“D-d-dead body! Dead body!” Takuto cries from the other side of the rover. Cleve unslings his rifle and goes on full alert. I rush over to Arx and Takuto to see what they’ve found. Half buried in the ground in front of them is a human skeleton with very little flesh remaining. I’ve no idea how long ago the person died. Weeks? Months? A year? It looks like the vehicle that passed through here inadvertently unearthed the corpse. People have repeatedly told us that getting exiled is the equivalent of a death sentence… It seems that was the case for this poor person.
When I stand back up after my inspection, I see our surroundings from a new angle, and the picture grows more complete. Nailed to one of the giant shroom stalks nearby is a sturdy notice, laminated against the elements. Warning, exiles evacuate this area. Make way for Morgan Industries Earth Corridor. “That a sign here is addressed to exiles implies that exiles hung out around this location,” I observe. Now the tarp makes more sense.
“You think this was an exile?” Cleve asks, joining us by the body since there seems to be no active threat.
“Yeah. Somebody who didn’t survive out here in this dangerous wilderness. But dead long before they got rolled over by whatever passed through recently.”
Cleve examines the body and finds a small radio emitter screwed into one of the bones, some sort of medical monitor that in other conditions would transmit its readings to a computer. “Maybe an anti-cancer device?” Cleve suggests. It might have been measuring something to do with the bone marrow. The transmitter is etched “Morgan Industries” so the device was manufactured on this planet, not brought from Earth.
“You all don’t just get implants as a matter of course, do you?” I ask the dome-born in our group.
The teenagers exchange puzzled glances. “No, we don’t think so,” Louisa says. She’s the one most likely to attribute horrible things to Morgan—when Corazon’s not around—so I believe her. We might be looking at another person who died from being denied medical treatment due to their debt levels.
Whatever this device is supposed to emit, it definitely does not right now, its batteries long since drained. Cleve extracts it from the skeleton. “I bet you Tenoch might take this in trade for more rover time,” he says with satisfaction.
Since the rover is still charging, we poke around the area more. There are signs nearby of an abandoned encampment: lean-tos, an old sawed-off barrel for a firepit, scraps of tent canvas. The kindling stash includes torn up collection notices and unpaid invoices. The one thing exiles have in plenty is debt.
There’s even a stash of shroomnuts that are still edible. I add those to our food supplies. “They must have had to leave quickly,” Cleve concludes. “Or they would have taken the shroomnuts and kindling.”
“If someone from the dome was coming through to hammer up those warning signs, I don’t think these people would have wanted to be here to be caught at that point,” I comment. Cleve stalks around the area, gathering observations to make a rough estimate of the camp population: a dozen or so.
I set the teenagers to picking up litter while I head a little farther into the overgrowth. I’ve spotted some plants that acorn stars tend to grow on. On one of them I find a healthy looking specimen to pack in a jar for Marina. The sound of water draws me still farther from the rover. The squatters probably picked this place for their encampment because of the nearby spring I come across. Wavy tendrils of a xenofungus-like kelp float in the pond there. This is something I’ve never seen before. I call Louisa over, and we flip through Marina’s zine, but it’s not in there, either. We head back to the rover to see if we have any way to transport a submerged sample of it. The… shall I call it xenokelp? Aquaxenofungus? Anyway, it’s too large to fit in a tiny jar.
Cleve greets me with more musing. “Is there anything at the cryopods that could help us with the pass?”
“With closing the pass?” I ask for clarification. Cleve nods slowly, lost in thought.
“If you could get Shu-Fen to help, maybe,” Takuto suggets. “A mining engineer would be helpful for closing the pass, right?”
“Yeah, but getting Shu-Fen on our side, that would be hard.” I’m still stinging from my completely failed attempts to get Bianca Horvath and Dr. Khan to even consider that the Morgan way might not be the only one.
“You should take her hostage and force her to close the pass!” Louisa suggests, more forcefully than I would like. Seeing my facial expression at that idea, she adds, “But don’t actually hurt her.”
“Well…” Cleve seems to be seriously considering the idea.
“No!” I object. “We’re not going to take anybody hostage!”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” Cleve agrees, not needing to hear my arguments now that he’s thought things through.
I continue anyway, for Louisa’s benefit. “Aside from practical concerns—what, take her whole mining team hostage? The five of us?”
“We have a gun,” Louisa points out.
“Yeah, so does Shu-Fen!” I tell her.
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Louisa says.
“Yeah, pistol in fact,” Cleve adds.
“Who brings guns on a mining expedition?” Louisa asks, revealing some of her own ignorance about what happens out here.
“Anybody who leaves the dome has a gun if they’re employed in such a position. There are dangerous animals out here. Wolf beetles might be nice pets inside the dome, but they are wild animals out here. If you get in their way, they will defend themselves and their homes.”
“And there are exiles, too,” Cleve says. “If I were banished, I might not be so keen on letting you go by without taking whatever you’ve got. Not if I need to survive.”
“True, true. Okay, that’s a good point,” Louisa allows.
“But let’s return to the other side of this, which is—No! We don’t take hostages!” I tell her.
“I don’t know if they’re even there still,” Cleve says. “I was thinking along the lines of taking their equipment. Or there might be something explosive in that part of the ship,” he muses.
“Look, I don’t want to take a hostage,” Louisa says in her defense. “But what if someone finds out about our plan to block Miasma Pass? Do we just let them go?”
“We will burn that bridge when we get to it,” Cleve replies gruffly.
“Oh, we should send them back with false information!” Louisa says. “Just sow confusion.”
“That’s a more palatable approach,” I agree.
“Excellent idea,” Cleve congratulates her.
With that settled, I open the trunk and take a look at what we have. There’s a larger plastic container in here, and it looks like it should be watertight. And there are the pieces of tarp and wrappings from ration packs… enough that we can line and cover the container, since it’ll be holding water that would otherwise slosh out. I make sure I get some soil and roots, too. The nodules on those might be edible even if the leaves aren’t. As I transfer the new find, I discover that it’s just as thorny as regular xenofungus, so I’m careful to avoid the briars. With that secured in the trunk and the batteries now fully charged, we’re ready to go.