Battery-powered lights illuminated the tunnels, but other than black rock and the occasional lava worm, there was little to see, so he focused on the nav screen, watching the car eat up the distance. The drone had shot some decent footage of the landing pad, and worker reports were generally reliable, but Biggs wanted to see the site for himself and check out the mystery building while he was at it.
Little squares on the screen represented buildings, the near-solid clump of them indicating he was passing under Dragon Town. Dozens of feet of solid rock separated him from the largely uninhabited metropolis, but he hunched over anyway. Dragons creeped him out.
The tiny squares thinned out, indicating he was leaving Dragon Town behind, and the car veered a hard right and sped up an incline toward a marker on the screen. First up: the landing site. In less than a minute, the transport rolled to a stop.
He retrieved a face mask and respirator from the car’s rear compartment, slipped his arms through the oxygen tank straps, attached the hoses to the headpiece, and then pulled the latter over his head and snapped it to his hazmat suit. The air tanks had been adapted from scuba gear for land use, and they weighed about forty pounds. Suiting up to go to the surface was a pain in the ass, but it beat being gassed to death.
A ladder had been bolted to the rock inside the fumarole channel.
Near the ladder squirmed a foot-long ashy gray lava worm. Biggs pulled out his blaster and shot it. It exploded, splattering slime over his boots and lower legs. Shit. He’d have to hose off before reentering the habitat area. Insulated by the hazmat suit, he couldn’t smell anything, but nothing stank worse than lava worm guts.
He stepped around the worst of the muck and climbed the ladder hand over hand. Once the lizards finished a project, they didn’t tend to return to it, but he peeked out the hole and scanned the area to confirm it was clear before scrambling out.
Sunlight filtering through a toxic atmosphere painted the sky a rosy purple. It always looked like the sun was rising or setting. Even he could appreciate the beauty, but everything on the planet could bite you in the ass. There were so damn many things—geologic and zoologic—that could kill you. Gazing at the pretty color, you could fall in a crevasse or be standing still and get stung by a venomous tetrapod.
And don’t forget the dragons.
He surveyed the area, while keeping an eye out for predators. Rocky spires and jagged hills had been more or less leveled, the debris carted away, leaving an area akin to a huge asphalt parking lot, except it was still rough and uneven. Dragon ships didn’t require runways; they didn’t land on wheels but merely set down, so the surface didn’t need to be perfectly flat or smooth. There were no fissures to catch the unwary, although he spied a few active, smoking fumaroles. He tromped farther out to better gauge the size and pivoted in a 360. The cleared area appeared to comprise several hundred acres, possibly even a section of ground.
They intended to land a behemoth of a ship.
A shitload of dragons would be coming. God, he hated those fucking lizards. He thumped his burning chest through the hazmat suit and stomped back across the field. At the tunnel entrance, a little puff of smoke wafted up from the hole. And the ladder had disappeared.
This wasn’t the entrance.
Fuck. He’d tried to retrace his steps, but he must have gotten off track. Everything looked the same out here, just black rock, black rock, and more black rock. Since the topography had been leveled, there were no outcroppings or spires to use as landmarks.
There. Over there. Another fumarole hole. Relief washed over him until he got to it and discovered it wasn’t the right one, either. Acid gurgled into his mouth, and he was forced to swallow it since he couldn’t spit with the hood on.
His gloved hand shot to his chest, ready to activate the rescue beacon, but he held off. If he had to be rescued, he’d appear weak. He took some deep slow breaths, and when he felt calmer continued his search for the entrance.
He blasted a couple more lava worms and an enormous tentacled tetrapod that appeared out of nowhere. Twenty minutes and ten holes later, he found the correct fumarole and scrambled down the ladder.
He unsnapped and tore off the hood and sucked in great gasps of piped, sanitized air. He tore open the first aid kit and grabbed a wad of gauze to wipe away the eye-stinging sweat. Then he took a long pull from his water bottle and climbed into the vehicle, half of a mind to cancel the next stop, except Jackson Biggs did not quit, did not surrender, did not fear.
He punched the coordinates for the mystery building into the nav system, and the car sped off.
* * * *
From the base of the steps, he surveyed the massive structure. Like other buildings, it was constructed of pure white stone, but similarity ended there. It didn’t resemble anything else the lizards had built. Why had they broken their established pattern and erected something so different? It didn’t make sense. Then again, they were alien animals, so maybe there was no explanation for why they did what they did. Yet, experience had taught him that often it was the little mysteries that ended up being significant, so it was a good thing he’d decided to see it for himself.
The columned building was round with a domed roof, but compared to the ornate, detailed architecture, it was plain to the point of austerity. Storage facility perhaps? Prison maybe? The latter would account for why it sat atop a
