by Kelly Gay
When the shaft angled up again, she paused, on her hands and knees, feeling utterly defeated. Tears stung her eyes. She was so damn tired.…
The climb seemed endless.
Spots were rubbed raw on her elbows and blisters formed on her palms. Her muscles ached and burned and screamed, and her back was threatening to seize up. What little adrenaline had come from seeing the human remains and realizing she wasn’t alone was now long gone, and if she didn’t clear the tunnel or shaft—or whatever the hell it was—she was afraid she might not be able to continue.
So she counted each awkward push in an effort to stay focused, to keep moving toward that little, hazy smudge of light in the distance.
How long it took in reality she had no idea; it seemed like hours before she reached the end the shaft, coming out on her stomach between two angled slabs of rough rock held tight to the ground by enormous twisted roots. She slid down to a ledge and collapsed, chest heaving, weak, thirsty.
Her head fell back and she gazed up at a strange, unexpected sight. A gigantic twisted tree rose above her. Its fat, monstrous limbs snaked out like thick tentacles against a hazy dirt-yellow sky. Hairy vines hung in loops from branch to branch, and primitive birds with long tails flew in the distance on wings that flapped slow and methodical. It was an eerie prehistoric picture with an atmosphere that dashed any remaining hope of her being on Zeta Halo.
A hum of denial built in her chest even as she knew the reality: She’d been yanked from the Cartographer, pulled through space, and spit out on an entirely different world.
And here she thought being on a Halo was the craziest thing to ever happen.
She should’ve known.
CHAPTER 23
Ace of Spades / New Carthage
Ram leaned against the front of the tactical table on the bridge, arms folded across his chest. The northern hemisphere of New Carthage filled the lower half of the viewscreen. He was impressed. The blue girl had gotten herself a nice pair of orbital defense platforms since his last visit. The closest platform lay two hundred kilometers off the portside bow. “Let’s not get their attention,” he said, giving the crew a deliberate look.
“You got it. Coordinates are set for landing,” Lessa replied.
Ram drew in a resolute breath and then relaxed, his gaze settling on Spark’s avatar. “All right then, Spark, make us disappear.”
“Done,” he replied instantly. “With my latest repairs, we are running dark at eighty percent.”
They’d put the Ace of Spades’s stealth capabilities to the test many times, but it was still a hold-your-breath moment as she slid past planet defenses and entered the upper atmosphere.
Few places in Ram’s travels fit solely in the scrapbook of good memories. Despite its dangers, New Carthage was such a place—an amused snort escaped him—probably because all those memories were from before he was a salvager and captain.
“What are you laughing about?” Niko asked.
“Just memories, kid.” A whole lot of memories…
“You’ve been here before?” Lessa asked.
“A long time ago. Back when the rallies were free to anyone with a working quad.”
“So, what,” Niko cut in, “like the 2400s?”
Giving the kid a scowl wasn’t easy when biting back a smile, but Ram tried. Lessa stifled her own laugh, and even Spark, that ancient, inscrutable mystery, let out a rare chuckle.
“Seriously, though… you rode the rallies?” asked Lessa.
“Don’t sound so surprised. There are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
“Oh, yeah, like what?”
“How about I nearly won the rally back in ’34. Came in second by twenty-nine minutes.”
“No, the hell you didn’t,” Niko said, amazed, and rightly so.
Just finishing a rally back then earned celebrity status in the colonies, but more important, it earned respect. Those early rallies were rough-around-the-edges, unregulated, high-stakes, long-distance gauntlet runs over uncharted alien topography, and landscapes full of lethal unknowns. Not for the faint of heart or the unprepared.
In other words, good times.
Ram had been a kid in ’34, Niko’s age. No fear. All go, all the time. He’d gotten lucky way too many times to count. “Komoyans can build some sweet rally quads,” he said, heart full of pride even as he gave a casual shrug. “You follow the circuit?”
Niko shook his head. “It’s more Less’s thing.”
“Oh, please,” Lessa said with one of the biggest eye rolls Ram had ever seen. “He follows it—or rather follows someone.”
“Shut up, Less.”
She ignored him. “Ever hear of the Tantalus Terror?”
Ram had indeed. “Ah. He’s a Bella Disztl fan.” Ram sighed. “Aren’t we all, though?” He gave the red-faced kid a wink as Ace transitioned into the lower atmosphere.
Going dark didn’t mean you stopped paying attention, and to their credit, they knew it. Spark began running scans over the area, hoping to get a ping on Rion’s bio-tag, while Lessa took over the controls and guided the ship to the landing site Ram had procured during their trip through slipspace.
The swift descent went off without a hitch, and Ace settled easily, if not noisily, in the back lot of a seven-acre spread dedicated to all things fast.
Quads, racers, roadsters, motorbikes, pieces and parts, and all the equipment to tear a vehicle apart or put it back together were haphazardly spread across hard, dusty ground. Outbuildings, shipping containers, and a two-story house sandwiched between two large industrial garages sat at the far end of the fenced lot.
During the jump to New Carthage, Ram had sent a wavespace transmission to his old rally buddy McKinnon “Mac” Quarrie, hoping he’d secure them an out-of-the-way spot at his chop shop in Torba, a small township on the edge of the Grieves.
Ram had a lot of fond history in the Grieves, a dry desert grassland in the Pori Region with a host of hostile wildlife and treacherous terrain. With sinking sands, hidden chasms, mudslides, empty stretches of dry wastes, temperatures that soared and plummeted, sudden rain and sand and electrical storms, the Grieves played host to several local and interstellar motorsports series.
It was chaos on a good day. If the terrain didn’t get you, the predators would, and damned if they hadn’t rallied through it like demons riding a path straight out of hell.
The occasion called for Ram’s old leather rally jacket and rally boots. As soon as the ramp was down, the familiar dry air flowed into the cargo hold, its scent triggering even more memories, and for a moment time stood still—capped off by the appearance of the tall grizzled wheel hound with shaggy brown hair overtaken with gray and tattoos up both arms. His scruffy face split into a wide white smile, and crystal-blue eyes squinted with unreserved warmth.
“Well, it’s about damn time you graced my doorstep.” He came right up the ramp and enveloped Ram in a hug. “How you doing, bru?” Quarrie stood back, grinning ear to ear. “Amazed you’re still kicking.”
“Could say the same about you, Mac.” True happiness spread through Ram’s chest, giving him a pleasant shock. It had been far too long since he felt the emotion—really felt it; he’d almost forgotten what it was like. He hadn’t heard another Komoyan accent in a while either, and it only added to his sterling mood.
Lessa’s and Niko’s footsteps echoed behind them. Ram moved aside and made introductions.
“You can call me Mac or Quarrie, take your pick. Welcome to my shop.”
Lessa’s gaze caught on something over Mac’s shoulder. “Is that a Goblin VS?” Somewhere in all the metal and parts, she’d struck gold.
“Yeah! Ja-Ne,” Mac said, impressed. “Only a few made in 2529. She’s a kiff one for sure, a classic. Go ahead, take a look.”
Her smile was dazzling and pure. Those bait-and-take scams she and Niko had concocted back on Aleria must have been wildly successful. With a tug on her brother’s shirt, they made off, leaving dust trac
ks behind them.
Mac watched them disappear into the junkyard maze. “That’s it? That’s your crew? What, you operating a day care? Oh. Damn, wait. Unless, they’re your—”
“Oh, hell no.” Ram instantly halted that line of thought.
A glint of mirth flashed in Mac’s blues. “Well, come on to the shop, and you can meet mine.”
Ram blinked. Now that was a bombshell. He never thought his old friend had it in him to settle down, but then again, a lot could happen in two decades, that was for sure.
They headed toward one of the garages next to the house. “So what the hell brings you here to Torba?”
“Trying to reunite that ship”—Ram gestured back at Ace—“with its captain.”
“Sounds like a plot I’d like to hear.”
“I meant what I said in my message. No one can know we’re here.”
“You have my word. My guys are all aboveboard. Trust me, no one here is going to say anything. So now I need to know… is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That you’re wanted for crimes against the UEG. Word is you all pissed off the guys in black, and they have it out for you twice bad.”
“ONI came here?”
“Nah, bru, not unless you have my picture on your wall. Saw a lot of junk on ChatterNet, Waypoint, all the news bulletins…” He squeezed Ram’s shoulder. “Gotta say, it brought a tear to my eye to see you still rebelling against the establishment. Ah. Here we go.…”
Inside the large garage, Ram had the honor of meeting Mac Quarrie’s two boys and his wife, Maise, before they headed inside to finish their schooling. The work space was impressive, and if Ram had stayed in the rally business, he’d want a place like this—it was damn near perfect with its lifts and diagnostic cables and carts, the enviable wall of tools… After they popped a few beers, Mac lowered the tailgate of a nice-looking TurboGen flatbed bakkie. They took a seat and admired the view across the yard.
“Appreciate the help, Mac. I really do.”
Getting a berth in a shipyard near the city had been out of the question. While fudging Ace’s registration wasn’t a problem, disguising the vessel was. If someone ID’d them, the shipyard could lock the ship down with ease.
They didn’t need any explosive attention trying to get out of a mess like that. That’s where Mac had come in.
“She’s a nice ship, real nice.… Could use a little work on her belly. I can have my guys help you out with coating,” Mac said. “What is she, Mariner-class?”
Ram swallowed a sip and agreed wholeheartedly. “That she is. I remember when the closest we’d come to something like her was sneaking into the shipyard back home.”
“Climbing the control tower to the roof with a six-pack of Clips or Ginnie’s, and a couple smokes… Those were good times, bru.”
“The best.”
Lessa and Niko returned from their exploration. It was damn nice to see the cloud lifted from Niko’s eyes, and the fresh glint of happiness in Lessa—her smile was easy and her chatter on the junkyard nonstop.
“See anything else you like?” Mac asked, hopping off the tailgate to get them each a beer.
“That Arrow-XR3 you have in the back is real nice,” Lessa said, tucking an errant curl behind her ear.
At Mac’s surprised laugh, Ram cocked an eyebrow and explained, “They’re not your average kids.”
“Adults,” Niko corrected under his breath as he popped his drink and took a seat on a large metal storage chest.
“Right.” Ram smiled. “Not average adults, then.”
“There’s about two decades between us,” Mac told them. “Means no matter how old you get, we’ll always call you kids.” A moment passed as they drank and settled in. But Mac was never one to dance around a subject. “So this captain of yours. What kind of trouble she in?”
“I don’t want to get you too mixed up in this,” Ram said slowly. He hated to keep his friend in the dark, but… “The less you know, the better.”
“Fortunately for you, I know a lot around here. You’d be smart to make use of me. Ram—what do you need? Seriously.”
“Well, for starters, I could use a ride.”
“Let me guess, taking a trip into Pill-vil?”
Lessa’s brow wrinkled. “Pill-vil?”
“That’s just what we call Pilvros out here. City is addicted. Everyone drinking the Hannibal juice, you know?”
“What makes you think we need to go to Pilvros?” Niko asked.
Mac shrugged. “You land here, looking for your lost captain. And we all know she ain’t out here. Torba is the closest town to Pilvros, so… you think she’s down there?”
Lessa answered “Yes” at the same time Ram said “No.”
Before they could get themselves out of that verbal mess, the ground shook. The garage became a giant wind chime as tools and parts clinked and rattled. Ram waited, frozen. Eight seconds passed and then it ended.
Maise stuck her head out the side door connecting the house to the garage. “Everyone all right?”
“Good. Just a mite one, luv,” Mac told her.
“The boys are making chow tonight; it’ll be ready in thirty.”
Once she ducked back inside, Ram questioned his friend. “Since when does the Grieves shake?”
“Since Hannibal is destroying the whole damn region with their testing. Getting tremors all the time now. The Grieves is taking the brunt, though. Sinkholes, chasms opening up…”
Ram could see Niko and Lessa were thinking the same thing he was. “And what’s the official word?”
“They’re covering it up, saying it’s a new fault line, came out of nowhere.” Mac’s disgusted expression told Ram no one was buying that lame excuse. “Bad ones have come across the area and gone all the way from here to Pilvros and Kotka… they added a couple wave suppressors, but, of course, only to protect the city, not the townships.”
Damned if that didn’t piss Ram off—the Grieves and the townships around it weren’t Hannibal’s personal playground. They should be protected and treated as fairly as anyplace else.
“What do the cities do when the tremors happen?” Niko asked. “They ever close things down?”
“Not usually. A bad one not long ago, they evacuated everyone.” Mac eyed them all for a good long second. “Aha. I see where your minds are.…”
Still Ram hesitated. Mac had a wife and kids—something Ram hadn’t anticipated. The last thing he wanted was to put his friend or the family in danger.
“Ram?” Lessa’s voice brought him out of his worried thoughts. She and Niko were both staring at him. “We should tell him, let him help us.”
“I won’t take no for an answer, bru, you know that,” Mac added. “It’s on me.”
Ram rubbed a hand down his beard and sighed.
“Our captain,” Niko said impatiently, “is trapped inside HQ.”
Mac took in the news thoughtfully. “So you want to go down there tonight, get the lay of the building.”
“We want to get in and get her out as quickly as possible,” Ram said, “before we bring ONI down on our and now your heads. If we can take a look around tonight and get her out in the morning…”
“Bru, that’s one hell of a timetable.”
“You said they evacuated the building before.” Niko got up and tossed his empty beer in the trash receptacle on the wall. “How long ago was that?”
“About three or four weeks ago.” Mac hopped off the tailgate and got everyone another round from the wall cooler. “I’m getting what you’re all not saying. But that’s a lot of moving parts to fake a tremor big enough to evacuate HQ, and to set it up in one night…” Unfortunately he was right.
Once everyone had drinks all around, Mac air-toasted the group, chugged a few gulps, wiped his forearm across his mouth, and grinned. “But it’s not impossible.”
Glorious. And that’s why they were brus for life.
CHAPTER 24
Rion
Now that her second pain patch was working, Rion pushed to her feet and studied the sky to determine a time of day, but the yellow haze made it impossible. She’d have to wait until nightfall to get a good look at the stars and possibly determine a general location.
As far as the eye could see, the land appeared fractured like puzzle pieces drifting apart. Pockets of mist floated up from vents and cracks and deep chasms that zigzagged through the primal forest, making the air dank and humid and warm.
She’d landed in an antediluvian world of monstrous trees with twisted trunks adorned with spikes and long snaking branches that linked the forest together, limbs reaching over the chasms, creating bridges, rooting down into the ground and popping out elsewhere.
Eerie and exuding hostility is what it was.
Just her luck.
From her current position on the ridge, it was an easy slide to the ground below, but Rion decided to see where the ridge led first, hoping to learn more about the facility she’d been dumped in—maybe another entrance or building or landmark to tell her where she was and provide a way to get back.
Unfortunately, the ledge ended at a cliff. In the gorge below, a thick mist dwelled, making it hard to tell if the drop down was a thousand meters or a hundred, or what lay beneath the mist—ocean, swamp, or rock?
She went back to her original exit point.
It all appeared so primitive and prehistoric that she’d be hard-pressed to say this was an inhabited world. But then again, she was in one small part of it, and there had been humans here at some point in the recent past.
Weary again, she sat and leaned her back against the rock to eat a food strip and swallow a water tab. But what she wouldn’t give for a real glass of water.
A shrill cry echoed overhead. Several birds took to the sky from the treetops, their large wings making them appear slow, almost too slow to stay aloft. Pretty much how she felt—too slow, too tired, too achy, to stay aloft. Her head was splitting and her eardrums still hurt.
In the darker corners of her mind, memories she didn’t want to think about were worming their way in.