Asala stared at them for a moment. “Okay,” she said.
Niko opened their mouth to keep yelling, then stopped, thrown off. “Okay?”
“Okay.” Asala shouldered her pack and headed back toward the path. “You're right. One farmstead and a sketchy channel? We can deal with that. It's a decent plan.” She meant it. Getting word to Soraya first and foremost was smart, and besides, if getting a win helped Niko deal with whatever stick had broken off in their ass, it was well worth a detour. The two of them probably were going to get themselves killed. Better it be due to overwhelming odds or spectacular heroics than a stupid mistake made by a stressed-out kid.
• • •
It was nearly dark by the time they reached the bottom of the mountain, and the bushes they crouched in were wet from the evening damp. The foliage was thick, the leaves irritating. Clouds of insects congregated. Niko watched the bugs weave and sway, unsettlingly reminded of the general's spiders. What a weird thing, having nature remind you of its mimic rather than the other way around.
“Ow,” Niko hissed.
“Quiet,” Asala said, her words barely rustling the air. She had a pair of pocket binos in hand, produced from the sack of gear she'd received in Shi Shen.
“Something bit me.” Niko rubbed the stinging spot on the back of their neck and looked warily at the flying things. “Are any of these poisonous?”
“Venomous.”
“What?”
“Poison's passive. You have to eat it or touch it. Venom's something that something else injects into you. Insects are venomous.”
Niko rolled their eyes. “Whatever. Are there any Gandesian bugs I need to worry about?”
Asala lowered her binos and thought. “You're probably fine,” she said finally, resuming her search.
“Thanks.” That was hardly a help, but Niko had bigger concerns, all of them neatly coiled around their chest and squeezing tight.
Beyond the bushes lay a small compound of five modest houses, and under any other circumstances, they might've seemed inviting. The thick, wild scrub was trimmed in an orderly radius around them, and the glow from the windows looked warm and safe. It was nothing fancy, this place. Even in the dying light, Niko could make out roofs that had weathered, edges in need of repair, garden patches struggling despite evident tending. A place that could be best described as adequate. But it wasn't a shambles. This was home to some, and whoever lived here clearly cared about that.
Those people were the big question right now, the reason Niko was still in the wet bushes with Asala, legs full of pins and needles, slivers of uncovered skin getting bit by who knew what. In those same warm windows, there were silhouettes, undefined yet unmistakable. The ambiguity—the complete unknown—was maddening. How could you judge a stranger by their home, their shadow? The smells of airy spice and fresh dinner, the sound of kids playing—none of that meant these people were friendly . . . or did it? The heavy hunting racks hanging off their vehicles, the hefty shape of an axe resting in a tree stump—none of that meant their owners were dangerous . . . or did it? It was a dice roll, a coin flip. It had also been Niko's idea, and they'd yet to think up a better one.
Dammit.
Asala sighed and lowered the binoculars once more. “I count fourteen, maybe fifteen,” she said, “and that's not factoring in anybody who hasn't been kind enough to walk past a window or out a door.” She offered the binos to Niko. “Tell me there's something here we can use.”
Niko took the binos and peered through. The lenses within scanned their eyes with soft green light, automatically adjusting focus to suit their viewer and raising night-vision intensity to fit the environment. Clear image attained, Niko left the windows and doors behind, and looked instead to the roofs and outer walls.
“Anything?” Asala said.
“Gimme a bit,” Niko said. They looked, and muttered, and looked some more, and—“Hmm.” They sat back on their aching legs. “Hmm.”
“Good hmm or bad hmm?”
Niko scratched a fresh bite behind their ear. “Promising hmm. Maybe.” They handed the binos back over and pointed. “Do you see that barn over there? Or workshop, whatever it is?”
Asala aimed the binos as directed. “Yes.”
“Go up to the roof. Do you see that receiver?”
Asala scanned, and—“Yes.”
“That's a basic satellite link. They're probably using it for weather data. But . . . ” They squinted. “Yeah, I could probably get that to work. Maybe not to Camp Ghala, but . . .” They considered. “Yeah, it'll work.”
“Can you do it from here?” Asala asked, nodding at their hiding spot.
Niko shook their head. “Not with this gear,” they said, angling their head toward their pack. “From the look of it, I'd need to patch straight in.”
Asala swung the binos downward. “There're no windows on that barn,” she said. “I can't see what's going on inside.”
“I know,” Niko said.
“Shit.” Asala sighed again. “Okay, give me a minute to think this through.”
Niko looked upward as Asala studied the compound. A few stars peeked through the patchy clouds. Another night, and Niko might have found it pretty. They slapped a bug trying to stick its face into their neck.
“All right,” Asala said, pocketing the binos and retrieving a light pair of night-vision goggles from her bag. She shifted her weight, still crouched but ready to move.
“We going for it?” Niko said. They put on their own goggles as well.
“Yep.” Asala gestured forward with a flat hand. “We're going to hit the left side of that storage container, make sure nobody's looking out the window, and then continue to the second house. Do everything exactly like I do, and nobody will know we're here.”
“Okay.” Niko got onto their feet, like Asala now had. “You're going to have to give me a minute though.”
“Why?”
Niko grit their teeth. “My calves are asleep,” they said, wincing as their waking nerves made themselves known.
Asala shook her head, but there was a laugh in there, an almost fond sort of scoff. “Your timing is amazing, kid,” she said. “Let me know when you're good to go.”
Niko processed that. The familiarity. The hint of friendly banter. They'd been hoping for a dynamic like that, ever since they'd met Asala in their father's office a million years ago. That sort of easiness was here now. It made Niko feel so much worse.
• • •
Asala waited for Niko's legs to remember how to function. At last, the kid gave her a nod.
“Okay,” Asala said. “Keep it low, and keep it light.” She hoped, as she said the words, that they might beat the odds here. Nimble wasn't the first descriptor that sprang to mind for Niko.
Asala darted forward, whisper-soft on her feet, aiming for the large storage container near the first house. Whatever was in it didn't matter. It was broad, opaque, and taller than she was in a crouch. Everything she needed. Niko slid in beside her, having shadowed her every step to the letter. Asala felt an unexpected twinge of approval. The kid was learning. The field was beginning to suit them, and if Asala had a hand in that . . . well, that was all right.
Laughter drifted out of the house nearby. Muffled voices. The rattle of dishes. Dark as it was outdoors, it was hard to say how much of the light from inside would bleed over their path to the barn. Asala craned her head around the container and looked to the windows. Finally, a bit of luck: someone had closed the curtains. “Hug the wall once we get there,” she said. “Keep down below the windows on the other side.”
She went and Niko followed, skirting past a heap of weatherworn toys and a recently forgotten jacket. They slunk along the house, grass barely crunching beneath their feet. This isn't so bad, Asala thought. She was reminded three seconds later why that was always an immensely stupid thing to think. She peeked around the corner of the house, looked ahead to the next building, and quickly pulled back.
“What?” Nik
o whispered.
Asala looked skyward, cursing her luck and her own hand in jinxing it. “Take a look. Carefully.”
With trepidation, Niko tiptoed around her, craned their head, and froze. “What is that?” they breathed over their shoulder.
Asala yanked them back. “Don't let it see you.”
Niko looked alarmed. “What is that?” they said again.
“A mobuck.” Asala sighed. She remembered them from her time on Gan-De. A half-ton of crazy on six hooves. The females were fairly common meat-and-leather stock, but the males—if you had the chops to socialize them toward you and yours—were a favored guard animal for folks with more than just a city yard to think about. Asala had been dumbfounded at the idea when she first heard about the animals—surely a carnivore would be a much better choice for home defense? That opinion changed the moment she saw a half-trained mobuck, drunk on hormones and territorial fuckery, run some poor bastard up a tree, then ram against the tree—bloodying itself in the process—until said poor bastard fell out. The mobuck had trampled its victim like the goddamn world was ending until its panicked owner had called it off. Asala very much doubted the human mess she'd seen in the dirt had ever been all right again, if he'd lived at all. She'd never forgotten the mobuck's fur, matted with blood and its own frothy spit. She remembered the whites of its blank herd-animal eyes flashing.
And now there was one about half again that size, twenty feet away, chained to a post that Asala wasn't confident would hold if the stone-brained beast got it in its head to charge.
The horror on Niko's face indicated they knew of the animals. “They're . . . bigger than I thought. What do we do?”
“I'm thinking.” Asala peeked around the corner again. The mobuck was drinking from a trough, unaware of or uncaring about anything else. She had no idea how sensitive they were. Could it see in the dark? Could they sneak behind it? Or would it know they were there the second they moved into its bubble? She thought again of the animal she'd seen in her youth, calming the moment its flared nostrils took in the smell of its owner. “Wait here.”
She ignored Niko's half-formed protest as she scurried back the way they'd came and retrieved the abandoned jacket from the play area. “Here,” she said when she got back. “Put this on.”
Niko took the dewy jacket with a reluctant hand. “This is a kid's jacket.”
“You're smaller than me.”
“I'm shorter than you. I don't think I can get it to fit.”
“Well, it's definitely not going to fit me.”
“Why do I have to—”
Someone entered the room they were closest to in the house behind them. Asala heard a door open and floorboards creak. “Now is not the time to argue,” she hissed.
Niko put on the jacket, grimacing as they did so. “Ugh, gods, there's something sticky on it.” They squeezed their arms into it, undoubtedly busting a few threads. The fabric stretched around their torso awkwardly, seams straining, buttons without any hope of reaching the distant other side. “Now what?” they said.
Asala pointed to the house beyond the mobuck. “Keep your distance, head for there. I'll be right behind you.”
“What?” Niko leaned in indignantly. “Why do I have to go first?”
Asala tugged at the jacket as if she were adjusting finery. “Because now you smell kind of like a friend.”
“Will that even work?”
Asala paused. “I don't know,” she said honestly.
Niko glared. “If it doesn't?”
An excellent question. “We have guns,” Asala said.
“Kind of defeats the purpose of the whole sneaking-around—”
“If you have a better suggestion, I'm all ears.”
Niko scrunched up their face, inhaled through their teeth, and let it all go. They tiptoed out past the house. At first, nothing changed. Asala followed close behind, nearly touching Niko, putting them directly between her and the animal. Best she keep her own scent in the background. Unless this idea didn't hold water at all. If that were the case, they were pretty much screwed.
They took a few steps. A few more. A few more.
In a ripple of fur and muscle, the mobuck turned its head. It looked dead at them, darkness be damned.
The intruders froze. Asala could hear Niko's breath catch and quicken.
The mobuck raised its nose, nostrils widening in the night air. White steam drifted from them as it pulled in their scent. It made a strange whinny, an alien wheeze. The animal seemed confused.
“Keep moving,” Asala said, nudging her companion forward. “Don't give it something to think about.” Her voice was calm. She felt anything but.
The mobuck took a step toward them, continuing to make questioning sounds.
“Fuck,” Niko whispered. “Aw, fuck.”
“Don't run,” Asala said. “You're doing fine.”
A door opened on the side of the house and a woman called out in a common Gandesian dialect. “Bombom? What's got you all riled up?”
“Never mind, run.”
The two dashed the last short way to the back of the house. Asala could hear the rattle of a chain, the stomp of hooves on hard-packed ground, the introductory crescendo of a cervid scream. Then—“Whoa, whoa, boy, hold now. Hold.” There were human footsteps now, and the sweep of a flashlight lit the place where Niko and Asala had moved through just moments before. “Hold, hold,” the woman said as hooves fell impatiently. Her voice was steady, but the same question present in the mobuck's whimper was present in her words. Asala pressed flat against the back of the house, holding her breath. She watched the light arc this way and that, heard the woman walk out into the grass, closer, closer. The light crept toward Asala's boot. Closer. Closer.
The light switched off. “Probably just a grain rat again,” the woman said. There was the sound of patting, palm against flank. “It's okay now, Bombom. It's okay.”
Asala made a sharp hand gesture, pointing them onward and taking the lead. Niko did not need to be told to be quiet.
They continued their shadowed dance to the barn without trouble. Finally, they arrived, greeted by a bit more good luck—the barn was unlit from the outside, and the entrance was unlocked. They slipped inside, barring the door behind them.
“Can I ask a question?” Niko said, wasting no time in wriggling their way out of the too-small jacket.
“Shoot,” Asala said as she took in their surroundings.
“My Gandesian is admittedly garbage, but . . . its name was Bombom, right?”
“So it would seem.”
“Okay.” Niko paused to let that sink in. “Not, like, Killer, or . . .”
“Crusher.”
“Psycho.”
“Hammer.”
“Bloodfeast.”
Asala snorted. “Do we have any alarms to worry about?”
Niko pulled out their handheld and launched a scanning program. “Gimme a sec.” They shook their head as they entered commands. “Bombom. Ridiculous.”
While Niko consulted their tech, Asala used her eyes to search her surroundings. The barn was empty—of people, specifically. As was the case with barns in general, empty wasn't really the word to use here. The lower floor was bursting with workbenches, storage boxes, projects briefly loved and long deserted. Some kind of small vehicle—an autoplow, maybe—rested under a dusty cover, a contrast to the tool cage that stood to one side, whose messiness and clutter suggested it was in constant use.
“No alarms,” Niko said. They looked from wall to wall. “And no wiring box down here.” They nodded at a simple metal staircase. “We'll need to go up.”
Up they went, Asala leading the way. She assessed, then waved Niko forward. “See what you need?” Her question was answered by Niko hurrying straight for a large white box fixed to the wall. Cables ran to it through the ceiling, and a smaller wire trailed from it to some kind of terminal nearby. Asala followed, and examined the terminal desk as Niko unpacked their gear. A live feed of weather
data glowed on a monitor. Crop tables and old disc manuals rested around it. She pawed lightly through the titles. Engine repair. Plumbing maintenance. A guide to foraging wild food. A stark contrast to the big cities of Gan-De, with their warehouses of resources and rock-solid infrastructure and people who wouldn't know a weed from a prize melon. The cities had all the stuff, but housed dangerously specialized citizens; small communities like this one knew much and had little. It was hard to say which group would fare better when the cold properly hit. Not that that argument mattered outside of academics. The cold would take them all, eventually. It didn't care about ethos.
“What can I do?” Asala asked.
Niko was already in work mode, eyes fixed on the wires in hand. “Just . . .” They gestured vaguely elsewhere, away from them.
“I got it,” Asala said. She stuck her thumbs under her belt and looked around. Weather desk and wiring box aside, the barn loft seemed to be used for storage only. Must and age filled her nose, but the air was dry, at least, filtered through a dehumidifier in the corner. There wasn't any sort of animal funk. She wandered as Niko worked, idly reading labels on the boxes. She hadn't used Gandesian pictographs in a while—dialect didn't matter; the whole planet used the same symbols—but the words were simple enough. Clothes. Dishes. Clothes. Tent. Batteries. An ordinary attic full of ordinary things. She wondered what these people would make of their uninvited guests with their military tech and guns and otherworldly voices. She wondered what they made of any of it. Camp Ghala was just a concept to them, just as their glorious general was a concept, just as Khayyam and the sun and a galaxy beyond. Why should they care about such things, when there were crop pests to deal with and mushrooms to gather? How could they care?
And how, more important, could Hafiz's people plan to leave people like this behind? The Outers hated the Inners, and vice versa, but what they hated were the few that were visible to them on a day-to-day basis. The faces on the news, the policy makers. The heads wearing crowns. Neither side thought about the places she stood in now, places identical in essence no matter where you went. People like this didn't care about war or politics, not really. They cared about their crops, their tools, their clothes. They cared about cooking dinner and letting their kids play. And that's who the solar system was home to, in aggregate. That's who they were really talking about when they talked about who to save and who to forget. She understood—oh yes, she understood—why the Outers wanted to leave the Inners behind. She wanted to leave Cynwrig, definitely, and Ekrem, probably, and a host of other stuck-up bastards besides. But she didn't want to leave the owners of this barn, whoever they were. They didn't deserve it. None of them deserved it, these planets full of bystanders who could only react to a carefully curated window into someone else's game.
The Vela: The Complete Season 1 Page 23