“He’s the quantum wayfarer who guards the gate. He gave me the gift. Says I need restraint.”
I remembered her mentioning the wayfarer before. She’d said he looked more like me than her. All the pieces began to fall into place.
“Are you alright?” asked Laith, cautiously. I hadn’t steeled my expression well enough, evidently.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Just thinking.”
Attica’s internal navigation system alerted me that we would reach the trading perimeter in several minutes. I caught a glimpse of a caravan idle on the side of the road; a group of civilians were huddled around it, working to fix a broken wheel. They turned and watched us drive by with an uncomfortable amount of suspicion.
“I guess there’s no chance of us slipping past unnoticed,” I muttered.
“We’re in a rover decorated with bones,” said Laith.
Good point.
Once we were out of sight of the banked caravan, I slowed the rover to a stop at the side of the road. Laith blinked while I grabbed our things out of the back. I fetched the armor out of the satchel and threw it at her, pointing to the thicket behind us.
“Go, get dressed. Don’t get tricked into an ambush.”
She caught most of it, clumsily. “What—?”
“We’re walking from here.”
*
Traveling on foot took another half an hour, but we were still making good time. It would look (even more) strange for an OSC elite guard to be carrying luggage, so I was forced to hold everything, falling into character as an attendant with my head down as Laith walked ahead.
She played the role well—almost too well. When she returned from the thicket I’d had to double-take. Not only did it fit perfectly, her energy signature had shifted into something higher-frequency. Aside from the complaint that the armor felt like it was ‘biting her’—whatever that’d meant—she’d said little else throughout the trip.
To my knowledge Laith had never even seen an elite guard, yet somehow she imitated one perfectly. Head held high, back straight; with each rigid, powerful step down the road the blade at her hip bounced, the blue-electric hilt shimmering against the rays of the dying sun.
I watched her from the back, marveling at the radiation emanating from the armor, like red and blue smoke, attuned to my eyes only. And then I noticed the series of socket-like holes along the spine of the armor.
I froze, cognizance having completely stopped any movement on my part.
Laith noticed, and turned. She said nothing, only watched with her head tilted questioningly. She couldn’t really speak through the headgear unless she shouted, which would alert passersby to the Evgan language in which she spoke. Elite guards didn’t speak Evgani. To my modicum of knowledge, they didn’t speak at all. I appreciated her wits.
The hub was basically a slum of ramshackle, rusty-metal huts and shipping containers packed together in rows, spanning several miles in diameter. Squatters and panhandlers sat amid the muddy, trampled ground along the narrow roads upon which groups of civilians traversed. They went largely ignored, although no one in particular seemed to have much to spare. The sight was depressing. Many inhabitants were missing limbs, using instead filthy prosthetics or makeshift crutches to get around.
I slowed as I saw a young boy in the middle of an intersection, amid a wooden wagon. Both of his legs were missing at the knees. The sight hit home, and for a long while I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. His clothes were rags, his young little face a mask of hopelessness. There didn’t seem to be anyone watching out for him. He had an arm wrapped protectively around a jug of neon-purple liquid.
Once upon a time, that had been me. This all felt like one, big cosmic joke.
I forced my gaze away, suppressing the subsequent pity rising from base of my chest.
Targerine dock, egvadosil. Speak to Unga at the egvadosil registry.
The OSC’s instructions were displayed on attica’s interface, blinking softly in the lower-left corner of my field of vision. There were no signs indicating where we were—finding our destination would prove to be a challenge. I really didn’t want to talk to anybody, but it seemed I’d have no choice.
None of the people around us appeared particularly friendly. The hub was undoubtedly the most inhabited place on O-2, but it wasn’t nearly as populated as Jabron—a testament to this world’s brutal living conditions. It likely started out as an area for people to come and trade goods, but was now teeming with criminals, miscreants, slavers, prostitutes and vagabonds.
And we certainly looked out of place. Groups of rough-looking men adorning cloth rags and leather vests were perched along nearly every corner. As we passed their eyes followed us, but their curiosity was fleeting once they noticed Laith’s armor. The OSC had abandoned this world decades ago, but everyone still knew an elite guard when they saw one. Lucky us.
It was night now, and we were running out of time. The darker it got, the livelier it became. Angry shouts and laughter erupted through the air, echoing from a street or so over. A scarfed woman with hollow cheeks and dead eyes watched us from the shadowy doorway of a shack. Ahead, Laith’s gait was waning confidence. She was beginning to realize we were lost.
Risking suspicion, she sidled with me.
“Where are we going?” she asked, so quietly that only my ears could hear.
“Not sure. North, I think.”
“You think.”
“Stop talking. Just follow me.”
Laith did as she was told. We walked side-by-side down another street. Thankfully, this one was decorated by merchant stands selling junk and other things barely passing as food. I instructed her to wait on the road and approached the least dangerous-seeming person, a haggard old woman in a black shawl, selling rodent and insect meat on grimy skewers.
I asked her where the egvadosil docks were, and she took a long moment to look me over, then she looked over at Laith behind me. I repeated the question, recapturing her attention.
She pointed down the street, stating we were only a block and a half away, and to turn right at the next intersection.
I thanked her and returned to the road. The way she’d looked at us made me question whether or not her directions were sound, but that was all we had to go on. Attica couldn’t get a lock on specific locations other than a general vicinity of airspace communication tower activity, which was north of us. The merchant had pointed northeast, so there was that.
I informed Laith that we were close, and we continued down the unlit road. More people began to congregate around the merchant stands, specifically the ones selling illicit substances and spirits. One in particular sold aerosol cans, the same kind that I’d seen that dredge from the outpost holding. The air stank of burning rubber.
“Zira,” cautioned Laith, her gait wobbling for a moment, nearly crashing into me, “I don’t feel well.”
“Keep it together a little longer,” I encouraged her, quietly. “We’re nearly there.”
XX
I WATCHED THE SHADOWS MOVE ALONG THE ALLEYS, ignoring the gnawing of hunger in my stomach. The scent of meat from street vendors made it difficult. I tried to remember the last time I’d eaten. I couldn’t. Maybe yesterday morning.
“Guri,” said Apchko, the glinting green of his eyes the only visible thing on him as he stood a little ways down the alley. The whites were bloodshot; he’d taken too many huffs today. “Are you coming?”
“Not tonight,” I said. Better to starve than die, like Fehto had the day before. What they paid us wasn’t worth the risk, but I didn’t have a habit like Apchko. I’d take my chances perched by the hag with the meat sticks. She was bound to look away at some point. If I was lucky she would suddenly die of old age, by the looks of her.
Apchko didn’t insist, only receded further into the alley until his footsteps faded. The odds of him returning were slight. None of us knew how to live beyond the outpost—perhaps it was better to die than limp along like this. That was how the others felt
. Stealing cargo for various syndicates or killing paid targets without any actual weapons wasn’t how I wanted to go out. Even if we were stronger than the average man, we weren’t stronger than a dozen armed men.
Other transients spoke of freighters smuggling people from the hub out to O-3. They’d said the refugee camps weren’t any cleaner than here but there was at least guaranteed food each day. The price was hefty and there was a chance of being shot down by rebels before even clearing O-3 airspace, but apparently the price was worth it. Had I known this on the first day here, I’d have traded our rover to the pirates in return for a ticket out.
The hag merchant hadn’t looked away yet. I was beginning to think I’d chosen the wrong stall. She’d had maybe three customers all night, yet hadn’t grown bored enough to take her attention from the stand. She sat frozen on a rickety stool, staring out into the dark. Trance-like, almost. Maybe she was sleeping with her eyes open.
Time was precious, and my growling stomach reminded me of just that. As I was about to try my luck at another vendor, someone approached the woman’s stand.
Someone that I recognized.
My heart fluttered in both fear and anticipation as I watched the man who’d singlehandedly leveled my home—the man who was actually a vicious monster in disguise of a man—ask for directions to the northern shipping dock. My post was but a dozen feet from them, and I heard everything clearly.
My attention drifted to the street, where someone else waited. They were clad in chrome plate and violet-dyed leather armor, their face concealed by a horned mask. I’d seen OSC guards accompanied by those things before, but where was the girl?
The Dezidko had to be here somewhere. She was no longer valuable to me, but certainly would be to anyone in the position of making a profit from her ransom. Clearly the OSC wished to acquire her, having hired that monster as her keeper. That the OSC would even dare to show themselves here was proof enough. On O-2, no one liked the OSC. They didn’t own this place, and was reminded of that fact by the locals at every opportunity.
Just as well, sometimes information was more valuable than money. Maybe I would get off this rock sooner than I’d thought.
XXI
THE DOCKING PERIMETER WAS ILLUMINATED BY fluorescent streetlamps, their posts decorated in signs that designated freighter zones by location. It seemed cleaner here, not as many rough-looking civilians camped against buildings or on side-streets, but the amount of traffic this neglected world typically saw was evident from the erosion of most docks, their pathways blocked by debris. Unused, probably for years.
The area encapsulated a mile in diameter, although only three docks seemed active. The grime on the posts obscured which one was the egvadosil freighter line. The OSC message had instructed me to check in at the registry. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just scout the three docks to figure out which one contained our lift. It wasn’t as if this place was heavily guarded, at least it didn’t appear to be.
We had caught the attention of a crew unloading freight in metal crates at the dock nearest us. They gave us random glances—some curious, some suspicious—to which I deduced that these were not our guys. I also deduced we shouldn’t linger here too long.
The docks were all connected in what might resemble a web formation from aerial view. At the center of the web was a cubic, non-descript building. Lamplight shined through one of the windows near the front door. I whispered for Laith to start moving and headed toward the building, feeling the eyes of the unloading crew burning on our backs.
A few steps later, Laith fell to her knees.
I heard the clank of her plates hit the metal walkway, and turned to see her slumped sideways against the rail.
Not now, I thought. Please, not now.
“I’m fine,” she was gasping. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”
My gaze shot to the crew. They no longer tried to hide the fact that they were watching us, but now they wore varying expressions of confusion.
I broke character and helped Laith to her feet. She wobbled, but found her footing. Her pulse was elevated, her breathing shallow and quick.
“Do… do you see it?” she asked.
“See what?”
“The sparkling ash falling from the sky,” she breathed, looking upward. “What is it?”
I stared at her, unresponsive. There wasn’t any ash falling from the sky. Eventually I mumbled that she should watch her footing, and we pressed on.
A hundred feet from the building, I froze and grabbed Laith’s arm so she would as well. Two towers rose over the back of the building, just high enough to peek from the roof. Mounted on them were turrets, aimed directly at us.
The moment we stopped, the door to the building opened. A man in torn clothing stained with oil emerged.
“What do you want?” he asked, eyeing Laith carefully.
“We’re looking for Unga at the egvadosil registry,” I said, unsure of whether I’d just placed us into (more) danger by truthfully stating our business. At this point there wasn’t much choice in the matter.
The man hesitated, probably trying to work out why an elite OSC guard and her attendant would be looking for anyone here. The shadows emphasized the lines of his weathered face as his frown deepened. To Laith’s credit, she did an excellent job of not wobbling beside me.
“What’s in your bags?” he finally demanded.
“What does that matter?” I replied, my tone suggesting I wouldn’t speak anymore on the subject. “Our business is with Unga. Where is the egvadosil registry?”
Although Laith could not understand what we were saying, as the language here was a dialect of Ophali-slang that barely resembled its parental source, her hand slowly moved to the hilt of the sword on her hip. Perhaps my tone warned her something was amiss. Whatever the reason, the gesture was enough for the man to smartly back down.
He pointed past the building, toward a walkway that snaked north-east, but said no more and retreated inside. A few moments later, the turrets began oscillating, no longer seeing us as targets. I understood now why exploring on our own would have been a mistake.
This revelation was reinforced as I spotted more turrets as we made our way in the direction that the man had pointed. Dozens framed the walkway, posted every fifty-or-so feet. They’d somehow been informed we were not threats, although I expected them to open fire at any moment. It made for an anxiety-fueled trek.
At the end of the walkway was another block building identical to the previous. A middle-aged woman in a desert tunic and scarf stood in the open door, hugging her arms. She’d been waiting for us.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Are you Unga?” I asked.
“Hurry,” she said, neither confirming nor denying her identity, “the freighter crew is getting nervous. They are going to leave.” Her gaze moved behind us, as if to make sure we weren’t followed. Then she left the building and headed down another walkway, and we followed close behind. I could hear a craft engine rumbling in the distance; aviation lights blinked rhythmically in the dark, just several hundred yards away.
A sigh of relief involuntarily escaped me. The end to the most uncomplicated yet challenging contract I’d ever acquired was near. The first thing I planned to do when I got back to Exo’daius was spend an entire day sleeping.
Unga stopped and stepped aside just before the walkway opened into the launchpad area, where a dingy freighter with U4b6 painted on the nose awaited. A single man stood beside the craft, armed with an assault rifle. He looked at us, then at Laith, and his eyes widened.
Without a word, he jumped back into the craft.
I froze, and so did Laith as she turned to look at me. I couldn’t see her face but knew it was one of utter fear.
Not a moment later half a dozen men filtered out of the craft, all armed, and circled us.
I turned in place, feeling my lips twist into a confused scowl as I watched them aim their weapons at us.
“Where did you get that
suit?” one of them demanded.
“We found it,” I said. “She needed a disguise or we wouldn’t have made it here.”
“Step away from her,” he said, carefully. “We will take it from here, Scholar.”
I didn’t move. “What’s the meaning of this?”
None of them seemed willing to answer my question. Instead, to the soldier closest to him, he said, “Get the calipers.” Then to me he said, “Please, step out of the circle.”
My eyes followed the soldier retreating back to the craft. Laith was visibly scared, as she’d moved closer now, nearly hiding behind me. “I’m not moving anywhere until you tell me what you’re planning to do. And none of your guns are going to change my mind.”
We were at an impasse. Their eyes shifted between each other, no doubt struggling to think of what to do next. They didn’t realize that I knew a lot more about this situation than the terms of my contract had afforded, and I wasn’t in the position to let them know as much. “I was under the impression that the OSC wanted to safeguard the Dezidko for political integrity. You appear to want to hurt her.”
“She shouldn’t be in that suit,” the lead soldier finally confessed. “With that suit, she—”
The answer to my question never came. Gunfire erupted around the launch pad from above, turning the soldier’s head into gory particles at our feet.
The turrets around the walkway and craft had suddenly come to life, viewing us as a security breach.
I grabbed Laith’s arm and threw her underneath the craft. Her armor sparked as she slid across the floor, slamming into the front wheels. She was winded, but alive, and hopefully would stay that way for the time-being. The other soldiers scattered, returning fire at the turrets. I caught a few bullets in the arm and chest, their bite turning into a scorching sting around the entry points.
A grabbed a metal crate and tossed it like an inflatable ball toward the closest turret, the impact ripping it off its post. It landed on the pad in an explosion of circuitry. And then I saw the crowd of rough-looking armed men heading toward us from the walkway.
Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8) Page 18