After counting to sixty, she tried again. It was much smoother this time. Whatever issue they had isolated to the MICS satellite must have been fixed, at least for the moment.
She checked her map. Fifty kilometers from the target location, and plenty of time to get there.
Parkowski pushed her robot hard on the flat, rocky plain, but had to lay off her speed when they came to another crater-filled moor. She had to deftly maneuver the ACHILLES unit through the crevasses in the ground, much like near the more mountainous region earlier, to ensure that its “feet” didn’t slip through.
Twenty-five kilometers to go. There were more boulders here, likely broken off of the nearby mountain range, and pushed down by wind and gravity. Parkowski could no longer take a more-or-less straight route to her destination, rather, she had to weave through the increasingly dense field of large rocks that blocked her path.
She was now within seven kilometers of Point Charlie.
Up until this point, Parkowski hadn’t noticed any noise, other than the artificial sounds of her own robot’s footsteps and the radio chatter in her ears. Whether it was the VR software filtering out external sounds, or her own ears and brain tuning them out, she wasn't sure. But there was noise, the footsteps of technicians and scientists meandering around outside of her rig or static over the comm net, and even more artificial sounds from the VR environment such as the scraping of the ACHILLES unit’s foot against the ground. She just didn't notice them.
However, there were now some strange sounds that had to be coming from inside of the environment itself. She heard a low rumble, then a weird, chirping sound not unlike that of a bird, followed by a loud roar.
Parkowski looked around, instinctively seeking the source of the sounds. They were completely out of place on Venus. But, all she saw was the desolate landscape, the same one she had traversed over the last few hours.
A little nervousness was starting to seep into her armor of confidence.
“Hey doc, I’m hearing some weird stuff.”
Pham came on the net. “Weird stuff?”
“Yeah, some sounds. Did you guys hear anything out there?”
“No, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“There’s not anything at all? Didn’t a bird get into the high bay a few weeks back?”
“No, nothing like that. Grace, is everything ok?”
“I’m fine, Doc, seriously. I just heard something odd.”
Pham didn’t respond. Parkowski kept moving forward towards the objective, the strange chirping sound still coming through her headset.
There was another sound now, a low rumble at a different frequency than the earlier one, but she tuned it out. It had to be some kind of bug in the software, perhaps some kind of programming artifact left in by the development team.
Not all of the sweat was from her exertion now. Parkowski worried that something was going wrong.
At two kilometers from Point Charlie, the lag started to get better and the sounds disappeared. Parkowski breathed a sigh of relief. She was almost done.
The aliasing at the horizon went away, the blockiness of the far-off ridge giving way to a more natural curve. Whatever communications issue that she had been experiencing throughout her mission was gone.
She saw movement.
A gigantic wyvern rose from the other side of the ridge. It was red and brown, about the size of a city bus with wings.
The dragon surreally flapped its wings as it hovered a hundred feet above the planet’s surface.
Her jaw was on the floor.
Parkowski was stunned. Not only were dragons not real, and certainly not on Venus, but her rational mind wouldn’t allow for anything, let alone a gigantic mythical creature, to fly in the thick atmosphere. But there it was, clear as day, in front of her.
She was exposed and out in the open. The field of boulders was kilometers behind her, there was no way she would make it back there if the dragon would attack.
The dragon stopped flapping its wings and went into a lazy glide in an orbit about half of its original altitude.
Parkowski breathed out. Maybe it hadn’t noticed her.
But it had.
The beast made a sharp turn and came straight in her direction.
Parkowski screamed.
The dragon swooped down and opened its mouth wide. Flames shot out towards the ACHILLES unit.
Her survival instincts kicked in. Parkowski dove towards the planet’s rocky, cracked surface. Unfortunately, she forgot that she wasn’t actually there on Venus.
She fell to the floor in a heap of wires, equipment, and hardware.
It was like something out of a nightmare. Parkowski felt trapped, constrained by the wires wrapped around her body.
The sensor on her left leg slid off as she slammed, knee-first into the lightly padded floor. Her other leg hit a moment later, followed by her torso and arms. Parkowski felt a shooting pain in her right elbow that had gotten twisted in the fall, and a slight ache in her knee.
The dragon was still there, overhead, blotting out the stars. It roared and started another dive.
