by Josi Russell
He selected it, but nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. He scrolled down the list. There were more tantalizing subject lines: “10 Reasons I Love You,” and “I’m Scared About the Stasis Trip Home.” Then he saw one that chilled him: “Marcos, don’t trust . . .” He selected it, knowing that it wouldn’t open.
Marcos buzzed in his assistant, Taru. “Where are these other messages?” The man leaned over Marcos’ shoulder, smelling of sweat and spices, and peered at the screen, then shook his head, sending his shaggy dark hair spinning around him.
“I don’t know, Mr. Saras. They should be here. It looks like someone has been locking them,” Taru said apologetically. “I don’t have the right permissions to unlock them.”
“Who’s locking them?”
“I can’t tell. Just that it’s from an Earth account with Admin permissions.”
“Who has those?”
“Just the VPs and up. And Admin Techs, of course.”
Marcos couldn’t stand it. “So my father has those permissions?”
The tech squirmed. “Yes, sir, of course.”
Marcos swore softly. “You can go,” he said. He called Veronika into his office.
“My father has been blocking some of my messages,” Marcos said, pacing.
Veronika nodded, and Marcos had the uneasy feeling that this wasn’t a surprise to her. “From Serena?”
“Mostly. But there are others, too.”
“You know he doesn’t like you distracted while you’re trying to work out here. Maybe they were frivolous messages and he didn’t want you to spend your time—”
“Why does he get to decide what’s frivolous?” Marcos snapped. He didn’t like her taking his father’s side, especially when she knew how arbitrary his father could be.
“Because he’s the president of Saras Company Intergalactic, and you’re only the president of Saras Company Minea,” she said bluntly.
And you’re only his ex-mistress, Marcos thought but didn’t say. His father had little room to criticize in the frivolity department.
“I want you to find out how I can get them,” he ordered.
“I’ve got to go do checks in the Health and Human Services Department right now, but when I get back I’ll see what I can do.” Veronika adjusted her ruby bracelet as she left the office.
As she left, Marcos wondered if she would. He knew, had sensed, what she wanted from this job. She wanted the company, and with it, Coriol. She felt she deserved it as payment for his father’s betrayal. He wasn’t sure she didn’t. But it was him that Dimitri had appointed President, and neither of them could change that.
From the side window of his office, Marcos watched Veronika leave the front gate in the company hovercar before he called Taru back in, gesturing for the assistant to sit down. Taru looked nervous, as he always did when Marcos called him in. It was one of the reasons Marcos didn’t call him in much. The other was that Taru had been Theo’s assistant before Marcos arrived and Marcos was never sure of his loyalties.
“What would it take for you to get into these messages?” he asked.
Taru considered. “A raise.”
Marcos swore. “You’d be willing to break in for a few scrip?” He opened his mouth to fire the man, but the look on Taru’s face, one of shock, took the words from him.
“No, no, sir, I was just being funny. Er—I thought I was being funny. I meant that I’d have to get advanced to Admin Tech, which I should be because I’m running the whole Coriol system, and we need one here anyway—” Taru stopped speaking.
“I see,” Marcos said. “And, Veronika has to do that? Or Theo?”
“Yes, sir, they can do it. But you have those permissions to advance me as well. I was joking because if I advance I do get a raise.”
Marcos leaned back. “How long would it take?”
“Not long. You just have to go into your Admin account and change my status.”
Marcos looked at the screen, then back at Taru, gesturing for him to come around the desk.
Taru was a bit sheepish as he indicated the proper steps for Marcos to take.
“I feel like I’m giving myself a promotion,” he said, chuckling.
Marcos didn’t laugh. He was focused on the messages. “You’re an Admin Tech. Congratulations. Now what?”
Taru walked toward the door of the office. “I’ll just go update the system and I should be able to unlock those messages shortly. They’ll appear on your “new” screen.”
Marcos slipped a gar fruit candy in his mouth while he waited. He tasted its tang and felt a certain satisfaction, having handled the problem himself. The one good thing about being on Minea was that his father was too far away to control him. If he wanted something done, he could do it.
He stood and walked around the room, once, twice. It was a wide, deep office, with his desk at one end and a seating area of comfortable Earthleather furniture at the other. Between them was a fireplace for comfort in the rainy winter season. An etched aluminum photograph of his parents hung above it. He made a mental note to have it removed and replaced with a photograph of Serena.
The screen chimed and Marcos tried to slow his steps as he went to check it. There were all the messages. He began with Serena’s long-anticipated travelogue about the craters. It was delicious—almost like hearing her voice. She described their ruggedness, their volcanic activity, in vivid detail, and he felt, for the first time in a long time, close to her.
He read the ten reasons she loved him, most of which painted him more generously than he deserved, he realized. He longed to comfort her fears about her stasis trip home, even though she was nearly done with it now. He read all the cheerful messages Serena had sent him and sat for a moment, with his eyes closed, feeling the glow they generated in him.
Finally, Marcos selected the ominous message he couldn’t open earlier. It was short, but he froze as he read it.
Marcos, don’t trust Veronika. She doesn’t just want Saras Company. She wants you.
He looked up just as Taru came in. “Sir,” he said, ducking his head, “I told you wrong.”
Marcos blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The messages were locked from an Earth account, but the account was accessed from Coriol. Your father didn’t block them, sir, Ms. Eppes did.”
Chapter 13
Maggie grasped Ethan’s shoulder painfully and pulled him down to her eye level. “If you let another of my people die in a stupid accident like that last one, you’ll be the next to drop off a cliff,” she said, her eyes burning with rage. “I should never have left Collins in the hands of a Colony Office fool.”
Ethan wanted to protest, but guilt stopped his words. He simply nodded. She shoved him back and turned away on the stretcher.
It had been so long since he’d seen grief turn to anger. So long since he’d stood face-to-face with that kind of pain. But it wasn’t something you forgot. He ached for her and for Collins. The cousins lifted the stretcher. Ndaiye shot Ethan an apologetic look over Maggie’s head. Ndaiye, of all of them, understood Collins’s death best. He was there. Ethan gave him a wry smile.
Ethan hated to leave the Teardrop Chamber. Above him, the long transparent filaments hung down in perfect parallel. He hoped the worms lived throughout the cave and that he’d see the chandeliers again.
They followed the passage they’d found the day before. A subdued quiet still rested over the group, and no one joked or teased. Three of the crew had their Maxlights on, and the passage was almost unbearably bright. It made Ethan feel better, though, and probably all of them.
Ethan lagged behind, letting Jade lead the way today. Brynn came up beside him.
“She can be pretty harsh,” she said quietly.
Ethan, not sure that Maggie couldn’t hear them, simply nodded. “It’s rough, losing someone,” he said.
Brynn walked in silence for a while. “Ethan,” she said, “I don’t want to complain, but I’ve got a problem.”
He
looked at her closely, questioning.
“I’m out of water. Have been for hours. All this walking and the dirt—it’s so dry.”
This part of the cave was dry and dusty. It was a change from the dampness. Ethan was glad for a problem he could fix. Without stopping, he swung his pack around to the front and rummaged up a bag of water. His last. He handed it to her and got a smile in return.
“Sip it,” he said, “don’t guzzle or it’ll make you sick.” She nodded.
They walked on in silence. The tunnel passed on either side in an endless monotony of gray. Ethan held the sparkling chandeliers in his mind, their light and beauty out of place in this dismal passage.
When he traded off with Traore for a turn carrying the stretcher, he half expected Maggie to kick him in the kidneys while they walked, but she didn’t, just rode in sullen silence.
“That song you sang last night,” he said to Ndaiye, “it was in an Earth language, wasn’t it?”
Ndaiye spoke from the other end of the stretcher. “Yes, a very old one.”
“Do you speak it?” Ethan had met so few native speakers of other languages. As language standardization became more and more necessary for global commerce, the languages had died.
“I do. A little. My parents and grandparents were tenacious people. They hung on to the scraps and pieces of it that their grandparents had left them.”
Ethan nodded. Linguistic enclaves still thrived through such tenacity.
“I’d love to hear more of it someday.”
“When we’re not trying to die,” Maggie interjected.
Her acidity suddenly struck Ethan as funny, and though he knew she was saying it to quiet them, he started to laugh. Ndaiye’s laughter exploded behind him. It felt wonderful to laugh at the absurdity of this whole situation. Their laughter ricocheted around the passage, and Ethan heard an annoyed grunt from behind him on the stretcher. He laughed harder.
Jade stopped ahead and held up a hand. They quieted. A distinct ping echoed through the cave ahead. Walking carefully, they continued down the passage. Seconds later, they heard another, followed immediately by another with a slightly different pitch. A long pause, then another ping. As his ears adjusted to the rhythm of the pings, Ethan began to anticipate the next one. He watched Jade walking ahead of him. Her steps fell in syncopation with some of the pings, and he noticed his own were doing the same. Ahead of her, the stone of the tunnel, light grey for the last few hours they’d traveled down it, suddenly darkened. It swallowed the beam of Jade’s Maxlight, and she slowed. The passage narrowed here, too, suddenly tapering to a funnel just big enough for a single person to walk through.
“Hold up!” Maggie called, leaning out of the stretcher to peer around Ethan. “Come here,” she called, and the team gathered around her. Ethan and Ndaiye set her down and stretched their aching muscles as they turned to listen to her.
“We’re gonna have to be more careful,” she said pointedly. “This isn’t some carved-out, polished-up, metal-backed Yynium mine. No Colony Officers,” here she glared at Ethan, “are going through here every day making sure there’s nothin’ to stub your toe on. This is a wild cave. We’ve seen enough already to know that there’s enough in here to kill us without us throwing stupid into the mix as well. No more charging into caverns blind. No more pretending we’re fine if we’re not.” Her eyes shifted to Brynn, who visibly shrunk from the captain’s gaze. “We’re gonna have to be smarter.”
Ndaiye spoke up. “Then you’re gonna let me change that Sprayshield again, right, Captain?” he asked, taking the Emedic out before she could give permission.
Ethan watched over Ndaiye’s shoulder. The Emedic was blinking several warnings.
“What’s up?”
“Batteries are low,” Ndaiye said, “and we’re out of Reagan cells and bandages.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Ethan said.
“We still have some basics: pain medicine, antiseptic sprays. But,” Ndaiye looked up and caught Ethan’s eye, “with the batteries going, it’s probably better if nobody gets hurt from here on out.”
Maggie spoke up. “It’s like I said, we’re gonna have to be smarter.” They nodded their approval. “Now,” she said, “I don’t like the looks of this next section. It’s narrow and it’s gonna be slick. I can feel the wet in the air.”
Ethan focused. She was right. The humidity had risen again.
“We need to send somebody through there to be sure we don’t find another drop off or a krech nest.” She gestured at Ethan. “You go first,” she barked. “See if it’s safe.”
He knew what she was doing. He would have to prove himself to her now and maybe every day after. He nodded slowly.
“If you don’t die, come back and we’ll go in.”
Ndaiye started to speak, but Ethan caught his eye. “It’s okay,” he said, “I want to make sure.” And he did. Perhaps redeeming himself to Maggie would help redeem him to himself.
He pulled out his own Maxlight and headed down the passage. Long and smoothly curving, it reminded him of a waterslide. The dark walls cut off the light behind him quickly and he was alone with the ever-nearing pings resounding around him in the narrow tunnel.
When his light fell on a slab of solid rock ahead, Ethan swore. Another dead end. Except . . . a sliver of shadow played at the right edge of the rock face. As he investigated further he found that the passage didn’t end, it just made an incredibly sharp turn. Stepping through it reminded him of stepping into the experimentation chamber back on Beta Alora and a shiver ran through him as he stepped quickly around the corner and out of the passage.
Ethan stood in wonder. All around him, jutting ten, twenty, thirty feet into the air, was a chaos of shining white crystals, some of them bigger around than the survey crew’s ship had been. They cut across the cavern from floor to ceiling, crisscrossing and tumbling like a broken mirror caught in midair. They were glorious, ghostly and translucent, suspended all around him down through a long arching cavern. The floor was covered with smaller crystals, from two to four feet, covering the ground with jagged edges. Here and there, a pool lay perfectly still, reflecting the jubilation of luminous columns. A ping echoed through the chamber and he saw the ripples of a single drop of water on the surface of one of the pools. Seconds later, another drop fell, again ringing through the crystal cavern like a bell.
“Ethan!” he heard Traore’s voice in the tunnel outside. “Ethan! Are you okay?”
It took Ethan a moment to find his voice, and even then it only came in a hoarse whisper.
“I’m all right. It’s—it’s safe. And it’s beautiful!”
Traore responded, “Okay, we’re coming.”
Ethan didn’t return to them. He stood, soaking in the grandeur of the cavern by himself as long as he could. When they shuffled through the narrow entry, Traore first, helping Maggie walk through because the stretcher would never make that turn with her on it, Ethan turned to see the awe on their faces. One by one they entered, standing on the low rock ledge at the edge of the cavern.
No one spoke. Finally, Ndaiye could contain himself no longer. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said softly. “Can this be real?”
Ethan leaned down and ran a hand across the nearest crystal, as big around as his own body and three times as long. The mineral was cold and smooth under his hand. “They’re real.”
Ethan dropped down and sat on the ledge, then lowered himself the three feet to the jagged floor of the cavern. Traore and Brynn followed. Maggie sat on the ledge, but came no further. Ethan saw her watching them intently.
The crystals were solid. The team could climb on them and crawl under them. Traore even grasped the end of a jutting crystal and hung from it. Ethan saw Brynn at the pool, filling her water bags and the one he’d given her earlier. She stumbled as she brought it to him across the uneven floor. Small crystals chimed as they snapped or were kicked across the floor. Ethan couldn’t help himself. He gathered some an
d slipped them in his pack. Everyone took the time to fill their water bags from the cold, clear pools.
He stood in front of the wide face of a vertical crystal. In it he saw his own image reflected in the shiny surface. His shoulder lights illuminated his unshaven face, and his coveralls reminded him of the Caretaker’s uniform he’d worn for five long years. He looked different to himself, older, more weary. He was, he supposed, all those things. If he made it back to Aria, he would tell her about this place. He would tell her how the crystals seemed to glow from within when the light touched them, how the light brought out color from the pure white of them. He would tell her how her face came to him at every tough moment, and how he held the children’s laughter in his mind like a talisman against the dark of the cave.
Ndaiye and Jade hopped down and did some exploring, too. Ethan watched the whole team, climbing and sliding down the shining spears like children at a playground. That was when he started to get nervous. The loss of Collins was still a shadow in his mind, and as beautiful as this place was, it was no place to stay. The jagged floor would be impossible to sleep on and though most of the big crystals were suspended now, there was no guarantee they would always be. Several of the giants lay on the floor, where they had obviously fallen from their own weight. And the shattered remains of the crystals unfortunate enough to have formed under them were proof enough that a human wouldn’t survive being under one if it fell.
Maggie, of course, was thinking that, too. “We’ve got to keep moving,” she called, watching her team. “Let’s see if we can find the way out.” She stood and Ethan watched as Jade offered to rebuild the stretcher for her. Maggie waved her aside, and began hobbling across the cavern floor. Jade returned the folded stretcher to her pack. He’d have to remember to trade it off with her so she didn’t end up carrying the extra weight of it all the time.
The team searched the cavern walls for exit points. Ethan suspected that any way out would be near the back, so he looked around for the largest gaps he could find between the shining fingers of rock and began climbing over and under them, following a dark passageway that ran erratically toward the back of the cave.