by Mike Sheriff
Hyro kicked Pabbu’s feet as if testing for the last vestiges of responsiveness. None remained. She harrumphed. “I would have wagered you’d need at least two strikes to drop him.”
Cang kneeled and wiped the blade clean on Pabbu’s mianfu, then sheathed the dagger. She looked up at Hyro. “You’ve just been promoted to district commander of Yindu Cheng. Give Su whatever he needs.”
Hyro came to attention. “You honor me, sireen.”
Su chucklebucked. “Sha’s silica teeth. I can’t believe what I’ve just seen.”
Cang rose and faced him. “You wanted to see tangible proof of my word. You now have access to whatever weapons you need, as well as an armored staging ground for strikes into Zhongguo Cheng. Is that proof enough?”
Su extended his hand. “And more.”
Cang grasped it. They shook; one palm up, one palm down.
“And what shall we do with Pabbu?” Hyro asked.
Cang gazed at his prone body. A pang of regret tightened her chest. Were it not for his innate caution, he might have been recorded as one of the heroes who saved the people of Daqin Guojin from extinction. And now? “Seal him inside a levicart,” she said, the pang receding. “When the Libraria get around to writing the scrolls on this uprising, they can record him as its first casualty.”
11
Storm-Tossed
TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after transiting the Southern Turbine Complex, Daoren gathered with Heqet and Cordelia near the aerostat’s forward windows. Ten feet aft, Laoshi manned the navigation console. He’d been preoccupied with one of its screens since relieving Daoren an hour earlier. His sporadic finger taps and the bright chirps of data input provided random accompaniments to the methodical thrum of the airscrews.
Heqet sipped water from a glass bottle. Cordelia stretched in silence. Both appeared content to postpone conversation, which suited Daoren’s mood.
He rubbed his eyes and yawned, feeling a dozen paces closer to dead than alive. The past seven days had frayed his mind and body to the breaking point.
Six days lying in the Rig.
Sitting the S.A.T.
Escaping the grooll mill.
Battling Jireni in the Void.
Stealing the aerostat.
Evading the aeroshrikes.
It was enough for one lifetime, let alone one week. He’d tried to sleep after slipping away from the aeroshrikes, but his nerves refused to settle. Coaxing the aerostat beneath the turbines had been stressful beyond imagination. Dodging erupting geysers while every piece of debris on the planet—and scores of Jireni—rained into the sea compounded the trauma a hundredfold. How they’d survived was beyond him.
Heqet and Cordelia had slept for six hours following the transit, though it was fitful judging by their frequent moans. Daoren had watched Heqet for at least half the time, curled up at her workstation on the gondola’s starboard side. Her nose twitched on occasion and she’d repeatedly flexed her arms before her as if bracing against a fall or warding off a blow. Other times, she seemed at peace. He envied her moments of serenity, however brief.
“How did you two sleep?” Cordelia asked, breaking the collective silence.
“Fine,” Daoren said.
“Me, too.” Heqet took a sip of water. “But I had the oddest dreams.”
“I thought as much.” Daoren twitched his nose and flailed his arms, mimicking the movements of her slumber. “You were fidgety.”
Heqet dipped her chin and smirked. “Were you watching over me while I slept?”
He sensed the telltale burn of a blush. “Just to . . . um, make sure you were all right. You know, after the adventure with the aeroshrikes.”
Heqet chucklebucked. “That’s what you call it? An adventure?”
Cordelia glanced over. Her eyes hinted at bemusement.
He opted for a change in subject. With any luck, it would deflect his mother’s attention. “What did you dream about?”
“My father was teaching me how to ride a levideck, which is strange because we never owned a levideck. I was six-years old, and he’d taken me to the transway south of the Eastern Mound. The really steep one?”
“I hate that transway,” Cordelia said, evidently still attuned to the conversation. “It’s so busy and so narrow.”
“Well, that’s where my father had taken me.” Heqet cocked her head. “Maybe he was hoping to get rid of me? Anyway, I didn’t want to mount the craft. The transway was too steep, but my father insisted. He said I shouldn’t be afraid of how things looked. I said, ‘What about the Unum? He looks dangerous.’ And my father said, ‘Maybe him you should be afraid of.’”
She paused to take another sip of water.
Her easy, animated manner fascinated Daoren. She’d previously reserved that part of her character for Mako alone. The closest he’d come to seeing it was on the few occasions the three of them were together. Even then, he couldn’t help feel his presence tempered her mood, in the same way an observer influences the observed.
Experiencing her true nature first-hand delighted him, but he was careful to hide the feeling from Cordelia. Revealing emotions to his mother usually led to awkward questions. “So what happened?” he asked.
“I mounted the levideck and—boom!”
He flinched at her shout. It eased his self-consciousness to see that Cordelia flinched as well.
“It accelerated down the transway,” Heqet said. “Before long I was veering between levitrans and huge levishuttles, which popped up out of nowhere like objects do in dreams.” She accented the narrative with cutting and thrusting hand gestures. “The levideck kept going faster and faster, completely out of control. I could hear my father calling after me, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. His voice grew fainter and fainter, then suddenly . . .”
“You hit something?” Daoren asked.
“I was walking on a pair of stilts through a water fountain in Zhongguo Cheng.” She leveled a deadpan stare. “I told you it was an odd dream.”
He rolled his eyes, rasplaughing. Cordelia chucklebucked. “Well, that first part sounded terrifying.”
“A few days ago it would have been,” Heqet said. “But after what we’ve been through, my dreams can’t compete with reality.”
“Let’s hope we’re past the worst of it,” Cordelia said, turning to the forward windows.
“Let’s hope.” She handed Daoren the bottle of water. “Want some?”
He raised the bottle to his lips. “My thanks.”
Heqet leaned closer. “I had a pleasant dream, too,” she whispered. “I met this boy in a shabby aerostat. He wasn’t much to look at, but he could fell scores of Jireni with a single brooding glance.”
Daoren gazed over the bottle’s lip into her gleaming eyes. His heart rate doubled.
“You can finish it,” she said. “I’ll get more.”
He drained the bottle in three gulps, welcoming the cool water into his parched throat.
“Could you come aft and help me get it?”
“You need my help to get a bottle of water?” he asked, chucklebucking.
Heqet dipped her chin and smirked. She waggled her eyebrows.
“Oh . . . right.” His cheeks burned, mostly in embarrassment for missing her intent. “I’d be happy to—”
“We’re crossing the coastline,” Cordelia said, hands and face pressed to a window. “Oh, what an amazing sight! Come see!”
Heqet glanced at her, then heaved a good-natured sigh at Daoren. “Maybe later?”
“Promise,” he said, grinning. They joined Cordelia at the window. The view beyond it stirred a trio of gasps.
One thousand feet below, the gray water of the Sea of Storms yielded to the glistening sand of the Great Saharan Desert. Enormous crescentic, parabolic, linear, and star dunes melded to form a desolate topography of complex geometries and subtle color shifts that stretched beyond the horizon. In comparison, the desert north of Daqin Guojin was a mere patch.
“Welcome to the Nile D
elta,” Laoshi said from the navigation console. “Home to one of the world’s largest population centers during the Cycle of Extinctions.”
“And this is where we’ll find the seed vault?” Heqet asked.
“Yes, dear. Before its inhabitants migrated north, they spent generations collecting seed stocks from around the world. The vault was built beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza.”
“They never came back to retrieve the seeds?” Cordelia asked.
“Not according to the cultural records.”
“Then why go to the trouble of building a seed vault?”
“The upheaval experienced during the Cycle of Extinctions was unprecedented,” Laoshi said. “Perhaps they intended to return one day, but lost its location to the sands of time.”
Daoren scanned the lifeless plain. Its dazzling albedo made him squint. He tried to imagine the city-states the ancients might have built here. Did they favor towering spectraglass structures as well? Did crystalline transways wind through their boroughs? What memorials did they construct to honor their dead? The desert below offered no insights. Whoever had lived here left no trace of their passing. “Is the pyramid close by?”
“I believe so.”
Daoren, Heqet, and Cordelia pivoted from the windows. “You believe so?” they asked with one voice.
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d pinpointed its location,” Daoren said.
“I have, but it’s long since been consumed by the Great Saharan Desert,” Laoshi said as though it was the most obvious statement in the sterile world.
Daoren smirked. “That’s why you wanted a geology aerostat.”
“Clever boy.” Laoshi beckoned them to the console. He called up a plot of square grids on one of its screens. The grids overlaid a three-dimensional representation of the delta. “Based on my son’s expedition report and my research into the cultural records of antiquity, I’ve reduced the search area to roughly one hundred square-miles.”
Daoren made a rudimentary count of the plot’s grids. They tallied over a thousand. It wouldn’t be a quick search. “Any idea how deep the pyramid may be buried?”
“Taking the prevailing winds and desert’s fetch into account, it could be anywhere from tens to hundreds of feet below the surface. We’ll have to use screw mines to expose its entrance.”
“I can make a preliminary calculation for the number of screw mines,” Daoren said. “I’ll place the apex at the surface to derive a baseline solution, then adjust it for the actual depth once we find the pyramid.”
“Excellent! We’ve no time to waste.”
Laoshi guided the aerostat into a descending turn, leveling off at fifty feet above the desert. He slowed the vessel to a hover in the center of the first search grid. “Could you take the controls, Daoren?”
Daoren stepped up to the navigation console. Piloting the aerostat was second-nature now; transiting the disintegrating wind-turbine complex had given him a crash-course in its handling qualities.
Laoshi strode aft to the echolocation-transmitter console. Its vertical screen middled a myriad switches and hand controls. He toggled a switch. “Deploying feedback sensors.”
Four hollow thuds resonated like a fist pounding on the hull. Beyond the forward windows, two glass prongs streaked into the sand trailing thin wires. The wires biased to port and starboard at sixty-degree angles relative to the aerostat’s nose.
Daoren glanced through the aft windows.
Two more wires were visible, each attached to embedded prongs, each angled sixty degrees to port and starboard. The four sensors formed a square measuring roughly five-hundred square-feet.
“A word of warning,” Laoshi said. “This will be a bit noisy.”
Heqet and Cordelia bunched their shoulders. Laoshi toggled another switch.
A sonorous boom jolted the gondola. Low-frequency sound waves transmitted through the deck into Daoren’s sandals. The vibrations crawled up his legs and into his gut, making him cramp.
Heqet and Cordelia doubled over, faces twisted in shock. “What was that?” Cordelia asked.
“The echolocation transmitter on our belly,” Laoshi said. “Its sound waves penetrate the sand. Resultant echoes from subsurface objects are picked up by the feedback sensors and appear here.”
The console’s vertical screen displayed a turbulent waterfall of white pixels.
Laoshi studied the pattern. “There’s nothing below this patch of sand.” He toggled a switch; the feedback sensors reeled back into the hull. “Can you mark this search grid and reposition us, Daoren?”
Daoren tapped the console screen’s three-dimensional plot. The search grid tinted red. He nudged the control yoke forward, maintaining a fifty-foot separation from the desert, and brought the aerostat into hover in the center of the next grid. “In position.”
Laoshi redeployed the feedback sensors. The bowel-rattling echolocation transmission boomed two seconds later. Its vibrations shook clouds of silica dust from the deckhead.
Daoren gritted his teeth against the loathsome intestinal sensation.
Cordelia groaned. “How many times will we have to endure that?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Laoshi said. “If it bothers you, the seats at the workstations are decoupled from the aerostat’s structure. It’ll make it easier to tolerate.”
Cordelia took his advice. Heqet stayed with her grandfather, flanking him at the console. She raised her hands to her waist and groped the air. Her drooping lower lip and pleated forehead spoke to her confusion—she was grasping at hair braids that no longer existed. At the navigation console, Daoren stifled a chucklebuck.
Laoshi inspected the waterfall on the console screen. “Nothing here either.”
“Repositioning,” Daoren said, yawning.
This could take a while.
PYROS GRABBED A hard-point on the bridge’s forward bulkhead to stay on his feet. He fixed his gaze on the gray horizon beyond the windows to settle his stomach.
For twenty-four hours they’d been at the mercy of the Sea of Storms. Despite deploying lateral stabilizers and four sea anchors, the aeroshrike pitched and rolled like a plaything in the hands of Sha. Nausea had rendered half the crew immobile; repairs to the hydrogen cells and starboard engine were taking twice as long as a result.
Julinian lay on the deck on the bridge’s port side, curled up in the fetal position, hands cradling her ashen face. She’d foundered hours ago and hadn’t moved since. Narses remained on his feet, wedged between two consoles on the starboard side for balance, but his complexion had taken on a greenish hue. He looked seconds away from soiling his splendid mianfu with gobbets of grooll.
Another thirty-foot wave smashed against the bridge windows. Its thunderous roar blotted the laments of the crew.
Narses groaned. “How much longer will this take?”
“The latest estimate was thirty minutes.”
“That was over an hour ago!”
Pyros shrugged. “The crew are working as fast as they can.”
Given the conditions, the repairs might take hours longer. The delay had granted Daoren and the others time to make good on their escape. They’d be hundreds of miles away by now. With one aeroshrike left to continue the search, they might never be found. The thought gave Pyros comfort, but the forced delay had a downside.
The tumbling turbine section had sheared off the air-link’s primary and secondary transceiver antennas. The vessel’s supply stores carried spares, but their installation required working high atop the gas envelope. A team of six men had been up there for twelve hours, braving the wretched conditions with only a single safety line for protection.
The second aeroshrike’s destruction negated a pressing need for air-link communications, but he’d easily convinced Narses otherwise. He’d neglected to tell the Unum Potentate why the repairs were vital.
Pyros ached to hear from Commander Cang. The Unum’s meeting with the district commanders would have taken place yesterday morn
ing. Not knowing the reason for the meeting had caused more gastric distress than the storm-tossed sea.
A dust-strewn Jiren stumbled onto the bridge. She picked her way forward, weaving with each roll of the deck. “The repairs are complete, sire.”
“The air-link transceivers, too?”
“Yes.”
“Any injuries?”
“None, sire.”
“Well done.” Pyros grasped her shoulder as much for balance as in gratitude. “Tell your men I’m proud of their—”
“Recover the stabilizers and sea anchors!” Narses said, still wedged between the consoles. “Set trim planes for launch!” He clutched his belly and dry-heaved. “Full . . . speed ahead . . . all airscrews!”
Pyros grunted. He couldn’t tell what Narses was more eager for; resuming the pursuit, or getting off the sea’s angry surface.
CANG TARRIED BEFORE a glass wall in the Unum’s chamber, midway through the day’s second briefing. Ten feet away, Radan struggled to activate the plasmonic projection via his quantum tile. Until he finished his troubleshooting, the technical difficulties held her—and the briefing—hostage.
Radan was a fellow Asianoid, mature beyond his twenty-five years. Trustworthy and discreet, he was usually adept with technology—and more adept with his tongue. He’d been sharing her bed for a year now. Watching his fingers stroke and pinch the tile conjured up memories of their nocturnal activities, except now it was his face growing redder with the passing seconds.
“My apologies, sireen,” Radan said. “I’ve almost got it.”
“Take your time.”
She had no desire to berate the boy; his fluster was acute enough without the added verbal pressure. So far, the Unum bided the time in silence behind his desk, gaze fixed on his Newton’s Cradle. He hadn’t activated the device, but his twitching hands hinted at mounting frustration over the delay.
Radan released an audible breath. “Here it is.”
The wall projected a plasmonic representation of Daqin Guojin. Rendered at a scale of one inch per mile, it still covered most of the chamber’s floor. Delicate beams of monochromatic light lent the three-dimensional model a benign quality that obscured the malignant reality spreading through the city-state’s Chengs.