“Thank you. I’m sure that I’ll find her somewhere or we’ll end up back at her house.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
“No, that’s alright. You have planning and preparing to do on your own.”
“Will you be ready first thing in the morning to begin training?” Creia asked.
Athan nodded once.
“I will.”
He made his way back through the group and started toward the rest of the official buildings, forcing himself to keep his pace casual so that if they were watching him they wouldn’t detect the nervousness that was starting to creep back into his mind. He reached the infirmary and stepped carefully inside, not wanting to disturb any of those who were resting and trying to heal. The interior of the building was dark except for small bioluminescent plants positioned along the walls to provide a faint glow that let him just see the outlines of the people in their beds.
Athan backed out of the infirmary and started for Rey’s palace before remembering that he was with Creia at the meeting hall. He stood in the center of the courtyard in front of the infirmary and looked around helplessly. All of the fear and the negative thoughts that had melted away when he thought that he would find Ellora in the official buildings suddenly rushed back and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He thought of the ship that they had landed in the openness of the planet outside of the kingdom. Was it possible that she went there? Could her state of mind carried her out of the kingdom and toward the ship, determined that she was going to get to Penthos and Aegeus?
Athan rushed toward the nearest entrance to the kingdom. He saw a man standing beside it on guard, and his chest tightened. Though he hadn’t been called up by them, he knew that he had offended the Order, that they knew he had revealed secrets and even given vehicles to the group so that they could travel across Uoria more easily. If the guard had instructions to bring him in, he could consider his life over. He sank back into the shadows and stared at the entrance, debating what he should do next. The guard was stoic, not moving as he protected the entrance in the way that he was commanded. Athan remembered his own long hours standing at the gate on the other side of the kingdom. He was guarding it the day that Maxim had come home with Ivy. That was the first time that he had truly betrayed the Order, and he felt that it was that decision that had taken the rumblings of the war and surged them into full force.
Remembering that moment and how deep he already was, he knew that he couldn’t let his fear of the Order keep him from fulfilling his commitment to Maxim, to Kyven, to Ellora, and to Aegeus. Drawing in a breath, he pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head and ran with all of the speed that he could across the open area, past the guard, and through the entrance. He could hear the guard yelling after him, but it didn’t matter. By now the Order knew that he was back in the kingdom. If they wanted to, they would come for him. And when that happened, he would handle it.
As he ran into the darkness, thoughts of the last battle that he had fought alongside Aegeus formed vibrantly in his mind. He could smell the damp ground of the battlefield and hear the battle cries of the armies as they approached each other. In his mind he saw Aegeus, walking ahead of him with the warriors at his side. He remembered deeply within him how he felt when Aegeus disappeared, and then when the battle ended and he still couldn’t find a trace of his best friend. He thought he was dead. Rather than trying to understand what might have happened, he had simply resigned himself to Aegeus’s death and steeled himself for having to tell Ellora. He had given up on him.
As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he knew where Ellora was. The ship had just come into view, but he turned back and ran toward the kingdom with new speed. What he needed to do would put him in extraordinary danger, but he had to do it. He couldn’t give up on her. No matter how much danger he was facing, if she was where he thought that she was, it was nothing compared to what she could be enduring. He needed to get to her if she was going to have any chance of survival.
Circumventing the entrance that he had just used to get out of the kingdom, Athan ran along the edge of the stone wall toward the gate that he was guarding when Maxim and Ivy arrived what felt like a lifetime ago. He noticed another guard in place and continued past, not wanting to risk trying to pass a second guard so soon after the first. When he got around to the side of the kingdom, he gathered all of his strength and what felt like might be the last of the energy that he had within him, moved back several steps, and then ran toward the wall. He dug his foot against the stone and felt his body pause for a moment, pulled between falling back to the ground and allowing him to get up and over the top of the wall. Using his thoughts of Ellora and Aegeus to fuel him, he forced himself up and grasped the top of the wall, digging his fingers into the stones on the other side. He took a few breaths and then pulled himself up and over the top of the wall. Dropping down on the other side, he landed and took off running.
His fingers flew as he input the code into the keypad hidden in the stones of the wall and he stepped back to allow the section of ground to sink away, revealing the entrance to the network of underground tunnels that were the hidden lair of the Order.
Chapter Nine
Maxim walked to the entrance to the compound for what felt like the thousandth time and peered out across the seemingly endless expanse of sand. The group from Earth should have been to him by now. He had been waiting for days and Azra had communicated with Elise to tell her that they would be arriving on the planet soon. He was getting more concerned about them as the minutes passed, giving him a helpless feeling that he hated. The papers that he had found in the Valdician office were still in the back of his mind, and the more he thought about them, the more the worry increased until he felt like his stomach was tied in knots. More than ever he wished that he and Ivy could communicate the way that the Denynso were able to. He knew that sending her back to Uoria was the right thing to do to keep her and their baby as safe as possible, but it also made him feel so disconnected from her. The distance was painful and he longed just to hear her voice. He had to remind himself, though, that he had made the decision that he had to and that it would be his efforts here that would ensure that he made it back to her.
Seeing no one on the horizon or any other indication that they might be coming, Maxim turned and headed back to the building that they had claimed as their headquarters. He stepped inside and looked to where Zyyr was leaned against the wall, still recovering from the injury to his leg. Lila came into the room carrying a plate of food and looked at Maxim earnestly.
“Did you see them?” she asked.
Maxim shook his head.
“Where’s Elise?”
“She went to get water from the pump,” Lila said.
“I need to talk to her.”
“To me?”
Elise pushed the curtains that separated the two sections of the building out of the way and stepped into the room. She set a large pitcher of water on the table set against one wall and glanced at Maxim over her shoulder. Her voice sounded like she was hovering somewhere between fear and confidence, balancing both emotions that she had struggled with since they had been on the shuttle. He knew that she wanted so much to live up to what they had told her was now her place: the mate of a Denynso who was involved in this war whether she was prepared to be or not. At the same moment, though, she was still afraid, still unsure of the situation that had swept her up the instant that she fell in love with Azra.
“I need you to contact Azra,” Maxim said. “It’s been far too long. They should have been here by now.”
“You shouldn’t panic,” Zyyr said. “They had no way of knowing where to find the compound. They could have landed far from here and still be on their way.”
Maxim shook his head.
“No,” Elise said. “The ships are extremely accurate when it comes to navigation. If they had a pilot that was at all familiar with how to use one of the newer ships, they would be able to see the compound fro
m far enough that they could land within a fairly short distance. Not right beside the compound, but not so far that it would take hours to get here.”
Maxim was surprised at the calm with which she was able to say this. He knew where Ivy was and still couldn’t shake the worry about her no matter how determined he was to close himself off to thoughts about her. Azra was among the group that was missing on the dangerous and desolate planet, and she was still able to remain in control. She might never walk into battle, but he would never forget that she was fighting just as hard as they were.
“Have you heard from him?” Maxim asked.
“No,” she said. “Not since he told me that they were preparing to leave.”
“Can you try to reach out to him, please? We need to know where they are.”
“They still haven’t arrived?”
Maxim turned toward the curtain and saw Avery holding it back as he stood in the doorway. He immediately stepped back and looked toward Zyyr.
“No,” Zyyr replied shortly.
Avery scoffed.
“Are you seriously going to keep going with this?” he asked.
“What?” Maxim asked.
The human pilot stepped the rest of the way into the room and held his hands out as if to encompass all of them.
“This,” he said. “All of this. You can’t honestly think that I haven’t noticed that you have been completely isolating me. I’ve been forced into my own little corner and totally left out of everything that’s been happening. The instant that I walk in the room, you stop talking.”
“It’s just that you aren’t a part of this. You are only here because of circumstances that were beyond your control.”
“Don’t give me that,” Avery snapped aggressively. “You know as well as I do that I’m here by choice. I might have been trapped on that ship because of the Valdicians, but I chose to stay here with you. I offered my service to you and I demanded that the rest of my crew show you respect. I could have gone to Uoria with the others and then taken the ship and gone back to Earth with my crew if I didn’t want to be a part of this.”
Maxim felt the words hit him in the gut and knew that Avery was completely right. The pilot could have easily rejected them and refused to help them. He could have waited for Rain to repair the damaged navigation system and then taken over the ship again so that he could go back to Earth rather than letting her bring Kyven, Nylek, Ivy, and Rain back to Uoria along with the other two members of his crew. Instead, he had joined them without question and was willing to fight alongside them.
“I’m sorry. You’re right,” Maxim relented. “I shouldn’t have treated you that way. We need all of the help that we can get, and if you are still willing to give it to us, I would appreciate anything that you could do.”
He expected Avery to reject him, but instead, the man stepped forward and held out his hand. Maxim took it firmly, meeting the other man’s eyes to show his sincerity.
“My opinion hasn’t changed,” Avery said. “I’m happy to do whatever I can for you. I might not fully understand what’s happening, but I know enough to know that I can’t abide by what’s happened.”
“I’m going to go outside and try to contact Azra,” Elise said. “He’s had his mind blocked, but I might be able to get through.”
“Thank you, Elise,” Maxim said. He turned back to Avery. “I need you to tell me everything that you know about Nyx 23 and this planet.”
He drew in a breath, hoping that Avery could tell him something that would help him understand what was happening.
“To be honest, there isn’t much to know. It was such a long time ago and there wasn’t much documentation.”
“The human women told us that the case was in history textbooks. It’s something that is well-known,” Maxim said.
“Known about, yes,” Avery said. “But there simply weren’t many details. When we learned about it in school, we learned the names of the crew and the official backstory for why they left Earth.”
“And it mentioned Penthos?” Maxim asked.
“Yes,” Avery said. “When the crew originally left, the existence of the planet was still contested. There were many official agencies and even academic groups that didn’t believe that it was there. The disappearance of the Nyx 23 crew was the confirmation that it did actually exist. That was when the planet got its name.”
“That’s right,” Maxim said, remembering when Rain and Ivy first confirmed the story in the meeting hall of the human settlement. “Rain told us that the mission was clandestine and that even people within her department didn’t know about it. What did they teach you was the purpose of the trip?”
“No real details were ever given,” Avery admitted. “The official backstory is that they were a carefully selected elite group that was on a humanitarian exploration mission.”
The explanation didn’t sound exactly like what the women had told him, but it was close, reaffirming that the government and University had either covered up what had really happened to Nyx 23, or didn’t know.
“How did they explain their disappearance?” Maxim asked. “Ivy said that you mentioned it when they found you in the panic room in the ship.”
Avery nodded.
“Some of the newest technology in the ships that has just been released was developed because of what happened to Nyx 23, and there are security measures now because of them and because of the more recent hijackings. They said that the Nyx 23 crew went missing because the ship’s security was breached and the navigation was compromised. Crews were sent to Penthos to find them, but didn’t recover them or the ship.”
“How would they know that the systems had been compromised?” Maxim asked.
“What do you mean?” Avery asked.
“You said that they developed new technology based on the fact that the Nyx 23 StarCity had their security and navigation systems compromised. Since they never recovered the ship and had no communication with the crew after they left Penthos, how could they possibly know that that’s what happened?”
Avery shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We just accepted what they told us because it was a tragedy. You don’t question tragedies.”
Maxim could hear the regret in Avery’s voice. It struck Maxim as incredibly strange that the official documentation of the disappearance of the crew would include information about a ship that had never been recovered and couldn’t have transmitted any information back to Earth. There was no way that they would have known what had happened to the ship in order to change future technology or procedures.
“What can you tell me about the crew?” Maxim asked. “Did they explain how they were chosen or any special qualifications that they might have had?”
Even though he had spent time talking to Rain and some of the other humans from the settlement about the time before they left for the mission, Maxim didn’t know if he was truly getting the full information from them. It was possible that Avery could tell him something about them that would give him a new perspective.
“It was a fairly large crew,” Avery said. “Some of them weren’t involved in the actual mission, but were chosen just for the purpose of keeping the StarCity itself operational.”
“Rain never mentioned that,” Maxim said. “I thought that everyone who was onboard was part of Nyx 23. She said that she was trained to fly the ship.”
“She was,” Avery confirmed. “She was given that credit. Many of the crewmembers performed duties throughout the StarCity, but at the time that was the largest ship in use. It was an experimental ship style that had never been utilized before and was never utilized again. It needed a larger support structure than could have been provided by just the crew that was chosen from the department.”
“Do you know that there was a support crew, or are you just assuming that there was because of the complexity of the ship?” Maxim asked. “Were their names released?”
“No,” Avery said. “Only the members
of the official Nyx 23 mission were released. The ones who had official positions like Rain and Martin Roe were noted.”
“Martin Roe?” Maxim asked. “I don’t recognize that name.”
“He was the pilot,” Avery said.
Maxim shook his head.
“No,” he said. “That’s not right.”
“What do you mean?” Avery asked. “He was one of the most skilled pilots in the transportation department of the University as well as being a part of the department that Nyx 23 came out of, which made him the obvious choice for the mission.”
“No,” Maxim said again, shaking his head and looking to Zyyr and Lila for backup. “That’s not the name that Rain mentioned. She’s told us about the pilot. She…” he stopped himself before he revealed the suicide of the pilot as the ship was crashing to the surface of Uoria, not wanting to dishonor the memory of a man that he had never known. “Rain mentioned his name many times. She called him Etan.”
“Etan?” Avery asked. “I’ve never heard that name mentioned. All of the crew lists have Martin Roe as the pilot. It’s even his picture in textbooks and at exhibits about the disappearance.”
Maxim’s thoughts were churning. Why would Rain not know the real name of the pilot? Or could it be that the official crew lists purposely listed the wrong man as the pilot for the Nyx 23 crew? And if that was the case, what had happened to Martin Roe?
Chapter Ten
Aegeus avoided the reflective doors of the ship’s elevators as he made his way toward the infirmary. He knew that he still wasn’t entirely himself and he couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the results of Ryan’s disgusting work again. The gruesome, skeletal appearance of the Klimnu represented so much of the darkness and evil in his past. The first time that he saw himself after being freed from the lab, the mutation was unbearable to look at. He had become everything that he hated. From the very beginning of his service to the Order and to the army of the Mikana kingdom he had sworn that he would give his life to protect the kingdom from their enemies, and when he saw himself in the tiny mirror in the University basement he was confronted with the stark reality that a portion of his life had been stolen to force him to be the very thing that he had railed against most severely.
The Alien's Mystery (Uoria Mates IV Book 7) Page 8