“Dancer… Dancer I don’t like this. What
is going on, man? It’s like you said earlier, with the rock formations, and the
unbroken earth… we aren’t in the right place. Rodriguez must have overridden
the sat-com, rigged it to send out a false position… I dunno, I’m no radio
technician, but… ah, man, where the hell are we going?”
Dancer was silent, staring out the
viewfinder. Making every effort to remain as calm as possible, he lifted the
radio and, through gritted teeth, hissed “Yugo base. This is Dancer in Roller
Twelve. Do you receive me. Over. I say again, Yugo base, this is Dancer. Are
you receiving me? Hello? Is anybody receiving me at Yugo base? Rodriguez,
Jenkins, will someone respond?”
The channel cracked and hissed, but no
response came. Dancer switched to the general emergency channel, just in case
there was another Roller nearby – he knew there wasn’t, but anything was worth
a try now. Again, there was no response.
“Steffens, we have no choice, we are
going to have to ride it out until dawn and see for ourselves where in the hell
we are when the sun comes up. We’ve been off course for more than four hours,
and we could easily be in unmapped territory by now. God damned company! You
know buddy, the first couple of years out here were great, really great. We got
all the training, all the support, all the spare parts you needed and then
some. If anything went wrong, even the slightest niggle with the Roller,
there’d be support vehicles despatched from multiple locations to guide you
home. There weren’t any decommissioned relief bases, or comm stations with only
one technician on duty. There were three men to each Roller, and they even made
some of the more important runs by dropship. Now though, it’s like this whole
place is falling apart. I can’t believe they actually gave me a co-driver for
this run now that I think about it; I’ve been running solo out here for, oh,
the last two or three work cycles. Some of the guys I joined up with back at
the beginning, lifers like me, just stopped coming back after their off time
back on Earth. When I tracked a couple down back home, they told me they got
laid off! You’ve seen all the raw materials we’re carrying around out here,
right Steffens? No way anybody should be getting laid off, this planet is an
embarrassment of riches. Then they replace them with… no offence kid, but,
well, you new guys just don’t get the training we got. When they first planned
this expedition, we were signed up to three years training – yeah, that’s
right, three years! Toughest part was the acclimatisation simulators. You see
that rebreather you carry around there? Well us old timers don’t need them
because we spent months cooped up in pressurized chambers, to teach our bodies
to breathe the atmosphere here on 296e. But you new guys, you get six weeks
training, and then get sent out here with no clue what you’re doing, unable to
breathe the atmosphere, and barely getting paid enough to make coming all the
way out here worthwhile! I mean, Steffens, you’re alright buddy, don’t take it
personally, but I really miss some of those guys, you know? Ah hell, forget
about it. Sorry to go on about it, it just gets to me. But hey, it passes the
time, eh?”
“Erm, yeah, sure thing Dancer. Thanks
for the history lesson. I’ve, er, got some news feeds I’d like to take a look
at if you don’t mind…”
“yeah, whatever, I’ll shut up for a
while. Have at it, kid.”
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