The tunnels and districts of New Vitriol were narrow and cramped. Each and every section had been laboriously cut into the rock with hand-held equipment, it seemed. In some areas, they hadn’t even bothered to cover the stony metal walls, just fusing metal sheets into them or even just buffing the stone itself to be a sort of bulkhead.
There was no gravity, either – at least none appreciable – and they had to use handholds stuck into the walls, floors, and ceilings.
It was interesting, in a way; small stores and proprietors could be over their heads or under their feet. Pirra just wished there was anything interesting in them.
What food stalls she saw seemed to mostly sell different flavors and textures of algae paste, with even pre-packaged survival rations being presented as delicacies.
The prices were all in local work credits, and the prices seemed exorbitant. Something that looked like it might have been a decent meal cost twice as much as good work gloves.
Not that she was wanting to buy anything; even besides how unappetizing the food was, she had a hunch that the shop owners wouldn’t want to deal with xenos.
It might have been the glares they kept giving to her and Cenz that told her that.
She was glad that Alexander had opted to stay on the ship. He’d been born on the Phobos colony around Mars, he had little interest in seeing what he called ‘a worse version of that’.
She thought he was just worried he’d say something stupid and cause a fight. He wasn’t a combative man, except when it came to others reacting poorly to her. As good a feature of him as that was, this was not the time or the place to go looking for a fight.
“This rock is fascinating,” Cenz said, leaned over and intently studying the wall. “The composition makes me think it must be an inner-system object that migrated to the Kuiper Belt, rather than something that formed out here naturally.”
Pirra was hardly paying attention. Something was making her nervous – it was hard for her to tell if it was just the confined nature of the tunnels, the local sentiment or something else altogether.
She was probably overreacting with the locals. Despite the stares they had gotten, no one had said anything or made a move, and the majority of people just seemed content to ignore them.
Probably they had seen aliens before – certainly they did if any mass-media made it out this way. Dessei produced even more than humanity in that regard. Theatrics were a very popular past-time among them both. And Qlerning dwarfed even Dessei and humans combined in that passion.
She just thought of it in a human term; peacocking. Some beings just really liked attention.
Sometimes she wished she had been born with a more muted feather scheme. Some were mottled brown and white – plain, but at least not standing out as much as her bright greens.
But one couldn’t change the colors of their feathers.
“There’s a higher concentration of phosphorus-bearing minerals than I would normally expect. That’s a good sign!” Cenz continued. “No wonder they picked this rock. Phosphorous is vital to carbon-based life, as I’m sure you know.”
She had learned that at some point, but it wasn’t the kind of information that popped up in her mind a lot.
“This might account for the high bacterial growth,” Cenz continued.
The Coral continued to walk along, one of the fingers on his hand opening to reveal a suite of sensors. As he began to scrape at the wall, evidently taking a sample, a few heads turned their way.
Pirra flicked on her comm. “Sir, I feel like the locals might be finding your tests a little suspicious. I think it’s better not to antagonize them.”
“Hm, that’s good thinking,” he replied, standing upright.
“Looks so sturdy,” he said, just loudly enough that the words could carry. “They’ve done such a good job with this place.”
Perhaps he thought that would help placate them, but she wasn’t sure if they cared about his view of their architectural skills.
“Let’s move on,” she suggested, wrapping her wing drapes around herself and heading away.
Cenz said nothing, but followed her, a calm smile on his face screen.
She noted that her tracking signal for the Hurricane blipped out for a moment.
“Cenz, did you see that with the tracker?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “That was odd, I’m not sure why it happened. But we have the signal back. Would you like to head back towards the ship?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she answered.
As they moved, she saw figures coming out of shadows around them; humans wearing crude cloth masks. Everything about them appeared to be trouble, from their fake loitering to the tools they gripped. They seemed more ready to use them as weapons rather than labor.
“This way,” she said to Cenz, taking a turn. The signal for the Hurricane blipped out again, and this time it stayed off.
“Damn it,” she hissed.
“I’ve got it,” Cenz said. “It might be getting scattered by something in the asteroid itself.”
Pirra saw the tracker return, but it seemed to be suggesting a different path for her. Had the signal changed, or had her system calculated a better path?
She couldn’t be sure.
The masked humans had followed them. Her systems could see right through their masks, figure out the shapes beneath, but the faces of individuals she’d never met had no meaning to her – and importantly, faces scanned this way were frequently inadmissible in trials.
One of them had armor on, she saw, that of the station’s security. Tape covered his badge and other identifying marks. His rifle was unslung in his hands.
“Cenz, we might have trouble,” she noted.
“I saw them. Let’s just keep moving and see if we can head back towards the ship.”
“Understood.”
Cenz took a sharp corner and she followed. The men behind them seemed to hesitate, and she knew they had good reason; she’d let them see her hand on her sidearm as she’d ducked through. This narrow tunnel would be a death zone for them if they forced her to use it.
Glancing down the path and following Cenz, she realized that this route had been a mistake; while defensible from the mouth, it was lined with bore holes large enough for a human to hide in.
She had no idea how deep they went.
“Cenz-” she started.
“I know. Just get through as fast as you can.”
Her scanners tried to measure the depth of each hole, and she strayed nearer the shallow ones, but they were hard to get a good read on. The metals in them were scattering her scans.
Passing with her back to one, she saw the man too late. He wasn’t wearing a mask and looked different from the others, grungier.
“Hah!” he said in a cracking voice. His hand lunged out, grabbing at her wing shrouds. His hand closed upon a feather and yanked at it.
A stab of sharp pain went through her, but she didn’t let it take her attention. The feather came off in his hand, and she lashed out with a boot, smashing the reinforced toe into his cheek.
The man’s head snapped back, but he wasn’t stopped. The look in his eyes grew more crazed, and she realized that he was under the effect of some sort of drug.
He crouched against the rock and lunged for her.
She likewise kicked off the wall, just barely dodging his flailing arms. Her sidearm came up-
“Don’t!” Cenz cried.
She didn’t shoot. Instead, she smashed the butt of the pistol against the man’s temple.
In the lack of gravity, he went into a sideways tumble, crunching painfully into the wall and bouncing. His eyes still looked crazy, but he was, at the very least, stunned.
His cries had attracted attention – or perhaps the others following them took it as a signal. Silhouettes crowded the end of the tunnel, and someone cried out in anger.
“Get them!”
“Go!” she shouted to Cenz. The Coral clearly had been figuring out an escape path, and he dove down into one of the holes in the wall.
Giving herself a great push, Pirra followed him.
Other Terrestrial 