by Aer-ki Jyr
“Fine,” she groaned, “but you better have yours completely off.”
“It’s always off,” he said, walking past her and into the crack in the wall.
Esna followed him, feeling very sluggish but finding that there was no room to run just yet. The crack wasn’t straight and they spent several minutes before she saw her first peak of light. They eventually emerged back onto the surface in a very deep canyon that had almost no angle to it at all and rose up some 50 or more meters above them with only a 2 or 3 meter width at the top and half a meter at the base which was full of rocks and other stuff you couldn’t step on easily.
“It’s been 5 minutes,” she said, looking for the control on her HUD.
“We’re not running yet.”
“You didn’t say running.”
“I am now.”
“How long do we have to walk and climb until we get to the running part?” she asked three steps prior to hitting solid, but dusty ground on a weaving path before them between the sheer cliff walls.
“Here,” he said, with a timer popping up on Esna’s HUD. “Follow as best you can.”
Rammak started running and disappeared around the first turn with her slowly accelerating into a stumbling jog. She’d never tried this without full power before and was now scared of turning it off entirely. It was so heavy, but at least she could still move forward. It was a pathetic run, made all the more difficult by the constant turns every three or four steps, but it counted. She watched the timer move all too slowly and found Rammak again after 1:13 when there was a split in the canyon. He led her on the right fork then disappeared as she moved slower than he was willing to go.
When 5:00 appeared she switched the power back on, having already figured out how to do it and not waiting on the Calavari. Her legs suddenly came back alive and her heavy armor felt as light as clothing with her breathing heavily as she continued to jog forward.
“Feels lighter than normal now, doesn’t it?” he asked her over the comm, though he was still out of sight somewhere ahead.
“I hate you, but yeah, it does.”
“A lesson learned, with many more to come. Now pick up the pace as soon as your breathing recovers. We have a lot of ground to cover and these canyons go on for a very long way before we reach the wash.”
“Why…are these so twisty?” she said, getting a bit dizzy with the constant redirections. It felt more like a maze than any canyons she’d ever known of.
“Erosion.”
“Wind blows straight.”
“Not if it follows tunnels.”
“What tunnels?”
“Burrowing creatures that didn’t move in straight lines. Natural miners that went where they smelled their next meal. Those tunnels were weak points and the rock above fractured along those lines. The wind did the rest.”
“Rock eaters? I thought those were a myth?”
“They might be now. I haven’t seen evidence of any in a long time.”
“Were they here with the cities?” Esna asked, tripping on an outcropping but catching herself with her left hand on a sidewall and pushing off to maintain her pace.
“No. They were brought in afterward.”
“By the Viks?”
“No, by others. This planet has a long history after the fall of not so nice people coming to salvage the ruins and do a lot of other stuff. That’s why you see a lot of races here that didn’t live on the planet.”
“What happened to them?”
“A lot of fighting. The Viks haven’t obviously been back since they obliterated the planet’s surface, probably thinking anything worth killing was already dead. They wouldn’t leave any Humans alive, but some Calavari and others weren’t important. Especially when you had opportunists coming in to repopulate whatever they found useable. It helped hide those of us that survived.”
“How long were you here before they came?”
“Not long. Once the warfleets left the scavengers came, following in their footsteps. And with them the Vik infiltrators hunted for us. They let us expose ourselves…”
“They’re patient?”
“When they want to be.”
“And you think they’re still hunting you?”
“No, but I think they have people watching the planet just the same. There are a decent amount of ships coming and going that even if someone didn’t survive here they could flee here to hide. That’s why no world is safe.”
“If I haven’t said it enough before, I hate you…but I’m really glad you found me.”
“Same here.”
“You hate me?” Esna asked as Rammak became visible again and she almost ran into him before he started running with an annoyingly easy gait.
“I hate how slow you are. You can do a little better though.”
“Not without running into the walls,” she complained, following his pack from two meters behind.
“Use your hands as buffers and just go with the flow. If you trip and fall just get up and keep moving, but don’t feel embarrassed and not push your limits because of it. Your armor will keep you from getting hurt.”
“Fine,” she said, speeding up and trying to hang the next turn faster with a hand extended out to her left. She pushed against the rock and tried to bounce herself, but she bounced too far and her shoulder hit the far side. Esna stumbled but kept running and made it four more turns before finally getting so loopy that her foot tripped on a loose rock and she rammed head first into the next bend.
She bounced back a few inches and landed on her shoulder, but Rammak didn’t say anything. He was still ahead of her and maybe he hadn’t noticed, so she got back on her feet and started again, this time a bit slower but still using her hands a little bit as she headed towards wherever Rammak was taking her, for she was completely lost at this point and had no idea how he was navigating, let alone moving as fast as he did in these small confines with his wide shoulders.
13
Esna woke up sleeping in her armor underneath an overhang in the canyons that had nothing but a sand wash underneath to rest on, yet she wasn’t too stiff. The Star Force armor Rammak had given her was way better than what she’d had before, and the internal padding even made it almost comfortable to sleep in. Add in a bit of soft sand beneath her and she’d fallen into a deep sleep a few minutes after she’d laid down. Rammak had done the same, but he was nowhere to be seen now.
It was daylight, as usual, but she didn’t get an idea of what time it was until she noticed the chronometer on her HUD. Esna was supposed to be woken up by her internal alarm nearly four hours ago but had apparently slept right through it. Considering how much running they’d been doing she wasn’t surprised, but Rammak should have woken her when it was time to move on and he hadn’t done so.
Her mind was groggy, so it took her a while as she sat up and leaned against the rocky wall to notice the little flashing icon on upper left area of her HUD that Rammak had told her was the comm area.
“Menu,” she said, with a list of options popping up. “Comm.”
A sub menu came up, and sure enough, there was a new addition.
“Message. Open.”
The little icon disappeared as a map appeared covering the lower right portion of her HUD. On it there was a single pulsating dot…which she thought meant it was interactive…but the three words emblazoned above the map drew her attention away from experimenting with it.
YOU’RE BEING TRACKED.
Had someone contacted her using her armor? Or was it Rammak and he was trying to warn her, because he wasn’t here.
“Battlemap,” she said, but where the message map should have been covered up with a new one, it instead materialized on the left side of her HUD. Between the two of them she’d lost at least a third of her vision out through her helmet, but it did allow her to compare them if she’d wanted, though they weren’t covering the same area.
“Message. Off,” she said slowly, firing off each word like a lachar blast in order to keep
from slurring them. Her local accent and the armor weren’t all that friendly, so she had to concentrate to get her words right.
The message map disappeared and the battlemap slid back over to the right side showing the surrounding 10 meters. The canyon dimensions had been mapped out just by her being here, but Rammak wasn’t showing on it.
“Battlemap. Expand. Two.”
The range of the map doubled, showing a bit more canyon ahead as it should have due to the fact that…
The map behind her was filled in, because that’s the way they’d come, but ahead it should have been blank when out of view. That meant either she’d sleepwalked down there or Rammak had gone on ahead.
“Battlemap. Expand. Four.”
The map quadrupled in size and she saw a zigzagging line ahead that marked where not one, but three tendrils extended. Apparently Rammak had been doing some scouting and his marker was now shown at the end of one of the tendrils. A dead end, according to the map.
“Comm. Rammak.”
A little icon in the upper left that was only a ghost fully materialized and that meant she could speak to him. If not, it wouldn’t have lit up.
“Rammak, did you send me a message?”
There was a short pause, then the Calavari’s reassuringly deep voice answered.
“No, I did not. But do not worry, we are safe here.”
Esna froze for two seconds, trying to figure out what that meant. If he hadn’t sent the message, who had?
“Did I pick up someone else’s message by accident?”
“No. It was sent to us.”
“You got it too? What’s it mean?”
“It means that whoever is looking for us can’t find us.”
Esna’s throat suddenly constricted, and her gut didn’t feel too good either. “The Viks sent it?”
“Possibly.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“There are a set of coordinates for us to travel to, far from here.”
“Why would we go where the Viks wanted us?
“It wasn’t sent on a Vik frequency. It was Star Force.”
“Your people are here?”
“Our people might be here…or it could be a trap. I honestly do not know which. There are codes used to prevent unauthorized access to our comm systems. Very good codes. But this armor is hundreds of years old.”
“Meaning they could have hacked it by now?”
“Yes.”
“So what do we do?”
“At the moment our destination doesn’t change. We still need to get through these canyons.”
“And then?”
“I do not know.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Why didn’t your alarm wake you?”
“I guess I was too tired.”
“Then make it louder. Sound levels are a suboption in the menu. Find it and adjust as needed. There’s a scaling option so it won’t go loud on the first beat and freak you out. Probably want to use that one.”
“Why aren’t you here?” she asked, sensing something wrong with his voice now.
“I’ve been scouting ahead a bit.”
“You’re just sitting on the map.”
“I’ve been thinking. I’ll join up with you here.”
A waypoint flashed on her battlemap and Esna knew she had to click on it to get a path shown, else she might take a wrong turn if she wasn’t careful. Navigating by map wasn’t so easy for her, but Rammak had been making her practice. Navigating to a waypoint on an existing map was way easier, which she’d found out by exploring the menu options.
“I’m on my way. Comm. Off.”
Her link to Rammak went out, then she looked down at her menu list.
“Nav. Waypoint. Route.”
Suddenly there was a line on her battlemap tracking through all the twists and turns between her and her destination, but it was also floating in the air about a meter above the ground and heading off down the canyon.
“Menu. Off. Battlemap. Off. Message. Off.”
Her HUD cleared of all the clutter save for the yellow circular bar that tracked in the direction she needed to go. Esna stood up and waved a hand through it, still marveling at how her armor was able to do that. It looked totally real save for the fact that it was glowing.
She needed to get going, but her bladder was arguing for priority after having slept for the past 10 hours…far more than Rammak had been giving her previously. Her muscles were stiff, but they began to loosen up as she walked over to a more discrete spot and looked around, not wanting to get ambushed by anything.
“Armor. Disassemble.”
The various connections of the dull white pieces cracked apart and she started to pull the heavy pieces off one at a time, dropping them onto the small rocks on the ground until she was standing in the fresh air in just her bright white uniform. She found a spot in the rocks and relieved herself, then practiced putting the armor back on as fast as she could.
Esna tripped when she tried to dive her right foot into the boot and only a thrust hand kept her from face planting on a sharp rock, though her hand didn’t fare so well. When she stood up with one and a half boots on she saw and felt a cut across her palm beginning to ooze a bit of blood.
“Damn it,” she said, sucking it off and spitting to the right before she reached down and more slowly got her other boot on, followed by the rest of her armor. She sucked at the wound one more time before putting the arm piece on, then finished up with her helmet after grabbing a couple food cubes and some gulps of water from her supply pack.
Now that breakfast was done she followed the virtual guide line off through the canyons to meet up with Rammak and figure out what they were going to do about this mysterious message.
Three days later they finally arrived at their destination. The canyons led into another crack in a rocky mountain cliff that showed signs of having been enlarged with explosives. Rammak admitted to that as he barely was able to slide through sideways after removing his pack. Esna carried it for him as she followed, easily moving through the gap until a natural tunnel widened and led them a few meters into a cave offshoot.
“Thank you,” he said, taking his pack back and reattaching it to the nodules in his armor, then he pointed to the right. “Not far this way is a makeshift camp. I had to haul everything in here, for there are no ruins. There’s nothing here for anyone to look for, but it is a nexus point for four different trails I use and there’s a speeder if we want to take to the sky.”
“Do we?” she asked as they jogged off, with Rammak thankfully going very slow this time.
“It’s a gamble,” he reiterated from previous conversations on the subject that had led them to no conclusions. “My job is to keep you alive, and right now they don’t know where we are.”
“Best guess?”
“I find my sudden possible connection to my brothers and sisters clouding my judgement on that.”
“Do you think they’ll send another message?”
“That wasn’t a direct comm link. They’d have to know where we were to beam it straight to us. No, that was sent to a large area and anyone with the proper equipment could get it.”
“Meaning the local hunters?”
“Not unless they have Star Force equipment, which they don’t. I’ve made sure of that over the years.”
Esna frowned. “You mean you stole it back from them?”
“I made sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands, and when it did I took action.”
“You killed them?”
“Some.”
“Did they deserve it?”
Rammak stopped suddenly and Esna almost ran into him as she skidded to a halt. He turned around to face her, visible only through the enhanced HUD on her armor, for the cave was pitch black as usual.
“I never kill those who don’t deserve it. Never on purpose, anyway. Those I did were using bits of recovered tech to exploit others. They didn’t really know how to use it, b
ut I took it back from them and some didn’t like that. Others, I bartered for it and helped them in exchange. I didn’t kill people just because they took our stuff.”
“Sorry.”
“You still have a lot to learn about Star Force. That question never would have even formed in your mind had you been born among us, and I intend to give you the chance to learn what you’ve been denied by fate. That’s why we can’t follow those coordinates,” Rammak said, finally making the decision.
“But if it is yo…our people, we’ll miss our opportunity to find them.”
“If it is Star Force and they know we’re here, they won’t leave.”
“But if we keep hiding, how are they going to find us?”
“I don’t know, but if they can’t find us then neither can the Viks.”
Esna frowned, then a stupid question formed in her mind. “Is there some way we can send them a message?”
“It would reveal our posi…” Rammak said dismissively, then cut himself off.
“What?”
“It might be possible.”
“How?”
“We can’t transmit from where we are, but I might be able to construct a delayed message. It would have to be sent after we’re away, but it’d still help the Viks narrow down our location.”
“What could we say to find out if it really is Star Force or an imposter?”
“It’s not that simple. The signal we got had to be strong and it had to be airborne. That means from a ship, and whoever set it would have given away their position. If it is Star Force, then the Viks probably know they’re here too.”
“And if it was the Viks?”
“Then we know they’ve got a ship here.”
“Meaning?”
“If they can narrow down our location, we’re as good as dead if we’re above ground.”
“Oh,” Esna said grimly.
“Sending a message makes that more likely.”
“Can we stay below ground?”
“No. Not unless we want to camp out in the same region. We’ll have to travel above ground to get from point to point in order to stay on the move.”
“Isn’t that more risky than staying put and moving around in places like this?”