Travelers (Stars Edge: Nel Bently Book 1)

by V. S. Holmes

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  TRAVELERS

  Copyright © 2016 by Sara Voorhis

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

  Amphibian Press

  P.O. Box 190

  West Peterborough NH

  03468

  www.amphibianpressbooks.com

  www.vs-holmes.com

  ISBN : 9780996133050

  Discover the rest of Nel Bently Books:

  Travelers

  Drifters

  Strangers

  Heretics

  Enjoy Fantasy? Check out my dark epic fantasy series!

  Smoke and Rain

  Lightning and Flames

  Madness and Gods

  Blood and Mercy

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  This series combines archaeology with science fiction. Doing so is a hazardous road, particularly with the advent of television like “Ancient Aliens” and the fourth Indiana Jones film.

  This book is a work of fiction, and something to be enjoyed as entertainment. I wholeheartedly believe we are far from alone in the universe. That being said, I am an archaeologist by trade and I know humans are ingenious and resourceful enough to build pyramids and other architectural wonders all on their own.

  ONE

  Vandalism across a perfect site was the best recipe for an archaeologist’s worst day. Apparently, it wasn’t enough that Nel Bently’s visa had met with “authenticity issues” twice on her way into Chile. She ducked under the rope that had served as a barrier. A poor one, she mentally snarled. The site was a disaster. Great gouges carved the formerly pristine soil. The tools stacked under a tarp by the bushes were now scattered, bent and broken. What pits her crew had dug the week before were filled with rotting leaves and back dirt, the perfect, square walls of the trenches ruined and crushed in.

  Nel stepped carefully through the mess. This has Founders written all over it. As a rule, Nel was a patron of locals and the people she studied. Coming onto culturally significant land, not matter how old the site, was always tricky and she respected that. The Founders were her exception. They took issue with any archaeologist that set boots near their land, despite admitting there was no spiritual or cultural significance to the sites Nel chose.

  “Well, fuck.” Her tanned hand raked sweat and sunscreen through her sandy hair. She had permits and this was blatant vandalism. She turned back to her colleague and the two grad students who had arrived early to help. They waited, uncertain, at the rope, tools and packs still held with earnest dedication. “Alright, Mikey, grab pictures of this mess. You two, packs and tools go there, and set up a tent over them. Once Mikey has his pictures, clean it up. Wear gloves, it's gross and smells like a sewer.”

  She watched as they moved to do her bidding, eyes wide as they got their first good look at the vandalism. “If you need anything, talk to Mikey. I'll be on the phone.” She trudged up the rise, dry soil crunching under her battered boots as she tugged the satellite phone from its case in her pack. She dialed, listening to the clicks as the call connected and surveying the land below her. It was perfect, really. The site was nestled between a stream and the rise she stood on now. The water had carved deep enough to have been there when it was inhabited, but small enough to be on only the local maps. The rise, curving from the north to the west, was covered with artifacts. It was the first place they surveyed, and it provided natural protection from the wind that whipped off the Pacific, just a few hundred feet away.

  “You've reached the machine of Dr. Martin de Santos. Leave your name and number and how I can help you, and I'll return your call at the earliest convenience.”

  “Martos, it's Nel. Site was vandalized, looks like Founders. We could use some extra help -- I don't know if my greens can handle this. Give my cell a call tonight, I'll be in town.” As she hung up, she caught site of the rotted mess Mikey was about to shovel out. It was a rough shape of a symbol. “Oi! Mikey wait!” She snapped a few pictures with her handheld, before waving for him to continue and stamping down the rise. She had been unable to see it from the ground. It was the angled symbol with which the Founders signed their papers, websites and protests. As she watched the clean up, she noted two figures on the rise across the stream. Both wore telltale woven bands around their forearms. A cold mix of dread and defiance crawled down her spine. It wasn’t like them to watch. I'll be damned if I'm going to be cowed by radicals. “C'mon,” she called to the students, brown eyes fixed on the figures above. “I wanna see you moving dirt by ten!”

  She returned to the site and sat on a rock, flipping through her field book. She had been digging since she was an undergrad. She had started with a history major, then steadily worked backwards in the time line, learning about anthropology, prehistorics, and paleolithics. She fell in love with her first dig. Now, with her doctorate defended, she had her own crew, her own research. Not to mention funding from a generous private patron to continue her passion for sweat, dirt, and work that made her body ache. She was staring at the page where she had sketched the site last summer when Mikey sauntered over.

  He was a blocky man -- square head, square hands, square shoulders -- with only a slight paunch to round out the edges. “Sucks, eh? Think it was the Flounders?”

  Nel smiled at his nickname for their adversaries. “More than likely. I tried to keep this site under wraps, but when you've grown up here, I think nothing escapes notice. They were watching us clean up this morning. Creeps me out a bit.”

  Mikey glanced at her, a frown crinkling his sun-weathered skin. Mikey was the resident prehistoric ceremonial specialist from their department, but more than that he was her best friend. “Everything okay?”

  She shrugged. “I don't know.” Her gaze was fixed on stain from rotted debris.

  He rose with a groan. “I bet you a beer you pick up a shovel before tomorrow's over.”

  It was an old tradition. Nel could not keep her hands out the dirt, and even as site supervisor, she often found herself in a pit before long. She laughed. “You're on.”

  •

  The Jeep ride back down to the village was about as comfortable as what Nel assumed a camel ride would feel like. The wheels bounced over a road that Class 6 trails in the U.S. dreamed of being when they grew up. It still made Nel feel decidedly badass. The trip took all of 30 minutes, though the distance was short, and it was close to 5:00 when they arrived. The house they rented for the summer -- Vecuna y Las Rosas -- was a small, narrow building, butted up against the hillside. A locked shed in the rear had enough room to park the Jeep and equipment, and that was all that mattered to Nel. She swung off the Wrangler's rollcage and began unloading.

  “Go shower, get settled in if you didn't last night. Be downstairs in half an hour--I'm orienting the undergrads who arrived today. Dinner is whatever, wherever.” When the students had scattered she felt Mikey's concerned gaze. She did not want that conversation. Not now.

  “Meet you on the porch in twenty!” She hoisted her pack over her shoulder and grabbed the bag they used for the day's artifacts. She an
d Mikey had two of the singles on the fourth floor and with them the privilege of a private bathroom. The house was narrow and tall, giving the impression of precarious building. Nel knew it had survived every earthquake with minimal damage and had no qualms with her room at the very top. She dropped her field pack off in her room and spread out the finds on a desk in the spare room. Her fingers traced the artifacts. They were few, but promising.

  Finally she grabbed her cooler and jogged down to the porch. Nel eased herself into a chair next to Mikey with a sigh. “What do you think this year'll bring?”

  “Artifacts or crew?” Mikey popped open one of the precious ciders he shipped from the States.

  “Crew. Artifacts are too close to home for me to comment on.” The rest of the diggers arrived that afternoon. She wasn't looking forward to orientating a bunch of undergrads.

  Mikey snorted, running fingers through his sweaty hair. “I think we'll get three partiers — old fashioned drunks — someone in a committed relationship and then the studious brown nose.”

  Nel laughed. “The usual round up?”

  “Not every time. That one year everyone was a fucking introvert.”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “You kidding? That was the only year I got some decent sleep. Every other time it's either been drunkards stumbling up the stairs at 3:00 or someone boinking through the wall.”

  Nel raised her glass. “To introverts and celibates?”

  Mikey hooted and tapped his bottle to hers. “Fuck yeah.”

  A door slammed above them and Nel smothered a smile. “I suppose I'll quiet down. They'll think I'm the partier among them.”

  Mikey laughed softly. “No, but you get a few beers and you'll be prowling the bars for a tanned-up senorita.”

  “She only chatted me up once, and it was my birthday.” She leaned back with a smile. “You think she's still there?”

  The screen door snapped open behind them and Mikey craned his neck to peer over. “Ahh, the crew approaches.”

  Four undergrads filed onto the porch. Each performed a rendition of the Where-Should-I-Sit dance before settling on the bench along the edge. Nel watched them shuffle about. She noticed more than a few puzzled glances directed at her and Mikey's un-showered appearance. They'll be embracing dirty-beers soon enough. A moment later her two grad students arrived and flopped, dirty, into the chairs.

  When they stilled, she leaned forward, her eyes bouncing from one digger to the next. “Welcome to Chile. I'm Dr. Nel Bently and this is Dr. Michael Servais. We're heading up this year's field school for USNE. I know you all have to get settled in, you're welcome to skip dinner tonight. We do crew dinners every Wednesday. We'll get to know each other a bit now and the grad students will join us at the restaurant — Padradito's — a bit later. I know all of you by name, but you'll have to help me put faces to those names. Let's go around and introduce ourselves.” The introductions were quick and awkward, Nel ignoring most of the innocuous why-I'm-an-arch-major nonsense as she tried to pin faces to names. I'll learn about them over the next weeks. No sense wasting time now.

  When they finished, she polished off her beer and flipped open the cooler. “The social rules — I'll go over the work rules tomorrow on site — are simple. I know you're all of age, and we'll be drinking here, but try to keep the shenanigans to a minimum. Drink, but don't drive or be an asshole. Flirt with the local boys and girls, but don't get pregnant or knock someone up. Don't wander off alone. I don't have the budget for a drug lord's ransom, but that won't stop them from trying.” The well-worn warning slid off her tongue and she added a narrow-eyed glare to the words. “Stay up late skinny dipping and bar hopping, but be out here on time in the morning. If you drink too much, you deserve the hangover.” She made sure to punctuate the last statement with a heavy swig of her new bottle. “Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a shower-beer.”

  The door clapped shut, muffling the stuttering conversation. She breathed a sigh of relief. She hated dealing with new people. She took advantage of the deserted upstairs by stripping off her dirt-logged clothes in the hall and almost skipping naked into the wet-bath. Within five minutes the solar-heated water ran red from the dirt ground into her skin.

  Images of her vandalized site flashed through her mind. She slammed a fist against the tile. “Fuckers!” Her words echoed in the small room and she winced. There was no way Mikey didn't hear. The water was hotter than the day had been, and worked a few superficial knots from her back. Man, there's nothing like a Phase II to screw up my back. She stopped, soap forgotten in her hand. She had her own Phase II dig. Her excavation was fully funded by a third party and accredited through two universities. If under-grad-Nel saw her now she would never believe it. Nel tilted her head into the water with a happy sigh. Her mouth curled, eyes crinkling as they closed. Someone pinch me, I'm dreaming.

  TWO

  Nel crossed her arms and eyed the new students. “Welcome to Los Cerros Esperando VII. This is the seventh place we surveyed, thus the number. We’re not looking for anything fancy here—nothing like Inca temples or crystal skulls. Aiming for projectile points, chipping debris, and manufacturing tools. If you don’t know what a hammer stone looks like, come see me. Those of you who haven’t worked with me, let me, Dr. Servais check your screen before you clear it. Just for the first week or so. The tools we’re looking for are made of chert and scoria.”

  She pulled two artifact bags from her pocket and passed them around. “That point tip is chert, same with the flakes, just different varieties. The cone-thing is the leg to a molcajete made from scoria. Same material as those massive statues and heads you see. The layers we're finding the stuff in are consistent with 14-12 thousand years before present—though we haven’t dated anything yet.” The tools were weathered, but the scars from knapping were clean. The flakes were slightly curved, a tiny bulb where the force of the blow expanded out from the point of contact.

  She scanned the crowd. They were silent, eyes large and fingers fiddling with new dig clothes. They are so damned green. “Alright. Safety briefing. Don’t get hurt. Closest hospital is 53 minutes away - if you’re hurt enough to need it, you’ll probably die on the way there. If you find water, don’t fall in it.” She scanned down the generic site safety form. “No explosives here, no decon, no HazMat, no buried wires. If you’re dizzy, sit, don’t faint. Drink water. Eat food, but wash your hands and don’t eat dirt or rocks.”

  She eyed Mikey taking a draw off his cigg. “If you’re smoking, you shouldn’t be and don’t toss the butts. An artifact bag works nicely. If you have an epi-pen, please let us all know where you keep it. If you find an animal don’t get bit or stung, but if you poke it, you deserve whatever happens.” She glanced around at the faces, noting the mixture of startled entertainment and knowing smiles. Nothing sets people at ease like joking about maiming and death. “Any questions?”

  One girl raised her hand. “Annie mentioned vandalism. What if that happens again?”

  “I hope it won’t. If it does we’ll clean it up, document and so forth. The people we have to thank call themselves Los Pobladores -- not the ones from Los Angeles, though. Do yourselves a favor and don't Google it. Usually those that do the vandalizing only do it the once.” She jerked her head at the Jeep. “Most of the equipment we carry-in, carry-out, since that’s the first that goes if we get vandalized. Questions?”

  Annie raised a hand. “Are we opening Transect B now?”

  “Some of you. I want to bust out A5, 7, and 11 before B starts.” When no one spoke up, she clapped her hands. “Let’s unload and get everyone acclimated. Mikey, get the seasoned diggers underway on the rest of Transect A.”

  She gathered the four greens by the Wrangler. They were all in their final year of undergrad, or had just graduated. Martos forbade her from accepting only grad students, but she drew the line at underclassmen. She would never have the necessary patience. “Alright, sorry for the repeat
, but let's go around with names and backgrounds. I can remember most typologies, but can't handle names, it seems.” She pointed at a girl with tan skin and a mass of blonde curls piled haphazardly into a bun.

  “I’m Shiloh. I graduated from UNM where I studied Anthro. My minor was archaeology. This is my first non-school dig.”

  The next girl had a streak of sunblock through her thick eyebrow. “I’m Kat. I studied Archaeology at SUNY Platsburg and I’m going to BU to study lithics. I have an epi-pen in my pack, outer-most pouch, for bees. I dug in New England a bit with a few field schools.”

  George was a quiet Hispanic boy from New Orleans. An older girl named Sally leaned on the Jeep with the steady confidence of someone who knew her way around a site.

  Nel unrolled the map across the Jeep's hood to show them the layout of the grid and where 50cm square test pits two years before had yielded stone tools and the flakes knapped off in the process of making them.

  “We're standing to the north. Get yourselves oriented. Each black 'x' is a shovel test pit from two years ago. The black boxes are 1m square units we did last year. You'll see we alternated on the first line of a grid.”

  Finally she set them loose, pairing the newer students with those who were more experienced.

  The day was long and hot. Nel was used to the thick pants that protected her legs from insects and metal, but she saw her students suffering. She ordered them to drink water every half hour, but most of them were unused to the work. Shiloh struggled with cleaning down the next 5cm level. Nel crouched at the edge of a pit they had cleaned out, tugging her trowel from the loop on her pants.

  “Like this.” She demonstrated. “See how the sharp edge works? Like scraping frosting off a cake.” She watched the girl a few minutes more. “That's better. Don't use the handle, grip the butt of the blade. You'll get calluses before the week's out.”