Travelers (Stars Edge: Nel Bently Book 1)

by V. S. Holmes

  “Bar?”

  “Let’s head to Juan Pablos.” She swung herself off of Lin’s body and out of the bed, stretching. It had been a while since she was naked in front of someone, not counting skinny-dipping. The old insecurities were fading, replaced by the knowledge of her body’s strength. I’m not tall or buxom, but I’ve got killer muscle-tone.

  “You’re striking.” Lin had yet to get up, curled on her side, head resting on one crooked arm. “I like strong women with rough hands and skin that’s seen some work and sun and weather.”

  “Basically a sailor. Or pirate.” Nel tugged on her shorts and began digging through her bag for a tank that wasn’t bloody with dirt.

  “Shovel-pirate.” Lin slid to the edge of the bed and fished through the clothes on the floor to find her underwear.

  “I’m pretty sure those are looters. And I take issue with looters.” Nel finger-combed her hair into order, smiling at the sweet, musky scent on her left hand. She grabbed her phone and leaned against the dresser to watch Lin braid her hair. Lin’s fingers twisted the pieces into some beautiful order. “I never learned to braid. You make it look like magic.”

  Lin laughed. “My mom taught both of us. Said even if we had short hair, the skill might come in handy. I have yet to braid anything else, but I trust she’s right.” She glanced over as she wound the braid around her head. “I could probably do yours in tiny pigtails.”

  Nel grimaced and held the bedroom door open for her. “I’ll pass. Besides, I prefer to style my hair with field-gel.”

  Lin led the way past the silent crew rooms and into the street. “And that would be?”

  “The perfect mixture of sweat, bug-spray, sunscreen, and dirt.”

  “Sexy.” Lin slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans, staring up at the sky. Nel’s boots thumped a rumbled echo to the whisper of the other woman’s sandals. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Nel followed her gaze. The night was quiet and clear, the stars incredibly bright, and the Milky Way a winding river against the void. “Yeah. Makes you feel small and big all at once.”

  “We’re such a small, yet important piece to it all. Like the tiny microbes in the soil — unseen but integral. Makes me homesick, sometimes.”

  “The stars?” Nel tilted her heat at the woman.

  “Yeah. All that emptiness with potentially millions of other worlds, all just as alone.” Lin shrugged.

  “Ever see the movie Contact?”

  “If there aren’t other worlds, other people, 'it’d be an awful waste of space.’ That movie, and the scene on Vega, feels like my family’s mantra.” Lin smiled, but her eyes darkened with something close to sorrow.

  “Dude, your family is the best.” Nel ducked into the bar after Lin. The noise swelled, enveloping them like warm rain. “Grab a table, I’ll get drinks. What’re you in the mood for?”

  “Something with bite. Surprise me.”

  Nel wound through the tables and leaned over the bar. “Hey, man. Two shots of cuervo, a glass of your shandy and a stout.”

  “Where you sitting?”

  “Blue table by the window.”

  The bartender glanced over and grinned. “Got a looker tonight, eh?”

  “Eyes, off, man, she’s with me.” Nel grinned and headed back to where Lin had found a two-person seat by one of the dirty picture windows. Partway across the room she caught sight of two figures on the other side of the street. After being held at gunpoint, she’d recognize Emilio anywhere. His face was lined and shadowed with more than night. Before rage clouded her thought, a tiny voice told her that it was regret that darkened the circles under his eyes. The other man’s back faced her, but he nodded and jerked a thumb towards the bar. Emilio glanced up and met her gaze.

  “Fuck this.” Nel sprinted through the rear door of the bar, muscles unused since high school track meets grumbling awake. Adrenaline temporarily erased pulled muscles and screaming tendons. The morning would feel differently.

  She pounded up to her room and grabbed her pack. Mikey was right to carry knives all the time. All she had was a pocketknife and a 3cm blade wasn’t much against killers. Her shaking hand found the worn handle of Mikey's Dirt-o-mancer. She momentarily congratulated herself on taking the time that morning to sharpen the tool. She tucked it into her back pocket with her cell and wallet before climbing up into the hills behind the house. She circled the town, listening for the sounds of a fight or commotion. Lin was smart, and Nel hoped the other woman knew enough to book it back to the house. I should have told her to run. She shouldn’t get caught up in this. She’s clever, but this is different. Even I’m not rough enough to be ready for this mess. The uneven dirt tumbled down-slope in the wake of her boots and she slowed. The restaurant was just a few houses away and the large shed just beyond. Nel’s eyes burned with manic anger.

  She gripped her trowel and eased herself down the hill towards the shed. The windows were blacked-out, but light glimmered where the paint had flaked from the glass. Her shoulders groaned as she lowered herself from the retaining wall silently. She pressed herself against the shed’s sidewall, chest heaving. The night was cool and still. Goosebumps flared across her bare legs. Should have grabbed pants. There were dozens of “should have” thoughts tumbling through her head, but most were too serious for her to consider without panicking.

  The wood at her back was dry and rough, splinters sliding through her shirt and skin. She forced herself to breathe through her mouth to stay quiet as she inched towards the window. If she could see in, they might notice the black of night outside becoming the pale of her shirt. Should have worn my black one. She crouched until she could peer in without pressing her eye to the hole in the paint.

  Whatever she expected to see, it wasn’t Lin holding a weapon at Bastian’s head.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “What the fuck?” The words were whispered, but she saw Lin’s eyes flick to Nel’s side of the shed. There’s no way she heard that. None. Nel turned back to the front of the shed, hoping to find a way to burst in without getting everyone shot.

  Emilio stood at the corner of the building. He was a black void in the stars scattered across the sky behind him. He slowly pressed two fingers to his lips. He reached out, one hand still raised in peace between them, and handed her a piece of paper. She scoffed silently when she realized it was one of the menus from his restaurant.

  Your man was never meant to die. Bas has taken this too far. Come in and we can talk.

  Nel’s eyes narrowed. This is getting weird. Too weird. She glanced through the crack in the window. No one had moved, it was as if they waited for something. Maybe it was for her.

  Finally, she nodded.

  Los Pobladores headquarters was a glorified garden shed. Nel gave herself three seconds to glance around the room and she was fairly certain a weed-whacker and hoe hung in one corner. Bastian sat stiffly, his gun on the table before him, but out of arm’s reach. Two others leaned against rear walls, but none seemed armed. “Hey, Lin.” The casual words ground against Nel’s forced tone. “Come here often?” She’s not one of them, based only on the fact that she’s holding Bastian at …weapon point?

  “Hey.”

  Nel’s eyes fell to Lin’s hand again. It was encased in metal and the kind of fabric Nel thought might stop bullets. Two slim metal bars rested snuggly over the lines of her strange tattoos. Her hand was outstretched, as if telling Bastian to stop, but the steel in her eyes was all feral menace. “Looks like you’re better prepared than I am.”

  Lin snorted. “I wasn’t the one who ran pell-mell into the dark without paying for our drinks.”

  Nel shifted. Is she actually angry? She was acutely aware of Emilio a step behind and to her side. “So you wanted to talk?”

  Emilio made a low, lurching hiss.

  Nel was too nervous to turn, but after a minute she realized he was laughing. “Seriously?”

  “I want all of us to talk.
This has gone far enough, we all agree. Can we put disagreements aside and discuss this?”

  Adrenaline nudged Nel towards the mental chasm she had avoided for weeks. “Discuss what, exactly? As far as I’m concerned, you people dragged the best man I’ve known out onto a roadside, did fuck-knows-what to him, and gunned him down when you were done.” Her words snarled through her clenched teeth.

  “Not a good start, slinging blame,” Bastian retorted.

  “Actually, I think she got right to the point.” Lin’s voice was charged, all the threat of an approaching thunderhead. “Los Pobladores. The Founders. Deep Roots. Half a dozen names and you thought we wouldn’t find you? You thought burying all our heritage under 60cm of dirt would keep us away?”

  “We didn’t bury it. Time does that you know,” Emilio pointed out.

  “I was told we’d be welcome. I was told we’d be expected. I thought the earth would be ready for us!” Lin's voice broke.

  What the actual fuck? The nudge at the back of Nel’s mind turned into a shove, a hurtling blow that made her dizzy. Lin really isn’t from around here. “Lin, you’re losing me.”

  “We can’t do this now, Nel.”

  “You didn’t even let your bar-fling in on who you are?” Bastian’s eyes flicked to Nel. “And you — I thought you were supposed to be some great student of people.”

  “Prehistoric Archaeology and Lithic Technology,” Nel growled.

  “Whatever. How’d you not see how poorly she fit here?”

  “Bas, that’s quite enough.” Emilio stepped carefully out from his place by the door. “It only takes one man and an ounce of fear to pull a trigger, Ms. Bentley. It was never my intentions when I took over Los Pobladores that someone die. Our organization was not one of violence, though it may seem so. We are dedicated --”

  “To preserving the integrity and soul of our resources, both ancient and newfound, cultural and natural. I know your damned motto.”

  “Ah yes, but there is more you perhaps do not know. I know the people you study are rather far removed from us, by modern standards, but they told a story. Disagreements happen often, but sometimes they have far-reaching effects that we never anticipate. Thus it was with these people.”

  “How can you know this? I know their tools and their lifestyle, but little else and I’ve spent my life studying them.”

  “So have I.” His eyes softened. “Perhaps without the same degree of academia or excavation, but I’ve studied that site as much as you. Tell me — the rock forms you mapped, the black layer in the strata, what have they told you?”

  “That they manipulated their landscape, though less than it looks, since many of those stones were naturally deposited. The black layer may have been some catastrophic event, like a volcano.”

  “We both know that’s not volcanic ash.”

  “I can’t explain it.” Nel’s lips thinned. This was not something she had ever anticipated discussing with him, and the experience was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Nel, do you remember that conversation we had about the meaning of life?” Lin's reminder was gentle.

  Emilio raised his brows. “Well, your pillow talk is rather more interesting than mine.”

  Nel ignored him. “Where we came from versus where we’re going.”

  “Yeah. Perhaps you should ask Mr. Sepulveda to elaborate on his philosophy.”

  Nel narrowed her gaze on Emilio. “I fail to see how your philosophy is going to make this better. We’re standing in a shed in rural Chile waving bizarre gloves and talking archaeology. This is like a fucking Indiana Jones movie, and I’m not keen on it.”

  “Hear me out?” It was a question. Nudging in its open insistence, but gentle.

  There was something paternal in his eyes and it eroded the mental cliff edging the void before her. “Alright.”

  As she moved to sit, Bastian's chair scraped back. The table jerked as he flung himself across it, fingers scrabbling for the gun. Light flooded the room with the sound of a transformer blowing, and Nel blinked furiously. “What the fuck?”

  Gunshots peppered the air and she dropped, blinking light-seared eyes. Bastian flung a chair into the confusion and Nel pulled herself to the wall, head low. Whatever the light had been caused the air to smoke. Her groping hand found a sandaled foot and she glanced up. Fire clawed up the opposite wall, backlighting Lin.

  Nel stared. It was as if her life was suddenly an action movie. Lin was unrecognizable as the woman in Nel’s bed hours ago. But people weren’t characters, and unless someone was obtuse to an obscene degree, the light reflecting from the myriad facets of their beings inevitably shone through. The woman in Nel’s bed was relaxed and soft, perhaps, but the intelligence and checked power had been there. The focus in her eyes as she brought Nel to orgasm was the same with which she flexed her fingers and fired her weapon.

  The second wave of adrenaline burst through her nerves, thrusting her into the void. The world tunneled and she rose into a crouch. Years of pounding shovels into the ground powered her across the room. She collided with one of the men she didn't know and rose from her crouch, trowel clawed in her hand. The sharpened metal ground against flesh and something hard. Did I just stab someone?

  Light and sizzling engulfed the tiny room again. The door was blocked by Bastian’s snarling figure, gun held with the mania of a zealot. Fuck, this is bad. The fire eating at the side of the building spelled several death sentences and none were particularly pretty. I should have left a note, I should have told someone where we were going. On the tail of her concerns came another: I should have gone home. Emilio appeared, crouched beside Nel. “There’s another way out the back. Grab your girl and follow me.”

  Nel glanced up at Lin skeptically. Her fingers fumbled over the other woman’s free hand. She pulled herself up and called over the sharp retort of energy and bullets, “There’s a way out!”

  Lin’s fingers gripped Nel’s tightly and the shorter woman tugged her towards the door buried in the hill. Emilio jerked it open, ducking twice at the sound of gunfire. Nel pulled Lin in behind him. The door thumped shut and the shhk of a lock falling into place echoed in the sudden stillness. It was dark. The hall smelled of leather and metal, like a smithy.

  “Emilio?”

  “Here.”

  “Do they have a key?”

  “No. It’s with me.”

  “Good.” Nel drew a steady breath. “Everyone okay?”

  Emilio’s voice was rasping, but not strained. “I think they got my arm, but nothing that will kill me. Hurts, though.”

  Nel squeezed Lin’s hand. “Lin?”

  “I’m fine. Adrenaline is wonderful.”

  Nel laughed. The sound felt strange in her throat. “I’m okay. My wrist hurts like a bitch from when I fell, but I think I’m just being a baby.” She fell silent, blinking rapidly to acclimate to the darkness. It was hopeless. The hall was blacker than any night. “So now what?”

  “The hall leads down. It’s been here a very long time -- almost as long as your site.” The floor sounded like stone under Nel’s boots. No one spoke, save for Emilio’s whispered warnings about uneven flooring or low-hanging beams. It took the better part of fifteen minutes before the echoing of their footfalls changed.

  Nel stopped. “We’re in a big room. Or a cave.” She focused harder, catching the faint sound of running water.

  Emilio fumbled with something metal a few paces away. Light pierced the darkness. He held a large flashlight, one hand shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness. “There’s another hall that leads outside from here.”

  Nel barely heard him. Her eyes were trained on the simple art covering the walls. “I’ve seen these before.” She pulled out her phone and flipped through the pictures. “Here!” She held the phone triumphantly up to the wall. “I must have been looking at them upside down.” It was a simple shape. It looked geometric at first glance. Or if you’re holding it upside down. “This c
an’t be what I think it is.” It was oblong, lines radiating at slight angles from three sides. The curls from the bottom and rear were like the lines used in comic to designate motion. She pointed angrily at the nearest one with her trowel. “Lin, why are there cave paintings of a fucking spaceship? If you tell me goddamned aliens are responsible for this, I’m fucking done.”

  A soft noise echoed through the cave. Nel turned, frowning, to see Lin doubled over, smothering her uncontrollable laughter with a hand. “Don’t tell me you brought a sharpened trowel to a gunfight.”

  Nel’s eyes narrowed, but the fight wasn’t in her. She smiled, Lin’s laughter worming into her and pulling a chuckle free from her chest. “Alright, this whole thing is ridiculous.” She glanced at Emilio. “Can one of you enlighten me?”

  Lin straightened, tears of laughter still clinging to her lashes. “I’d be happy to, but we have to settle this.” She turned to Emilio. “We need to get to the site before the other Los Pobladores.”

  Nel’s stomach clenched at the thought of what they might do.

  “This tunnel leads out to the edge of town. It’s not far from your house, but we’ve got to hurry. They’ll catch on to where I’ve led you.” He tucked the flashlight under his arm and edged past the paintings to another entryway. It was carved into the rock by water. The sound of water grew louder.

  “Emilio, is this the same stream as the one in the pink cave?”

  “It is. It runs through here all the way to the site and then to the ocean. There’s a tunnel that reaches partway there, but for some reason it was never finished.”

  Lin squeezed Nel’s hand before releasing it to trail her fingers along the wall. “It’s stupid for me to question it now, but why the sudden change of heart?”

  “Ah. Perhaps Nel, student of people, could answer that better than I.” Emilio's brow rose, inviting Nel to answer.

  Nel shrugged. “I don’t know about that. You said you were tired of the fighting and that this wasn’t how things were supposed to be. Is this what you referred to when we spoke about where we were going and where we’ve been?”