Dawn of Procyon Read Online Free Page A

looking for lunch and ending up finding the transponder. I guarantee it.”
    “Just get the transponder and put it in here, huh? We’ll be back before lunch, easy.”
    Landry glanced back at the door to the hangar, uneasy about the exchange with Cait.
    “Yeah, we better be.”

 
    Chapter 4
    PSD 29-212: 0802 hours
    Landry fidgeted inside his EVA suit, attempting to get comfortable within the cramped confines of the scout’s cockpit. Ahead of him and slightly lower down sat Gus at the flight controls, busily flipping switches on the avionics panel as the Seagull powered up. Landry glanced back toward the hangar entrance, but Cait had not returned.
    Maybe she’ll just forget about it.
    “Yeah, right,” he muttered.
    “You say something?” Gus said over his comms, turning his head and raising his voice over the noise of the engines.
    “Nothing.”
    Gus gave a thumbs up, and in a moment the scout began to trundle forward and out of the hangar. The space narrowed and the ceiling got lower as they continued, then a door behind them lowered. There was a loud hissing sound around them as the airlock cycled the oxygen, and then the bay doors opened out on the glinting red landscape of Proc-One. Landry heard the ship’s AI beep as it came online, but Gus reached out and shut it down before it could complete its boot up sequence.
    “Okay, we’re good,” Gus said. “Hang onto your breakfast.”
    The engines rotated into the vertical position and thrust increased. Then the landing gear retracted and the scout lifted into the air and began to skim across the ground. The airlock disappeared behind them, and then suddenly they were rocketing forward, kicking up plumes of red sand and dust as they surged along.
    “Whoa!” Landry exclaimed, his hands digging into the edges of his seat involuntarily. “You gonna pull her up anytime soon, man?”
    “No can do, buddy. We’ve gotta keep this bird low. Don’t want anything showing up on radar.”
    “Oh yeah, I forgot we were on a suicide mission.”
    Gus laughed. “Don’t sweat it, Landry. I’ve got this.”
    Landry turned his head and looked out across the desolate landscape, at the sun hanging low in the red-tinged morning sky. Around here, morning was a loose term—Procyon was in fact a binary system, consisting of a larger star Procyon A, and a smaller companion white dwarf Procyon B—and so the classifications of night, day, dusk, and dawn that were used on Earth did not strictly apply. It was rare for the planet to be in complete darkness. Usually at least one of the Procyon stars was visible at any given time, and even though Procyon B gave off far less light, the evening was too bright to be considered night. Instead, Proc-One went from daylight to a kind of dusk and then back to daylight again.
    The binary nature of the system also played havoc with the planet’s orbit, resulting in harsh changes in climate at different times of the year. This instability meant that life had never taken hold on the planet’s surface, and never would.
    Only invaders like humans and the Argoni would ever walk the surface , Landry thought.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Gus said, interrupting Landry’s reverie.
    “Huh?”
    “Check it out.” Gus pointed to where both Procyon A and B were rising over the horizon. “This is an amazing place, Landry.”
    “Funny. It always seemed like a dead rock to me.”
    “Nah, man. We’re privileged to be here.” He adjusted the attitude of the scout as they passed over a hill, then dipped downward into the valley on the other side. “That’s one of the reasons I can’t leave. To be given the honor of looking out at the glory of something like this . . .” He trailed off, then a moment later began again with renewed vigor. “Can you imagine what it would be like if there was no war? If we were just free to explore this place instead of spending every waking moment trying to repel the Toads?”
    “Not really.”
    “I mean, it was