At the end of my prayer, I heard a rustling in the leaves.
I hefted my javelin. It was too much weapon for the jokapazathel, but the rustling seemed to come from something larger. I crouched and snuck through the ikfal, eyes and ears attuned to every nuance. I could use UV, but it felt like cheating when my prey was so small.
Raxkarax had assured me the serpents and shegoshe-taxl never traveled this far north the last time I had asked him.
There. Another rustling noise in the branches. I saw the leaves shimmy on a large bush.
I lowered myself to hands and knees and peered into the bush.
A white jokapazathel stared at me with red eyes.
I gasped.
Had Theraxl ever seen albinism?
I toggled my comms. “Raxkarax,” I said.
“Yes, Pattee?” He sounded annoyed.
“Have you ever seen a white jokapazathel?”
A pause.
“No. I have only heard of such things in stories. Do you see one now?”
“I’m staring right at it,” I said. “I won’t kill it.”
“That is well,” he said. “It will die soon enough in this land, having lost its colors. They say the Goddesses send White Ones as messages from the heavens. We are forbidden to kill them.”
“I’ll leave it be, then,” I said and signed off. “You’re safe, little White One,” I said.
It winked at me and scuffled away under the bushes.
I stood to turn away when a thought occurred to me. Messages from the heavens? The Theraxl healer, the Maikshe, had sent information about healing plants. What if …?
“VELMA, give me those images of medicinal plants please.”
The images displayed in my IntraVisor, and I followed the trail the White One had made, the rustling leaves drawing my eye. I stepped over treefalls and stumps. I inspected the plants I came across, but nothing matched the photos. I tamped down frustration. Hivelt had spoken to me about hope. Even if it was a fragile tendril, I had to hold onto it. For him.
Each time the jokapazathel stopped to nibble at something, I compared it painstakingly to the photos on my screen. Still nothing.
I had been trailing the albino jokapazathel for an hour when its trail disappeared at a tiny stream. I crossed the stream and searched through all the bushes and briars. I crossed back over to the last place I’d seen it, but it wasn’t there. It was as if a black hole had swallowed it.
“Pattee, I have my kills. I return to Moon Shield. Do you need help?”
“No, I’ll be up soon.” I had no kills. And no medicinal plants. And no “white rabbit”.
Feeling foolish, I sunk to the bank of the tiny creek and watched the clear water run, dejected. A breeze stirred the leaves of a tiny tree. I squinted at it. Its branches were purple. And its leaves were gray. A memory surfaced from a distant dream.
“Sweet … leaf.” I plucked the branch and stared at it. Where had I seen this before? I sniffed it, and the memory of braiding sweetgrass with my mother washed over me in a powerful wave. The goddesses of this world had given me something I could use in place of tobacco. Even if I couldn’t find any of the healing herbs, this was, without question, a message from the heavens. I had been given the means to continue my traditional faith, a symbol for offerings and gratitude, even when my heart was broken. My heart warmed. I blinked away tears and looked at the quiet stream.
Something shimmered and glistened in the water.
57
I stretched and yawned, then sat up. Blinking, I smirked at the odd expressions on everyone’s faces. “You have not seen a mighty hunter take a nap?” I asked and rubbed at my eyes. “Hivelt needed a rest.”
Naraxthel cocked his head. The soft traveler beside him held her hand over her mouth but made no noise.
Raxthezana paused mid-stroke, sharpening his blade.
Raxkarax stood with a brace of jokapazathel at his back.
“Why do I feel like I am missing something?” I looked at each in turn.
A memory tickled at my brain, but I couldn’t place it. And the image of a dream, something with a lot of feathers. Many colors of feathers. I cocked my head and stared at the fire pit. A small pot bubbled from which the smell of spicy ten-finger tea arose. It was an odd choice for a meal at Moon Shield. The hunters brewed it when someone had a serious injury from which they could not recover.
Everyone I stared at seemed hale and without need of the tea.
“What?” I growled and stood, unsteady on my feet.
Naraxthel moved to catch me, but I glared at him.
“I am not a youngling learning to walk!” I stood and popped my back.
Footsteps pattered behind me, and I spun to see Pattee Crow Flies running straight at me.
“Hivelt!” she screamed and jumped into my arms.
I caught her and held her tight, inhaling her fragrance as her helmet had been tossed aside. It seemed I had only held her moments ago, but she acted as if I had been gone an entire moon. I held her away from me to see tears streaming down her face. “But what is the matter? We are all well here,” I said. “Why does everyone stare so?” I slid her body down my length but held her close with one arm.
She wiped her tears away with her free hand. She spoke to the group. “I didn’t find any small prey,” she said. “I’m sorry. But I caught several of these shiny fish.” She held up a stringer of eight fat glisten-fish. “I thought we could at least have a change of pace from the usual, if fish is something you eat. Esra and I will eat it, if not,” she said, her voice trailing off.
“Glisten-fish.” I squeezed Pattee to me so tightly she cried out. Then I kissed her, and her lips tasted like the Suns of Shegoshel. Her smile sparked a flame in my heart and engulfed my heart-home, and then I remembered seeing her, pride swelling my heart, as she stood in the center of a dozen slain agothe-faxl, covered in their blood, panting from exertion, and the light from our woaiquovelt blades casting a purple, jeweled crown across her forehead through her helmet visor.
I could not remember anything after.
My brows furrowed. “What happened?” I asked Pattee, my eyes and ears attuned to her and her alone.
“The Elder Sister agothe-fax struck you,” she said. “Naraxthel administered the Holy Waters of Shegoshel, and we brought you here to recover. You’ve been asleep for days.”
“Days,” I whispered, and then looked at the others.
Naraxthel nodded.
Raxthezana and Raxkarax had dropped their items and folded their arms.
Esra held out a cup. “If you want this,” she said.
I took the cup and drank its contents in one draught, the refreshment enlivening my senses.
Now I remembered all but the end. “I thank you all,” I addressed my companions. “But Pattee comes with me now.” I pulled at her hand, but she came willingly as we hiked to the base of Moon Shield, away from curious eyes.
In the shade of Moon Shield, I faced Pattee.
“Your fellow human? Has Natheka found her?” I asked Pattee.
“No,” she said. “And we don’t know if it’s a man or woman.”
I rubbed at my chest armor. “It is a female,” I said. “And he will find her.”
Pattee glanced at my hand over my heart and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “I will trust you.”
“You had better,” I said. “My heart is …”
“Never wrong,” she finished.
She stretched to reach me, so I bent to meet her mouth with mine.
She kissed me again, and the scent of morning dew flooded my senses.
Her hunger for me drowned my intellect.
Her tongue sought out my own, and we shared one another’s life breath, exploring textures we’d never imagined and flavors undiscovered until now. When she pulled away, her lips were swollen, and her cheeks flushed.
I had no doubt my features were similarly affected, as my heart beat strong and my heated blood rushed through my veins.
�
��Thank you for coming back to me,” she said.
I grunted and stared into her silver eyes. “I will always come back to you.” I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my embrace. “Otherwise, I suspect you will track me down and entrap me with your seductive wiles.” Her hearty laugh spurred my own.
“I will, at that,” she said. “You can’t hide from me.”
“Nor do I wish to,” I whispered in her ear and then nuzzled her neck.
After a time, we separated.
“Let us return to the group. Hivelt will make glisten-fish stew and feed the first of my hungers.”
“The first?” she said.
I pierced her with my steady gaze. “Only one more hunger remains.”
I saw her breath catch when she understood. “After we eat, we should bring your pallet down here, then,” she said with boldness.
I grunted and took her hand.
When she blushed and laughed, I chuckled all the way up the path.
58
The view of the stars from Moon Shield took my breath away every night. But tonight, lying in Hivelt’s arms, I felt at peace with my new life, my new self, and the bountiful Deities that watched over us all.
“VELMA, tell me when your SLO nosecone is flying over,” I said. “I want to see it.”
“Why?” VELMA asked.
I chuckled. “It’s a human quirk,” I said. “It’s a connection to you, to my pod, to things I’ve lost.”
“Very well. SLO nosecone number four will pass in three hours and seventeen minutes.”
I sat up so fast I bumped Hivelt on the chin with my helmet. “Oh sorry!” I touched his face but scrambled to my feet. “SLO nosecone number four! When did we get a number four? What about number three? Where’s that one?”
“Number three is stationary somewhere in the Black Heart Mountain range. I have tried to isolate its signal with small successes. The anomalies of that region reflect strong magnetic signatures.”
“Dammit, the magnets!” I tripped over a rock in my haste to reach my pack. It was Esra’s giant, black rock she had carried with her all the way from the Magnetic Burst Field.
“Esra, there are number three and number four nosecones!” I said.
“What? Why didn’t VELMA tell us?” she asked.
“Sometimes if you don’t ask, she doesn’t tell,” I said.
“It’s a programming quirk,” VELMA responded.
“Well,” Esra said, looking at me. “Is there a fifth nosecone as well, then, VELMA?”
I paused, waiting to hear VELMA’s answer.
“That information is unavailable,” VELMA said.
Esra’s face fell.
I snagged my pack and pulled it open, jumbling the CMM in my shaking hands. “VELMA, you already downloaded the weather patterns, right?”
“Affirmative.”
My fingers flew over the controls that manipulated the information contained in my Computational Machine Matrix. I could input limited information with the keys, but I used a small set of controls to manipulate, convert, and display huge collections of data. Complex systems rocked my world. Finding connections where they didn’t seem to exist was like solving a puzzle on a massive scale. I had been so busy fighting for my life—and my love—that I had forgotten all about the CMM and my plans to solve the little mystery of Hivelt’s planet, but now I needed to solve the mystery of where the third pod had crashed.
By now, the others had gathered around me, doubtless wondering at my erratic behavior.
“If the nosecones survived, then the humans did too,” I said, breathless. “They’re programmed to self-destruct if the occupant’s life-support systems indicate flatline. Natheka is going to find the crash site if he hasn’t already. And there’s a fourth SLO nosecone, which means we should be able to access the coordinates from where it launched. We can find the fourth pod.”
The CMM became hot in my hands. It was old technology. After Earth’s Accountability years, humans had moved away from software development, letting Artificial General Intelligence solve the world’s equations. But a small group of outliers had developed the CMM, resisting the idea of letting AI do all the thinking. They had designed and built these units with the intention of computing big numbers. While they were genius units, they lacked some of the newer cooling technologies. I sat it down next to Pattee’s rock. And the screen blipped.
“Oh crap.” I snatched it back up. The screen returned to its original rotating graphic. I double-checked the data inputs, and it was unchanged. “Esra, your magnet rock almost wiped my CMM drive,” I said offhand.
“I knew it was magnetic,” she said. “It spins my compass like a roulette wheel. But it’s not magnetite, and it’s not neodymium bonded with iron, either.”
I paused and studied her as she held the rock, admiring its facets. “You’ve been analyzing it for a few days.”
“Yeah,” she said with a blush. “It’s what I do.”
“The Magnetic Burst Field is just a huge deposit of that rock,” I said. “And so is Black Heart Mountain.”
She nodded, considering. “Yes, an epic magma event must have happened there, hundreds of thousands of years ago,” she said. “The deposit is what happens when a solvent storm separates the burst field from its mother rock, the mountain.”
“VELMA, what signatures have you isolated out of the anomaly readings?”
“I’ve picked up isotope signatures of Galvanite, boron, neodymium, and an unidentified element.”
“That can’t be right,” Esra said, looking at me. “Neodymium isn’t found free in nature. It’s bound up with monazite or maybe bastnaesite.”
“So those metals are in the burst field then?” I asked.
“VELMA would have isolated them if they were,” she muttered and bit her lip. “What does this mean?”
“VELMA said she can’t target a lock on the third nosecone because of magnetic signals bouncing back. Right VELMA?”
“That is correct,” she said. “The magnetic forces are altering my pings dramatically. I have deduced the best signal for detecting nosecone three occurs when Ikthe is at perihelion.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “VELMA, download those weak signals and the perihelion schedule.”
“Complying,” she said. “However, Ikthe has been in perihelion only twice since the array was deployed. It is fortunate the pods landed on Ikthe during this season, and that there are two suns.”
“That’s enough,” I said. A new graphic formed that looked an awful lot like a topographical map. “Gotcha.”
I turned the map to Esra. “Look.”
Raxkarax spoke first. “That is the Black Heart Mountain range. It is the north face,” he said. “There is a maar up there.”
“A maar,” Esra whispered. She looked at me. “A phreatic eruption would have caused that solvent storm I mentioned. And you told VELMA to deploy the baffle floats, and she said there wasn’t water.”
“A maar is a crater lake,” I said. “There was water.”
Esra broke into a huge smile. “You saved her life!”
Chills erupted over the surface of my skin. “We don’t know that yet,” I said. I chewed my lip. “But I hope so. VELMA, try to signal Natheka if you can. Tell him the crash site is near the crater lake in the Black Heart Mountains. He may know where that is.”
“He knows,” Naraxthel said, rubbing his shoulder. “We hunted there many cycles ago.”
“Good,” I said. “Now to find where nosecone four launched from.”
“A simple matter,” VELMA said. “It launched four hours ago from these coordinates.” She read them to me, and I plugged them into the matrix.
Another map formed.
I leaned back so the hunters could look at it.
“Kathe,” one of them muttered.
I raised a brow at Esra.
“It’s like their version of the F-word combined with ‘shit’,” she whispered to me. “You shouldn’t ever say
it.”
I huffed a laugh but sobered when I saw their faces.
“It is Agothe-Fatheza,” Raxthezana said. “Your technology translates it to “night corruption”, but it means so much more than that.”
I swallowed and looked up at Hivelt for comfort.
He placed a hand on my head. Its weight kept my panic at bay. “Agothe-Fatheza,” he said. “The stifling gasses of bog and swamp pollute the air. The suns’ rays cannot penetrate its depths. The beasts of that habitat are blind but use a sixth sense to detect their prey. It is something like sound and aura. They smell and listen for the energies that waft from the body. It is an abomination.”
“VELMA,” Esra spoke up. “Make sure the occupant receives the packet of information about the cyanobacteria, along with the instructions for the antidote and vaccine. Can you communicate with them?”
“Pings have been sent. There is no reply yet,” VELMA said. “The occupant was in cryosleep when the nosecone reached SLO. Without a DSN tower, communication will be stifled. I have not completed a patch with the nanosatellite array yet.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I studied the screen on my CMM. While we had been making maps, it had been working on the other data I had fed it earlier. It showed a new rendering in white, blue, and purple.
“Raxthezana,” I said, looking up at him. “Your brothers tell me you’ve spoken with many past hunters on Ikthe. Did they mention mass migrations of animals or strange weather patterns? And what spread of time do they represent?”
Raxthezana’s expression softened for once, and he scratched at his chin. “The oldest hunter I spoke with hunted here two hundred sun cycles ago,” he said. “He never mentioned such things.” His gaze drifted to the starry sky, light from the embers and ambient helmet lights setting his features in a soft glow. “Of them all, none spoke of these irregular changes. I also studied ancient records of my people that span thousands of years. There was no mention of similar upheavals.”
Tracked on Predator Planet (Predator Planet Series) Page 29