Outcasts of Gideon

Aftermath : Part 1

Kishan piloted his hover across the area surrounding Amon Mons. It was a modest rise in the surface of Phaethon. This was twenty kilometers from the phaethonium field where he'd left a massive crater. He was covering his tracks.

It was standard procedure to do something like this. The importance of this practice increased when the mission was a failure. He didn't want to be doing it. Instead, he would prefer to explore the site, to understand what went wrong. That wasn't likely to happen. Getting caught in the vicinity of the event would be difficult to explain away. It wasn't a risk he would take.

Runar's organization had provided his alibi. It was his job to make it plausible. He was expected to claim faulty equipment. It wasn't one of their better ruses. If he didn't have to rely on them to get him out, he might not be following this plan.

During his time roaming, Odyssey rose and fell across the Phaethonian sky. As it did, he was witness to the planet's unending barren wasteland. He'd criss-crossed inhospitable land in the past. None of them rivaled this planet for its lack of definition. The bump that was Amon Mons offered as dramatic a geographic marker as he'd found over several hours. If he hadn't seen it on topographical maps, he wouldn't have noticed it at all. He had to constantly check his bearings against satellites. It was these facts that gave the ruse any credibility it had.

While he piloted the hover, his mind raced over his earlier actions. Time and again he started the Apeiria Projector. He repeated the calibration and re-initiated the replication sequence. Each time he found nothing in error. He thought through the placement of markers and the conversations with his contacts. Reviewing their directions and the materials supplied, nothing stood out as anomalous. He was unable to unearth any point of failure.

In his profession, success was a valuable thing. That wasn't only because it meant getting paid, but because it tended to extend one's life. Even if he could elude capture by authorities, he might suffer more from failure. People like Dagrun Runar were unforgiving, particularly when they had invested so much.

He even tried to calculate the loss. Not knowing much about phaethonium, he could only guess at the value. The loss of the ore had to have been bad enough. Losing the potential from the failed replication was probably ten times that.

He steered the hover westward for fifty more kilometers. Then he turned northward toward the Leto transit station. This circuitous route brought him back within ten kilometers of the crater. If anything, he was a little surprised not to see more activity in the area. He was certain distant parts of the planet felt the tremor. Monitoring from the sky must have started almost immediately after the event. By now, vessels of the curious – if not planet authorities – would have descended on the area. Yet he saw little activity.

Before him, the lights of the Leto outlined the small transit facility. They were steady beacons he could aim for even this early into the returning night. There he would finally be rid of this hover. He hoped that would lessen the sour taste of the night's activities as well.

Due to its remote location, this was one of the quieter stations on the planet. None-the-less, he was surprised to find himself still quite alone. In fact, there didn't even appear to be maintenance or service personnel in the area. He wondered how completely Runar controlled these things. That was his best rationale for the lack of traffic.

He parked the hover beside an empty storage building. Keeping a wary eye on the station, he pulled together his few personal items. There was still no noticeable activity in the area. If he thought about it, he would have preferred a very busy station. Blending into a crowd was relatively easy to do. An empty station meant that his timing needed to be precise. The sound and motion of the transit pods would offer some misdirection as he entered. It was his practice to think of everything. Any clue that led back to him was another thread to be pulled on, another way to be exposed.