“What does anyone do with a kite,” Elissa answered. “You fly it.”
“Where? There’s no wind within the eye, and the hurricane winds
outside will tear a kite apart in seconds.”
“Ask someone who knows if you don’t like my theory.”
“Right now I need a thermal scan.” The inside of his visor lit up with a graphic display of heat sources. An adult, the child, and a small stove lay inside the tent. Chim paused just outside its door flap, looking for something to knock on. His fist nearly rapped against the doorframe when he was stopped by a gruff, weathered voice.
“Come in, stranger, and be welcome in my home.” The speaker sat on a pile of pillows, gesturing to another pile. He was white-bearded, lean, and wore a red-leather suit with a wide belt. The jewel clasp of the belt was half a sphere with whirling crimson fire inside.
Chim sat down where indicated.
The old man turned to the boy. “Rho, bring our guest a pan of water so he may bath his feet—and wine, to quench his thirst.”
“That is not necessary,” Chim said. “I require only information.
“Then ask. We are a generous, open people with nothing to hide.”
That remains to be seen.
“Chim,” Elissa’s soft whisper flowed from Chim’s implant. “I’ve got a sensor lock on three high-gee cargo sleds approaching from the direction of the trade port. This could be trouble.”
“What’s the target,” Chim sub-vocalized his questions. “The ship, crawler, or this settlement?”
“It’s the wrong tangent for the ship. They are either after the crawler or the settlement. I could lift off and engage--”
“Let’s hold that option in reserve. How much time do I have?”
“Let’s see … you’re almost at the land-bridge … I’d say an hour, maybe a little more.”
“What? You’re not going to count it down to nano-second for me?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Okay, there’s time before we need to act. I’ll see what the old man knows about local conditions.” Chim turned his faceplate toward his host. His normal voice emerged, smooth and well-modulated. “Why are three hi-gee sleds on their way here from the port?”
The old man paused, a steaming cup of some local brew just at his lips. He lowered the cup. His eyes went vacant a moment as he stared off into an infinite distance. He returned, smiling. “They have just passed into this hemisphere. It will be a while before they get here.” He held up his glass cup. “Would you like to try the Khaafe? It’s quite good, imported from the mountain sanctuaries of the southern continent.”
Chim ignored the offer. “Tell me about the sleds. Do they come often? What do they want?”
“Ask him how he determined their position, just sitting there,” Elissa requested. “I monitored no transmission link in operation.
“Keep checking, and expand reception of electro-magnetic bandwidths,” Chim replied. “He may be using an unconventional frequency.”
Oblivious to the sub-vocal exchange, the old man answered the questions put to him. “The sleds come when off-world ships land. The port authorities never seem to do anything to stop them from roaming at will.”
The old man paused for a drink. During the break, his grandson brought him a plate with folded skillet bread packed with vegetable pieces and some kind of greenish egg. The boy turned toward Chim. “Yuh want some?” He gestured to the stove. “We got plenty.”
“Perhaps later.” Chim turned back to the old man. “These sleds, they always come to this continent, this camp?”
“At first, no. They went everywhere, got into everything. Then came the crash. One of the sleds went down and we rescued the survivors. They got a close look at the rider-stones, and saw what we could do with them.” He indicated the jewel he wore on his belt. “They wanted to trade with us for them. We explained that mining them was difficult and we only had enough for our own use. They did not accept this. After they failed to find the source of the gems, they began to make childish threats.”
“You don’t fear the off-world technology?” Chim asked.
“We know no fear. We are the Riders. Each day, we face death on the winds so the rest of our people may survive. Do you want our stones as well, stranger?”
“I’d prefer your friendship, but I am curious. May I see one of these stones?”
The old man detached the polished crystal from his belt. Its fire turned his hand and face crimson as he leaned forward, holding it out. Chim leaned forward and took the stone without hesitation. He sub-vocalized a command. “Elissa, scan this and give me an analysis.”
“Coming up, love.”
Chim rotated the stone so the hidden sensors built into his suit could better pry out the jewel’s secrets. He handed back the convex gem with a nod of thanks as Elissa began to report inside his helmet.
“The stone is a native variety of carbuncle—left uncut in the style commonly known as cabochon. Density index is…”
“Just tell me how it’s different from similar stones on other worlds,” Chim said.
“Fine. This is it. I think … the trace elements in the crystallized carbon … are organic, giving off a unique electromagnetic signature.”
“Which means…?”
“The organic elements are immobile but alive, feeding off their own energy decay. The amount of radiation actually released is relatively low-level—probably not dangerous unless the jewel is worn for decades.”
The old man spoke. “You are a man of deep silences, or is it that you speak to spirits only you can hear?”
“Watch out, Chim,” Elissa warned. “He’s a sharp one.”
Chim changed the subject. “What are you going to do about the sleds?”
“Discourage them.” The old man put down his cup. “I would invite you to come along and see, but you haven’t the skills needed.”
Chim nodded. “I shall follow in my own way.” He rose to his feet. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“You are welcome, guardsman.”
“You know what I am?”
“I know what the galactic library and news services know. We’ve accessed the data-store at the port, on numerous visits.”
That wasn’t supposed to have been allowed. “That’s how your grandson found out about the Tooth Fairy,” Chim said.
“Just so.”
Chim bowed, turned, and made his way to the tent flap. He passed through, into a gloomy dead calm. Little sunlight filtered through the outer storm.
The source of the stones is obvious, Chim thought. They have to come from the spring. With the hurricane being a permanent feature, the stone’s radiation augments growth. Trees and plants here have adapted to feed off it.
He stood still, taking in the stirring life around him as children carried buckets toward the pool, fetching water to feed livestock. The old man passed him, heading for the village center. He stopped by a frame that suspended a flat sheet of metal. A mallet hung with it.
The old man took the mallet and beat on the sheet. In moments he was surrounded by others in leather suits and belt jewels. Chim also noticed that they carried hoods with goggles sewn in. Just what you’d need to keep wind-swept sand out of your eyes—like the heavy leather suits, they’re made for protection in the outer storm.
“He’s calling the troops,” Elissa said, “but I still don’t see what he thinks he can do against three high-gravity cargo sleds that are armored with plenty of firepower.”
“I think I know, I’m just not sure I believe it,” Chim answered.
“Well, when were you going to tell me?”
“You’re about to see for yourself. Look.
The leather-sheathed men broke their ring around the old man, and tracked over to the kites stacked by the main tent. Each of them picked one out and stepped aside. The wood frames strapped around their torsos, leaving leather membranes flapping to either side, beneath their arms.
“Those aren
’t kites,” Elissa said. “They’re…”
“Wings,” Chim finished. “Handcrafted wings. The old man said that this was a camp of riders. He meant wind-riders. My guess is that the energy of the crystals accelerates their metabolism and reaction time so they can safely navigate hurricane winds, avoiding obstacles, making tiny compensatory shifts, moment by moment as the world hurtles by. The energized metabolism also gives them the lungpower to breathe in the severe wind stream. I’m also guessing that the crystal synchronizes their brainwaves enough to allow them to share thoughts.”
“You’re joking.”
“No. I think that was how the old man new the position of the incoming sleds. It’s probably being watched by other Riders who relay information.”
“No wonder the smugglers want these crystals. On the black market…”
“We can’t allow these stones to get off world. If necessary, we’ll quarantine the planet, and close the trade port.”
“That wouldn’t be a popular decision with the legitimate off-world merchants.”
Chim shrugged. “I can’t let that be a consideration. However, it might not come to that. If we close down the smuggling ring and expose their contacts in the port bureaucracy, and continue proscription indefinitely, it should be enough.”
“So what’s our next move?”
Chim delayed answering, watching the riders stroll confidently toward the whirling wall of wind beyond the camp. The men dropped over a dune and vanished from sight, but in his mind’s eye, Chim saw them snatched up and flung headlong into the distance.
Chim left camp, returning to his crawler. Hopefully, it would get him to the battle in time to catch part of it. Failing that, he still had to check any wreckage for survivors and clues as to which ship they were from. He transmitted a compressed code, and the machine recognized him. The air lock door cycled open, and he climbed inside.
Once more at the controls, he brought the machine to rumbling life. Chim guided the vehicle in a wide curve around the camp, setting a course toward the land bridge in the west where the sleds approached. Once past the camp, he turned head-on into the wall of wind.
The crawler shivered and jerked as the winds swelled to full strength. Chim checked the graviton emitter and raised its output a notch. The winds were providing enough lift to weaken the grip of the treads, costing him speed and energy. He increased the emitter output and the crawler’s treads sank deeper into the ground. His speed picked up.
The sensor display showed the crawler dead center in its screen and a group of blinking spots that were the riders. “They’re already at the edge of scanning range,” Chim said. “I better cee-square it. Don’t want to miss the party all-together.”
Chim advanced the thruster-control. The crawler shuddered as the engines maxed-out. He was slammed back into his seat by the new acceleration. He frowned at the fuel gauge. At this rate, he’d need the reserve tank soon.
The UV rack-lights on the roof did their best but the air was thick with flying grit and debris. Visibility was miserable. The digital reconstruction inside the windscreen was a gray-tone hash suffering pixel fall-out. Chim navigated entirely by sensors, magnetic compass, and radio-lock on the trade-port tower.
Chim turned his thoughts to other matters. “Elissa, configure a holo-grid for geometric display, and beam the picture to my crawler’s main screen.”
“Done.” The screen lost its gray-tones, becoming a black void with green cross-hatching over it. “What’s up, Boss?”
He removed his helmet and set it aside. Chim’s eyes peered into past years, as he activated the crawler’s com-link, reestablishing communications. “When I was young, the Imperium pulled me out of a Spacer’s Guild orphanage because I scored phenomenally high in the abstract thought section of the standardized aptitude tests routinely administered. Part of the test required me to view two-dimensional images and match them to their four-dimensional counterparts by visualizing the missing dimensions.”
“I am familiar with such puzzles,” Elissa responded, her voice rising softly from the dashboard comm.
“Load schematics of the orbiting platforms into the holo-grid,” Chim ordered, remembering the globe from his earlier dream that had shattered into disks. “Separate the platforms.”
“Processing.” The screen filled with a cloud of curving blades, cylinders, and support beams. It reminded him of a dissected water lily hanging in an unseen web. “Done,” Elissa informed him.
“Eliminate excess material,” Chim said. “Show only the main decks.” He studied the new picture in silence, letting the autopilot system handle most of the driving chores. “Assign numbers to pieces. I’ll rearrange them with forth-dimensional vectors. You’ll need to adjust the display accordingly.”
“Ready, Chim.”
He rattled off strings of numbers, and slowly, the images altered on screen. Curved plates aligned and locked in place, creating a hexagonal shaft under an umbrella—a cyber-spatial mushroom. Chim stared, mind racing. “You know what this is?” he asked.
“A weapon of some kind?”
“Not exactly. It’s a sky-hook. A very big sky-hook.”
“A twentieth-century drag chute used in dropping supplies from passing aircraft?”
“That’s its original meaning, but the term was later adopted by asteroid miners in the Earth’s solar system to reference a graviton anchor used in traversing a belt by locking a ship onto various rocks and borrowing their kinetic energy. The platform is designed to convert into a solar-powered graviton emitter—like the one built into the crawler, only a lot more powerful.”
“I knew I was right!”
“What?” Chim asked.
“It’s a weapon!”
“Anything can be a weapon.”
“Then I was right.”
“Well … I suppose so.”
“Go ahead. You can say it.”
Chim grinned and assumed an exasperated tone of voice. “All right, all ready. You were right. Happy?”
“Yes, dear, but further praise must wait. I’ve got an emergency call coming in.”
“Probably from one of the sleds.” Chim put his helmet back on. “Kill display. I’m returning screen to normal function.”
“Affirmative.”
Chim checked his sensor display. It showed two sleds airborne and one sled down. He activated the comm’s frequency scanner, and a new voice filled his cabin. “Emergency … repeat, emergency! I’m down. Radio beacon is active. Need pick-up.”
“Cool yer jets, Davy. We’re on our way tuh get cha.”
“I copy, out.”
“They’re not using call signs,” Elissa noted.
“They know that the port tower routinely monitors and records all transmissions. They’re keeping a low profile. Ah, there’s the pick-up. They’re returning to port. I’m headed for the wreckage.”
The screen lit up, a wall of blinding light. The automatic filters kicked in. A shockwave followed. It picked up the crawler and flipped it back into a roll. Wearing his exo-suit, strapped to the piloting chair, Chim easily rode out the extra turbulence. Eventually, the crawler skidded on its side to a stop, edge-first against an outcropping of rock pillars that stabbed up out of the sand. The armored vehicle hit with a metallic clang, shuddered and groaned.
Chim gathered his thoughts, grateful to his exo-suit for its extra protection as he scanned the controls. It wasn’t good; the graviton emitter was off-line along with life support and power. If the wind were to shift
vectors, he’d be whisked away.
Sharp with concern, Elissa’s tiny voice spiked in his ear, “Chim! Chim! Can you read me?”
Chim answered. “I seem to be functional. Crawler’s dead. The downed sled … self-destructed. They let its power core blow.” He fumbled with the straps that held him in the chair. They released him and he fell cross the cabin, his red cape fluttering behind. “There aren’t going to be any clues to examine out there anymore.”
“I’m co
ming to get you, Chim.”
“I’ll be here.”
Chim passed the time in quiet meditation. Elissa arrived and he came aboard the IMPERIAL DRAGON. Barely started with a shower in his quarters, Elissa called him to the bridge. He soon bolted into her presence wearing an over-sized bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. A damp towel hung around his neck, and his hair was wet, plastered to his skull, but not yet shampooed.
“All right, what’s so important you gotta drag me out of the shower?” he asked.
She spared an appreciative glance at his muscular calves. “Monitor three. Live footage of the camp you stopped at for breakfast.”
“That can’t be right. There’s no dead-zone around an oasis. No village, just—”
“Barren, windswept wilderness, like the rest of the planet.”
“They’ve moved the whole camp, storm and all! That stable hurricane wasn’t natural.”
“Apparently not. My guess is—there’s a master stone, like the ones they wear, only bigger, that creates the super-hurricane as needed.”
“I think you’re right,” Chim said. “Those large tents they live in, what do you want to bet they reassemble into flying wings as well? Talk about a mobile society.” Chim found himself before another monitor. It showed him a sealed vault on the research deck. Inside, mechanical arms held an irregular lump of reddish crystal. “Hey, where did that come from?”
“Wellll…,” Elissa started with a drawl, an odd habit that emerged from her program when she’d done something good or bad, but wasn’t sure which. “I didn’t have anything else to do while you were off having all the fun, so I did a quick survey, got some drones outfitted for the weather, and sent them over to a site that showed strong plant growth. I dug up one of those red gems for myself. I wanted to see what I could do with it.”
“You’re supposed to tell me these things.”
“I just did.”
“In a timely fashion. Head for the trade port. I’m going to finish my shower.” Chim gave Elissa a stern glare. “And no peeking.” He headed
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