Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller)

by Patty Jansen

  Gyrocopters means PanAf? Nicha wanted to know.

  PanAf or militia, as far as I know.

  Why would he think they’re PanAf? If they were, why would they come for us?

  I shrugged. Your guess is as good as mine.

  “Quick, quick. We have to go. We can’t stay here.” Henri’s voice rose to a squeal.

  “PanAf is not your friend, huh?”

  “They’re no one’s friend. These are corrupt people and they only work for themselves. They’re supposed to protect us from the krayfish, but when you complain about them, PanAf soldiers come to take you away and shoot you. Please, they must not find us here.”

  “You have personal experience with these people?”

  He stared at me.

  Evi said, “He’s right. Mashara would be in a very poor position to defend our group from any attack from an airborne vehicle.”

  And we weren’t supposed to be here in the first place. I had to agree that we were probably better off clearing out for a short while. I asked Henri, “Where can you fly us in the dark?”

  “Sorry, mister. It’s a solar glider. It’s night.”

  “Surely you have some battery reserve. Wasn’t that what you were going to do after sneaking out?”

  “That was just for me alone. It won’t go far with this many people. We’re too heavy.”

  “Then take us across the water to the shore. We’re sitting ducks here. We’ll find a place to hide there and wait until they’ve gone.”

  We grabbed weapons and armour and ran into the night.

  In the breathless air, the sound was coming closer. Already, I could see a light further down the shore. The gyrocopter didn’t look like it was searching for anything but was coming straight in our direction.

  “Mister Kray’s mansion is over that hill,” Nicha said. “That’s probably where they’re going.”

  We all climbed into the plane. Henri activated the battery to power the jet.

  The plane took off, gliding low over the water. Very low. The glistening surface of the water was not two metres underneath the bottom of the plane.

  “Pull it up,” I said.

  “It’s too heavy. It won’t go any higher. I’m just hoping that it will reach the shore.”

  As we kept going, it became clear that it probably wouldn’t. The bottom of the plane skimmed the surface a few times. Fortunately, Henri had pulled up the wheels, and the belly of the plane bounced off the water, giving us a little boost each time. The jet would fire and lift us a few metres higher, only to sputter out a moment later.

  Henri called, “Battery is flat. I’m going to have to put it down—”

  The plane hit the water at full force. It skidded for a distance before bumping into sand. We still had enough speed that various items flew around the cargo hold.

  The plane wobbled ominously from side to side, settling on one wing tip and the belly. We were lucky that it didn’t flip over.

  Henri rose from his seat. “Out, out.”

  We clambered across the slanting floor. Of course the door was on the high side. Telaris reached the door first. He pushed it open and jumped out with a splash. He helped Nicha out and then me.

  We had landed in a very shallow area with sandbanks and mud pools. The ground was so soft that I sank into the mud to my ankles. Great. More yellow stuff on my shoes.

  Nicha said. “Step into my footsteps. It’s solid underneath.”

  I did that, but each time the surface crust broke because of my weight, a waft of sulphur would rise up. The stench was so bad that I didn’t know how long I could keep this up. Somewhere in the darkness was the plop-plop-plop of bubbling mud. What if someone accidentally stepped in boiling water?

  “Use a light,” I said. “It’s very dangerous here.”

  When Thayu switched on a tiny light, it became clear just how dangerous. Not only were there bubbling pools, but there was an entire field of structures made of salt and mud that looked like mushrooms. The edges of the “hoods” looked sharp.

  We followed Thayu in single file, walking at fast pace across salt ledges that felt crumbly under my feet

  After a short while we reached the edge of this little island.

  “It’s not very deep.” Nicha waded in to his ankles, his knees, and then he slipped, falling face-first in the water.

  I gasped. Coldi hated water. Like typical Coldi, Nicha couldn’t swim.

  But instead of going under, he bobbed on top of the water. He bounced up and down, as if sitting in a comfortable chair, but never went in deeper than his waist. “What’s this nonsense?”

  “It’s because it’s very salty,” Henri said. “When it gets deeper, you can’t even wade through it because you keep floating to the surface.”

  We had to stick to the slippery edge. The moonlight was bright, but not bright enough to see every little unevenness. I slipped twice, making an acquaintance with the salty lukewarm water. Once I landed with my hands in a bed of brittle salt crystals that broke into pieces under my feet as I tried to climb to drier ground.

  By the time we reached solid shoreline, the gyrocopter hovered over the research station, floodlights on. Large clouds of dust blew up as it landed on the flat next to the buildings. By the light, I saw a few men with guns come out. Henri gave a squeak. “They’re PanAf. What are they looking for?”

  The men went to the building. I thought I could hear the sound of breaking glass over the noise of the gyrocopter’s engine.

  We kept walking away from the water, urged on by Henri.

  The men came back out of the building. Stood talking to each other for a while. The guns were clearly visible by the light from the gyrocopter.

  They checked the island, but not finding anything, went back inside the gyrocopter. It took off again towards the north.

  “Get down,” Henri said.

  We crouched between a couple of rocks that were not nearly big enough to hide us. Henri threw handfuls of sand over us. Most of us were still wet, so it stuck to our skin and clothes. We sat very still as she floodlight tracked over the shoreline and then moved off to the north. The thud-thud-thud sound faded fast and then vanished entirely.

  Phew.

  The sound died down soon after.

  “It has landed,” was Evi’s conclusion.

  “Mr Kray’s house is on the other side,” Henri said.

  “I’m guessing you know a fair bit about that?” I said. I was cranky and tired and filthy. Half our things had been left behind in the house. Was it even safe to go back? There was nowhere to wash so there wouldn’t be any point in getting clean clothes. I was going to be the giant yellow mud monster. We could scare away the crooks. Ha, ha.

  More seriously, we had no food and no water and we would need both. The water in the sea was way too salty to be of any use. Already my skin was starting to itch from drying salty mud.

  Evi and Nicha offered to go back to the research station and collect the essentials. They tramped off through the darkness.

  None of us knew what to say.

  We were all tired and dirty and cranky. The ground was hard and dusty. I pushed away some of the sharp rocks from underneath where I sat, and got even more dusty in the process. Much as I disliked the salty bath, I now longed to go back to it, because my skin felt tight and itchy. At least the stars were incredible.

  Somebody moved to sit next to me. I sensed Thayu’s warmth.

  “How are you coping?” I asked in a low voice.

  “All right.” Meaning I’m wet, cold and I can’t see a thing. Coldi night vision was worse than ours. Then she admitted, “I don’t like this.”

  “Nope.”

&nb
sp; Another silence. “Are you in contact with my father right now?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t know why she asked. Surely she wouldn’t ask her father for help. For one, that was admitting weakness, and Thayu wasn’t in the business of admitting defeat. Secondly, she would also understand that any kind of action that her father performed would be one that would cause a lot of diplomatic trouble for everyone.

  She said, “We should carry our things closer to the water, so that when morning comes, we can get onto the plane straight away.”

  That gave us something to do, so we picked up our things and threaded our way down the stony hillside.

  By the time we settled at a position at the lakeside, the sky was getting lighter.

  Nicha and Evi came splashing the other way with the supplies which they had put on a sheet of plastic which they dragged over the ground. They were both wet to the bone and covered in yellow goo and mud all over. We then went back and dragged the plane closer to the shore, which resulted in all of us getting covered in mud and goo.

  We tried to clean up a bit, but most of the shore was made out of soft light grey mud and getting out of the water meant getting dirtier than getting in. By now, the lower part of my legs itched so much that I couldn’t stop scratching.

  Henri wanted to know if we still wanted to fly along the shore and seemed a bit worried when I said we did.

  We needed to wait a while before we could leave, he said.

  Solar planes were very quiet but the big disadvantage, of course, was that they only worked during the daytime. The battery would take care of getting where sunlight was, but we’d run that flat last night. On top of that, we were on the eastern shore where the light from the rising sun was blocked by the hills at our back. It was frustrating to have to wait in the shade while the mountains on the opposite shore at the horizon bathed in golden sunlight. Wait and sit like dummies for target practice if any gyrocopters came back.

  CHAPTER 19

  * * *

  IT WAS MIDMORNING before we managed to get off the ground.

  The glider flew low over the water before it rose into the air, turning and clearing the hills.

  We’d informed Henri of the route we wanted to take: first to the south along the islands and shallow water that surrounded the research station. This was to convince Henri that we really were doing research, and studied the approaches to Mr Kray’s house.

  A sealed road, a battery of solar panels, some strange contraptions with pipes sticking out of the sand. Thayu took pictures while I prepared the key ones to go to her father. He had been in range before we left but right now he was probably somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

  Even Evi and Telaris helped. We looked like a proper research team.

  We followed the shore north, past the station—still no gyrocopters—and continued along the water’s edge, taking pictures of the weird salt-encrusted formations. They were mostly white, but sometimes pink or yellow. Henri steered the plane lower and lower.

  “So that the krayfish don’t see us, mister. There is a house over the next hill.”

  “Then let us look at this area here,” I pointed at a spot past Mr Kray’s house. “The water wells up from the ground here.” According to the real Martin Spencer’s work, it was one of three spots where there was an underground connection to the Red Sea basin.

  Henri veered away from the coast. But while he did so, the plane rose and we got the first view of Mr Kray’s house: a couple of white buildings on the hillside surrounded by a long wall, also white.

  Thayu was taking a lot of pictures. Her camera was amazingly good and we would be able to see quite a lot of detail on the house.

  The pictures she put in the feed showed a white house like a sugar cake, surrounded by palms and a lawn. There were trees along the driveway, and one road led from the gate over the hillside while another went to a shed between the house and the water’s edge. There was a solar plant and a tank next to it, as well as a mountain of white stuff which I assumed to be salt from the desalinator that was probably in that shed.

  Interesting.

  “Look,” Nicha said.

  The surface of the water underneath us churned. In places it was not very deep. On a rocky outcrop, I saw something that I hadn’t seen before: birds. Little white specks sitting on the rocks. Were they nests?

  That had to mean there were fish in this water, because what else would they eat?

  Life was everywhere. Even in places as hostile as Asto’s Crystal Wastelands, there was life. Nature always found a way.

  “It’s very pretty,” Thayu said.

  Coming from Asto, I could imagine that she thought it was, but to me this was a scarred and damaged landscape, a frontline victim of human abuse of the planet.

  Henri turned around, smiling. “Anything else, mister? We’re fully charged.”

  “I’d like you to go much higher so that I can take a picture of the whole area.”

  He veered away from the coast, to catch rising hot air, he said. We cleared a couple of hills. Once there was no more water, the landscape returned to its desolate state.

  Henri found a pocket of rising air and circled to lift the plane. The air was hazy here and visibility reduced, so I asked him to come down a little.

  We followed the shoreline. We took pictures.

  Henri was studying his maps on the navigation screen, tracking a finger across the surface to plot a course. Back to town from here? It looked like it.

  Nicha looked at me and pointed outside. There. His father’s ship must have come above the horizon, because we were going through a patch of connectivity.

  I could now see the large building site, too, faint in the hazy air.

  Thayu was already taking pictures. The enlargements were still a bit hazy but the software that increased the resolution was very good. It showed the individual trucks standing in front of a shed. It showed us the markings on the trucks.

  Behind it was an area where structures were beginning to rise out of the ground.

  “It’s going to be a power plant,” Henri said.

  “I guess with all these power outages that will be useful.” You hypocrite. “It’s very big.”

  “Yeah.” A bit later, he added, “I can’t go any further that way. The warlord doesn’t like it.”

  “Then turn around. No reason to displease them. I’m here to study the geology, not human structures.”

  I almost thought he believed it.

  We kept going and Thayu took more pictures which she fed to me, and I passed onto the ship. Asha’s communicator, Daina, asked us if we could get a clearer view of the far side of the building site.

  It will be hard, I let her know. The pilot is very nervous.

  I see some vehicles that are clearly not local. I would like to get a closer look.

  Trucks?

  No. Aircraft.

  I peered at the picture that I’d sent her and that provoked her interest, but couldn’t see anything of the sort.

  Henri said, “Shit. I’ve got another plane in the air.”

  “It may be a good time to turn back,” I said.

  He was all too happy to oblige. The plane banked—Thayu got another good view of the building site—and turned around. We had been gliding on the rising hot air, but now he fired the jet engine.

  Now that I was on the other side of the plane, I noticed another building, this on by the water’s edge. It was a simple, square thing resembling a concrete bunker and the pipes leading to it from the water made me think that this, too, was a desalination plant. However there were no pipes leading away from it, so maybe the water was used as cooling for something inside. Manufacturing?

/>   “Did you get pictures of this building?” I asked in Coldi to no one in particular.

  “I did,” Evi said.

  “What do you think this is?”

  “Some sort of industrial plant.”

  A number of vehicles stood in a walled yard on the building’s eastern side. A truck was just coming into the open gate. There were people around it, little black specks in groups. And now a few people ran onto the roof of the building. Two people already stood there. Sunlight glinted on something that stood on a stand between them.

  I remembered the gun I’d seen in Dekker’s office. Can be used against aircraft, Thayu had said about it. This was the area where those guns had been intercepted.

  In a split second, my brain put all that information together.

  “Get out of here, as quick as you can!” I yelled to Henri.

  “I’m already doing my best.” He was turning dials and settings on the controls, swearing, of all things, in French.

  The jet engine whined but our progress seemed painfully slow.

  There was a puff of smoke on the roof.

  “They’re shooting at us!”

  Henri banked the plane sideways while swearing even more in French. It made a sharp dive. I hung onto my seat, and noticed Thayu doing the same thing.

  “What are you doing?” I called to Henri.

  “Nothing. The solar wing is damaged. I can’t get it under control.”

  A section of the solar sail was flapping loose behind the right hand wing.

  Telaris wormed himself from his seat. He was not small and his moving about in the cabin unsettled the plane even more.

  He slid into the copilot seat. He said a couple of words to Henri in his halting accent. Henri clicked a few buttons and the plane levelled out. Phew.

  And what the hell did Telaris know about flying this machine?

  “I’m still barely holding it,” Henri said. “We’ve lost our right solar wing and are flying on jet only. We’re going to have to put down somewhere and see if we can fix this, because the battery won’t last all the way back.”