We split the watch fifty-fifty, rather than having Cleve simply take Takuto’s share in addition to his own. I rejected that plan, as I didn’t want our only driver falling asleep at the wheel today. In the morning, as a result, Cleve and I are both tired. He’s also a bit sore from sleeping in a car seat, though Takuto is just fine. At just about half Cleve’s age, he can probably sleep anywhere.
We start down the hill, and Takuto reviews the plans for the day: cryopods and then continuing on to the Morgan domes. I let him know that we’ll need to be careful, since there are very likely Morgan Prospecting crews in the area. Cleve hasn’t indicated he can hear the drilling, and Takuto doesn’t seem to either, but I know they’re out there.
The rover reaches the edge of what was a fordable river when we passed through here with Corazon. Cleve eyes it warily now, trying to decide if it has gotten wider—or deeper. “This is a bad idea,” he mutters. “‘Turn around, don’t drown.’ Everybody knows that!” I volunteer to walk across to gauge the depth, and that seems to make this plan more palatable to him.
When I get out of the rover, a flash of sunlight on metal under a patch of xenofungus catches my eye. I crack a grin: another wrench recovered! That craw must have taken more than it could reasonably carry. Or maybe this one was deemed not up to snuff once the craw came across a more attractive rock. I slip the tool into my satchel for now. I also pick up a long branch to use as a sounding tool. My cane is only about three feet long, so it isn’t suitable for testing the riverbed more than a step or so ahead of me.
It’s a tedious process, fording the river with the rover. Cleve drives extremely slowly behind me, back a good six feet to avoid any chance of running me over. For the most part, the water only comes up mid-calf on me, which means it just barely reaches the rover’s undercarriage. Halfway across, I stumble. “Wait, hold up!” I call out, as I steady myself. I look down and see what almost tripped me up. There are a few wrenches here, too! By the time the rover has crossed the river, I have enough wrenches to not feel bad about the quality of the kit I return to Tenoch later. There’s also enough seaweed—streamweed?—caught on the side of the vehicle to help it blend into its surroundings even better.
I approach the rover and find that Cleve’s had a more stressful time of this than I have. He’s still clutching the steering wheel tightly. “Good job, Mr. Cleve!” Takuto tells him.
“Mmm-hmm. Yeah,” Cleve agrees, but it doesn’t sound like he means it. He takes a deep breath and pries open his fingers. The river must have felt a lot wider than it actually is.
“Hey, can you hear that?” I ask, realizing that the clanging is audible even though I’m not “tuned in.” It’s very faint, but the others can pick it out now. “How much closer do you want to get with the vehicle?” I ask Cleve. He has a question for me in turn, about how noisy the rover is. “I don’t think it’s that bad, given that there’s construction work going on,” I tell him. “It’s a pretty quiet electric hum. The main noise is the vegetation you’re rolling over.”
Cleve wants the vehicle as close as possible when we’re scouting the area. “That way, if we need an escape, we have one,” he says.
“They take a break every twenty minutes, so we can stop and let the car recharge during that window,” I suggest. That way we’re not making any noise while they’re being quiet.
Eventually, we get as close to our cryopods as Cleve feels comfortable driving. He parks the rover under the large cap of a partially collapsed mushroom tree. From there, we continue on foot until we have eyes on our target.
Sure enough, Beetle Ridge, the hill that covers our cryopods, is a scene of devastation. The side of the hill, as well as a swath of territory leading—presumably—all the way back to Morgan Prospecting’s sub-dome, has been burnt clear. The amount of fungicide they must be using to keep the work area clear is mind-boggling. No wonder the environment was calling out to me.
The encampment is composed of a bunch of sealed tents at the bottom of the hillside, while farther up it sits the drilling rig. It’s a large vehicle with two giant treads and an enclosed cabin for the operator. There’s a really tall metal tower attached to the back. Every few seconds, a metal weight zips up it and then plummets. The bit slams repeatedly into the ground, painfully loud at this proximity. Mercifully, it stops for its twenty-minute break as we look on.
“Too little, too late,” says Cleve. “They could’ve come looking for us earlier!”
Down below, a woman in a hardhat with a clipboard emerges from what is likely the administrative tent. “Put on your hardhat, idiot!” she yells at one of the people climbing out of the rig. “We’ve got safety standards for a reason. Gah!” Seems like this project has been underway long enough that people are getting on each other’s nerves. Either that or she’s a tough supervisor to work under. One of her underlings heads over to the dormitory tents. The others are busy initiating the coolant cycle on the drill and looking over some other equipment. Everything is emblazoned with Morgan Prospecting logos.
From this angle, we can’t tell how deep they’ve dug, but I groan at how close this is to our cryopods. The drill is off to the side of the collapsed wolf beetle nest, coming at our module at an angle through the hillside. But it’s still too close for comfort, in my opinion. If we try to bring in our rover to the wolf beetle nest, we risk being noticed, exposed as we would be by the high elevation.
“Could we bring in some miasma to keep them in their tents?” Cleve asks. “Then we could see how far they’ve gotten, maybe use their hole.”
I look at Cleve with brow crinkled, a little nervous about such a plan. “You want me to blanket the area?”
“Is that something you can do?”
“It’s something I can try to do.” I’ve pushed miasma out of our way before. It seems likely that I could draw it in, as well. I don’t want to hurt anyone with it… but they have tents they can retreat to. Hopefully their supervisor would allow that. And if Cleve and Takuto go back to the rover, they’ll be safe, too. “All right,” I agree. “I’ll see what I can do. But you’ll need to go back to the car while I do this. If I’m keeping the miasma here, covering up our actions, you two need to do the digging. But… I don’t know if I can do this much.” Covering their camp is a lot of area to manage.
Once Cleve and Takuto have disappeared into the undergrowth, I try to calm my misgivings and welcome miasma to the base of this hill. This is way beyond what I’m capable of with my current instinctive approach to interacting with the environment. Yes, I can draw miasma towards me and coax it to change direction, but hey, so can the wind! And the wind is better at it than I am, despite how hard I tug. As I feared, this plan was too ambitious. And what is worse, it hasn’t gone unnoticed.
One of the workers below pulls a small yellow device from his hip. “Hang on, hang on!” he calls out, studying its screen. He extends a plastic tube out from the base of the handheld unit and waves the whole contraption around, sampling the air. “Uh, I think we’re okay, but keep close watch.” Work resumes down in the camp, and this one fellow remains vigilant, looking around nervously for any signs of miasma rolling in and compulsively checking his meter.
So much for that plan. I catch up with Cleve and Takuto and let them know that I can’t move enough miasma for it to make a difference. “It was enough to trip their miasma detectors but not enough to block vision. We can try conventional stealth, but I’m not going to be able to hide you behind a cloud of miasma, and I’m not going to be able to scare them inside.” The only other idea I have is the siege worm device. Not that I’m suggesting we try to draw one to their camp, but if we turned it on nearby—say, on the far side of their camp—that could cause a disruption. Of course, it might also collapse this hillside even further.
Cleve does not favor the siege worm plan, and I don’t blame him. He’s not ready to kill anyone over this—and that’s not what I was suggesting!—but he’s right that bringing one into play would be too dangerous. Best to just try to avoid detection. If they catch us, we can explain our completely legitimate reason for being here. We have a claim on these cryobeds, as they are ours. Well, Cleve does, anyway.
We have two choices: try to get our excavation done while the miners are on break in their tents or when their digging noise will cover our own. We settle on the former, as we’re more likely to be detected by sight than by sound. Cleve drives us around to a spot from which we can excavate towards our cryopods from a different angle than the Morgan team is. He puts down his window to stick his head out for a better view on the final approach, and that is when we hear trouble. “Who the heck are you, driving rival equipment here?” The demand is accompanied by the click of a pistol safety coming off.