by TW Iain
Copyright © 2017 T.W.Iain. All rights reserved
Cover designed by Joshua Jadon joshuajadon.com
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
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By TW Iain
Shadows
Shadowfall (Book One)
Shadowsiege (Book Two)—coming soon
Shadowstrike (Book Three)—coming 2018
Shadowlair (A Shadows Prologue)—Mailing list exclusive novella
Dominions
Dark Glass (Dominions I)
Dead Flesh (Dominions II)
Deep Water (Dominions III)
Gatekeeper (A Dominions Prologue)—Free short story
Control (A Dominions Story)—Mailing list exclusive novella
Expedient (A Dominions Story)
The hunger was never far away.
The creature had fed recently, back in one of the other caves. It had opened the wound and sucked eagerly, taking in as much as it could. Others had been waiting for their turn, and it would have fought them if they approached. But they didn’t interrupt. They knew it needed the energy, for what it was about to do.
But the food supply was tainted, the source already weakened. And that was why the creature pushed through the caves, so dark and cold and perfect. That was why the creature explored.
They needed more food.
The creature moved through the blackness with ease, and even when the tunnel fell away, the creature climbed as fast as it walked.
The tunnel opened into a cave. The air was different, rich with the smell of vegetation, and it blew cool against the creature’s hide. The darkness was no longer all-consuming, and the creature hesitated. But it took a step forward anyway. The shadows allowed that much.
It sniffed, and turned its attention to the outside. The atmosphere was heavy with moisture, but it sensed life, far below. That would be the large forest creatures. They would do in an emergency, but their blood was sickly, and the energy it gave was short-lived.
But there was another trace rising from the forest, and although it was distant, the scent was familiar. It rekindled the hunger, and the creature salivated.
A fresh supply of food approached, and that excited the creature almost to distraction. It yearned to sink its fangs into flesh. It craved the sharp, bitter taste hitting the back of its throat. It relished the feeling of power that would cascade through its body.
It inched closer to the opening of the cave, and could have climbed down. The clouds were heavy, and the trees were tall enough to provide shelter if they could be reached with speed. But it knew the benefits of patience. It knew about stealth. It wasn’t some dumb animal, like the large forest beasts.
And so it retreated, back into the shadows. And it waited.
The Proteus lurched to starboard, and the seat restraints bit into Brice’s shoulders. Again.
“How we holding up, Keelin?” Cathal asked, from his seat at the back of the bridge. If Brice turned to look at his commander, he knew the face would be as emotionless as the voice.
“Not enjoying this,” Keelin said as she rolled the craft to starboard. Brice switched his lenses to the internal sensor and saw her grimace, glazed eyes half hidden by strands of hair. Her hands curled round the ends of the armrests in concentration.
“How long?”
“An hour plus.” There was a whine from the engines. “Plus a lot, the way this storm’s growing.”
Over an hour stuck to his chair on this rust-bucket. Brice couldn’t wait to get back to Haven.
“You finished your report yet, Brice?”
“Almost.”
“No time like the present.”
Brice nodded. The others had probably finished ages ago, reports all filed and ready for collation. But Brice hadn’t even started, and Cathal must know that. But what could he add?
He pulled the file up through his lattice, the blank page filling his lenses. He stared at it for a moment, then recorded the bare facts. Fly out, land next to the abandoned Proteus. Start investigation, but nothing of interest on the craft besides a removed panel. No clear reason for this. Ryann tracked the missing crew into the forest, up to the edge of the gully. The trail headed down, following a line of bolts. There was no rope. Ryann said she couldn’t detect anyone nearby.
Cathal called the search off. With the increasing storm, climbing down was a risk he was unprepared to take. They returned to their own Proteus, and headed home.
Tris moaned about being cold and wet the whole time, of course. Brice was tempted to put that in his report, but he knew Cathal would remove it. He’d say the company wasn’t interested in such pettiness, but Brice knew it would reflect poorly on Cathal himself. It wouldn’t do for a commander to have dissension in the ranks.
The company had an image to uphold, after all.
“Tris, you patched in?” asked Cathal.
As crew tech, Tris sat next to the pilot—some hold-over from ancient times, apparently. Of course, Tris could work from anywhere through his lattice, and there was no need for him to sit up front. All it did was stroke his ego.
Tris swivelled his chair to face Cathal, and ran a hand over the clumps of hair he called a beard. “Signal reach to Haven’s fluctuating between six and ten bars. I’ve tried routing through freq-mod, but atmos gamma’s running at seventeen per, so that’s a no-go.”
Typical data-drivel. Brice snorted. “You mean you can’t reach Haven?”
“Think you could do any better?” Tris’ jaw clenched, and he tried to look imposing. Brice wanted to laugh.
“Keep it civil, boys,” said Cathal, stern but bored. “Tris, keep trying. Brice, if you’ve finished your report, send it to Ryann.”
“Sending now.”
He had the file on auto-push anyway. He re-read the few sparse sentences, decided it would do, and signed off. His lattice pinged when Ryann received it.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice as soft as usual, and Brice gave her a nod. She sat in the chair across from him, her eyes glazed and her face serene.
Brice still wasn’t sure what to make of the crew’s second-in-command. She was one of the best trackers on Haven, a trained medic, and everyone spoke highly of her. But she seemed distant, like everything she said was planned. She seemed to care, but the emotion felt too forced.
“Tris, try hold-out seventeen,” she said. “It’s in use. Might be close enough to relay our signal.”
“On it. Nyle Patera and Osker Rella. Just the two of them?”
“Training mission.”
“Right.”
Brice envied Nyle and Osker. The hold-outs were little more than concrete blocks, but they beat being stuck in a Proteus in a storm.
The Proteus shuddered and dropped, and Brice’s stomach lurched.
“That trees we’re hitting, Keelin?” Tris said.
“Only the tops. This baby can take it.”
“You sure?”
As if a tech could do better than a pilot, Brice thought.
“I know what I’m doing. Just need to find somewhere to drop into the basin.”
“Thought we were running the rim. That was the plan, right?”
“Storm’s changed that.”
“Anywhere to drop?” Cathal asked. Brice wondered why he didn’t pull up the maps himself. But why should he do any work when he had a crew to do it for him?
“Closest possibility’s the Tumbler.”
Of all
the waterfalls cascading into the basin, the Tumbler was the biggest. And the most powerful. Brice had read of the drone, the one that crashed last year. A sudden down-draft slammed it into the vertical water, and it disappeared. They said parts of it were still churning round in the plunge-pool’s maelstrom.
But something about air pressure made waterfalls ideal drop-points. Or was it thermals? Some technical garbage, anyway. The kind of stuff Tris would get all excited by.
“Your call, Keelin,” Cathal said, and it annoyed Brice that he was off-loading the decision. “And take a break if you need it.”
“Prefer to get back as soon as.”
“And I’d prefer to get back in one piece.”
The Proteus tilted gently to starboard, and the engines whined. Brice sighed, and linked to the external sensors.
His lenses flared up as lightning streaked across the sky, and he felt more than heard the deep boom of the thunder. The heavy clouds were dark, and rain lashed down onto the forest canopy. The wind roared through the trees, and to Brice the forest looked like an angry sea, waiting to devour them.
Ahead, he saw a line snaking through the trees, and he knew this was the Tumbler’s feeder river. The line grew as they approached.
He tuned in to the haptic sensors, and his skin prickled with the cold harshness of the air, and the rain stung like a thousand angry insects. But there was also warmth in the friction of the air rushing over the Proteus’ hull.
The craft clipped the tree-tops, and raked across his belly. He winced, but then he thought how much more intense this would be for Keelin. She was locked in to every sensor, truly at one with her craft. In some senses, she was the Proteus. To move it, she merely had to think.
The craft jerked, and Brice’s head was tossed to one side, his body held in place by the seat restraints. It was enough to pull him from the sensors.
“You okay, green?” There was a hint of a smile on Cathal’s stubbled face.
“Fine,” Brice said. He hated it when Cathal called him green. He never used that term for Tris or Keelin, even though they’d only joined the crew a week before he’d signed up.
“Taking us down,” Keelin said.
Brice locked on to the outside sensors again as the Proteus dropped towards the water. The river flowed so fast and steadily that it appeared to be a solid thing, and he almost imagined Keelin would land on that surface. But she stopped a couple of metres above it, setting the craft to hover, facing a line where the river stopped and the sky began.
To either side of them, the river tore through the trees, ripping branches free, dragging trunks from their roots. It dragged the debris to the lip of the waterfall, and then threw it down, to be reduced to splinters by the churning waters below.
Brice pulled out. Hovering over the water made him feel queasy.
“Tris, any joy with the hold-out?” Cathal asked.
Tris shook his head. “Can’t pull enough power into the boosters.”
“That’s me,” Keelin said. “Need to keep the Proteus steady. Just give me a moment.”
Tris didn’t respond, and Brice knew he was annoyed. But Keelin outranked him. Everyone outranked Tris, apart from Brice.
He was the crew’s grunt. That wasn’t the official role, obviously, but that was what they called him, often to his face. His lattice was tweaked for physical enhancements, and so he did the heavy lifting. He did all the donkey work.
“Take as long as you need, Keelin,” Cathal said. “Prefer to get back late than not at all.”
And then the lights flickered. They turned off for a second, and when they came back on, they cast a dim glow.
“Great!” muttered Keelin. “They were supposed to have fixed this.”
“Glich?” asked Tris.
“More like a screw-up. Odd times, we stay stationary for more than a minute, the Proteus thinks we’re parked and cuts to minimal power.”
“Can’t you over-ride it?”
Keelin turned her head to Tris. “Right,” she drawled. “Never thought of that.”
“I’ll speak to Arela again,” Ryann said, before Tris formed a come-back.
“Can’t see that helping, but thanks anyway,” said Keelin.
Arela Angelis. Brice had only met Haven’s chief commander a couple of times. The woman was fierce, and acted like she was independent, but they all knew she was under the thumb of the company. Kaiahive—so big it controlled governments, so big it dealt in everything from food processing to mining to high-tech development. So important it was the only company that offered superior lattice tweaking, unless you went black-market and risked a total melt-down.
And so self-important that it only spent the bare minimum. It was no wonder the name was rarely mentioned. They were ‘the company’, and they screwed everyone over. They didn’t give the refit guys the parts they needed, and insisted they make do. They forced Keelin’s baby to hobble on with problems patched over, the plasters peeling away at the slightest disturbance, but they’d complain if missions were not a success.
Arela might be able to pull a few strings, but she wouldn’t stick her neck out too far, and they all knew it.
The lights flickered again.
“Tris, help run diagnostic,” Keelin said.
“On it.”
Silence descended on the bridge. Everyone had their eyes down as they retreated into their lattices, pulling up data or rifling through reports. Brice shrugged, and plugged into the craft’s systems once more.
Nothing was ideal. If he stayed in the bridge, the grey walls felt oppressive. But if he connected with the sensors, and saw the world outside, it only reminded him that he was stuck on the craft.
He looked to the trees, longing to be amongst them, even in this weather. The leaves were thick, and they’d keep off most of the rain. The wind wouldn’t penetrate too badly, either.
There were the warths, of course, but Ryann would sense them, and would guide the crew around the beasts. They were only a danger when provoked, anyway.
The Proteus vibrated, and Brice felt the wind pushing down on them, funnelled by the trees. The water churned below, and Brice followed its flow, towards the line that stretched out, where the river ended and the clouds began. A branch—no, a fallen tree—was swept past, and it teetered on the edge for a moment before disappearing from view. Maybe he could hear the roar of the Tumbler. Or maybe that was the thunder that constantly rumbled.
And then the sky burst open with lightning.
Brice saw it in a negative freeze-frame, the trees suddenly brilliant white, before the intensity slammed into him. White-hot pain shot through his body, pulling every muscle rigid. His heart stuttered and his lungs squeezed.
The Proteus twisted and fell.
Ryann felt everything.
The moment the lightning struck—because that surely was what had happened—her lattice switched to hyper-sensitivity. The illusion of time slowed as she analysed all inputs.
The Proteus slammed into the water. It twisted, almost lazily, and the engines spluttered. Keelin cried out inside. Ryann felt her mind shift as she dived into the craft’s controls. Tris flared with anger and panic. He wasn’t controlling his adrenaline, but letting it consume him.
Cathal’s heart-rate jumped, but he forced a barrier up, sealing his emotions until later.
The craft tilted to port, a down-draft pushing from the stern. They faced up-stream, and Ryann saw the water push the Proteus’ nose, forcing them towards the waterfall.
Brice was dark, and that was a concern. When Ryann pushed, there was only the suggestion of a lattice. It was like trying to grab at mist.
The hull creaked as their nose lifted, water forcing the Proteus upright. She dug
into the data, and read how their stern was trapped against a tangle of rock and a web of wood. The river pushed them vertical, and for a second they teetered, the craft groaning in complaint.
And then they fell.
The seat restraints pinned Ryann in place, and for a moment she was weightless. Then, the Proteus spinning, pressure drove into her chest, and a roar filled her ears. She gripped the arm-rests, and found it hard to swallow.
They tumbled, over and over. The sensors showed the swirling water, angry streaks of foaming white amid the darkness. Then the sensors cut out, and the Proteus lost power.
Ryann closed her eyes.
There was nothing they could do. The water pummelled them from all sides. She felt collisions, and heard hideous scraping sounds—other debris smashing against them. And within the bridge, when she pushed out to the others, all she tasted was their fear, sharp and pungent.
And then they shot forward, with such force that Ryann feared she would lose consciousness. She swallowed vomit, her face cold and clammy, and her chest squeezed tight.
But she continued to analyse. She understood how they had been forced along the huge stopper at the base of the waterfall, until they had reached a weaker spot. Then, the force of the water had been released, and they had been rejected into the river.
They spun, but gently now. The water tilted them at times, and now they rolled and tilted to starboard, and came to a stop with a grinding crunch of metal on rock.
The fear from the crew settled, and relief pushed it down. She heard breath being forced from between pursed lips, and the stuttered shaking of something close to laughter.
They’d survived the Tumbler.