The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3)

by Catherine Asaro

  I slapped the oxygen mask over my face and gulped in breaths as I scanned the controls. The holoscreen was obvious, a disk with glimmering lines. No blue panel—wait, there. I banged my fist on the glowing circle. “Done!” The CA Tower was so close now, I could see people inside running past the windows to escape the level we were about to hit.

  The flyer abruptly swerved to the east, nearly grazing a window. A woman stood there, frozen in shock, her face clearly visible as she stared at us through the glass. Then we were past the tower and out in the open air.

  I pulled away the mask. “Did you do that? We missed the tower.”

  “Yes,” the man said. “You transferred control to me when you hit the panel. I can’t land the flyer by remote, though. I’ll more likely crash it. Is the pilot still alive?”

  I glanced at the woman. “Yes, she’s breathing. She passed out. I almost did, too.”

  “All right. I’ll try to keep you in the air. See if you can wake her up.”

  “Understood.” I put the mask over the pilot’s face while I held my breath, and I shook her shoulder.

  No response.

  Glancing out the window, I realized we were above the plaza on the outskirts of the city, headed toward the desert. At least if we crashed, we wouldn’t kill anyone but ourselves. Putting the mask over my face, I took several long breaths. Then I tried it on the pilot again.

  “Ungh. . . .” The woman stirred, her eyelids lifting.

  “Wake up!” I said.

  No answer.

  I shook her again. “You need to wake up!”

  The woman groaned. As she opened her eyes, she dragged herself upright, staring out the windshield with a blank expression. Then she took the mask and breathed deeply.

  “Can you release your own mask?” I asked. “I need that one.” The smell of the gas saturated the air, making me nauseous.

  The pilot tapped her controls groggily, several times, until a blue mask dropped from above her. Moving more smoothly, she handed mine back and fixed hers into place. We were over the desert now, losing altitude despite the best efforts of the transit authority.

  The pilot took the controls and spoke through her mask, her voice distorted. “This is flyer M47. Release control to me.”

  “Transferring control,” the man said.

  As the pilot took over, the flyer skimmed over the dunes, stirring up great swaths of sand. She brought up the nose of the craft only moments before we would have plowed into the ground. As we rose into the air, she banked in a large curve toward Cries.

  The pilot spoke to me through her mask. “What the bloody hell happened?”

  I moved the mask away from my face. “Some gas knocked us out. It must have released in the cockpit first, because it affected you faster than me.” Either that, or I’d been less susceptible. “It smelled like an old-fashioned compound medics used as an anesthetic.”

  She concentrated on the controls. “Who did it? And why didn’t it knock you out?”

  “I don’t know who did it.” I talked through my mask this time, not wanting to inhale more gas. “As for why I kept going, I can hold my breath for a long time.” In the army, I’d been astounded to discover that most human-inhabited worlds had water forever—lakes, rivers and oceans, real oceans, nothing vanished about them. I’d loved swimming underwater, staying as long as I could, always pushing for greater times, marveling that the universe could hold so much water.

  “We were lucky,” the pilot said. “We need to get back to the palace and have this checked.”

  The palace? Not a chance. So this happened right after I told the Majdas what I’d discovered. Yah, right, some “coincidence.” It could be them or it could be whoever betrayed them, but either way, damned if I would trust them again.

  “I need to rest,” I lied. “Can you drop me off at the Sunrise Tower? I live there.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “I will, but don’t disappear. Security will want to talk to you.”

  I didn’t doubt it. I had no intention of going near them.

  Gourd and Hack sat with me on a pile of rubble in the tunnel that had exploded last night. Dust motes drifted around us, sparkling in the glow from the torches. Ruzik’s gang were working on repairs, reinforcing the walls damaged in the explosion, their bodies bathed in the orange light. It looked like someone had taken part of the tunnel floor, swirled it around, and then smashed it into the tunnel below, leaving a jagged, gaping hole.

  A charred smell filled the air. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that something living had burned here. It’s the torches, I thought. You smell the torches, that’s all. None of us had been hurt, aside from scrapes and bruises. After what happened today with the flyer, though, I couldn’t escape my sense that death waited nearby, lurking in the shadows.

  Gourd was holding the sphere from the banister in the Quida mansion. The crystal glittered with sparks of light. “At first, I found nothing,” he said. “But I only looked at the big. Then Max tells about your rock. So I look at the small.” He tilted his head at Hack. “He helps.”

  “What’d you find?” I asked.

  Gourd grimaced. “The small is wrong. Built the same but different.” Frustration washed across his face. “My words can’t say.”

  Hack said, “Molecular structure.” He spoke the Cries words with distaste.

  I wished they knew the Cries dialect better. The Undercity manner of speech didn’t have the words to express what they wanted to tell me. Hack often explored the Cries meshes, stealing his education. Sure, he knew words like molecular structure, but he’d never fully learned the dialect.

  “Molecules wrong?” I asked. “Change to new molecules?”

  “Not change,” Hack said. “Same molecules. Frame broken.”

  I couldn’t figure out what he meant. “Say in Cries words.”

  Hack shook his head. “Don’t ken the words.”

  I tapped the sphere Gourd held. “Where frame broken?”

  Gourd turned over the sphere to show the hole where it fit onto the banister. He touched its rim. “Only here. Like a mistake.”

  “A mistake in what?” The rim looked normal to me.

  “Wrong frame,” Hack said.

  I still didn’t see what he meant. “Say Cries word for frame.”

  “Lattice?” Hack used the term warily, as if it might bite him. “Nahya, not lattice. Quartz has a lattice. This ball, no lattice. Like glass.”

  Ah. Now I understood. The molecular structure of glass wasn’t ordered in a crystal lattice. Despite its misleading name as “crystal,” the ball didn’t actually have a true crystalline structure.

  “Not ordered,” I said.

  “Yah. Quartz is solid.” Hack laid his hand on the ball. “This is liquid.”

  I blinked. “Not liquid.”

  He scowled at me. “Liquid.”

  How could he describe the ball as a liquid? “I don’t ken.”

  “Not real liquid,” he allowed. “More like liquid than lattice.”

  Okay, that did make sense. Glass had an amorphous structure between a liquid and a crystal lattice. “Not solid. Not liquid. Between, yah?”

  “Yah.” He took the ball from Gourd and weighed it in his hand. “Pretty, eh?”

  I smiled. “Yah.”

  Hack touched the rim. “Different here. Not much. Few molecules.” He stopped, then tried again. “Like someone pulls the molecules apart, then puts them back. But didn’t put them back quite the same way.” He held up the sphere. “A machine makes this ball, yah? So all must be the same. All same pieces.”

  “Pieces?” I asked.

  “Tiny,” Gourd said. “Too small to see. Needed Hack’s tech-mech.”

  “Use Cries word,” I said.

  “Molecules.” Hack paused. “Silica, lead oxide, potassium oxide, soda, zinc oxide, alumina.”

  Ho! Where had he learned all that?

  Watching my face, Hack grinned. “Read Cries glassworks mesh to understand.”
He showed me the ball. “Same chemicals. But! Put together different.”

  I understood now. Nanomachines crafted these balls, constructing them atom by atom. They made every sphere in a lot the same, down to the molecular level. It was like a fingerprint. Something had disturbed the “fingerprint” of this sphere, taking apart a small bit and putting it back together with slight differences in the arrangement of the molecules. If I’d been a gambler, I’d have laid odds that the edges of whatever hit Mara Quida had also nicked this ball.

  I glanced around the tunnel. Had the same thing had happened here on a more dramatic scale? Ruzik and Angel were working on the stalagmites that held up the ceiling, using silica-cement to reinforce the weakened areas. Tower was on the level below, clearing out the debris, while Byte studied the hole in the floor to see if it could be repaired. I doubted they could rebuild well enough to make it safe. Better to leave it open rather than risk its collapse when people walked through this tunnel.

  Gourd regarded me. “Heard whispers about the bang here.”

  I had no doubt rumors had raged throughout the Undercity. “What hear?”

  “No one set a bomb.”

  “Someone had to set.” Bombs didn’t spontaneously appear out of nowhere.

  “No one came in,” Gourd told me. “No one went out. Except you, Angel, and the slick.”

  That made no sense. Someone had to have set the explosion. If their weapon affected matter on a molecular level, they probably weren’t from the Undercity. It wasn’t impossible; Hack and his friends could create some bizarre tech. But they hadn’t done this. If they had, rumors about their exploit would saturate the whisper mill. The silence implied outsiders set the bomb. Yet that remained impossible. Without a guide, they could never make it down here and back at all, let alone without leaving a trace. This felt as if ghosts had appeared, blown up the tunnel, and then vanished.

  “No one saw intruders?” I asked. “Walking other tunnels maybe?”

  “Nothing,” Gourd said.

  “Any bodies?”

  “Almost you three,” Gourd said. “No one else.”

  “No cyber trace, either,” Hack said.

  I hit my fist on my thigh. “Not possible!”

  “Our own people wouldn’t do this,” Gourd said.

  Hack said, “Offer good enough bargain, they might,” but he didn’t sound convinced.

  I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. I felt so tired. Only a couple of hours had passed since that lovely excursion in the flyer. I’d come to see Gourd and Hack, sure, but I also wanted to avoid the Majdas and anyone else from Cries who might be after me.

  I opened my eyes to find Gourd studying my face. “Stay here, Bhaaj,” he said. “Stay with Jak. Don’t go back above.”

  “Yah,” I said softly.

  Except no place seemed safe right now, not here, not Cries, not anywhere.

  Mist curled over the desert and around my body. Impossible mist. The desert never had fog, yet here it drifted. Engines growled in the distance, starships it sounded like. I followed the sound, unable to see more than a few handspans in front of my face. The noise increased. Whatever ship they came from, it was in terrible condition.

  I walked free of the mist—and stood facing the Vanished Sea starships. They rumbled as if they were trying to wake up. The closest stood before me, curving up and up, three stories high. A sand-weaver mesh covered it in red and gold lace. So beautiful, like mathematical artwork. A weaver scuttled across its web, a little dragon no larger than my hand, with filmy wings that could spread out twice the length of its body. They didn’t look strong enough to bear the weight of the creature in flight. The weaver climbed down the mesh, down and down, until it reached the ground. It dug its way into the desert, going below the ship.

  Below the ship?

  I sat up in the dark, gulping in a breath. What the hell? Where—?

  “Bhaaj?” Jak’s sleepy voice came from beside me.

  I closed my eyes. I was in Jak’s room at the Black Mark, sleeping in his criminally luxurious bed. I lay on my back, my pulse slowing. I’d been dreaming, just dreaming.

  Jak draped his arm over my waist and mumbled, “Go to sleep.”

  “Yah.” I couldn’t get the dream out of my mind. Sand-weavers and ancient ships. The little dragon had dug under the ship. Weird. Sand-weavers never dug, they just wove webs and ate the ill-fated creatures that got stuck in them.

  Digging. Under the ships.

  “That’s it!” I sat up again. “I should have seen it earlier.”

  “What?” The sheet rustled as Jak shifted position. Niches in the walls of his room emitted a faint red light. “Too much talk,” he grumbled. “Come sleep.”

  “I can’t.” I pulled away the sheet and swung my legs off the bed. “I have to go to the Vanished Sea starships.”

  “Bhaaj.” He turned on his back. “You are out of your fucking mind.”

  “Yah, probably.” I went over to the chair where I’d draped my clothes.

  As I dressed, Jak sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “Why now?”

  “I can’t waste time.”

  “Wait until morning.”

  “Morning isn’t for thirty hours. Too long.” I knew he meant the “morning” that happened halfway through the forty-hour night. It didn’t matter. I needed to reach the ships before anyone else beat me to it. What mattered wasn’t in the vessels, but under them. Ken Roy had told me as much without realizing it: So much is a mystery about all these ruins, including the ships, not only in them, but below them, too.

  “They didn’t need to go into the ships,” I said. “They said Daan Bialo could reach ‘under-chambers’ from outside the ships. At least, I think they meant from outside the ship.”

  “Under-chambers?” Jak yawned and fell back onto the bed. “You mean the Undercity?”

  I tugged on my pullover. “I doubt it. Could we reach the ships from here? Probably not. It’s beyond even the Maze.” That warren of twisting passages lay at the edge of the Undercity, far out in the desert. Almost no one ventured into the Maze, and those few who did often couldn’t find their way out. People died in there. It might extend all the way to the starships, but that would be ten to twenty kilometers of nearly impassable tunnels crammed with debris.

  Unless—gods damn it! I’d bet the High Mesh wanted to clear the Maze so they could reach the starships via the Undercity. Even if they dug a route, which I doubted was possible, it wouldn’t do them any good. The army had undoubtedly increased security now that they knew we’d been skulking around out there. If the Mesh tried anyway, they’d also pose a threat to the Undercity. This was our world. Not theirs. They had everything, all the advantages of their power and wealth. Damned if we’d give them any part of the Undercity, too.

  Jak sat up again, looking resigned. “You really going out there?”

  “Have to.” I tapped my temple. “Got ideas.”

  “Bhaaj with ideas.” He spoke dryly. “Terrifying.”

  I smiled. “It happens, eh?”

  “Not go alone.”

  Normally I’d have told him not to worry. With all that had happened, though, I didn’t want to go by myself. “You come with?”

  “Need sleep,” he growled. After a moment, he said, “Yah, I come with. And bring some Dust Knights.” He sounded pissed, but I knew his tells. His anger wasn’t for me. He wanted to kill whoever kept trying to pulverize my life.

  “Bring Ruzik and Angel,” I said. If they’d come.

  He walked over to me, dressed only in the sheet he held around his hips. “We go get them.”

  I tapped the sheet. “Like this?”

  He smiled, a sexy curve of his lips. “You think, Bhaaj. Think what’s under there, eh? Can’t have it again unless we make it back alive.”

  When he looked at me like that, I almost forgot everything else. “Got to make it back, then.”

  He laughed, a brief rumble.

  As we dressed, I watched him discreetl
y. Although he might not be my husband by Cries law, he had a point when he said we were married. It wasn’t by common law; we didn’t live together enough. It was by the unwritten laws of the Undercity. Maybe someday we’d formalize it according to all the legalities, but neither of us needed documentation.

  I slid my EM pulse revolver into my shoulder holster, and Jak slung a Mark 27 superconducting coilgun over his shoulder. Although massive compared to most guns, his weapon was lighter and sleeker than it had any business being. A civilian couldn’t build a superconducting weapon that well. I had no doubt our cyber-riders could make one, but no way would it be that well-contained, especially given the power source and cooling system it carried. Jak was holding top-of-the-line restricted military issue.

  I scowled at him. “What the hell?”

  He met my stare. “Got a problem?”

  “We’ll get key-clinked in the darkest clink the army has.” They didn’t take kindly to black marketers stealing their tech.

  “Isn’t military.” He even said it with a straight face. No wonder he was so good at poker.

  “Yah, right.”

  He shrugged. “Got no ID.”

  All that meant was that whoever sold it to him knew how to remove a gun ID. “Even so.”

  “Even so.” He crisscrossed several clips of extra ammunition across his torso.

  I tapped my revolver. “Makes EM pulses. Screw up your electronics.”

  “Nahya. Protected.”

  The coilguns I’d used in the army had only managed partial shielding against EMP pulses. The technology had advanced in the years since, though. “You sure?”

  “Yah, sure.”

  I was better off not knowing how he could be so certain that pulse revolvers wouldn’t affect his gun. Plausible deniability was off the table for me knowing he had the weapon, but I had no idea if or how he’d used it before, and I wanted it to remain that way.

  “Just be careful, yah?” I said.

  “Yah.”

  We set off then, headed into the night.

  I stopped in the darkness, silent and shrouded, holding my pack. A few meters away, Ruzik stood on guard duty, alone in the light shed by a torch. It glowed at the entry to the caves where his circle lived. Engravings bordered the entrance, desert vines painted in green and gold. The shape of the archway resembled the keyhole for an antique skeleton key, like many of the arches in these ruins. Whoever had built it probably had no idea their creation resembled the arches in ancient Ruby palaces even more than did arches in the modern palace where the Majdas lived now. These ruins contained memories of our history unmatched anywhere else among the star-flung worlds of humanity.