Invardii Series Boxset

by Warwick Gibson

  Celia took Habid with her and walked to an area clear of the group. She threw her hands up in the air, and began calling out loudly to ‘Throm’, the name she had given her supposed karrich, to show itself. The translation belt repeated her words loudly in the Pellukech language.

  She made a point of calling for her karrich in all four directions, as if she had no idea where it currently was, before standing with her hands raised, facing the sun.

  “Five seconds out,” said Andre in her ear. Celia turned dramatically to the Pellukech leader.

  “Throm comes!” she exclaimed, and pointed to the west. By this time the first murmurs of compressed air from the shuttle’s jets could be heard on the desert winds. The Pellukech began to stir uneasily, and several eyed the safety of the cave entrance.

  The shuttle burst over a rise to the west of the cave and blasted the Pellukech with sand and grit as it passed overhead. Andre lifted the shuttle into the sky and banked it, in a display of aerobatics. Then he came round to land in front of Celia. When the shuttle had come to rest he nudged the hydraulics, and the shuttle dipped at the front while its back rose. It appeared to lower its head before her.

  “Nice touch,” said Celia quietly, turning her head momentarily toward Habid’s shoulder.

  “We aim to please,” said Andre, chuckling as he levelled the shuttle and then settled it on the ground. Moments later he shut down the engines, and the hiss of compressed air died away.

  Celia looked around, and found the Pellukech in a general state of disarray. Some of the older men and women had stood their ground, but the rest were either edging backward toward the cave, or had already made it inside the cave mouth.

  “Open the side doors,” said Celia quietly, and the side doors of the shuttle slid back with a soft hiss.

  “If you will follow me, oh esteemed leader,” said Celia to the hakkim, who, to his credit, was standing with the group of older men and women. Several of them followed the hakkim toward Celia, and she led them to the open doors. They stopped short at the gaping entrance, however, and refused to move, so she stepped inside to reassure them.

  “It is perfectly safe,” she said with a smile, and took two more steps into the hold.

  The hakkim was a courageous man, and he stepped forward until he faced the door. He placed one foot inside the shuttle, and then the other. He waited, but nothing happened to him. One of the Pellukech behind him was a little less certain.

  “It will not eat me?” he quavered, bringing a sharp look of disdain from his leader.

  “It will not eat you,” said Celia reassuringly. The rest of the older men men and women stepped forward into the shuttle. They looked around in wonderment, and then started to jabber in their own language.

  Two days later the Pellukech were still at the same cave, the shuttle dropping by from time to time, when it was not off looking for food – as Celia told the Pellukech with a completely calm poker face.

  The debate about accepting Celia’s offer to fly across the desert was, after seemingly endless rounds of discussion, grinding to a halt. Yes, said the hakkim, we will give you guides to the Lizard’s Head, and yes, they will travel with you on your karrich. Celia noted he was unable to talk about travelling ‘in’ anything, and still thought they would ride ‘on’ the karrich.

  “However, there will be five guides, not three as is usual, and you will leave your tall one” – here he pointed to Roberto, who was not as tall as the adult Pellukech but was the tallest of the foreigners – “with us until the guides return.”

  Celia was a little exasperated at the hakkim’s lack of trust, but it made little difference to the plans of the research team. When the shuttle dropped off the guides on the way back, it could pick up Roberto and deliver him to the Lizard’s head where he could join the rest of the team.

  It was interesting that the Pellukech demanded a dominant presence on the shuttle – five Pellukech to four foreigners with Andre added and Roberto left behind – but that was desert politics, and it didn’t really matter either.

  And so it was that the shuttle finally lifted off with the guides on board. It headed for the equator first, and after that the northern forests.

  Andre settled on flying the shuttle a moderate height above the desert plains. Flying too low scared the Pellukech, as the rocky outcrops flashed by just below them, and flying too high meant they couldn’t recognise the landmarks they needed in the desert landscape which would tell them where the shuttle must go.

  CHAPTER 19

  ________________

  Celia had insisted that Kee-tuk be one of the five guides, and in the end the hakkim had given in. Now she sat with Kee-tuk in the cabin of the shuttle, recording his every word about the northern forests on the other side of the desert, and the great mountains that towered above them.

  “There is solid water high on the mountains,” said Kee-tuk in awe, his face very solemn, “and there is the gasping sickness, when you climb so high you cannot breathe.”

  Celia understood this to be tribal legend. Things Kee-tuk had been told by other trading parties, and other things that were part of the Pellukech tradition of storytelling.

  “The forest is not so tall once you get higher into the mountains,” he continued, “and many types of bushes grow under the trees, all locked together. Progress is very slow.”

  Celia nodded. As far as she knew this was the same on every planet.

  “Beware of the Olongetti,” said the Pellukech boy, turning to face her. His eyes were wide. “The Olongetti are the people of the mountains. They will kill you if they can. Always they are fighting, each tribe against the other, and against our people too if we go any further than the fringes of the forests.

  “There used to be other peoples in the mountains, gentle people, in the old stories our people tell, but they are all gone now. Olongetti are very bad people,” he spat.

  Celia wondered if this was genocide, or whether killing off a species that a later people had developed from, like the Sheomal, could be called genocide.

  The Olongetti were a people new to Celia, and they created a whole new set of problems for her to work on. Trying to find something the Rothii may have left behind at the Lizard’s Head was difficult enough, without dodging spears hurled by a race of blood-lusting mountain people.

  “Thatch says we’re coming up to the stone wall, and the stone wall will lead us to the Lizard’s Head,” said Andre. He was using the translation belt with one of the guides, a fellow he had named ‘Thatch’ after the coarse mop of brown and grey hair that circled his head and chin.

  The shuttle slowed, and veered left. It returned to its heading once Andre had picked up the eroded fault line that the Pellukech had named ‘the stone wall’. The fault line ran straight at the forests, and behind the forests it pointed into the towering range of mountains.

  “The stone wall’s pointing us at the central plateau we saw in the initial surveys,” said Andre. He was checking their current position against the maps they’d made from those surveys. “At least I think that’s what I can see in the far distance.”

  “Maka’H’Rosh,” said Kee-tuk in awe, looking ahead of them. Celia suspected his keen young eyes had seen something she couldn’t see. She peered into the forest now appearing ahead of the shuttle. He and Celia wore earpieces, but the mechanical voice of the earpiece couldn’t convey the excitement – and fear – she could hear in Kee-tuk’s voice as he spoke his own language.

  Mists rose from the forests ahead. A wall of serious cloud cover started at the edge of the mountains and rose to the edge of space. Thatch was becoming very excited. Celia could hear the translation belt talking animatedly to Andre.

  “The Lizard’s Head!” announced the shuttle pilot, and lifted the shuttle higher over the last of the desert. It gave them all a better view of the landscape ahead.

  A jagged range of hills stood out behind sweeping lower slopes. In the middle of it a long snout and beady eye matched the head of the k
arrich that had banked around the travellers on the second day of their journey across the desert. The natural feature in the range of hills was on a gigantic scale that could not be missed from the air.

  Andre flew over it, with everyone on board at the windows, trying to get glimpses of the unusual natural feature below. Andre was the first to remark on the square, flat-topped plateau that lay behind the Lizard’s Head.

  “A natural place to set down any sort of ship,” he said, “and the whole thing looks too regular, almost like its been worked into that shape.”

  “I’m sure it has,” said Celia. “An example of the Rothii being helpful again I think.

  “For now let’s get the Orouth Freighter to mark the spot on the survey maps, and then we’d better head back to our Pellukech friends and trade the guides for Roberto.”

  “Can’t we land the shuttle and have a quick look?” said Andre wistfully, too excited by the mystery before him to let it go easily.

  “No, we can’t,” said Celia firmly, “though I want to unravel the secrets of this place as much as you do. Something in Maka’H’Rosh might help Earth survive, and the sooner we know what this place is hiding, for that reason if no other, the better.”

  Andre took one more turn over the Lizard’s Head, everyone craning for a last look at the place, before the shuttle turned and headed back over the desert. With Celia’s permission, Andre boosted them into a suborbital path outside the atmosphere, to hasten their journey back.

  The Pellukech guides stood at the front screen transfixed, as the blue of the atmosphere gave way to the blackness of space, and the stars shone forth in all their glory. Kee-tuk looked uncertain, and was content to see what he could from the seat beside Celia. A small hand like a bundle of twigs crept into hers. She smiled to herself. Some things seemed to be the same everywhere in the galaxy.

  The desert came up fast as the shuttle homed in on a particular outcrop of rock that sat like a giant pudding in the middle of a gravel plain. The hakkim and his trading group were waiting at the site for the return of the guides they had lent Celia and her team. Andre landed the shuttle a short distance away, not wanting to panic the small group of the strange reptilian camels that were settled in the shade of the rock.

  Roberto strode out of the cave entrance, already packed, and the Pellukech guides shuffled stiffly out of the shuttle. They were not used to sitting on elevated seats, and their muscles set in a shorter position. The formalities took a little longer, the hakkim making something of a speech, and then the shuttle was headed back to the longhouse clearing.

  It looked like it was going to be hard to drag Sallyanne away from her study of the Kantari, but she changed her mind when Celia dangled the prospect of discoveries at the Lizard’s Head in front of her.

  Then Celia found it difficult to say goodbye to K’duc Hana, the crippled elder who had worked patiently with her and her team from the very start. Hana was an excellent example of graceful ageing, on this or any planet.

  Then the shuttle team were back on board the Orouth Freighter, and there was a lively discussion about the new development.

  “Maka’H’Rosh,” I can’t believe we’ve found it!” said Sallyanne.

  “So you were right,” said Andre, looking at Celia, “the sodding place is real!”

  “Calm down everybody!” said Celia, steel in her voice. She noticed how hard her voice had become, and reflected for a moment on the fact she was another person when she had to be the leader of the expedition. It felt false, like playing a part, but it had to be done.

  “We don’t know what’s there yet, and we don’t know exactly where it migh be. For all we know the Rothii might have booby-trapped the place. Just keep doing your jobs, and keep moving forward. The rest is up to the vaguaries of fate – and let’s hope we get lucky!”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  Celia decided to wait until the following morning to send a shuttle team down to the planet. The initial investigation of Maka’H’Rosh would take a long time, and it would be sensible to have the rest of the day available.

  There were 18 people from three different races on board the Orouth Freighter, and they would all want to be part of the first team to the site. Celia sighed. She hated making decisions about who should be included and who left out, but she wanted a small, focused team for the first landing. Kee-tuk’s warnings about the Olongetti were uppermost in her mind as she thought about it.

  In the end she decided on a strong security contingent, so Habid would be taking three other Hud pilots with him. Jeneen would be allowed to accompany Andre as pilot of the shuttle – and Celia had to admit there was some sentiment in that decision – and Sallyanne’s low level of training for field work counted against her again. Maybe she could be part of the team on the second landing.

  Ursul a nd Cantoselli would represent the Mersa. That was a straight out political decision. If the shuttle team discovered something that made a difference in the war against the Invardii, it would reinforce the bonds of the alliance if every race was present at the discovery. Celia grimaced. She was turning into a political animal – something she hated.

  As the first rays of the sun cleared the mountains on the following morning, the shuttle landed gently on the flat plateau formation hidden behind the Lizard’s Head. Andre had come down over the desert, and then slid in under the thermo-incline above the forests. Those who had experienced a free fall descent through the turbulence of the thermo-incline appreciated the much gentler passage through the atmosphere.

  The Orouth Freighter had bombarded the box-shaped plateau with every scanning device on board, but this had yielded nothing unusual. If there was anything hidden in it, under it, or near it, that something was heavily shielded.

  Evidence of the Olongetti, however, was easier to find. There were no clearings like the longhouse clearings on the other side of the desert, and no obvious cultivation, which suggested an entirely hunter-gatherer way of life. But Andre was detecting metals, which was worrying.

  The presence of metals was only ever in small amounts, but it probably meant the Olongetti had metal weapons, which did a lot more damage than fire-hardened wooden spears. The tribal encampments they lived in were small, but fairly frequent. Celia was surprised the forest could sustain this level of a top predator.

  Then it was time to decide whether to leave the safety of the shuttle. Celia waited a long time, but the arrival of the shuttle didn’t seem to have stirred anything up. She motioned to Andre and the side doors opened. Habid’s squad dropped onto the top of the plateau and dispersed to the four corners of the shuttle. They were heavily armed over their flexible body armour.

  Feeling apprehensive, Celia stepped out onto the plateau with Roberto at her side. She took a deep breath. This was it. If there was anything here they had to find it, never had she felt there was so much at stake.

  CHAPTER 20

  ________________

  Celia and Roberto were the advance team. Andre and Jeneen, and Ursul and Cantoselli, were running every sort of scan the shuttle would allow them to. Nothing bigger than a mouse would move within a very big stone’s throw of the plateau without them knowing about it.

  Two of the Hud pilots joined Celia and Roberto as they explored the top of the plateau. It took a while to cover everything.

  “Path!” said Roberto at last, the first of the party to see it. Celia gazed in the direction he indicated, but couldn’t see anything.

  “Don’t you believe me?” said Roberto, when she looked sideways at him. “I’m taller than you, I can see further,” and he patted her on the top of her head to prove his point. Celia brushed his hand off, and was considering kicking him in the back of the knee again, when Habid pointed in the same direction. “Path,” he said, confirming Roberto’s observation.

  When they had finished their explorations, it was clear the oddly flat top of the plateau ended at a sheer cliff in every place but one. A set of stone steps had been carved up the vertic
al side until they turned and broadened into a last set of steps like a semicircle punched into the edge.

  Celia’s spirits rose. Rothii work, it has to be, she murmured, and spoke to Andre over the commslink.

  “Are you getting this?” she asked, and Andre made an affirmative sound. She and Roberto were set up for visual and sound, and everything was being recorded.

  “We’ll see how far the steps take us,” she continued, “and I’ll keep up you in the loop with a commentary. If there is any change in the visual or audio feed, any sort of electronic interference, let me know and we’ll come back immediately. Still nothing moving out there?”

  Andre told her there wasn’t. The he acknowledged Celia’s plan to move off the plateau and onto the steps.

  Celia looked at Roberto. He grinned like a boy out on an outlandish adventure, which wasn’t too far from the truth, and gestured to her to go in front of him. She ignored him, and motioned for Habid to take point with Tunak bringing up the rear.

  The first few metres were the worst. There were no rails, and that left the exploration party with a solid stone wall on one side and a sheer drop on the other. The steps were worn as well, the risers almost halved in places, which made for uneven going.

  Celia realised that the plateau had been used as a gathering site – possibly a devotional one – for thousands of years. How else could feet wrapped in hide have worn away solid stone like this? She talked to Roberto about the idea to take her mind off the unnerving fall on her right.

  What worried her most was that the warlike Olongetti would be supremely protective of a devotional site, and were likely to sacrifice lives to protect it.

  “Still no sign of anything moving?” said Celia apprehensively into her commslink.

  “Funny you should say that,” said Jeneen, I’ve been getting readings of movement – air displacement, small creatures moving for no apparent reason – but we’re not getting any heat signatures. It’s not helping that the forest is too dense for line-of-sight readings.”