Eclipse of Procyon (Distant Suns, Band 2) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mark has been writing stories for as long as he can remember. In the early days he assembled his own illustrated books with accompanying stories and forced his parents to buy them. Unfortunately this model was not scalable, so in later years he has sought to promote his works to a wider audience.

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Chapter 1

Cait stomped on the pedal, and the mudhopper slid sideways as its tires fought to gain purchase on the steep dirt wall of the gully. She gritted her teeth and held the wheel firm, and after a moment the treads bit deep into the sand. The buggy lurched upward and out of the ditch, its front wheels spinning in the air, and for a moment there was nothing to see through the windshield but red sky. Then the mudhopper crashed back down and began to bump and thud its way across the rock-strewn terrain once more.
Beside her, Landry’s unconscious body lolled in the passenger seat, scraping awkwardly against the doorframe. He still looked a mess, his skin pale and slick from fever, and the wound on his arm had opened up again. Blood covered the seat and the cabin floor, and the sight of it was enough to make Cait feel sick to her stomach.
She slammed on the brakes, and the mudhopper responded quickly, sliding to a halt and sending a plume of coppery dust scattering in the morning sunlight. She reached over and carefully pulled Landry upright again, securing him as best she could back under the seat harness.
As she stared at his gaunt face, she realized that she could no longer deny the truth.
Landry was dying right before her eyes.
He’s not going to make it back to the outpost, she thought. Not a chance.
She reached into the back seat and pulled out the first aid kit again, her mind whirring. The last fifteen minutes had been a blur, and she was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened. When she’d driven away from Proc-One’s outpost in the dim hours before dawn, she hadn’t expected to find much out at the array tower. It had been almost a day since Landry’s distress signal, and she’d figured that both he and his pilot would most likely be dead by the time she got there.
At most, she imagined that she might find them clinging to the wreck of their scout with an incredible story to tell.
Instead, she’d found Landry running across the sands of Proc-One’s wasteland—without an EVA suit, of all things—and with a mysterious black substance clinging to his body. By the time she’d pulled him inside, he’d been half dead.
Maybe a little more than half, come to think of it, she thought.
In the few moments he’d been conscious, he’d been babbling about an impending Argoni attack. Saying that the aliens were coming. That all of them were coming. In fact, he’d seemed scared out of his wits, pushing away her attempts to apply first aid, demanding that she simply drive, get the two of them out of there as quickly as possible.
Cait had to admit that his panic had infected her as well. Landry was generally a pretty calm and collected kind of guy, not the sort who would succumb to hysteria unnecessarily. Seeing the look on his face had frightened her in a way that talk of Argoni and invasions could not.
So she’d done as he’d asked. She’d stepped on the pedal and sent the mudhopper rolling across the planet’s surface, all too aware that danger to the outpost meant danger to Fraxa as well. The girl’s face loomed in Cait’s vision, urging her onward as she sped across the terrain. Although she had only known Fraxa for a day or two, she couldn’t deny that a bond had formed between the two of them.
She’s a fighter, just like me. But there’s no one else on her side.
Despite the urge to keep going, Cait had reached a point where she could no longer ignore what was happening to Landry. She was no Medic, but his plight was obvious nonetheless. She knew that she had to apply some basic first aid to stop the flow of blood, regardless of Fraxa, the Argoni, or anything else. Landry would surely slip away if Cait didn’t help him, and there was no way she was going to let the guy die right here in the mudhopper. Not after everything she’d gone through to rescue him.
She rummaged through the first aid kit and took out a container of hydrogen peroxide, then reached across Landry and gently drew his arm toward her. The fact that she was still inside her EVA suit made maneuvering inside the cabin difficult, and as she moved, the blanket with which she’d attempted to cover Landry slipped down. His torso was bare, and she winced as she noted the nicks and raw patches of skin that covered his body. There probably wasn’t a lot she could do with those, she figured. Not out here.
Just patch up the worst parts. Stop the bleeding.
She eased him forward and gave him a quick inspection. It became quickly apparent that the arm was the major concern. There were several open wounds between his elbow and wrist, oozing blood. If she could patch those up, he might have a chance of pulling through.
Dabbing away some of the blood, she irrigated the wounds with the peroxide as best she could. The damage seemed to have come from multiple sources. There were thin, stabbing-type punctures, as well as patches of disfigured flesh that almost looked like acid wounds. Cait remembered an occasion at the workshop last year when one of the other Optechs, Stillman, had gotten himself splashed with battery acid from a cracked transport assembly. The wounds had looked very similar to these.
Worst of all, there was a patch of blackened, necrotic skin on Landry’s wrist, its edges raised and mottled red. It almost looked like a wad of dead flesh that had been sewn onto his wrist. As she looked closer she could see that spidery black veins were emanating from the patch, creeping up his arm like tentacles.
Cait’s skin crawled just looking at it.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine what Landry had been up to out there before she’d found him.
What could possibly have caused something like this?
Trying to ignore the implications of that question, she concentrated on her work. She took a handful of adhesive strips from the first aid kit and began to pull them apart, then thought better of it. Instead, she dug through the mudhopper’s onboard tool kit and snatched out a tube of quick-seal glue—something she used on a daily basis in the workshop—and rested Landry’s injured arm on his chest. With her free hand, she pinched together the first cut on his forearm and applied the glue in one fluid motion.
Just like sealing a joint in a hydraulic hose, that’s all, she told herself, trying to ignore the squeamishness that was growing within her at the sight of so much blood.
She moved onto the next wound, and by that time Landry had begun to stir. He moaned and groggily moved his head as he tried to open his eyes.
“Landry, hold still,” she said. “I’m trying to patch you up here—”
He struggled and moaned some more, then cried out suddenly and tried to crawl away from her. “Please, stop!” he screamed. “No more!”
Cait held up her hands soothingly. “Landry! It’s me, Cait. You’re safe.”
His eyes focused on her then, and he blinked, still confused. His head jerked back and forth in alarm as he took in the mudhopper’s console, Cait’s EVA suit, and finally her face.
Their eyes met, and she saw the terror within him slowly begin to slip away. He visibly relaxed, letting out a shaky breath.
“Ugh,” he groaned, rubbing at his face with shaky fingers. “I thought I was there again . . . down there.”
“Down where?” she prompted.
He did not answer, instead leaning forward to stare up into the sky, blinking against the brightness.
“What are you looking for, Landry?”
His...