by R. A. Nargi
“Here?”
That didn’t make sense. K’Lortai were winged saurians from the planet Gilaa. And while they were large creatures, they weren’t big enough to knock a Mako-class ship around.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a stowaway,” Ana-Zhi said. “Wasn’t there a Gilaan mission in ’39?”
“Yeah, there was,” Galish said. “Maybe they smuggled in some eggs or something.”
“Well, it must like its new home to have grown so big. Too bad it’s not going to last. I can’t see the Rhya allowing a non-native species to—”
“Excuse me!” Chiraine called. “I found it!”
7
The cave was right where Chiraine had said it would be: at the base of the mesa, set into the cliff wall only about thirty meters from the bottom. Ana-Zhi directed the optical scanners towards the cave’s location and an enhanced image came up on the bridge’s main display screen.
“At least it’s not flooded,” Galish said.
The mouth of the cave was fairly wide, but not wide enough for the Freya to fly in. That was for sure.
“Anyplace to set down?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“Not seeing anything yet. We may have to do a hot launch.”
“Oh goody.”
She started to call for folks to suit up, but I jumped in and began ordering the crew around. Ana-Zhi smirked at me when Chiraine wasn’t looking.
“Obarral, take the con,” I said.
Chiraine asked, “You did change your mind about going, didn’t you? Because I really think I need to be part of the incursion team.”
“No, on both counts,” I said. “I’ll be running the op remotely. And I could use your help.”
“Besides,” Ana-Zhi said. “The Captain flies for shit.”
“Here we go. A spot for a picnic.” Obarral had found a place to set down the Freya.
It didn’t take long for Xooth, Yates, Ana-Zhi, and Galish to suit up and prep the sled. They weren’t taking much gear besides the Raker and some weapons.
After running some environmental scans, Obarral gave them the all-clear and the team propelled the sled out of the launch bay. Chiraine and I watched as the small utility craft launched a half dozen micro drones ahead of them and then disappeared into the darkness of the cave mouth.
After a few fumbles I figured out how to change the comm display to the sled’s POV video feed and we watched as the sled rose up into the lava tube, flanked by a formation of the micro drones.
“So far, so good.” The shaft seemed to be plenty big enough for the sled, with a few dozen meters of clearance around it.
We had decided to run silent for as long as we could, since we didn’t know whether or not the Rhya—or Faiurae or Mayir for that matter—were monitoring for chatter.
Technically we weren’t prohibited from exploring a lava tube beneath Roan Andessa. It was the city itself—and the Obaswoon—that we needed to keep away from.
It took less than two minutes—even moving cautiously—to get to the top of the shaft. But then it looked like there was a problem.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked.
Chiraine nodded. “Someone blocked the Well of Forever.”
“Yeah, that’s not good.”
“The map is seventeen hundred years old. A lot could have happened since then.”
“Right, like someone erecting a building where this Well used to be.”
“I doubt that. It was a religious site.”
All of a sudden the display turned completely white for a second. My heart jumped. What was going on?
Then the cameras adjusted and the image returned to more or less to normal, but it looked like Xooth was using a plasma cutting torch at the blocked exit.
They had to position the sled so it wouldn’t get hit by the falling debris, but after several minutes they had been able to create an opening large enough for the sled.
I watched, fascinated, as the team emerged into the twilight of a ruined plaza.
“That’s Tarkoja,” Chiraine said.
I wasn’t prepared for how destroyed the place looked. Especially since Roan Andessa was supposed to be inhabited. Buildings had collapsed and were covered by thick vines and blankets of moss. There were tumbled statues and towers everywhere. Huge broken pillars looked like fallen tree trunks.
Then I got my first glimpse of the Obaswoon. It was tough to see them clearly in the gloom, but they appeared to be pale-skinned humanoids, dressed in loose-fitting handmade garments. They had some sort of weapons that looked like impulse rifles but obviously were not.
There weren’t that many Obaswoon on the plaza. The few that I could see were pushing handcarts or driving animals down the street. I caught a few glimpses of ramshackle stalls where people were selling stuff. The Obaswoon looked curiously at the sled, as it rose up above their heads, but didn’t appear to be alarmed by the presence of our team. Maybe the Obaswoon thought that Ana-Zhi and the team were Rhya wardens.
Yates finally seemed to get a fix on the destination and the sled wove its way through the stone temples and collapsed buildings.
“It’s remarkable to see Roan Andessa for real,” Chiraine said. “Everything I know about it was from centuries-old records.”
“Is it what you expected?”
“I’m not sure what I expected.”
We watched as the sled continued through the ruined city, hovering over a section that looked even more destroyed. Maybe from an earthquake.
“That’s it!” Chiraine said. “They’re at the location of A782.”
The camera panned around, showing a partially-destroyed tower that once was a work of art. It had all sorts of carvings and ornamentation. Almost like an Incan temple from Earth.
The sled landed near the temple and we watched as Yates deployed the Raker, a small, stocky robot with various appendages that allowed it to climb into position. The Raker propelled itself up the side of the tower and then froze in place. Hopefully it had fixed on its target and was now pulling in the data image.
I turned to Chiraine. “So you really think that once you get the data for this node, you can reconstruct the Ambit?”
Chiraine made a face. “Not the entire Ambit, obviously. But, based on my research, I do believe that A782 will lead us to the location of the Kryrk. In fact, the—”
She suddenly gasped. “Oh my god!”
I turned back to the display. Galish was on the ground, clutching at his arm.
“What happened?”
“I think he was shot!”
On the display we saw Ana-Zhi race over to Galish, while Xooth fired his shard slinger into the shadows.
This was definitely worth breaking radio silence for. I punched at the transmission button on the comm unit and yelled into the microphone. “Team, report!”
There was a slight delay, but then Ana-Zhi responded.
“Man hit! Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Armor absorbed most of it. Prep the MedBed anyway, just to be sure there’s not a fracture.”
I saw them load Hap Galish on the sled and then it lurched and set off at maximum speed—which was probably not much more than 30 KPH. Was Galish freaking dead?
“Keep an eye on this!” I barked to Chiraine, then ran towards the bridge, calling for Obarral. He met me in the corridor, having heard Ana-Zhi Agrada’s message.
“This way!” He led me towards the infirmary, where he cleared off and powered up the ancient MedBed. Then the two of us moved the gurney down the corridor to the launch bay.
“Do stay here until they come through that airlock,” Obarral said. “They’re going to come in hot!”
Hap Galish had been shot in the arm, but he was fine. We got him on the MedBed and it did its thing. Even though it was old technology, it managed to clean, disinfect, and seal the wound without any issues.
“He’s lucky that it just grazed him,” Ana-Zhi said.
She had reported that an Obaswoon came out of nowhere and shot at them with a
primitive projectile rifle. Thankfully, the Obaswoon was either a poor shot or the weapon wasn’t very accurate. Xooth had returned fire and disabled the attacker. Then they had made their escape.
Back at her workstation Chiraine was hard at work integrating the data that Yates had brought back. She said it might take her a few hours, so we decided to find a place to set down for the night—someplace safer than the bottom of a swamp inhabited by megafauna.
According to Ana-Zhi, there was a relatively quiet mesa that they had used as a camping spot during the last mission. She checked her logs and found the coordinates and then we flew up through the mist and headed towards it. Thankfully there were no cthulians or K’Lortai Dragons waiting for us.
Ana-Zhi took over pilot’s duties while Galish recovered in his cabin. I sat down beside her and stared out into the darkness.
“At least the Rhya didn’t blast us out of the sky,” I said.
“Not their style.”
There was an awkward silence for a while, that I was determined to break.
“So you knew my father?”
“Yeah, of course. Everyone did. What, he never mentioned me to you?”
“Should he have?” I asked.
“I’m just messing with you, kid.”
“So, what did you think about him?” I asked.
“Honestly?”
“Sure.”
“He was a horse’s ass.”
I burst out laughing. That wasn’t the response I expected. Most people—especially Beck Salvage employees—viewed my father as some sort of god.
Ana-Zhi continued. “He was arrogant, stuck-up, and thought he knew everything.”
“That sounds about right.”
“He was also the best damn captain I ever flew with.”
That was also unexpected. I took a deep breath. “Were you there when he, um, died…?”
She turned and looked right at me with her steely eyes. “Are you sure you want to be having this conversation?”
“I want to know. I want to hear about it from someone who was there.”
“Then talk to Yates. He was the last one to see your father alive. I was pretty messed up. Half dead and barely conscious in the infirmary for the whole time.”
“Yates has always been pretty vague about the whole thing,” I said.
“I don’t blame him. Why are you even asking about this?”
“Because I never got a straight answer. From Yates. From my uncle. From anyone.”
Ana-Zhi rubbed her eyes. I really noticed her lack of cosme in the bridge’s harsh lights.
“It wasn’t here on Yueld,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Yeah, I know. It was on Bandala, right where you found the Tabarroh Crystal.”
“Where your father found the Tabarroh Crystal. He figured out where it was hidden. He braved the scrubbers and a million other things. That place was a deathtrap and we had no business in there. Not for the biggest bounty in the universe. It just wasn’t worth it.”
“What…?” I trailed off. It was hard to get the words out.
Ana-Zhi looked down. “Sometimes you just run out of luck. That’s what happened with Sean. He didn’t do anything wrong. He just couldn’t outrun the security bots. In the end, he sacrificed himself to save Yates. And the Tabarroh Crystal.” She looked away, out into the darkness. “Story time’s over. Okay?”
Chiraine’s analysis took longer than she thought. Way longer. By the time I went to bed for the night, she was still at it.
I found her, early the next morning, asleep at her workstation.
“Hey.” I touched her shoulder lightly, but she jumped anyway.
“What the hell!” She squinted at me through sleep-swollen eyes.
“You fell asleep.”
“I know.”
“You want some moxa?”
“I’d kill for some.”
“Coming right up.”
Apparently the Rhya didn’t have any problem with limiting hospitality technology. The Freya’s galley was state-of-the-art and fully stocked. With the good stuff. No powdered moxa for us.
I returned to Chiraine bearing a hot, steaming mug—which I placed down before her. “Here you go.”
She took a sip, inhaling the rich aroma. “Where’d you get that?”
“Tastes like Ardovan, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does.”
“Courtesy of Beck Salvage.”
“I’m impressed.” She took another sip. “Doubly impressed.”
“So, it looks like you pulled an all-nighter.”
“I did.”
“And you found the Kryrk?” I asked.
Chiraine leaned back in her seat, cupping the moxa mug for warmth.
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, technically, there were no records of it in A782.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. That was the entire foundation of our mission. “Technically?”
“No records at all,” she said. “But, I was able to trace back another broken node. One we had never been able to locate before. A419.”
She seemed pleased with herself, but I felt like we had hit a dead end.
“So we have to go back into Roan Andessa? Galish is not going to be happy about that.”
“No. A419 isn’t on Yueld.”
“What?”
“It’s on Taullae.”
Taullae was one of Yueld’s moons. The larger one. And unlike the swamp planet, Taullae had hardly any water on it. It was a dusty wasteland. At least on the surface. Underground were vast vertical mine shafts. They were all dead now, but at one time they held huge veins of tagax. At least that’s what Piettow had implanted in my brain.
The moon was inhabited by Batalarians, an extremely long-lived race of non-humans who had been enslaved by the Yueldians and forced to work the mines. I had thought that most of them died out over the years, but when we arrived, some six hours after leaving Yueld, we discovered an active settlement near one of the poles.
“This is Maridu,” Yates said. “Old mining town. Didn’t think anyone was still living here.”
Ana-Zhi took us low, past the grid of mine heads, over the settlement. It was a sparse-looking town made up of a few dozen small blocky buildings the same rust-red color as the dirt. None of the buildings were taller than two stories and they appeared to be fairly low-tech, with only a few solar arrays and some rudimentary communication antennae. We saw a few Batalarians out and about, but they didn’t seem too concerned about us. And luckily, they didn’t shoot at us.
“Are they friendly?” I asked.
“Hard to tell without landing and looking in their eyes,” Ana-Zhi said. “Right, Hap?”
“I’d like them to get a good look at a frag popper,” Galish grunted.
Beyond the town was a landing strip with some rusty-red outbuildings and a scattered collection of wheeled land-vehicles. Lots of tracks ran from the landing strip out to the land beyond, connecting the town, the landing strip, and all the mine heads.
I didn’t see any sign of the Rhya wardens up here, so I wondered if the locals were being monitored in any way. I asked Ana-Zhi about it and she thought it was odd as well.
“They should have at least one wardship up here. Or a supply vessel.”
“Unless they were here and left already,” Galish said.
“Someone’s been trying their hand at some mining recently, it looks like,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Good luck with that,” Yates said. “These mines have been tapped out for centuries.”
“There’s always scraps left,” Ana-Zhi said. She banked the Freya around and flew over Maridu again.
“We might as well put down and save the fuel.” She turned to me and said, “Why don’t you check with Chiraine so we can figure out where we’re supposed to be going?”
I bristled at being an errand boy, but I was curious about Chiraine’s progress. Despite myself
, I had to admit that I was getting caught up in the mission.
When I left her a few hours ago, Chiraine had been deep in her analysis of the new node, trying to locate the position of A419.
“We’re not seeing much on the flyby in the way of technology,” I told her. “But Maridu seems to be populated. And someone is still using that landing strip.”
“It’s got to be here—in this quadrant. I know that.” She was nervously running her finger along the resonator, almost caressing the orb-shaped biklode.
“But you can’t pinpoint it exactly, like you did the last one? We need coordinates.”
She looked up at me. “It took me two years—almost three—to pinpoint A782. The nodes are different, of course, but a complete recreation of this part of the Ambit isn’t something I can do on the fly.”
“You need Yates to help?”
“There’s only one thing I need right now.” She handed me her empty mug. “More moxa.”
Between fetching drinks and reporting back and forth between Ana-Zhi and Chiraine, a thought came to me. I returned to the bridge, but found it unattended. It turned out everyone except Chiraine was in the galley, having lunch.
“So I have an idea,” I said, sitting down at the table.
“Dynark help us,” Ana-Zhi said, munching on a piece of sunshine toast. “The newbie has an idea.”
“No, let the captain talk,” Yates said.
“What if we just take the Raker into that town? The place isn’t that big. Surely it would be able to find this new node.”
“What are you proposing, mon capitaine? That we go house to house?” Obarral asked.
“Or just walk down the street.”
Galish shook his head. “Bad idea. We don’t know anything about the Batalarians and I’m not inclined to get shot at again.”
“You’ve got ceramlar body armor, don’t you?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what, big boy. Yates’ll teach you how to run the Raker and you go in there. How about that?”
Before I could answer, Chiraine rushed into the room. She was out of breath. “Come quick!”
“You okay?” I asked. “What’s going on?”