“Fuck, look,” said Niko, pointing up ahead.
Asala peered into the darkness. There was a figure moving to the side of the road, just out of range of her headlights.
“Think it means trouble?” asked Niko.
“Might. Might not. But sit up. Get your seat belt on right.”
Asala kept moving forward, but the figure started waving their hand. “Fuck. Should we stop?”
Usually it wouldn’t even be a question. She’d keep moving. But this mission had led to one crisis of conscience after another. She didn’t know what to believe or what to do. She could trust her judgment no better than she could trust Ekrem’s or Niko’s or Hafiz’s or Soraya’s. She was, after everything, still the woman who’d left her own sister behind. The woman who’d proven she was no different now, leaving behind someone else’s little sister when she had the chance to do it all over again.
Focus on the mission.
“They could be in danger,” said Niko, but they didn’t sound that excited to stop either.
Asala pressed the brake button and let the truck drift to a stop. The figure moved toward the car, and Niko opened the window.
“Need a ride to Gwyyfier,” they said, squinting. After a moment, they got a good look at Asala. “What the hell are you doing here, clannie?”
“We’ll be on our way,” said Niko, closing the window briskly, but several other figures emerged from the surrounding red wood and came out onto the road.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Asala said, banging the heels of her palms against the steering wheel.
“What even is this?” asked Niko.
Asala inhaled deeply. “Lots of folks try to make the crossing from Shi Shen through the Seven Day Mountains to get to more central Gan-De, where you can arrange transport to Khayyam. Some Gandesian militias make it their mission to prevent that.”
“So? What’s our play?” asked Niko. “Are they armed?”
It became quickly apparent that it didn’t matter whether they were or weren’t. As Asala went to turn the fusion engine back on, nothing happened. Lights on the flashboard started blinking sporadically, and the radio blared on, then off, then on. Somebody was hacking the car.
Asala and Niko reflexively moved to lock their doors, but a second later, the locks unlatched.
“All right. You ready?” Asala murmured, touching one of the handheld weapons Dyfed had given her. She dialed it to a setting that would incapacitate anyone who got in her way, instead of killing them outright. Niko took out theirs as well.
“Let’s go,” Niko said.
They both stepped out of the car, weapons drawn. Asala’s specialty might be long-range kills, but she still knew her way around a hand weapon.
“Step the fuck back, or I end you,” she said, sizing their captors up.
There were a lot of them, and they were armed too. It wasn’t the most tactically ideal situation, but she’d handled worse.
“Shut up, clannie.”
She shot the mouthy one in each knee. The energy blast didn’t break skin, but the rush of pressure to his knees would hurt for weeks. He fell over.
The mob panicked at the crack of the energy shots, and she took that split second to do more damage, diving and rolling forward into a crouch to target a few of Mouthy’s companions. Niko did their part, covering Asala when she went forward to attack hand to hand, disarming who she could.
The moons were bright, but it was still nighttime, and visibility was far from high.
More and more Gandesians kept coming, emerging from the surrounding woods. This was going to get ugly.
“Niko, see what you can do about the car!” Asala yelled.
The Gandesians were trained, but nowhere near her level. Asala doubted any of them were even ex-military. They were easy to take out, and the red pines provided good ground for evasion. She climbed a tree with ease, palms on the sticky bark. This was the closest she was going to get to higher ground.
“Where’d that clannie go?” she heard them call.
She sent a few more targeted blasts toward them. Niko was still in the thick of it, trying to figure out who had the device that was hacking into their car. Whoever it was had to be within a pretty close range to manage what they were pulling off.
Asala watched from her perch in the tree, covering them, shooting at anyone who got near Niko. She took her time. Patient, well-thought-out shots, refusing to miss her mark by even a hair. Whoever this group was, come tomorrow, quite a few of their cohort wouldn’t be able to walk for a long time.
Niko finally found the source of the hack—a young woman just off the edge of the road with a tiny handheld of some sort. With Niko in the way, Asala couldn’t get a clear shot. They’d have to handle this on their own. Asala believed they could.
Their hand-to-hand combat skills weren’t bad, and they’d grown vitally more confident over the course of the mission. They were cautious but not too cautious, their arms up to guard their face, their legs widened in a nice sturdy base, springy on the balls of their feet. They side-kicked twice, knocking the woman off her balance. She still held tight to the device until Niko held their weapon to her neck. Between the dark and the distance, Asala couldn’t make out what Niko said, but she assumed it was something close to drop it or else. Then—
Fuck. Four of the goons popped out of the fray and pointed their weapons at Niko’s head. “Come out, clannie, or we’ll blow your little pet’s brains out.”
They had Niko surrounded. Asala didn’t have a choice. She leapt out of the tree.
Asala inhaled, smoothing out any ruffles she might’ve had in her calm exterior. Composure was key. Fearlessness was the difference between life and death. “I wonder how General Cynwrig would feel about some random boonies in the outermost regions of the planet causing a fucking diplomatic incident over two people on official business by the president of Khayyam,” she said. No differently than she might’ve said it to a lover in a bar, easy and calm.
“You’re bluffing,” sneered one of them.
“Oh, am I also bluffing about that being President Ekrem’s kid?” asked Asala, pointing to Niko.
One of them pressed their gun against Niko’s temple. “You’re a fucking liar, clannie. All of you are.”
“No, she’s not,” Niko said. “Check my ID.”
These seemed like the types who’d carry blood scanners for moments just like this, to discern who was really Gandesian and who was just faking it after years of assimilation. Purity required constant vigilance.
Niko held out their wrist, and one of the attackers grabbed it roughly. He waved the scanner over it.
“Tumal!” he swore as the scan revealed Asala had been telling the truth.
“What does it matter? They’d never be able to prove it was us,” someone said.
Asala held up her comm device in her left hand, weapon still poised and ready in her right. “I have photos of all of you. I hear Gan-De’s facial recognition is some of the best in the system, is it not? A file with your faces and crimes have already been sent to Ekrem himself,” she said. All of this was a lie, of course. She hadn’t even had interplanetary access to call him since that brief contact just before leaving Hypatia, when she’d left the message about the suspected terrorist plot.
Besides, even in night-vision mode, the photos would be grainy. Top-of-the-line facial recognition or not, their attackers would remain virtually anonymous.
To top off the ruse, she pretended to call him, though she was only calling her voice messages. At just the right moment, timing it perfectly, she put her last message from Ekrem on speaker: “What the hell is going on, Asala?” Anyone in the solar system would recognize that distinctive voice.
She pretended to hang up the phone then stared down the attackers. “Let us back into our car so we can be on our way.”
Around her, men and women moaned, clutching various body parts she or Niko had hit. These were hacks of the highest order. She didn’t need their goddamn white fla
g. She should shoot every single one of them. Gandesian militias were all the same. Sloppy. Bad technique. They learned a few guerrilla techniques from military vets, some formations here and there, but they were too hotheaded and hungry for the kill to have the patience and precision required to be effective soldiers.
“It’s not worth it,” one of them groaned. “Let ’em go.”
Niko wriggled free from the person clutching them and stumbled back to the vehicle. Asala walked very, very slowly to the driver’s side, weapon still out.
“Get the fuck out of here, clannie. Don’t let us find you here again or I’ll turn your tattoos into scars,” one of the retreating boonies spat. It took everything not to change the mode on her weapon and make his brain combust.
Back inside the car, she blew out a long breath as the engine powered up.
“Gods, weren’t those lovely people?” said Niko.
Asala smiled. “Makes you appreciate Shi Shen, doesn’t it?”
* * *
Neither Niko nor Asala talked much during the rest of the journey. Energy, will, and motivation had abandoned them days ago. Who could say what made them carry on? Habit, more than anything.
“Wake up,” Niko said.
They wanted to let Asala sleep more—she’d done most of the driving thanks to Niko’s injury—but now they were less than a mile away from the coast, where the cave network began near the Seven Day Mountains. The increasing altitude as they wound through the outlying mountains had taken its toll on them both.
Asala didn’t react.
Niko tried again. “Get up.”
“I’m up,” Asala said. Niko wondered if she’d even really been sleeping in the first place. She had a superhuman way about her. But even superheroes crash.
“All right, so the scanners we got at the safe house should theoretically track heat output. All we have to do is turn them on and set them scanning. They have a range of a few miles and they’ll beep when they check a heat anomaly.”
“What do you mean?” Asala rubbed her eyes and took a measured sip of water.
“Well, it’ll take averages of the heat radiating from a certain area, and then when something is higher than normal, it will beep. That way we don’t have to search all the factory ruins on foot.”
Niko pulled the vehicle up onto a rocky beach. Hopefully, any drones or passersby would think them military due to the scramblers they had running.
“Is it on?” asked Asala.
Niko shrugged. They were familiar with similar tech but not these particular devices. If they put a little effort into it, they’d figure it out, but they were all out of effort. Niko was holding so much in, the internal pressure threatened to expand inside of them until their rib cage cracked open. Shit.
Asala fiddled with the heat-detection device, and finally, the tiny monitor lit up. This wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art technology, but at least it seemed to be on now.
“Well?” she asked.
“It’s scanning. You hold it and I’ll drive slowly along.”
The road didn’t go as far as the caves, and the terrain had grown rough. The heat detector continued to show activity on the screen, so they could only assume it was working.
“I wonder what exactly we’ll find in there,” Niko asked, less out of curiosity and more out of a desperate attempt to stay alert.
“Yep,” said Asala. “Last I heard, it used to be full of squatters, but it’s pretty dangerous, all that old industrial scrap and equipment around. They’re here. I know it. We’ll find them.”
They had been driving for half an hour before the device beeped. “Yes!” said Niko. “Fucking finally.”
“Tell me about it. Does it show where the heat signature is exactly?” Asala asked.
“Yes.” Niko held up the device. The landscape was represented as a series of black curvy lines on the screen. The area that was supposedly generating more heat was circled in a dotted line.
They hopped out of the truck with the scanning device and followed it, climbing uphill over large boulders and rocks, across a patchy bit of dry grassland, and into the narrow crevice that was the entrance to the cave. They had to turn their bodies to the side to enter, squeezing through a tight passageway.
“Do you hear anything?” Niko asked. Maybe the machine was broken. If Uzochi and her team were here and operating the old manufacturing equipment, surely they’d hear noises.
“Shhh,” said Asala, and kept working her way through the crevice until she was on an open, short ledge. She hopped down onto the cave floor and Niko followed suit. She was fearless, and they aimed to be the same. Even if they didn’t agree with everything she did or the way she thought about refugees—they wanted to be like her.
They walked over a rocky stream. “This way,” said Asala. She seemed to hear something Niko didn’t.
Niko checked the scanner. They were going in the right direction. “So, like, what’s our game plan, exactly?” The two of them probably should’ve discussed this before.
“We go in,” said Asala, voice just above a whisper.
“That’s—is that the extent of the plan?”
“Yes.”
Niko stopped. “But what if they’re armed?”
“What do you mean what if they’re armed?” asked Asala.
“Do we shoot them? Because I don’t know if I can do that,” said Niko. “In fact, I do know. I won’t do it. If that’s a problem for you, I’m not going in.”
Asala rolled her eyes. Gods, Niko hated that. Yeah, maybe Niko was a fucking neophyte, but Asala didn’t have to be so condescending all the time. It was Niko’s contacts that had gotten them to this point. Not hers.
Niko inhaled. They had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well, and Niko wasn’t even sure what this was.
“You’re the one who dragged my ass out here. Not the other way around. Just remember that, kid,” Asala said. “Wait!” she called, holding her hand out. “You hear that?”
Niko nodded. Finally, some sign they were on the right track. There was the sound of light chatter just over the moving water. Clicking. Machinery whirring.
They crept slowly through the cave. There were only a few signs that it was anything more than just a tunnel of rocks. More trash than you’d expect to see. An abandoned jacket. The occasional steel beam support.
The two walked through a narrow passageway, and on the other side of it was something like Niko had never seen before. It was a cavern, perhaps two hundred or three hundred feet high, filled with technology they’d never dreamed of. It was beautiful. Symmetrical. It was the first time since landing on Gan-De that Niko knew what people meant by “Fortress Planet.” What incredible architecture built into the structure of the cave, elaborate arabesques, each as functional as it was beautiful.
There were six people in various states of disorganization. Someone was up in what looked like a control room full of computers. The others were working with various parts of a machine and conveyor belt. They were covered in grease, grime, and dust. They’d been here for some time. Judging by the remains of a fire and the smell of beans, they were eating and sleeping here too. Was this really it? Just these six?
“Hey!” someone called out, speaking in Atlan. It was the person in the control room.
They emerged out of the shadow and Niko saw right away that it was Uzochi.
She looked—somewhat like Niko expected her to look. Brilliant. A little scattered. Since the video they’d seen, her hair had grown and was shaggier in appearance, layers of different lengths and bangs long enough to disrupt her vision. She’d grown paler. Lost a small amount of weight. “Who the hell are you? Get out! Now!” she shouted. She picked up a gun, but it was clear she had no idea what she was doing with it.
Still, she got her message across. In many ways, someone who didn’t know how to use a gun was worse than someone who did know what they were doing.
Asala put her hands up, though she still held her weapon in her right hand. Niko kn
ew her well enough by now to know she wouldn’t be relinquishing it.
“Uzochi, you need to put that down,” Asala said. “We don’t mean you any harm.”
She stepped farther into the light, revealing her tattoos. She’d probably done that intentionally to win Uzochi’s sympathies, Niko realized. Clever.
“How do you know my name?” said Uzochi. “Who are you? I swear on my life I will shoot you. I will. Don’t think I’m weak.”
Niko thought no such thing. Asala probably didn’t either. Uzochi’s voice trembled with nerves as she spoke, but she was a woman of purpose, and there was a confidence there.
Niko looked over to Asala. Didn’t she see now that none of this had happened for the reasons she’d assumed? That Uzochi was just doing what she could to protect the most vulnerable people in the system? To protect her work from Niko’s leech of a father?
“We know who you are because we’ve been searching for you for quite some time,” said Asala. The others with Uzochi were frozen in fear, watching the altercation unfold. “We were sent looking for you when the Vela went missing. To save you.”
Uzochi snorted. “The last thing we need is saving,” she said. “And sent by whom? Was it Ekrem? He’s a liar and a thief and a manipulator. Whatever he said about us, it’s wrong.”
“Hafiz told us everything,” said Niko.
Uzochi turned to face them, squinting, hands shaking as she held the gun. “You’re—aren’t you Niko?” Niko startled a bit at her casual use of their name, like they were old friends, and glanced at Asala. If it had registered with her, Niko couldn’t see it. “Ekrem’s your father! Are you part of this?”
Niko shook their head vehemently. “I’m nothing like him. He deceived us just like he deceived you. We only want to figure out what’s going on so we can save as many people as possible.”
“Well, we’ve already got a handle on that, so thanks but no thanks,” Uzochi sneered. “Get out. Get out.”
“We will get out,” said Asala. “But I want you to know that I have this—see if that changes your mind,” she said. She moved her left hand very slowly toward the waist bag she wore and carefully pulled out the cube.
The Vela: The Complete Season 1 Page 21