Relic Worlds - Lancaster James & the Salient Seed of the Galaxy, Part 1
Page 5
Little Jack and Jude overheard them now. “We might need to distract Laui for a little longer than we think.”
“I had you come at night not just because it's a little darker, but security is more concerned with the casino. They'll be ranging inward. I got us a couple rooms; one near the control center, one near the drone hangar. Here.” Jude handed him a small, magnetic earring.
Little Jack looked around them briefly to make sure they weren't being watched, then took the earring and placed each part of it on either side of his earlobe. He immediately began hearing several of the security guards cracking jokes about some of their ugliest customers. “That can get annoying quick,” he said.
“You control it by contorting your face,” Jude told him.
Little Jack stared at her. “You did that part on purpose,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said, smirking broadly. “I'm finally getting an expression out of you.”
Little Jack contorted his face, lifting and lowering his jaw. The frequency altered, became clearer, then drifted further away. Some expressions made one guard louder; others focused on the second or the third guard. He found that clenching his teeth made him skip to an entirely different conversation. Jude giggled with delight, and he didn't give her the satisfaction of reacting. Finally he asked, “How do I turn the volume down?”
“That's easy for you,” Jude said. “Frown.”
Little Jack frowned, and the volume dropped to nearly unintelligible levels. “And to go up?” he asked. Jude smiled. “Why did I ask,” Little Jack groaned.
“Come on,” she coaxed.
“No,” he said.
“You're going to need to hear them,” she said. Little Jack looked right at her, and she could read his annoyance through his frosted white lenses. It only made her laugh.
But her laughter was cut short. She held her ear, listening to something.
“What is it?” Little Jack asked.
“It's on the headset,” she said.
Little Jack rolled his head indignantly and waited for her to tell him. She just turned away, urgently concentrating on what she could hear. Little Jack sighed. Then he smiled.
Jude turned around quickly enough to catch that rare expression Little Jack hid so well, and she caught a photograph through her cybernetic eye complete with a flash. His grin disappeared the moment he heard that the guards were talking about someone's large butt. “I hate you,” he said.
Mika had located the ruins of the building she had been trying to show Lancaster earlier, and had programmed it into the device. Lancaster now took it and peered at the ancient walls with bated breath. “Amazingly intact,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Holovizes from that will be invaluable to comprending their mid-epoch aquatic engineering...”
“The practices, the artistic culture...” Lancaster interjected.
“Tool types. The confirmations alone will be priceless. Lancaster, this could be like Orlan of the Nadif system.”
“Yeah, before Ivar Corp came in and… There might be a forum nearby,” Lancaster added.
“Let me take a gand,” Mika said, grabbing the Vizros. Then she said almost to herself, “Teo, what did you lead us to?”
Lancaster went suddenly quiet, remembering their goal. “We should find what it was he was searching for,” he said. “Best way to cipher where he went.”
The Vizros lowered from Mika's eyes contemplatively. “Yeah,” she said, and she placed them back over her eyes and began looking. “He was searching for the Idol of Haniz. That would be in the doctrinal district.”
The two historical scientists continued to scour the badlands, looking for likely locations that Mika's husband might have gone, and discrete ways to approach it without being seen.
Little did they know, however, that they had already been spotted.