Chapter Nine
Touchdown
“Tighten your straps. This is gonna rock your guts,” Grace shot over her shoulder as the Taras Bulba shuddered into Zopyrus’s lavender atmosphere.
Varinia gripped the center plate securing the cross-shaped straps that held her in. Her teeth chattered. A rattlesnake oscillation tickled up from her feet and her ass. Lyssa and Solomon flanked her along the rear wall of the cockpit, while Grace and Clay occupied the two pilots’ seats at the front. An overwhelming excitement bristled inside, making her lips pucker and whimper out the gamut of giddy expletives. A heightened realization that the five of them were farther from Earth than most people had dreamed, illegally, and no one could possibly stop them, almost coined her through the roof.
“Yeeeee-haa!”
The ship’s nose bullied through thirty seconds of severe resistance, its friction rings ripping apart a lilac sky. The old cockpit jangled and rattled, but it held together. A negative-g jolt catapulted Varinia’s stomach into the upper troposphere. Her eyes almost popped from their sockets as she gawped, speechless, at the spectacular world below.
Vast swathes of blue rainforest, webbed by intersecting greenish rivers, covered a valley between the widest and most precipitous cliffs she’d ever seen. A mountain on the port side was so enormous it reached far above the violet clouds. As Grace banked the ship toward that cliff face, a lower plateau came into view ahead, skirting the crescent shoreline of an endless, glittering dark green ocean. Streams of water fell hundreds of meters from numerous points along the edge of this plateau, the most eye-popping following the downward spiral of helix-like plant creepers, whose large silvery thorns barred the water and flung glistening rainbow spray into the wind. These commas of spray climbed to form a collective mist over much of the plateau. In her exuberance Varinia swore she glimpsed giant temple columns and mammoth archways inside the mist.
“Where do we land?” Lyssa widened her mouth for a full-on yell, but only a whimper emerged. “I said where the hell do we land?”
Varinia massaged inside her ears with her fingertips. A muffled ring intensified until she couldn’t hear Lyssa at all. It had to be the pressure. To equalize, she pinched her nose and swallowed hard. Three times. Her ears and jaw clicked. The ringing ceased, the rattling resumed.
“The old man said we can’t land on the beach,” Grace shouted back while leveling the Taras Bulba’s trajectory. She pointed Clay to a large burgundy-brown glade near the lower mountain cliff, a kilometer or so before one of the minor waterfalls.
“Why not the beach?” Lyssa asked.
“High tide. Unless you want to swim back to Earth, we won’t be parking there, chick.” Using controls on her armrests, Grace zoomed in and rolled a cursor into position on the 3D topographical hologram projected in front of her. A double bleep flashed the cursor green. “Right, this is it. The old man’s coordinates were spot on. I’m easing us onto his old landing place. Hang in there.”
“You okay, Varinia?” Solomon seemed so unfazed by the whole thing he might have just woken from a Sunday morning lie-in.
“Yeah. This is amazing. Worth it just to explore, you know?”
“We’ll have to do some climbing.”
“Try and reach that plateau,” she said. “I was sure I saw some ruins up there.”
“No kidding.”
“Then there’s this whole forest, and miles of beach. Am I glad you volunteered us for this.”
He checked to make sure no one was watching, then he blew her a kiss. Loving the gesture, she caught it in her fist, clasped her hands together and shook the kiss into a martini. She poured two imaginary glasses, handed him one, and they toasted their new life together on Zopyrus.
Before she could take a sip, the Taras Bulba touched down with a spine-buzzing thump. Varinia gripped her armrests. Mesmerized, she gazed out to a bald, brownish area full of tiny jumping creatures fleeing in all directions. A place where few humans had ever trod.
The cargo bay’s metal lips squealed open and a deluge of thick, tropical heat, far hotter than the oasis resorts of Magadan Three or the Turkish beaches of Earth, filled the Taras Bulba’s hindmost section.
Grace handed each of them a pair of cheap sunglasses, and responded to their ungrateful sighs and eye-rolls with, “What do you want? Designer goggles? Cheapskates skate cheap. Get used to it. We’re the least hi-tech prospectors since Gob the ape-man chewed a gold nugget, lost a tooth, and couldn’t tell which one belonged in his mouth.
“All right, we’re doing this in two teams. No one gets left alone at the ship. According to the old man’s map, our mine’s a little under four miles away, over on the coast. It’ll take us several trips but if we get cracking we should have everything at the campsite by nightfall.”
“How long are Zopyrus days?” Solomon unclipped the roly-poly’s container.
“Technically about thirty-one hours for the moon’s rotation. But its momma’s a gas giant—” she pointed to a hazy blue-gray hue enveloping much of the sky over dozens of mountain peaks, “—called Blue Bitch.” Groans and titters. “Probably not the technical name for it but ’til you can come up with a better one…She’s dull out of the sun, except when she’s having a strop. Her lightning storms are fairly common—according to the journal, the longest one was four days and nights. Hence why they called her Blue Bitch. Then there are three other moons in orbit. Not very big but, again, when they reflect the sun, especially two or all three at the same time, let’s just say we won’t need torches to find the outhouse. Get me?”
“Who’s making the first run?” Varinia had to ask, as she was dying to see the beach and the campsite as soon as possible. She cheekily held her finger up so that no one could see it but Grace.
“We’re all on equal footing now. Okay, let’s do this random. Clay, Lyssa and Varinia, you go on the first run. Solomon and I will stay behind and start camouflaging the Taras. Here’s the exact coordinates of the mine.” She handed Clay her portable digital interface. “It’s our secret now. When you get there, pick us a sheltered spot as far away from the sea as you can. Then one of you stay there, guard the stuff ’til the next party arrives. We good?”
“Trunks and bikinis.” Lyssa flicked the old woman a mock salute.
“Hmm. Let’s hope you feel that way after the forest.” Grace wiped her brow. “Remember I said the old man only started his journal after about a month. So we don’t know anything about this rainforest. That makes you guys the teachers on this one.”
“We’ll take the animals last.” Lyssa seemed keen to try out her unlikely new role as teacher. “We’ll have to wing it this first time, and they might be tricky to handle in a tight spot. Plus whichever dumb shit we leave to watch the camp will have his hands full without having to shovel donkey crap.”
“You can take the girl out of the gutter, but you can’t take the gutter out of the girl.” Grace patted Lyssa’s shoulder. “Nice try. But we bought these ponies and this roly-poly for precisely this purpose—to help with the carrying. Don’t worry none about handling them. They’re well trained. Better trained than you, that is.”
“Whatever.”
Meanwhile, Solomon stripped to his waist—his glistening pectorals and massive shoulders melted Varinia, made her want to jump him there and then, in front of everyone—as he unclipped all the trolleys and bundles ready for the first run. A workman by trade, a ripped hunk of manly goodness by every measure, Solomon Bodine seemed right at home in this untamed land, before he’d even stepped foot off the ship.
She turned to watch the equally sexy Clay who, accompanied by sarcastic fanfare from the other two women, became the first of them to set foot on the soft, giving soil of Zopyrus.
The sweltering humidity made Clay want to strip to his khakis, but he knew his bare white skin, unused to such strong rays, would soon peel and burn. He suffered in silence. At least Grace hadn’t forgotten bushwhacker hats for them all to wear. Those at least protected their n
ecks and the tops of their heads. Even so, he reckoned that by the end of the day, Lyssa and Varinia would need plenty of soothing lotion on their arms, legs and shoulders. Their shirts were too thin. And he certainly wouldn’t say no to applying said lotion…hell no.
Negotiating the large, clumsy buttress roots of these pale twisted trees took a keen eye. If the roots jutted too high, the trolleys’ intelligent triple wheels couldn’t make the lift, and the ponies only had short legs, too. They weaved for an hour or so around countless icy-looking trunks and roots—the topmost foliage, in the sun, was sapphire blue, while color bled from the lower quarters until the base became pure white. The soft soil, which gave a few inches, grew deeper and very unstable.
“Wow, stop. Back up, back up.” Lyssa sank up to her knees in quicksand. Her vociferous command translated quickly into pony, and the lead beast backed up—more likely scared out of its wits—dragging Lyssa out as she clutched its tether. “We need another way through, people.” She didn’t wait for a response, nor even to shake the mud off. Instead she tramped past her fiancé and Varinia without uttering a word.
Clay shared a lighthearted aside with Varinia, raising an eyebrow. She reciprocated. Christ, she was stunning when sun-kissed. Her sunglasses gave her a sleek and untouchable quality. His loins stirred, threatened to overheat, and he decided it was best to keep his distance from now on. After all, he was betrothed. To a different kind of woman altogether. To say the least.
He followed Lyssa’s latest attempt at trailblazing and loved her brash decisiveness. She led them unknowingly in a circle before giving a shrug, then veered toward the cliff face, toward the rising thunder of a significant waterfall. He had to chuckle. There might be four-leggeds in tow, but Lyssa had the bit between her teeth on this expedition.
Her gamble paid off. The bed of a cool emerald stream, though a little silty underfoot, provided an excellent, more or less uninhibited route for a mile or so. From here they gained a terrific view of the cliff wall under the plateau. It was amazingly smooth and straight, hewn by talented craftsmen…or craftsthings. Two thirds of the way up, roughly two hundred meters, a series of equidistant, geometrically perfect round holes, each about five meters in diameter, leaked water.
Clay imagined they were part of some stupendous drainage system for an ancient alien civilization, and that the old man’s name for this place, Zopyrus, had been inspired by the great walls of Babylon or Troy. No evidence of current residents, though. The helix-like creepers climbing the waterfalls also choked many of the trees below. A few even blocked drainage holes, further suggesting the civilization had expired.
“What do you reckon, Clay? Worth exploring?” Varinia’s confident tone surprised him. He’d expected her to find this a difficult journey—a princess slugging it out with hot nature. Instead she was a glutton for more? Interesting.
“Yeah, plenty of scrubs would kill for the chance,” he replied without turning. “I can’t believe no one else knows about this place—it’s a trove on top of a trove.”
“Solomon’s already agreed to climb. Wanna come?”
“Sure thing. Lyssa and I wouldn’t say no.”
“That’s what I meant. Be a fun expedition on our day-off…for all of us. Hey, where you from, Clay?”
Uh-oh. And it starts…
“Borodin,” he lied.
“What did you do for a living? All that navigational stuff…and you’re, if you don’t mind me saying, a lot brighter than the average suck-bait haunting deep space.”
“Thanks, I guess. I actually crewed freight shuttles for a while. Drifted further and further out. Before I knew it I was hopping rocks, no prospects. Same old. You know?” He spun for a glimpse of her mouthwatering figure.
The short skirt over tight spandex shorts looked a little odd, but her slender upper body, silhouetted through her thin cotton shirt, hinted at dangerous times ahead. Times when he’d be working alone with her, in various states of undress, his hard-on impossible to hide. But hide it he must. They had ten months to dig a fortune. Ten months to keep to their respective partners. Not that a stunner like her would go for a greasy grid-licker like him when she had Solomon Bodine, a guy twice Clay’s size, to share a tent with. But hell, it was so hot and she was so hot and he’d suddenly grown hornier than a…
No, get a grip. Focus on the path ahead. Must be getting near—
“So what’s in the plastic bag?” Varinia asked.
He stopped in his tracks, then had to force himself to trudge on and pretend she hadn’t uttered the exact words he’d dreaded hearing ever since arriving on Kappa Max. So…she’s the curious one. Another reason to steer clear.
“Just a few mementos from home.”
“That’s sweet.”
If only she knew.
“A man should be a little sentimental,” she went on. “It makes him more marryable. Congrats, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“You and Lyssa. She told me when we started out. I wish you both luck.”
“Thank you.”
Lyssa’s cry of “Get a move on, you two, I can see the sea” curtailed their chat, and Clay hurried his trolley, pony and the old roly-poly up the next shallow embankment, into curtains of tall lilac grass hacked apart by Lyssa.
“Where? Where is it?”
“Through that next field.” She removed her sunglasses to glare first at Varinia, then him, with smoldering hostility. What? Did the attraction show on him? Physically? How did—
He looked down. Oh, Christ. Not the best time to have a boner.
Lyssa’s jealousy couldn’t be more obvious. Legs astride, dry lips pursing, she looked ready to crack a whip and start some serious shit.
“Then lead on, Mrs. Barry.” Clay invoked her soon-to-be-married name—a pitiful attempt to placate her that even he cringed at.
“Anything going on?” She narrowed her eyes at Varinia. “You two fell back a mile a minute. What’s up?”
“What do you mean? We’re nearly there,” Varinia pointed out.
“Nearly. Not quite. What were you two talking about?”
“Skinny-dipping. What’s it to you?”
Clay quickly led his animals to the head of the convoy. “Let it go,” he whispered to his fiancée. “She’s happy with Solomon. Just like I am with you. You’re fretting over nothing. Trust me.”
“Whatever.”
“We cool?”
She broke her venomous gaze. “You are, babe. But Princess and me are gonna have a little talk after we leave you on the beach. Get a few things straight.”
“Go easy. We’ve got ten months yet.” He really wanted to tell her how personable and polite the princess was, but poor Varinia was under enough suspicion already.
“Just a word, that’s all. She can take care of herself, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He ignored that last remark and fought his way through the tall lilac grass instead. A pungent smell of fresh pulp intensified the further he plowed. Suddenly the grass opened up and a magnificent ocean vista overpowered him. He sank to his knees. It stretched as far as he could see in every direction. Few clouds, even fewer ripples in the glassy water—it was apoplectic, like a snapshot of an imaginary ocean, on which time stood still.
The animals ran back for the cover of the grass. He wasn’t kneeling on sand but on flattened stalks and what appeared to be the dried tangles of alien kelp. If high tide had reached this far, beyond the level of the cliff wall, they would have to find a dry cove or inlet farther up the beach to set up camp in, or else the sea would wash it all away.
He retrieved the digital map from his pocket. The spot marked as the mine was half a kilometer from the headland, roughly where the cliff did indeed appear to depress.
“Say your prayers later,” Lyssa mocked him as she passed. “Ain’t you never seen water before?”
He tossed a clump of kelp after her.
“Take a bath, creep,” she added with relish. Clay burst out laughing.
; The ponies wouldn’t budge without harsh yanks, while the old roly-poly, unfurling to stand tall for a moment—he reached over eight feet—seemed to scrutinize the water, then study Clay, after which he curled back into his wheel posture for a rapid beachward roll. What a curious creature. Clay had never worked with one before. This roly-poly was a terrific courier, no question. He’d held the tent packages suspended inside his rolling form, by whatever natural levitation ability he possessed, for miles. And he also appeared to have some kind of intuitive instinct. What had he sensed in the sea?
“It’s wonderful. Flat as a mill pond.” Varinia’s brunette curls tumbled onto her shoulders as she removed her bushwhacker.
“You’re loving this, aren’t you,” Clay said.
“I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. You?”
“It’s growing on…me!” He scrambled to unhook a squirming, slug-like creature with twin sucker heads from his boot.
Varinia laughed before brushing her backside and shoulders and checking every inch of her body.
“Welcome to Zopyrus.” Clay’s pony and the roly-poly had already caught up to Lyssa. After doffing his hat to Varinia, he jogged after them, trolley in tow, unable to recall the last time he’d felt this good.
Chapter Ten
Solomon’s Dilemma
“Whenever you’re ready,” Grace bellowed from a safe distance.
Axe in hand, focused on a spot marked on the nearest tree for him to cut, Solomon Bodine stood tall, glanced at each of his broad shoulders in turn, and grinned. Ever since he’d been forced to leave his father’s church, two attributes had ensured he’d always found work, probably the least likely attributes a boy raised a Catholic would ever imagine utilizing—physical strength and stamina. Whether mining, roughnecking, working zero-g or even high-g construction—the latter on larger planets was regarded as the ultimate test of human endurance—Solomon had invariably received a commendation from his employers and had often been asked to stay on for another job or sign a long-term contract. But his roots didn’t exist anymore. They’d been wrenched loose that day his father died, torn free when the demolition bot had smashed the church, scattered into space when he’d taken his first ever off-world shuttle, never to return.
Sparks in Cosmic Dust Page 11