“This ship will change Darklanding. Revelation of your navigation secret will change this entire sector of space. You know the Sagittarian Conglomerate will be involved. It would be good if we had somebody to advocate for Ungwilook.”
Cornelius dropped his kindly grandfather act. “People have died to protect that secret. Keep that in mind, Sheriff.”
“She should be here,” Thad said, then dropped the subject in favor of pushing ahead of the old man. “How much farther, Mast?”
The Unglok spoke through the rebreather mask Cornelius had provided. “I can see it at the bottom of this section. It is muchly the same as the other ship. Only the way down to it is different. My vision quest led me down a single vertical shaft. This ship appears to have been sealed inside the mountain.”
Cornelius and Ruby joined them on a wide ledge.
Thaddeus looked down on the ship. From this close, he marveled at the size. “Do you think that is a colony ship?”
Cornelius shook his head. “I’ve never found more than one pilot in one of the ships. Sometimes they have stowaways, like the spider things.”
“We need to tell them everything,” Ruby said. She waited, and when her grandfather didn’t argue, she explained. “Each ship can bond with a single mortal. It will do more than just transport a person, it teaches its passenger how to guide other ships.”
“What if it can’t get out of its hiding place?” Thaddeus asked. “I’m no expert, but it seems there has been a few cave-ins during the last several millennia.”
“I’ve never faced this type of dilemma,” Cornelius said. “The Red Can was waiting for me in a lush jungle valley. Two of my children found their ships on hospitable planets—paradise world compared to this underground warren of mystery.”
“How many children have you sent into the stars on the ships?” Thaddeus asked.
“Only two of my children were able to bond with ships.”
“This looks nothing like the Red Can,” Thad said.
“She’s been through changes, cosmetic changes. I added an AI computer and other hardware over time. Good ship. Like a member of the family. I can’t be away from her for long…before I get restless. Need to explore, you know. It’s in my nature,” Cornelius said.
Thad thought there was more to the situation, an important detail left unspoken. He feigned insensitivity to the man’s body language. “What about you, Ruby? Are you driven by a burning need to explore the galaxy?”
“I am. Once you start traveling, worlds like Ungwilook or even Melborn seem small and simple. I never craved safety.” She squatted at the very edge, overlooking the ship several hundred meters below.
“I’ll be able to climb down. Perhaps Ruby will also have the skill,” Mast said. “Sheriffs, pig-dogs, and old men should stay here.”
“This ship is for my granddaughter,” Cornelius said. “You are merely here as an advisor or a translator in the event the ship only speaks the native language of this planet.”
“The ship is for whoever it wants to be for,” Ruby said. “You taught me that.”
“I never thought this mission would be so crowded,” Cornelius said. “But in my experience, we need a native of the host planet close at hand. I’ll be disappointed if the ship chooses from local talent, but that is a risk worth taking.”
Thaddeus wanted to go down to the ship. He needed to see it up close to convince himself it was real. From this distance it was nothing but a dusty artifact. It could have been a building or structure rather than a ship. He also hated the idea of Mast going down without him. Ruby would be there, but that was different somehow.
He watched them descend using ropes and climbing tools. His deputy used his long arms and legs to grab hand handholds spaced farther apart then Ruby could reach. The Unglok was polite and courteous as always. He not only attached the ropes Ruby needed to make the descent but carried extra items for her.
Maximus whined when he lost sight of them. As big as the pig-dog was, he was still too short to have the proper angle to witness what happened below.
Once Mast and Ruby arrived, they opened the hatch without hesitation and went inside.
* * *
“Thank you, Mast Jotham,” Ruby said. “It feels right that we are here together. I always thought you were okay.”
“Is being okay a muchly big compliment of humans?”
“Not really,” she said. “I meant it as a big compliment. I’m really not a people person. They make demands and rules. Most take more than they give. Most are arrogant and selfish.”
“I am none of these things,” Mast said.
Ruby laughed. “I know. It’s easier to be myself around aliens.”
“I am not the alien here.” Mast nodded toward the ship. “It is dark.”
“I’m going to turn on a flashlight. My grandfather told me to be careful with this. Some of the traveling ships react poorly to sudden light,” she said.
“I hope you will be careful. Perhaps I will wait to use my flashlight. It is presently too dark for my eyes. They may adjust in time,” he said.
Ruby covered the lens of her flashlight with her hand, then turned it on. She allowed only a small crack of light to escape, which made the rest of her hand glow.
“Your hand is muchly translucent. That is different than transparent, correct?”
“Yes, Mast. Your Galactic Standard is improving. I can tell the difference from the last time I was here. Do you want me to lead?”
“We should go together, very muchly, is what I say.”
Shoulder to shoulder they walked. The passage was short for Mast. He walked in a slight crouch. Human buildings had taught him to adjust his posture. She reached out and held his hand.
“What are the marital obligations of holding hands among humans?”
“Ah, Mast, that’s why I love you. So innocent. It’s okay to hold hands. I’ll feel safer and we won’t get separated.”
“Can you see me blush? It would be bigly strange if you did in this darkness.”
“There are many kinds of love. Familial love, friendly love, and other kinds. The word is used loosely.”
“Loosely is a muchly good word. I will use it often. Sheriff Fry will be very glad of my improved vocabulary.”
They explored the ship. Ruby showed him what she thought was a command bridge. None of the controls responded to their touch. They found other rooms with panels and screens. These seemed to have been added after the ship had been originally built and lacked power.
“Is this ship alive?” Mast asked.
“Something like that. It is sentient. I argued with my older brother before he left the galaxy. He believed they were a version of AI computers. My grandfather warned him that this was a false paradigm and would get him in trouble if he persisted believing it,” Ruby said. “He also…”
Mast squatted so he could look at her more carefully. “Are you okay? What were you going to say?”
Ruby stared into nothing for a long time then spoke in a daze. Mast did not recognize any of her words.
“Should I get the sheriff?”
Color returned to her face. A light glowed in her eyes, as though reflecting something that wasn’t there. “I feel lethargic but very good. I will bond to the ship, if you will let me.”
“I do not know how to bond to it,” Mast said. “So you must.”
She smiled. “I can show you. It is very good that I am your friend. The ship enjoys you muchly. It will bond with me if that is your will. I think the reason it spoke to me first was with the intention of letting me down easy.”
“I do not need a ship to be a deputy,” Mast said.
“There is one other ship like this one on the planet. You have seen it. I will convince my grandfather and your sheriff to keep it a secret for your people.”
“Thank you, Ruby Miranda.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Changed
Thaddeus could not believe his eyes. Ruby Miranda no longer seemed human. She w
as the same size and shape with the same skin tone and hair color, yet she was different. In her demeanor, there was both a vitality he craved and an exhaustion he understood. He wanted to be near her.
“Careful, Sheriff, you will become entranced. The effect is not lasting,” Cornelius said. “The crash after the high is deadly.”
Thaddeus stared into Ruby’s eyes. There was a light from deep inside her gaze. Then it was gone. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I didn’t mean to stare.”
“I’d be staring too. You’re a good man, Sheriff Fry. Darklanding will need you in the near future, I think,” she said.
Thaddeus fought his rising anxiety. He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he understood that sometimes high-stress situations stimulated special insights. The girl already had good intuition. Why wouldn’t an encounter with an alien spaceship spark an epiphany?
“Should I have gone back to Darklanding when Shaunte told me to?”
Ruby took his hand and led him to the first set of natural stairs. Steep as a ladder, the passage went into the maze that had brought them down from the surface. “Grandfather, Mast…you must leave before the ship moves.”
A tremor went through the ship. Dust vibrated into the air. The heart of the planet groaned. Rocks fell from the ceiling above the ship as well as down the honeycomb of vertical passages they’d traveled to get there.
“Time to go!” Thaddeus shouted. “Maximus! Back the way we came, fast as you can.”
The pig-thing barked.
“Not now!”
The pig-thing bounced on his front feet, huffing and barking insistently. Thaddeus and the others yelled warnings. There was too much noise to hear everything. Maximus darted up the steep passage. Thaddeus and the others followed.
“Do you think he is muchly knowing a better way?” Mast said.
“I don’t know,” Thaddeus said. Speaking became a luxury as they raced higher and higher. Each tremor seemed worse than the last.
“Where’s Ruby?” he asked.
“She went back to be with the ship,” Cornelius said.
“This is going to be a long climb with the ceiling falling on us,” Thaddeus said.
“You are not loosely wrong,” Mast said.
Maximus continued to lead them without further temper tantrums. Thaddeus watched the animal, wondering not for the first time how intelligent he was. His own danger sense was activated. He could feel his adrenaline pumping. They made good time. Unfortunately, they were deep underground and not likely to escape if there was a true collapse.
“Are you sure you should leave your granddaughter with that ship?”
“Yes, Sheriff. The ship will protect her. She may be the only person who survives today. The ship will find a way out if it wants to get out,” Cornelius said.
Maximus stopped at an intersection. The pig-dog-thing clearly wanted to go into the left passage, which was horizontal.
“Not that way, Maximus. We need to go up every chance we get. It’ll take us a day to escape even if we can maintain this pace, which we can’t,” Thaddeus said.
“We muchly cannot.” Mast bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
Maximus popped up and down on his five toe hooves and barked. His mouth trembled as he bared his teeth. Thaddeus hadn’t seen him like this since he attacked the Chandler crew. His instinct was to back away, but he held up a calming hand instead and waited.
“Calm down there, buddy. I’m not stopping you from going that way if you want. You need to trust me. We have to go up,” Thaddeus said.
Maximus dropped his savage act for one second, rolling his eyes and sighing in exasperation. Then, fast as a snake, he darted forward and bit the hem of Thaddeus’s long coat. He yanked Thaddeus forward in a series of sharp tugs.
“Maybe we should just look at this so-very-muchly horizontal passage and enjoy not going up so steeply,” Mast said. “I think this re-breather mask is muchly suffocating me when we climb.”
Thaddeus wrapped both hands around the muzzle of the pig-dog. He held firmly without squeezing. He neither wanted to hurt the dog nor get bit. “Okay, Maximus. Let go. Just open your jaws and back away.”
Maximus snarled as he shook Thad’s hands free. He turned and went into the new passage. The confrontation had lasted less than a minute but had drawn the entire party off the vertical ascent several meters.
“I think I understand your animal,” Cornelius said. He pointed his flashlight at the ladder-like stairs they had been navigating. Water trickled down in several places.
“Stupid animal. That’ll teach me to ignore his dog sense,” Thaddeus said.
The trickle became a steady flow. Thaddeus and the others hurried after Maximus. He was at the limit of his flashlight range when he last looked where they had come from. The steady flow of water was now a raging rapids.
Thaddeus and the others hurried onward. The sound of a torrential waterfall roared behind them. He caught up to Maximus and scratched behind his ears. “Good dog, Maximus.”
“Snort, grunt, grumble,” Maximus said, then farted.
An hour later, Thaddeus called a halt. They rested, rehydrated, and ate their travel rations. The walls trembled constantly. Most of the rocks sweated water and other fluids. He could still hear the waterfall. It sounded like an entire ocean was draining into the caverns.
On the next stretch of their journey, they came to a ledge overlooking one of the huge cathedral-like caverns he had seen when flying the airship against LeClerc. There were glowing lakes hundreds of meters below the ledge. The water level rose steadily.
“I think the exotics rush is about to hit a bit of a barrier,” Thaddeus said. He knew what happened in a boomtown when the exotics dried up.
* * *
P. C. Dickles read the seismograph again. “No, Jeannie. This is the real thing. Pack it up.”
“With respect, boss, I’ve been doing this as long as you have. We get vibrations all the time since the discovery. I trust the seismograph about as far as I can throw Fat Bob.”
Dickles faced her, taking a step forward. The other miners stopped muttering to each other. All eyes were on him.
“The seismograph is just a tool. You all know how I feel about it. Not a fan. Trust my gut a hell of a lot more. So forget about the seismo. Trust me. I know what to do.”
“Did the cave speak to you?” Jeannie asked.
A few of the miners in the back row snickered. She didn’t, however. All she did was hold his gaze and wait. That was what respect looked like, Dickles thought.
“This is the big one. It’s time to go. On the bright side, a collapse like this could open up all kinds of new veins.”
Jeannie turned and faced the miners. “You heard him. Move your asses! This isn’t a drill. Begin the evacuation.”
* * *
Miss Dixie tipped the air cabdriver. “I need you to wait for me.”
“Sorry, Miss Dixie, I can’t do that. It’s against company policy.”
She fluttered her eyelids at him. “But I’m asking you nicely.”
“Ah, Miss Dixie. You know I don’t want to leave you out here. They make us do it so that our fares will pay extra to get from the desert back to Darklanding.”
“I understand,” Dixie said. “You are probably wanting to give up your account at the Mother Lode. Start saving money by handling things yourself.”
“I’ll be right here when you’re done,” the driver said.
She walked through the little village until one of the locals told her Stephen Henderson III was looking out over Transport Canyon from one of their scenic balconies. “Just a ledge, really. Hundreds of them around here. We provide shade and some ice chips. Fruit when it’s in season and cider when it isn’t.”
“Thanks.” Dixie curtsied, then pointed up the hill. “That way?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She found the man standing before an easel. He held a paint pallet in one hand and a brush in the other but wasn’t moving.
Tears welled in her eyes and she fought to catch her breath. This son-of-a-bitch took so much for granted. Pierre the younger would’ve died for so much time to explore this area and have such a view to inspire him.
“What are you painting? A pile of dog crap?” she asked.
Stephen Henderson III studied his cameras as though he wasn’t sure then looked again to the mountains on the distant horizon. “It doesn’t seem quite right, does it?”
Dixie had her small blaster in her purse. She’d only fired it one time on the day she purchased it to make sure it worked. The man standing before her was ten times as repulsive as the monsters he employed.
“What can I do for you, Miss Dixie? Have you reconsidered my offer?”
“They killed the young Pierre,” Dixie said.
Henderson lowered his paintbrush, then dropped his chin to his chest. He started to speak, but the words didn’t come easily. “That’s unfortunate.”
“You have to call off your dogs,” she said.
“My dogs aren’t the kind you can call off. You can only give them enough rope to hang themselves.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Thing from Glakridoz
Thaddeus and the others followed Maximus without argument. The animal had an uncanny sense of direction. They spent the better part of the day staring at a waterfall blocking their progress. Maximus refused to take any other route. He sat on his haunches, eyeballing the water until it finally stopped flowing
By the second day, they had survived several earthquakes and avoided drowning in a subterranean lake. Noonday sun blinded them as they emerged into Transport Canyon. Plumes of dust rose from other caves. Rescue crews flew to and from the SagCon mines a mile away. Thaddeus and Mast found the Calico undamaged. The Red Can had moved itself to safer ground.
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