“It sounds like it’s my only option. A train ride would take too long. I’m not even sure how far ahead of us she is or if these storms held her up as well.”
“Does it sound like she’s planning to head out on her own?” Shiro asked in the background. He’d come in with Charly. The crew weren’t taking chances with going solo, not since Odeon had been attacked, so the current rule was to take someone with you everywhere.
“If I heard right, yes,” Charly said, crossing her arms as Holly glanced at the two of them in the doorway. “She better get that fixed right away.
Holly gave a small laugh, then looked out into the street through the window. “Secure passage for three of us, please, Darius. Let me know as soon as—”
“Done. You leave in an hour and a half,” Darius said, cutting her off.
8
“We’re going to have to turn around,” Frank, the pilot of the cruiser, said. He glanced over his shoulder back at Holly, Shiro, and Charly.
“He’s kidding,” Charly said. “He has to be. You’re joking right?” She must have noticed the frustration that Holly found herself fighting with.
“I don’t think he is.” Holly cocked her head to one side.
“I agree, lass, he doesn’t seem to be joking.”
“That’s cuz I’m not.” He was a human male. Short, grizzled, with a belly that stretched against his blue pilot jumpsuit. He looked like he’d seen better days. Or possibly had never seen better days. “The landing pad is just outside the pass, but they’re telling me an avalanche covered it, so it’s currently closed till they can dig everything out. There’s no way around that.”
“So, the spaceport is out of commission?” Charly asked, her voice rising in pitch. She was going to lose it. Holly didn’t want to see the pilot knocked out with one of Charly’s fists, so she needed to intervene, though she herself was frustrated as well.
“I don’t want to be the one to point it out, but we should have taken the train,” Shiro said with a soft laugh.
“Wouldn’t have mattered. The trains are being turned around,” the pilot said.
“How precisely does one ‘turn around’ a train?” Shiro asked.
“The canyon before the pass has a few emergency turn arounds,” he said. “For shit just like this. The weather is too unpredictable to not have back up plans.”
“Turn around? Us? No. I can’t buy that. I refuse. We’ve come this far. Odeon’s hurt because we took this gig.” Charly sounded as exhausted as Holly felt. But she hadn’t given up her stubborn streak. Nor did Holly expect her to. She knew Charly better than that.
If she was honest, the journey had seemed doomed from the outset—everything from her initial resistance to the idea of a pointless Earth-born tradition to that feeling that it was too much, that day back at the Surge Club, when Charly had put up her tree and started decorating. And now here it was—Odeon was hurt worse than any of them likely understood and the storms had conspired to keep them away from the crazed Centau. Could she have even made it back to her volcanic outpost in weather like this? Maybe she was also trapped in the storm somewhere, forced to hunker down and wait.
But here they were. In the sky above the canyon, the ship chartered just for them, facing the storm like a dragon in the midst of a hurricane, beating its wings against the winds as it howled at them and forced them back.
“We’re here now, Frank,” Holly said, surprising herself. Her voice rang steady over the hum of the ship. She felt its life buzzing through her feet, up her bones into her ribs and heart. It wasn’t alive, but something about it fighting against the storm—that idea, that sense of the futility of the battle against nature even with a machine so cleverly built and powerful—it gave her a desire to never, ever give up. Besides, she had Odeon to avenge. If she turned back now, all would be lost. “We can’t turn around.”
“Well there’s nowhere to land, lady.”
“Then don’t.”
“What?” Frank spat. He twisted his neck to look back at them where they sat around the bridge of the cruiser, buckled in and watching the storm on the screen in front of them. “Is your friend crazy?” He shifted his wild green eyes to Shiro and Charly.
“Yes,” Charly said. “But in the best way possible. Listen to her.”
“Don’t land? I’m going to land. Back in Birbourn.”
Holly steeled herself. “No, keep going. You have emergency chutes, don’t you? Take us further north. To the volcanic region.”
Frank laughed. “See? She’s mad.”
Holly turned to see that Shiro was also laughing.
“Yes, I see it now. She thinks we’ll parachute out and what, dear Ms. Drake?”
Holly glared at Shiro. He would never laugh at her like that, so Holly chalked it up to fear. She couldn’t blame him, really. What she was proposing was possibly crazy. They could get hurt. Something could happen that could kill them. She had no idea what to expect. But, she suspected the pilot knew where their target volcano was. They’d not chartered a flight there in the first place because their initial plan had been hindered by what was available to Darius via the nets. The regions they’d approached were strictly used for mining and the quarries—not a leisurely trip to a resort where they could soak in hot springs—no one ever wanted to pass through Birbourn and the mountains. The volcanic badlands were named such for good reason. She knew that if their visibility had been better, they’d likely have seen the massive gouges in certain parts of the mountain range that had been stripped to build cities. And when Darius had secured their passage north, the weather hadn’t been quite so bad, nor had the forecast called for such a violent storm.
There had to be another option. And there was. Holly took a breath.
“Fly us as close as possible to the volcano. Please.” She requested, her voice strong. She would ask once. She would not beg. But she would not accept defeat so easily. She had one trump card if he refused again.
“No way, lady. Which volcano? Vaseevia? The air currents change too much as we go north, away from the cold air.”
Charly snorted. “This ship can’t cut through a current? Please.”
Was the pilot holding out for something more? Holly couldn’t tell and she didn’t know enough about flight to determine whether or not he was simply looking for a better deal for himself—more novas or a bigger pay out or promises of future work. But they’d been flying through a storm. Holly watched as he flew them above the clouds, out of the storm.
“Looks like it cut through a current just fine, right lasses?” Shiro looked at Charly, then at Holly.
“So you’re in, Shiro?” Holly glanced at him, calculating the risks.
Shiro dipped his head. His expression looked worried, but the fear soon smoothed away and his brown eyes seemed to reflect whatever resolve he’d uncovered. “Yes. For Odeon. Why go back empty-handed?”
“Same here, Hols, not that you needed to ask. You know I’ve always got your back.”
Frank chortled. “Don’t matter. You can say all sorts of cute things to each other, warm-hearted sentiments about watching out for each other and following each other into hell, but I’m not taking this ship up past the meridian of cold.”
Holly bit her lip. She felt Shiro and Charly’s eyes on her face. She sensed the refusal of what she was about to say bucking against her like a wild animal. The reins were in her hand and she didn’t like it. But they were. And she couldn’t let go and ask someone else to decide for her, for the crew. The weight of leading and calling the shots and asking her team to go along with it. But she’d asked and they’d agreed. And if it meant they all got less, wasn’t it the right thing to do? She would take less. She would give them more so that Odeon’s injury meant something in the end.
“I’ll pay you double,” she said, finally. The pilot laughed, like money meant nothing to him.
“You can pay me triple and I still won’t do it.”
Holly cussed. What recourse did she have now?
“Lady, you must be insane,” Frank said.
“Where are they?” She stood up and turned to head off the bridge in search of the parachutes.
Shiro’s eyes were wide. Charly kept blinking like her thoughts weren’t too far from where Shiro’s had landed. They both began to unclip their harnesses.
“Give me the damn parachute. I’m jumping out here, now, before you turn this sorry ship around. And I’m shooting for the volcano, come what may.”
The pilot glanced back at her. “Sit your ass down, lady. I’ll fly you as close to the damn volcano as I can. Then you’re on your own.”
9
The hot wind embraced Holly Drake like a hug in a sauna. At first there was something pleasant about it. But as the cool fled her body, the heat squeezed her chest and sweat soon covered her beneath her clothes. She still wore all the layers she’d been wearing on the ship. How long before dehydration set in?
She looked up at the departing ship piloted by Frank the grump, and waved. There was no way to know if he’d seen her wave, but the ship was soon gone. Shiro and Charly were both above her, plummeting to the moon—Holly had been the first to jump.
She was still in freefall. And she couldn’t believe she was doing this. What the hell?
Thinking had gotten her into too many unhelpful positions lately. This was for the best—just doing. Acting. She wasn’t a seasoned skydiver, either. That hadn’t even been something she’d considered. There weren’t a lot of better options. So, she’d done what she had to do—put the chute on and jumped.
As they got closer to the harsh terrain—black and gray rock in strange contortions, devoid of life and growth—Holly squinted as she began to detect another unexpected formation. The wind whipped her hair up and tore against her face. There was a distinct sulfuric smell in the air that scalded her lungs. She squinted against the tears in her eyes.
“Pull your chute!” A voice screamed in her ears. Charly’s, she thought. But with the wind ripping against her body everywhere, it was hard to say.
“I think—I think I can see her outpost!” Holly shouted.
The ground zoomed toward her. She’d been falling faster than she realized. She arched her back to look up and saw that Shiro and Charly had both already opened their parachutes.
She yanked on her own and felt her body jerk back like a boneless doll. And just like that, silence surrounded her.
“The shop. Think that’s her shop?” Holly asked over the comm.
“Probably,” Charly said.
“Aim for it,” Holly said.
The air shimmered with heat as Holly experimented with how to steer her parachute. She pulled it this way and swooped to the right. She tugged that way and swerved to the left. She’d used a chute before, it just wasn’t a regular pastime.
“Think she’s there?” Charly asked.
“I’d say yes, judging from that all-terrain vehicle parked near it,” Shiro said.
“Whoa! Look who’s got eagle eyes, Shiro!” Charly said.
Before they got into a complicated situation, Holly had some business to take care of. “Iain, you around?” She hoped the storm wasn’t causing interference with communication. When they’d passed the meridian of cold in Frank’s ship, the clouds vanished and the sun shone down, tearing at the skin on Holly’s forehead with hot knives. She wished now more than ever that their suits hadn’t been taken by the jerk who’d stabbed Odeon.
“Yes. Here, Holly,” Iain said in her ear.
“Thank Ixion. How’s your patient? Weird time to ask, I know, but we’re about to arrive. Who knows what’s going to happen next.”
“Take care of yourself,” he said. Holly thought she heard a strain in his voice, but it could have been distorted by the flutter of wind. “Odeon is sleeping still. In an hour I’ll bring in a doctor.”
“Thanks for keeping an eye on him.” Holly drew in a breath, pushing back her fears for Odeon. “Darius, can you check the weather? How long is that storm supposed to stick over the mountains?”
“I’ll check it out, Drake.”
Holly craned her neck again to look back at her companions. Perhaps because they’d opened their chutes much earlier than her, they were quite far from her. Holly would land nearer the building that they’d determined to be the Centau’s. At that point she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Stake it out, see what was going on, probably, and wait for Charly and Shiro to catch up to her.
“I’m going to land closer than you. But I’ll get the lay of the land, report back, and wait for you.”
“Be careful, Ms. Drake—you’ve pointed out yourself that this Centau may be dangerous. Unhinged, at the very least.”
“Yeah. You won’t have your personal bodyguard with you, Hols, so you need to hang back till we get there. I mean, you’re almost as tough as I am. But if we’re real about it, you’re a twig. At least I look like I could kick someone’s ass.”
Holly laughed. “Looks are cheap, Charly. I also look like a sweetheart. We both know that’s not true.”
“Oh, so you think you look like a sweetheart?” Charly let a loud sarcastic laugh.
“Fine, a librarian, or something.”
Charly snorted. “That’s more like it.”
The banter left Holly feeling slightly less terrible about the insane task they’d embarked on. Holly knew, for one, that her landing was probably going to be rough. So she prepared for it, rehearsing in her head how it was going to happen.
While Shiro and Charly chatted about their flight path toward the outpost, Holly let their voices fade into the background as she floated toward the outpost and surveyed the landscape. Except for a few small bulging outcroppings of lava rock formations—there was little hope of keeping cover as she hiked toward it on foot. She made a tentative plan, thinking that if she could stick to it, then things might go well, for once.
The discomfort from the heat was getting stronger as her clothes became hotter and heavier. She fought the discomfort by focusing on where to land. Her breath now came in laborious, chest-constricting pants.
She spotted a relatively flat area on the curved earth that sloped up toward the crater of the volcano. It was about thirty feet away from the outpost. She could land and duck behind a formation of rock, then make her way toward the outpost.
Holly steered her parachute to it and crashed forward onto her hands and knees in a jagged landing. Her legs were still covered with clothes made for cold weather, but her hands were scraped raw from the landing. She ignored the pain, stood up, unclipped the parachute, and then dashed to duck behind a nearby slab of volcanic rock. She spared one glance at the parachute that was now fluttering in the hot air. At the same time, she spotted Shiro and Charly landing about fifteen hundred feet away.
Before she proceeded, Holly unzipped her coat and dropped it. She took off her long sleeve, form-fitting jacket and her sweat-soaked white shirt. She wasn’t going to take off her pants or boots, but wearing only her sports bra helped. Her only concern now was the sun, but the majority of the heat plaguing her was produced on the planet—it was one of the reasons that the moon Kota was so fertile—all the volcanic activity had produced healthy soil for growing food.
Holly touched the handle of her aether whip, pulled it off, switched it on, and flicked it a few times to make sure it still worked. She removed her throwing knives from her wrists, which were now no longer concealed beneath her sleeves, and inserted them into the cargo pockets of her trousers. Now she was ready.
She started up the remaining slope to the outpost, wondering just how the hell this Centau got food and other supplies to the remote location. The outpost consisted of one large square building. There was a gray all-terrain vehicle with large, knobby wheels positioned near it. Holly considered taking it and driving off, but that would come later. How else would they get out of here? It had been nearly impossible to get the pilot to even pass the hot/cold
air meridian.
Holly darted to the vehicle and crouched beside it. She watched the building for signs of life. Nothing stirred. There were windows and a door, and some kind of machine hummed nearby running on aether, maybe cooling the air in in the building. Once she made sure no one was around, Holly rushed to the building and pressed herself flat against it, edging closer to the window. Inch by inch, she moved toward the window and peeked inside.
Holly bit back a gasp.
The Centau was inside.
10
Xekna, the self-proclaimed witch, was in the process of holding the Angel of Starlight over her head. Her lips moved. She finished and laughed. She placed the golden heirloom in a blacksmith crucible with a ridiculously long handle attached to it.
Suddenly, Xekna’s head spun and she was staring through the window, right at Holly.
Holly fell backwards, her heart pounding. She stumbled and fell to the hot ground. Sweat poured down her face and her sides. She gasped for breath, but the air scorched her throat and made her cough. Her face felt like it was plastered with perspiration and stray locks of hair from her ponyail.
She was certain the Centau was crazed. Never before had she seen such a malevolent look in the gaze of a Centau.
Holly expected Xekna to come to the window. When nothing happened, Holly scrambled to her feet and crept back to the window. It was covered in dust. Xekna was gone. Holly looked around quickly, worried that the Centau was sneaking up on her.
No sign of the witch.
Holly picked her way around the corner of the building her heavy-feeling toes kicking against loose rock and discarding construction debris, searching for the Centau. There was no sign of her until Holly approached the corner of the building closest to the upward slope of the crater. Xekna was dashing up the mountain, clutching the angel and the crucible.
The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material) Page 156