“We didn’t see him on Fosaan. Was he there?”
“No, I haven’t seen him since I left the village. I have no idea what he’s like now.”
Not a help. I hated not having more information. I also hated feeling like I should come up with some terrific plan since I felt responsible for everyone’s safety. I just wanted to get there and do something instead of sitting around and worrying about it.
When it was time for the ship to descend into Fosaan’s atmosphere, we all parked ourselves in the idle area, including Nic. We’d barely seen her for days.
Divana wasn’t happy about our presence. She pointed at me. “I want you and your merry band of adventurers out of the cockpit so you don’t distract Pixie.”
Pixie scoffed. “I’m never distracted, my dearies.”
“I don’t understand why this is now the passenger recreation room,” Divana grumbled.
“Let them be,” Pixie said. “They’re not bothering us.”
Divana looked back and forth between us and Pixie. “I don’t know what’s come over you,” she said to Pixie. “Since when did you start liking people?”
Pixie shrugged and went back to studying the slip at her station. “Fosaan is coming into view.”
“We’re going to have to do this with just the right timing to avoid the patrols,” Divana said.
“If we run into one, do I get to blast it?” Wren asked.
“No, sweetie,” Pixie said. “Remember, we don’t blast CF ships if we can help it. Too much bother afterwards.”
Wren slumped back in her seat.
“There are no patrol ships,” Tineg announced.
“What?” Divana moved over so she could see Tineg’s slip.
“Nothing is in orbit around the planet except this.” The MI motioned to the slip.
I came closer so I could see for myself. There was only one dot on the slip. “If you look out the starboard viewport you will be able to see it,” the MI said.
Lainie was already there. “I can’t believe it’s still here!” I moved next to her and looked out. It took my brain a moment to accept what I was seeing. The remains of the research station orbited below us. What was left of the three stacked rings hung in space, no longer slowly spinning the way they had when the station was operational.
“That is one big piece of space junk,” Decker said.
I had assumed the station had blown up along with the raider ship. When Decker and the others rescued me after the blast, I hadn’t been in any shape to ask for details.
“Why didn’t we see it when we were aboard the Everest?” I asked Lainie. “I looked out of the viewports dozens of times while we were there.”
“We must have been on a different orbit, so we were on opposite sides of the planet,” she said. “I didn’t even think about it then.”
Javen came over and stood next to us. “I’ve never understood why they built the robots on a space station in the first place. Why not just in a regular lab down on the surface?”
“Too hard to keep the air clean because of all the particulates from volcanic activity,” I explained. “And they didn’t intend to manufacture them on Fosaan once they were perfected. Once they moved to the manufacturing stage at a production facility on an industrial planet, the space lab could have been moved somewhere else and used for a different project. It was easier to control everything in a space lab, plus it was considered more secure.”
I’d known there must have been a lot of damage to the station from the explosion, but it was still shocking to see exactly how much. There were large sections missing from each of the three rings. When the raiders had taken over, they’d removed a few of the lab sections and had been in the process of removing more when the explosion happened, which blew more parts out.
“How is it still in orbit?” Decker asked. “I’d have thought the explosion would have either sent it crashing to the planet or pushed it out into space.”
“It would depend on the force and the direction of the explosion,” Nic said. “It probably altered its orbit. How high was the original orbit?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never paid attention.”
Nic went over and sat down at an empty slip. I thought Divana would protest, but she ignored her sister. “Its orbit is fairly low now, and it’s on a decay. It’s a slow decay, but eventually it will go down.”
“I’m surprised no one from Earth has been in to salvage more of it,” Decker said.
“Ansun has kept everyone too occupied with other problems,” Divana said.
Lainie sighed. “Wow, that brings back memories. It feels like it was years ago when we lived on Fosaan. So much has happened in such a short time. I still can’t believe Gregor is gone.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Nic. I glanced at her. She was staring down at the station, her lips pressed tightly together.
She and I hadn’t talked about Gregor since I’d realized she was the girl in the image Gregor kept in his workspace. I knew Gregor had been in love with her. Nic said she’d never been interested in him, that she wasn’t interested in anyone, but she’d been very upset by his death. She wasn’t the kind of person one pressed for details, so I’d left her alone about it and hadn’t told the others.
We watched until the station passed out of sight. I remembered how thrilled my mother had been at the state-of-the art laboratories and equipment. She’d been so pleased the authorities had made the decision to build it at Fosaan, so the scientists would have easy access to the unique form of iridium they needed from the planet.
“You realize what the lack of patrol ships means, don’t you?” Divana said to me. “Ansun isn’t here, and he’s not headed this way. Somehow the CF knows that. He’s gone somewhere else.”
I had been so focused on the space station, I hadn’t really processed Tineg’s pronouncement. I didn’t want to believe we’d come all this way for nothing. “We don’t know for sure that he’s not here. Ansun has fooled them before. We still need to check out the site. And if he’s not there, we might find a clue that points to where he’s gone.”
Divana made a sound that was a cross between a snort and a laugh. “You’re right about that. Ansun is as wily as the best of us. He might be here after all. And now that it will be easy to get down to the planet, we’ll go ahead. What’s your plan?” she asked me. “If the Fosaanians are there, are you just going to waltz off the ship and ask to see your girlfriend?”
“What kind of security do they have around the landing bay?” I asked, mentally kicking myself for not thinking to ask her earlier. “Can we slip off the ship without anyone noticing?”
“That’s the plan? All of it?” she scoffed. “You won’t be able to do that. Their bay is concealed in the mountain, similar to the one on Yenipel’s moon, except there is no cover over the top of it. It’s designed to look like a cave opening. It’s one of the reasons the Combined Forces advance scouting team never realized there was a second population site on Fosaan, though I’d say someone on that team cut corners for it to be missed.”
“Hiding a landing bay in a mountain is definitely a Fosaanian move,” Lainie said. “So, Ansun really might be here after all!”
“How close is the landing bay to the palace?” I asked.
“Not far,” Divana said. “That’s not the issue. There are tunnels leading to the palace complex. I’ve never been in them, but I assume you can’t walk through them without running into a few Fosaanians.”
“I don’t suppose the Paradox can land close by but still far enough away that they wouldn’t know we were there? Like on a beach,” Decker suggested.
“It’s not designed to land anywhere but on a hard surface,” Divana said.
“You know I like a challenge,” Pixie said. “We could find a big enough beach and hover over it while your team drops down off the ramp. I could get within a few meters, easy enough for you to jump. And because I’ve got a soft heart, I�
��ll be careful not to knock you off your feet once I take her back up. The ship will kick up a lot of sand, though.”
Since the sand on Fosaan consisted of needle-sharp shards of black lava rock, the kick-up would leave us with hundreds of bits embedded in our skin like tiny pieces of shrapnel. Not such a good plan. “Let’s think of someplace else,” I said.
“We’ll have some ground to cover to get to the palace,” Javen said. “It’s up on a cliff overlooking the whole cove. We’d have to land somewhere east or west of the cove, and then we would need to go through the jungle to get there.”
“I’m not going through the jungle,” Decker said. “No way. Too many things trying to kill you in there.”
“It looks like we’ll just have to put down in the landing bay and make a plan then,” I said, trying to inject some confidence in my tone.
“Even if you do manage to sneak into the palace without getting noticed, you won’t have much time. So get in, and get out,” Divana said. “They’ll get suspicious if we are on the planet for too long. I can make some excuse that we’re having mechanical problems, but that won’t hold for long.”
“I’m getting no response to my request for permission to land,” Tineg said.
“Do they usually respond?” I asked. “Don’t they want to stay hidden?”
“They respond if you have the right code,” Divana said. “And we do.”
If no one was responding, it meant Ansun wasn’t there, even hidden away. I didn’t know where else they could be. There had been hundreds of Fosaanians in the village who had disappeared. The children and the elderly had to be somewhere.
“Did you hear Ansun talk of another location they were restoring?” I asked Javen.
“No, this was the only one. We didn’t have enough people to work on more than one site at a time.”
As we got closer, the planet filled the viewport. Like the area in southern Fosaan where we had lived on the Earther base, the land was blanketed by lush green jungle. Even though I knew it was full of deadly creatures and plants, it was spectacular.
It didn’t take us long to descend. I could see the mountains, but it wasn’t until we were very close that I spotted the entrance to the landing bay. The cave opening was bigger than the access cylinder on Yenipel’s moon, and Pixie seemed uninterested in creating any excitement by coming at it too fast. She brought the ship in slowly and landed just as gently as she had on the moon.
There was no sign of life, though the landing bay looked clean and functional.
“There are never more than two or three people here,” Wren said. “They have bots to do the unloading.”
Decker peered out. “I see the bots, but I don’t see any people. This hardly looks like an empire being reborn.”
“If there isn’t anyone manning the port, I don’t think there is anyone here at all,” Javen said.
“We don’t know what kind of security they have around the station. They could have monitors to see who is coming and going,” Decker said.
I walked over to the exit door. “We won’t know until we check it out. Maybe I should go first and then let you know what’s happening.”
“I think we should all go together,” Nic said. “What happens if you run into someone? You’re not exactly trained to deal with that.”
“I’ll take everyone part way,” Wren volunteered. “I know where to go.”
Divana turned and stared at Wren. “You don’t have to get off.”
“No, I want to,” Wren said, getting out of her seat. “I liked it last time we were here. I walked in the gardens. There wasn’t anyone there. It’s very peaceful.”
“All right, but be careful. Don’t go in the palace. The others can risk their lives for this girl, but you shouldn’t. You don’t even know her.” Divana pushed on the mark that lowered the ramp. “You have an hour,” she said to me. “Though I can’t imagine why you’d need that much time.”
“Let’s do this,” I said.
Chapter Ten
We took the only way out of the landing bay besides the opening far above us, a tunnel that led into the mountain. It was large enough for a couple of transport vehicles, which made sense if they used it to move supplies from incoming ships out to the palace complex. The condition of the tunnel made me nervous. There were cracks in the walls and rubble on the floor. Since Fosaan still had so many active volcanoes and earthquake-prone areas, it didn’t seem like the best idea to build both a landing bay and the way out of it deep inside a mountain.
We hadn’t gone far when we came to a spot where the tunnel split into two.
“Which way?” I asked Javen.
Wren spoke up. “Last time, I took the tunnel to the left. It leads outside.”
“Where does the other one go?” Decker asked Javen.
“I don’t know. It’s been three years since I was here, and back then the landing bay wasn’t operational. They had a temporary one built outside.”
“Then we should follow Wren,” I said.
We found more rubble and more cracks. I wasn’t the only one who was uneasy. I saw Nic touching the sides of the walls and looking up at the curved ceiling as we went along.
I relaxed a little when we came out into the sunlight. It was so bright I had to close my eyes for a moment. I had forgotten the unique odor of Fosaan. The underlying sulfur smell of the volcanic gases mixed with the scent of the jungle brought back a lot of memories. I remembered the heat too. Not the dry, dusty heat of Reyet, but the heavy, humid kind that made the air too thick to breathe.
“At least we know some people have been working here fairly recently because it’s still clear of plants,” Lainie pointed out. “Everything grows so fast they couldn’t have let it go for long.”
I looked more closely at the vines around the edge of the site. They were just starting to creep onto the cleared area.
Again, we had two paths to choose. The one straight in front of us led into a heavily planted garden that someone had obviously been maintaining. It didn’t have a wild, overgrown look of actual jungle. The other led downhill, though I couldn’t see if it led all the way down to the bay or just turned into some sort of path along the cliff.
“Let’s go through the garden,” Wren said. “It’s the way I went before.”
“I don’t know about that,” Decker said. “No matter how pretty someone made that look, it’s still jungle. I’m sure it’s dangerous.”
“Why?” Wren asked.
“You can hardly move a meter in the south of Fosaan without something trying to kill you.”
Nic raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like an exaggeration.”
Decker gave a harsh laugh. “Well, let’s see. There were worm things that were so full of acid they would eat through your shoes if you stepped on them. There were poisonous lizards that would paralyze you if you touched them. Oh, and let’s not forget the giant lizard that is smart enough to use trees as spears while it’s trying to impale you. I’d say that counts as deadly.”
“Decker does have a point.” I didn’t usually jump to Decker’s defense, but every part of Fosaan I’d been to was dangerous.
“Have you seen any of those creatures here?” Decker asked Wren.
“I’ve only been here once. I didn’t see any creatures at all. Just plants.”
Decker turned to Javen. “Javen, you’ve been here. You’d tell us if it wasn’t safe to go through here, wouldn’t you?”
Javen shrugged. “It’s as safe as anywhere on Fosaan.”
“Terrific,” Decker said. “Do you think we should take the coastal route? It looks more open.”
“There may be some grippers nesting in the cliffs above the beach,” Javen said. “They don’t like to be disturbed, and they have very sharp teeth and claws. Probably better to take the garden route.” He took his knife out of the pocket on his belt. “If you were smart, you’d have a weapon on you all the time. It’s foolish to worry about dan
ger without a way to protect yourself.”
“We didn’t exactly have the time or the funds to arm ourselves,” I said. I’d grown up with a father and a grandfather who were so obsessed with weapons I’d become completely disinterested in them. But I was beginning to think the Fosaanian belts with the hidden knives were a good idea, if you could manage not to cut your own fingers off.
“Since you have the knife, why don’t you go first?” Decker said to Javen.
Nic pulled out a small walthaser from her tunic. I hadn’t realized it had a concealed pocket, and I hadn’t realized she had a weapon. “I’ll go first,” she said. “If there really are giant lizards, I don’t think a knife is going to be much use.”
I was actually pretty happy that we had both a knife and a walthaser—and two people willing to lead the way.
As soon as we walked into the garden, the temperature dropped. There were some tall plants strategically placed to provide shade without blocking the airflow. Pieces of abstract sculpture sat amongst the plants. Everything looked as if it had been carefully placed, some in such a way so that the plants were growing up and around the individual pieces of art.
“Fade talked about this,” I said. “I can’t remember the name for this sort of garden, but he said it was an important part of Fosaanian culture. It still is to the Fosaanians on Reyet.” I tried to remember how he had described it. I hadn’t been listening all that carefully at the time because I’d been thinking about Mira.
“It’s a Nifre garden,” Javen said. “Each person begins to create his or her own at a young age. Each tends their garden throughout life, along with the rest of the clan, connecting each to another and another. You might say that, though we worship no gods, Nifre is a form of religion. It is the goal of all Fosaanians to bring together the mind and the body for the good of the clan. Nifre is to work to be the best version of yourself, and that is what helps the clan.”
“You make it all sound so reasonable,” I said. “You’re leaving out the part about how the Fosaanians who stayed here warped that belief. Lainie and I had a mob chanting ‘mind, body, clan’ at us right before they threw us in a pit full of water.”
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