The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  Dana tried not to laugh at their attempt to disentangle themselves. But she also watched the edge of the forest a hundred yards below for any movement, hoping their arrival hadn’t been seen.

  Something inside her told her they had. It wasn’t an internal fear, but something beyond that, a feeling Dana couldn’t place.

  “Mirris, is anyone—”

  The compulsion came not through words, but a touch. The moment Mirris’s hand contacted hers, a single thought washed through her.

  Run. They sensed us.

  Dana dashed forward, breaking the touch with Mirris, but was still aware of something in the space beyond her sight. Something getting closer.

  Hurry.

  Dana pushed her legs, racing along what was now a much more familiar landscape.

  “The stone is close,” Dana whispered.

  “Yeah, but so are they,” Mirris said. “And they’re running, too. I can sense them. I don’t think Remiren knows I’m here, or she would be masking.”

  Remarkably, no animals in the forest had even hinted at their presence.

  Ritser. He was masking them, hiding all of them from every creature in the woods. That was far beyond Dana’s skill.

  But their enchanter wasn’t masking them. That meant—

  “Don’t listen to your thoughts,” Dana said. “They’re tricking us into running straight to them.” But she didn’t stop running. She was close to the place where the bloodstone lay only a few yards from view. The kazen must have gone beyond it and were coming back.

  Every outcropping she passed seemed to be the one that would retreat into the small, dark hole that led to the pool. It was close.

  “Stop, we’ve passed it,” Ryke said, suddenly.

  “Lies. Don’t listen to it.” Dana kept running and suddenly came upon the familiar spot. “Here. Here. Here.” She dove into the cove, scrambled forward in the blackness, and found the mechanodron sack.

  Then she pushed back out of the hole and handed it to Mirris.

  “Get it to the sanctum. Hide it in that old supply store near the hot room.” No one would look there.

  Mirris nodded, shouldered the bag, and raced down the hill. She could mask herself well enough. There was a chance she could make it back without being noticed. But without Mirris, Remira could easily control Ryke. And that was a scary thought.

  “Ryke, stay here,” Dana said. “I’ll go fetch the stone. Don’t let them past you. If you think you need to go in to save me, it’s a false thought. I’ll only call ‘go away’ if I really need help.”

  “Got it.”

  “And if I want you to run, I’ll say ‘kiss me.’”

  “Makes sense.” He smiled. “Good luck.”

  Dana wormed through the hole once again, pushing along the familiar rock until her outstretched arm glowed over the sayathi-rich pool. The light was much dimmer than she remembered. Worse, the sayathenite nodes weren’t sending pulses, they were receiving them from somewhere deeper in the cave.

  It’s been moved!

  Perhaps the cave fish had ferried it a little further in, for safety.

  This was going to get dangerous. If she got in the water to find the bloodstone and then tried to make it back to the sanctum, she could die of exposure. The only way to stay warm would be to make a fire, and then she would be found.

  No need to risk it. The kazen can take it from here.

  The kazen? It had to be a foreign thought.

  Remiren’s prompts were no longer vague sensations. Full, coherent thoughts were coalescing in her mind.

  There was no more time to think. She couldn’t trust her own thoughts anymore. Dana hastily unbuttoned her coat and stripped it off, scratching her elbow on the jutting piece of limestone. Ow.

  Dana pulled off her boots and gloves and struggled out of her pants, leaving only her socks on her feet to avoid cuts from sharp cave rocks.

  Ryke’s voice shouted into the cave. “Dana, Korren is here. I can’t fight him and Remiren.”

  She took a deep breath. “Then, kiss me.”

  “Dana—”

  “Kiss me now!”

  Dana crawled into the chill water of the pool in only her shirt, underwear, and socks.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps. The muscles of her chest clamped like she was in a vise. She took a deep breath and plunged her head under the water.

  Chapter 29

  Aboard Shuttle 23, the near weightlessness of the orbital entry trajectory made Jet’s head feel like a giant ball of water.

  Monique drifted over from Shuttle 24 to where Jet’s sleeping bag was strapped to a bulkhead. “You awake?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sidled up to the bulkhead and drew a strap around her waist.

  “Not a fan of zero-g?”

  She shook her head. “Makes me anxious.” Monique rested her head on Jet’s shoulder. “My stomach is . . . not good.”

  “You’re not going to puke on me?”

  “This is better.”

  “You know, you’re awfully distracting—walk into my room. Strap yourself to my bunk . . .”

  “I know. Shut up.”

  “Yes, Corporal.”

  She lay there for the better part of an hour, her breathing punctuated by sighs.

  “Are you crying?” Jet asked.

  “Not yet.”

  Jet looked over at her. “What do you mean ‘not yet’?”

  “Well, this thing is bound to go badly. It’s only a matter of time before—”

  “Before what?”

  Silence ate at Jet, a raw hunger of curiosity. What did Monique fear? Was it losing her own life, or losing him?

  Had he been that blind?

  She turned to face him. “Do you want to make out or something?”

  “Just to pass the time?”

  “Just to pass the time with me.”

  Jet swallowed. “Is this like a trick question?”

  “Afraid not, Corporal.”

  He burst into laughter and Monique joined him. Then she pressed a kiss against his lips—a friendly peck that grew into a long, passionate kiss that only made the small space between them seem to grow.

  “I can’t hold onto you, can I?” Monique wrapped her hand behind Jet’s neck.

  “Not for long, I guess.”

  “Well, dang it.”

  “When did you decide having me around was so much fun?”

  Monique shrugged. “I have eyes, don’t I? You’ve been checking me out at least four hours a shift.”

  “Only four?” Jet said.

  Monique sputtered a laugh and poked her finger into his chest. “You are trouble.”

  “Says the girl who—”

  “Shut it, Corp, and kiss me again, before your defense AI gets jealous.”

  “Angel is not infatuated with me.”

  “She certainly had a few questions for me about you.”

  “Who started Angel up again?”

  Monique blushed. “I did, of course.”

  Jet could see this going somewhere awkward. “You pulled rank—you and your college education—and ran my AI?”

  “Just a little girl talk, that’s all.” Monique leaned up and kissed him again. In the meanwhile, she pulled her strap loose and wrapped it around both of them, buckling them together.

  “No complaints?” she said, a glimmer in her eye. The warmth of her body pressed into his.

  “No complaints.”

  She stared into his eyes and traced her fingers through his hair. “Why does this feel like losing you?”

  Jet laid his forehead against hers. “Sometimes it hurts. It’s what makes us human.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Emotion squeezed him. This was just a fling, of course—brought on by the insanity of their mission. “You want to keep me, for yourself?”

  “What about the Xahna girl you were looking at pictures of?”

  “Well that’s pretty easy to explain. I was obviously projecting my male frustra
tion onto a passive target.”

  “All that pent-up attraction—who could you possibly have been pining for?” Monique said, batting her eyelashes.

  “What about you?” Jet said. “Were you just pretending to ignore me, or are you just really good at playing hard to get?”

  “Well that’s pretty easy to explain,” she started, copying Jet’s tactic. “I was obviously conscious of showing any sign of emotional attachment that might jeopardize my place on the mission.”

  “Ah, that makes sense.”

  Monique’s pony-tailed hair drifted up in the microgravity. “Doesn’t it?”

  Jet wasn’t sure if he believed her, and he wasn’t sure she believed him. It was too much fun to let go of all that worry and let the pleasure of each other’s company hide the fear and anxiety of an extra-terrestrial mission that carried the weight of an entire world’s salvation and the fate of the Believers.

  Here were two people clinging to what they desperately wanted to keep—a human connection, a semblance of hope.

  Monique laid her head against Jet’s chest, keeping one hand over his heart and the other arm looped behind his neck. Soon, she was asleep.

  This is going to be interesting to explain when Fleet Command gets the monitor camera logs.

  But rather than dreading the ribbing he would get, Jet basked in the fading light of human comradery. Very soon, he would be surrounded by alien creatures and alien life—the only human on Xahna.

  The speaker blared. “Naman, we have confirmation from Fleet Command.” It was Captain Decker. “Speaker for the Dead is go. And I mean now.”

  “Some timing,” Monique muttered.

  Jet unclipped the buckle.

  Dormit’s voice sounded over the speaker. “How in tarnation did they approve that half-witted scheme?”

  “I have people on the inside,” Jet answered.

  “People?” Dormit grumbled over the speaker.

  “Well . . . person.” It was the High Seer. She and Ahreth had probably both supported the strategy.

  “Who?” Dormit growled.

  “You know, I liked you better when you were in cryo.”

  “You would say that, you no-good, rotten horse thief!”

  “Didn’t we lock out his John Wayne library access? I thought we bit-bombed those files.”

  “‘Fraid not, sucker.”

  “This is never going to work,” said Teea’s small voice.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “And your Xahnan is still terrible.”

  “Noted.” Jet nodded at Monique, who moved across the dock to the other shuttle and shut the hatch.

  Jet shut his hatch and twisted the decoupling ring. “Bye.”

  He was alone, as the turquoise waters and white clouds of Xahna loomed in the viewport.

  “One more thing,” Decker said. “The orbital surveillance AI just picked up activity in Torsica. The ASP dropship in the Torsican capital is launching.”

  “What?”

  “It’s headed west. Looks like a suborbital trajectory parallel to yours. You’re going to have company when you land.”

  “What kind of company?”

  “As near as the orbital AIs can tell, ASP simuloids. The things that boarded the dropship look like Xahnans but have irregular thermal signatures.”

  “They made simuloids that look like Xahnans? Oh great.” At least I packed my rifle.

  “Whatever sort of rebellion this renegade in Shoul Falls is pushing for,” Decker said, “she’s about to be in way over her head. She doesn’t know about the simuloids.”

  “What is the dropship’s ETA at the Aesican coast?”

  “Two hours.”

  “Mine?”

  “Ninety minutes. Tiberius thinks they’ll set down far enough from the city to avoid detection, then try to mingle with the population. We don’t know their goal, but it probably involves you or the business with that renegade.”

  “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” Jet said. “Looks like I gotta find that girl first. Angel, plot fastest approach to Shoul Falls.”

  “Done.”

  “Engage thrusters.”

  * * *

  Submerged in the frigid cave water, Dana could see nothing but the feeble glow from her skin. Then a phosphorescent pulse ran along the bottom of the cave and forked out toward several sayathenite nodules. A myriad of weaker echo pulses ran back. Dana fixed her eyes on the place where she had last seen the glow and swam ahead in the darkness, her fingers brushing along the bottom of the cave pool, aware that overhead, the roof of the cavern was sloping down toward her head.

  Dana pulled with her arms on any rocky shapes she found, propelling herself forward. There was no guarantee when, or if, she would find another place to breathe.

  The cave fish couldn’t have taken the bloodstone far.

  I hope.

  Light flickered along the floor of the cavern in a small pulse. Instead of following the pulse, Dana looked up, seeking for the tell-tale reflection from an air pocket.

  There.

  But it was too small to breathe from.

  Hurry!

  Dana kicked her bare legs, diving for the bottom to keep her head away from the sharp limestone crags on the top of the cave. Spreading her fingers and toes to catch the water in the webbing between them, Dana propelled herself rapidly through the cave, following the current.

  Another pulse of light ran through a small gap.

  Clinging to the air in her lungs that tried to escape her in a last gasp for breath, Dana wiggled through the crevice and reached up to find that the cave roof tilted sharply upward. Dana kicked forward, and with a jolt of surprise, her hand rose completely out of the water. Dana took one desperate pull with her arms, and her head and shoulders rose completely out of the water.

  Unfortunately, the cave had no bloodstone. Worse still, she wasn’t alone.

  An animal presence moved rapidly toward her through the water, its killer instinct roused.

  Rakefish. A miner’s worst nightmare.

  Dana couldn’t believe her luck.

  Before the accelerating fish could strike at her and tear a chunk of flesh, Dana dove under and thrust every shred of will she could muster into the massive fish.

  “Take me to the bright stone. Now!”

  Dana grasped the stiff dorsal fin of the rakefish and was hauled swiftly along. A minute later she came up for a breath and switched rides to a larger rakefish with fresh strength in the muscles along its armor-scaled sides to drive its lashing tail.

  Dana’s mind wandered as the cold took her. Feeling in her extremities turned to the mere suggestion of touch. Only the rakefish’s awareness of the massive drag coming from its fin told her she was still holding on.

  There was total darkness save the light from the sayathi swarming around the bloodstone, beaming their strength to the ruling sayathi within. It was a remarkable organism, both photosynthetic and bioluminescent, as Forz described—or part plant and part animal, as Dana imagined them.

  The rakefish slowed.

  Dana came to the surface with barely enough will to breathe. She struggled along the shallow slope that lead over the sharp protrusions of sayathenite.

  Light shone from the far end of the cavern, a familiar blue-green glow.

  That’s it!

  Dana splashed forward. She struggled to reach the edge of the pool.

  Resistance against the push of her kick told her that her numb feet had found the sloping cave floor.

  Dana stood on her feet and clambered awkwardly over thick nests of sayathenite nodes, whose pointed shapes her feet scarcely registered through her soaked socks.

  There were hundreds of the nodules.

  This, Dana realized, must have been the central chamber of one of the bloodstones conquered by the Shoul Falls colony.

  Animals must come to the pool to make blood sacrifices.

  As she neared the center of the conquered colony where the glowing Shoul Fall
s bloodstone now commanded its empire of underwater colonies, Dana’s bare feet found surer footing on a tree root running along the bottom of the cave, and she scrambled out of the water and up onto a dry section of cave floor.

  She rubbed herself frantically, jumping and running in place.

  A chill draft ran over her back, reminding Dana of the far colder air outside the sheltered cave. She squeezed out her hair and rubbed her numb hands on her body, trying to get dry. She ran in place, arms and legs responding far too slowly as she tried to force blood back into her unsteady limbs.

  When she could bear the thought of getting back in the water, Dana waded back into the pool, chill water biting at her legs.

  Dana leaned closer, reaching for the bloodstone. It seemed just below the surface.

  What in the blue skies of Xahna?

  The stone hadn’t seemed nearly that large the last time she had touched it. She leaned even closer. Her jaw grew slack. Dozens of new faceted nodules riddled the outside of the bloodstone.

  It’s grown!

  Perhaps the conquered master stones of the other pools had somehow transferred their ruling sayathi to this one.

  But how could a microorganism travel so far?

  The answer was obvious.

  Cave fish.

  This cavern was large enough for cave fish, but the small pool in Shoul Falls did not have any large fish.

  Dana quickly grasped the stone and broke it from its pillar.

  The pulses stopped.

  Her hand glowing fiercely, Dana drew the much-larger bloodstone out of the water.

  Gotcha.

  The kazen could no longer track its position. And she was several hundred yards closer to the sanctum than where she entered the water.

  I can make a run for it.

  It was only moments later that she realized she was seeing not with the eyes of the retreating rakefish but with her own.

  This cavern was lit with the faintest light from the cave exit.

  Morning is coming.

  The sun would soon be up.

  Warmth. Even the memory of it seemed soaked with the cold that nearly immobilized her.

  Dana struggled to the side of the pool, her will at the edge of abandonment.

  Her body wanted only to lie on the limestone and die.

  Get dry.

  Dana removed her dripping shirt and wrung out her hair.