Part 10 (1/2)
”You're not up to playing stevedore, Thren,” Quinton said, glancing over at all the cargo strapped down in the shuttle.
She bristled at the implication she couldn't pull her weight. ”Watch me.”
”I have. You're going to undo everything we've done to keep you breathing.”
”He's right,” Lucas said. ”You're not helping with this, Threnody. Get inside the station. Korman needs to look you over.”
”Korman?” Threnody said. ”That doctor with biomodifications for eyes?”
”The very same.”
”I don't need to be operated on again.”
”Which is good, since he's probably drunk.” Lucas shrugged at Quinton's angry expression. ”He'll be coherent enough to run some tests.”
Quinton shook his head. ”You want me to trust some G.o.dd.a.m.ned drunk with Threnody's life?”
”No. I'm telling you to trust me. Now get to work, Quinton. Threnody? Get inside.”
Lucas walked away. Kerr drifted over, giving Threnody a sympathetic look. ”You can't really argue with him. He got us this far.”
”Yeah,” Threnody said as she started down the ramp. ”Makes you wonder how much further he's going to take us before he finds a reason to discard us.”
Kerr nodded. ”Come on, Quinton. Let's do this.”
As Threnody headed for the nearby station, Quinton and Kerr moved to join the scavengers, all of whom had separated into small groups charged with operating gravlifts and a dozen old-style cargo sleds hooked up to ancient-looking machines with flat tracks in place of wheels. They joined a work queue, adding their strength to hauling out boxes of seeds and other items, and organizing them into piles for teleportation into the dome.
The cold-storage units in every shuttle were unbolted and gravlifts used to pry them out. They were transferred onto cargo sleds, stabilized with heavy metal chains and hooks, then driven down a brightly lit icy path. Kerr rode along with the first load into the snow-covered dome. The entrance looked as if it had been carved into one side of the dome, the road they were on canting downward at a slight incline. They drove through the entrance at the bottom, the way braced by walls of ice whose weight Kerr didn't trust.
Zahara and Jason were still looking the place over, Jason needing to know the dimensions of the dome and the placement of everything inside to form a safe teleport. It looked as if various rooms had once existed inside the dome before the scavengers tore the interior apart to form an open s.p.a.ce. Kerr jumped off the vehicle and let the scavengers start unloading the cold-storage unit.
”Are you going to be all right, Jays?” Kerr asked as he approached Jason.
”I'll be fine,” Jason said as he squinted up at the geodesic ceiling. ”This needs to be done. I can do it quicker than the machines.”
”If you're sure.”
”What, you don't trust him?” Zahara said, arms crossed over her chest.
Kerr stared her down. ”This doesn't concern you.”
”The h.e.l.l it doesn't. The South Pole is ours, not yours.”
”I'd like to see you use that argument on Lucas.”
Zahara scowled, but kept quiet at the pointed reminder of who was really in charge. ”You ain't worth the people we lost,” she said before walking away. ”Hey, Rex! That thing don't go in the d.a.m.n middle of the dome. Move it to the f.u.c.king side.”
”She's got a mouth on her like Matron,” Jason said as he finally turned toward his partner. ”Strong genes.”
”There are those who would argue that conclusion,” Kerr said.
Jason shrugged. ”Let's get to work. The sooner we finish, the sooner we sleep.”
Jason wrapped his telekinesis around the both of them, exhaustion forcing him to go slow. Beside him, Kerr watched as Jason struggled for a second to find a balance that had s.h.i.+fted permanently off-center. Kerr swallowed, his mind empty of the solace Jason's s.h.i.+elds once gave him through the now-broken bond.
”You okay?”
”I don't see the world like I used to,” Jason said. ”It's strange.”
”I can only imagine.”
Jason's power finally steadied, and in the blink of an eye they appeared outside again, off to the side of the airfield so as to not arrive in the way of anything or in anything. They fell a few centimeters to the ground, feet hitting against hard snow.
The two separated, Kerr returning to help load up the cargo sleds and Jason moving to the nearest pile of seed boxes stacked haphazardly in the snow. Kristen was leading the work crew nearest him, and it was almost funny how the scavengers were keeping their distance from her.
”Humans are so easy to scare,” Kristen said as Jason approached, her voice cheerful. ”It gets boring after a while.”
”I don't think Lucas would appreciate you killing anyone here,” Jason said, eyeing her warily.
Kristen gave him a sly look, her mind briefly brus.h.i.+ng against his mental s.h.i.+elds. ”Lucas doesn't like cleaning up my messes.”
Jason didn't know how her damaged power functioned and wouldn't trust her, no matter what a.s.surances Lucas made. The dysfunctional empath rarely left her victims breathing, but Jason was still alive. The mental pattern of his natal s.h.i.+elds must have been enough to stabilize her, to show her how to build her own. He wondered how long her sanity would last.
”Stay out of my head,” Jason said. He placed a hand on top of a wide stack the scavengers had created in the twenty minutes he'd been gone.
With a slow, methodical wink, Kristen answered, ”Maybe.”
Jason gathered his power and teleported the boxes of seeds with him to the dome, the first of many teleports. It was less weight than the cold-storage units or the various pieces of disa.s.sembled terraforming machines, which was easier for his mind to handle. He'd have to deal with the heavier items eventually.
An hour later, but what felt longer due to Jason's headache, a commotion around one of the shuttles caught his attention. Quinton was yelling instructions at scavengers as they painstakingly s.h.i.+fted one piece of the terraforming machines out of a shuttle's cargo hold. Jason swore under his breath and jogged over to that area, holding his power in reserve.
”You should have called me for this,” Jason said.
Quinton shrugged. ”You were busy with the seeds.”
”Of everything we brought out of Spitsbergen, these machines are pretty f.u.c.king important.” Jason took a step forward and raised his voice. ”Hands off, I've got it.”
Telekinesis stabilized the heavy weight of the piece, the final product something he couldn't fully envision. Lucas had the diagrams downloaded and stored in a datapad, stolen from the Arctic. The terraforming machines could be rea.s.sembled, but more would need to be built eventually. Learning to reverse engineer that technology was going to be integral to rebuilding the planet. The terraforming machines were capable of cleansing and cloning with the aid of nanites on a level that could jump-start a previously uninhabited planet such as Mars. Fixing Earth came with government interference, and in the past no one had been willing to fight it for the sake of everyone. Even now, it was anyone's guess how long the machines would last.
”Just don't drop it,” Novak joked as Jason carefully settled the piece of machinery on the flatbed of the cargo sled.
”Novak, shut the h.e.l.l up,” Quinton said. He followed a step behind Jason, keeping an eye on the telekinetic. He didn't like the strained look on Jason's face. In the back of his mind, Quinton could feel the push and pull of power not his own, and it made him a little dizzy. He wasn't sure when the bond would settle, but he hoped it would be soon.