.