The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  I smiled a bit weakly, feeling shakier than I usually do after working with the Setari, and asked: "How bad is Zee injured?"

  "Her vitals are steady," Maze said, coming across to give me a quick captain-survey. "The attack seemed to be electricity-based, intended to stun prey and not strong enough to kill a healthy person. Though it would be another matter if we'd not caught her." He gave Ferus an approving glance.

  "Surion."

  There was something in Ruuel's tone which made us all look at him, and then follow his gaze to a building far up the hill. Two dark figures were watching us. Distance and the thin light of dawn made detail unclear, but I knew them anyway. Cruzatch.

  I glanced at Maze, but he was being pure captain, surveying the watching pair before saying: "Any others?"

  "Not that I've sensed."

  "Out of range of an immediate kill." Maze frowned. "The nearest gate to that location is one street beyond. We'll feint a retreat back toward the ship, then split and attempt to circle and catch them between us."

  Ruuel nodded, and the Setari broke into two groups, Auron tucking me under his arm again. They were very intent, grim. I guess, since Maze thinks the Cruzatch are organised and actively working against the Setari, he didn't want to give them a chance to report back.

  When we split, Fourth Squad headed straight for the gate while First took a swift, circling loop toward the Cruzatch. One of them launched itself at First, while the other did as Maze had predicted and went for the nearest gate.

  I'd not seen a Cruzatch fighting before. There's an eerie similarity to the Setari in their speed and the way they grow weapons – though the Cruzatch Ruuel fought created long claws from its fingertips rather than a sword from its arm. It was very fast, too, if no match for Ruuel, especially Ruuel enhanced. The thing I hated, though, was the way it almost seemed to be getting off on fighting him, like it knew it would just come back if he won.

  "Clear the emergents and rendezvous back at the Diodel," Maze ordered, and we spent another half hour chasing down swoops and one of those stilt things. Then it was hot showers and hot food and First and Fourth Squad were just about recovered from their wake-up call when two shuttles from Pandora arrived. It had a bunch of greysuits who wanted to investigate the massive, and more greensuits, and Ninth Squad, which I'd had nothing to do with before.

  I took the opportunity of everyone being distracted by their arrival to go see Zee. She was still unconscious, looking very crumpled and bruised for such a tall, fit woman. The doctor's letting me sit with her, and they think she should wake up soon, but I've managed to write this entire diary entry without her so much as twitching.

  Setari Musical Chairs

  Zee woke up. I'd fallen asleep – one of those post-too-much-enhancement power naps I'm getting used to taking – and when I opened my eyes she was lying on her side watching me.

  "Just a few moments too slow," she said, voice dragging a little. "Nasty shock to the system. I'll be joining Alay in rehabilitation for a while."

  "Alay's nearly better," I said, and squeezed her hand. "Dodge faster next time. Scared me half to death."

  Zee smiled and mumbled something I didn't understand. She was pretty out of it. I watched her failing to stay awake, and for a while wished I was still living with the Lents, that I'd never seen any of the Setari after being rescued. They live such dangerous lives, and the chances of all of them surviving is so slim. That may be another reason the Setari as a group are so competitive and distant with each other outside of their squads: having too many friends would mean having too many people you care about constantly in danger.

  That was after midday, while the two extra shuttles were still here. The greysuits wanted to record as much detail of the massive as they could before it vanished, which it did a couple of hours later. The vanishing thing really worries me, actually: it makes all this a little too like a computer game for me to be entirely certain that the nutter-in-a-straightjacket option isn't the right explanation for everything I do and see. Monsters that respawn infinitely, whose bodies despawn after they're killed. And me being some mysterious touchstone thing with bunches of incredibly hot people looking after me. It's all a little too wish-fulfilment.

  I would really hate it if I was insane. Though if this is a psychotic episode, at least it came on suddenly and doesn't make me face up to the fragmentation of my own mind. It would be far worse to be insane only some of the time.

  But if this was all my own private fantasy, I think I would make more people like me. The captain of Ninth Squad is called Desa Kaeline, and she has wonderful smoky eyelashes and unusually pale skin for a Taren. And was extremely correct and polite to me in a way that suggested that I gave her a headache but she didn't want to admit it. And there was another girl in her squad, Kahl Anya, who gave me this absolute viper-look. I've got to stop reviewing my own logs: it was only a quick glance and I wouldn't have caught it at all if I hadn't looked back over the reinforcements leaving just before sunset.

  They took First Squad away with them, and left Ninth Squad behind. Today sucked.

  Monday, April 7

  Team Drama Queen

  Ruuel made us all get up early to do enhancement testing and training, since Ninth Squad has never worked with me at all. Setari pecking order seems to be based on active duty seniority, so when the squads work together, the captain of the squad with the smaller number is treated as being in charge. Ninth Squad doesn't seem to resent this, though I noticed during this morning's session that Ruuel had Ninth do a lot more repetition of the multiple-squad enhancement rotation and the intricacies of carrying me around than he bothered with when Fourth Squad was testing. I don't know whether that's because he thinks they're slower on the uptake, or he just isn't sure another squad member would ask to go over things again if they needed to. It's pretty clear squads hate looking bad in front of other squads.

  Ninth Squad is another generalist squad: a little more big-hitting than First, since the older Setari for the most part aren't quite as powerful as the younger. Desa Kaeline turned out to be easy enough to work with; maybe she simply did have a headache when she was introduced to me yesterday. The rest of the squad seemed to settle into two groups: Kahl Anya and her two best buddies, and two people who really don't like Kahl Anya. I began to see why Kaeline might be prone to headaches.

  Not that they were squabbling or glaring at each other. I doubt they'd do that where Fourth could see. They just had this tendency to stand in two different groups, and Anya and her groupies would exchange little smirks, while the other two looked unhappy. I was glad my 'ride' in Ninth was one of the non-groupies – a bean-pole guy named Rebar Dolas. Other than an undertone of being in a bit of a mood, he seemed nice. He asked me where I prefer he put his hands, anyway, gave me a sympathetic smile, and kept an eye on my reaction when we changed directions abruptly.

  I was pretty tired. Napping half the morning yesterday meant I'd stayed up very late, doing school work in my pod since I hadn't felt like chatting. Fortunately Fourth Squad was on babysitting duty, so I didn't have to walk half the day. Islen Duffen kept making aggrieved comments about all the damage to the buildings, but she wasn't blaming the Setari particularly.

  I sat with Glade and Mori at lunch and dinner. I'm liking Mori more and more. She has a wry sense of humour, which she mostly only indulges when Ruuel isn't around, and she and Glade both watch The Hidden War devotedly, just to pick apart the things that don't make sense. They say that some of the characters who show up later in the series are based on leaked details of the real Setari. I'm still only up to the second year of it: I like it, but I've found I can only stand watching it sporadically, and prefer Super Sight Six. The Hidden War is often quite a dark show, and just now I don't want to think about how First has had two close calls in a handful of weeks.

  I'm glad I'm settling into Fourth, that I'm able to chat and laugh with some of them, because otherwise I'd feel pretty alone without First, dealing with Ninth. Of course, no-one'
s about to discuss Ninth Squad with me. By this stage I know to not even consider asking. I don't know what Anya has against me. I figure the best thing I can do is just not be interested in the opinions of people who've never even spoken to me.

  Nor is anyone willing to discuss whether the Cruzatch could really have driven that massive to attack us. People are discussing it, but the idea makes everyone desperately uneasy, and they shut up when I'm nearby with my ever-present second level monitoring.

  I keep thinking of Zee, falling out of the sky.

  Tuesday, April 8

  Chinese Mountains

  Halfway between midnight and dawn I woke feeling fretful and uneasy. I thought maybe I'd had a nightmare, and lay for a while not able to sleep, then eventually got up to go to the bathroom. The pods have quite a lot of shielding on them, much like my room back on Tare, and it was only after I'd opened mine that I started to properly register what had woken me.

  It was the "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" noise, the one I associated with the Ddura attacking or hunting, but very far away. I could barely hear it, and spent the time it took to go to the bathroom and then to get a drink to decide whether or not it was just my imagination. I'd been told I had to immediately report if I heard the Ddura, but hearing a noise which might be the Ddura in the middle of the night meant my own interpretation of immediately. Especially when the person on night watch was the prima donna from Ninth Squad.

  Still, I was assigned to Fourth Squad and all Anya would be able to do, beyond act like I was wasting her time, was report to the captains. So, with a squeamish mix of feelings, I sent Ruuel an override saying: "Can hear Ddura."

  He didn't treat me to any sleep-fuelled incoherencies, responding within maybe ten seconds with: "At what distance?"

  "Very far away," I said, watching as his pod cover lifted and he sat up. Facing away from me, fortunately, so I could enjoy the sight of him with his uniform converted to a tank top and knee-length arrangement. He scrubbed a hand over his close-cut hair, his uniform starting to return to standard configuration, and I looked away, feeling oddly uncomfortable. "Can only just hear," I added, out loud this time instead of over the interface. "It making noise it makes when it attack things."

  "Outside," was all of his response, and I followed him to the aft lock.

  The Setari on watch is posted with a greensuit just inside the lock; there's seats, and they don't have to stand, but usually seem to be. Anya and the greensuit were both standing, and the greensuit looked like she had a headache, heh.

  "Any movement?" Ruuel asked, and they both said no, tensing because we wouldn't have been there if nothing was happening.

  Ruuel opened the outer hatch and lifted us both on to the roof of the ship. He used straight Levitataion, which I much prefer to being hauled about clinging on to people, but the Setari can only lift me directly if they're not enhanced.

  "Try to gauge a direction while I arrange clearance," he said, and then I guess sent an override in turn to the Diodel's captain.

  It's really hard to work out the direction of a distant noise. Shadowed by Ruuel, I walked around the roof of the ship, trying to ignore the chilly wind, and eventually decided that I could hear it best on the aft end. By that time, a couple of greensuits were preparing the ship's transports for a night-time excursion, and Fourth and Ninth were all up and ready.

  There's a lot of different types of smaller transports, and the name of the two the Diodel carried would roughly translate to 'skimmers'. They hold eight people and are more complex than the flat, hovering sleds we used crossing the lake at Pandora, with low seats wrapped around the edge and a flat area in the middle: flying rafts. No visible controls or console or anything like that. They can only go about forty feet up, but scudded along at a brisk pace.

  Each skimmer had two greensuits, and five Setari, with two of Ninth Squad left at the Diodel, including one unimpressed drama queen. I sat up front opposite the greensuit, feeling very silly, and we flew in the direction I'd indicated. I was picturing the reaction if I'd chosen the wrong direction, but as we got closer I could tell it was more to one side, and re-directed the greensuit, and kept making corrections the louder the Ddura became.

  Nurioth sprawls over two rivers which drain into another fresh-water lake – the westernmost of a chain of huge lakes including Pandora's lake. After a while, as the Ddura grew louder, I stopped feeling so self-conscious about playing native guide, and enjoyed looking at the stars and the reflections in the lake and the spooky gloom of the city. After we left it behind us, I was expecting to arrive at another of the small settlements marked by the circle symbols on roofs, but there was just forest beside the lake, and small mountains which reminded me of those pictures you see on old Chinese pictures – conical pointed arrangements.

  "Very near here," I said, looking back confusedly. "Think we passed." There was no sign of any settlement, just the gleam of an old road.

  "Take us lower," Ruuel said to the greensuit, then touched my arm and added to Auron and Mori: "Try to locate another of the communication devices."

  The moon was three-quarters full above us as we dropped to nearly ground-level among the steep mountainettes. All three of the path-finders turned slowly in the same direction, glanced at each other and nodded. We moved back the way we came, until we were in the middle of a triangle formed by three of the conical mountains, with the lake to our left and patches of whitestone paving poking through the dirt and plants beneath. There was something distinctly unnatural about the shadowy near-vertical slopes of the mountains around us, the moonlight picking out too-regular shapes among bright-edged shadows.

  "We need more light," said Ormeral, the sole greysuit who'd been sent along.

  Ruuel said: "Halla," and she obediently sent a huge Pillar of flame into the air above us, startling a flock of birds (or bats) into flight and revealing large stone doors surrounded by decorative carving, firmly sealed and very impressive. Before the flame died away I saw that all three mountainettes had the same sort of entrance.

  "Set down by the lake," Ruuel said. We were well out of what he'd said was normal interface range, but I guess the skimmers would include communication links, since he got that talking-to-someone-else expression and, when we set down, said: "The Diodel will relocate, and we'll wait for daylight. What's the status of the Ddura?"

  "Still hunting." It was loud, but not as loud as it was on the surface at Pandora, let alone at the communication platform.

  Ruuel nodded. "We'll scout for gate locations external to the site while we wait."

  He split us into two groups, putting me in the "sit in the skimmers and don't move" half, and then divided the rest into pairs who vanished off into the night. Pairs meant he didn't sense a major threat nearby, which I guess isn't that surprising since the Ddura had been hunting through the area for the last half hour. Ormeral began taking readings using a bulky machine he'd lugged along, looking tremendously excited. I watched the lake.

  This is such a beautiful world. I pretended, just for a few minutes, that I was here on a family holiday. Mum and the aunts and the cousins, maybe even Dad. We'd fish, and only Nick would catch anything. Mum would go off on a long rambling walk, and bring back a huge bouquet of interesting leaves and flowers. Jules would be everywhere, complaining half the time of X-Box deprivation, and then would fall out of a tree, scrape every limb raw, and be all pleased with himself. Maybe I'd go canoeing – I've never tried that, but it looks like it might be fun. We'd have a campfire and cook the fish, with potatoes in the coals, and tell ghost stories. Everyone would argue just a little, and laugh a lot, and be comfortable and relaxed and no matter what planet it was I would belong because that's what being with your family does.

  Thinking about all this of course made me feel intensely miserable. I was surprised when Auron patted my shoulder and when I looked at him he gave me this shy, sympathetic smile. I smiled back, appreciating the gesture, which was uncharacteristic for him: he's even more taciturn than Ruuel,
though in a very different way. Ruuel had swapped him for Glade as my primary babysitter pretty early on, maybe just because he's so tall it makes it easier for him to tuck me under his arm. I'm more comfortable clinging to Auron, anyway. Glade, though he was always correct, was I think endlessly tempted to tease me about it.

  Halla and Sonn are still pretty formal, but I think even they accept me as a temporary part of Fourth Squad; they're certainly not hostile. Mori and Glade are becoming friends, and Auron (Par) sort of comes as an added extra with Glade. And their acceptance and growing willingness to talk to me makes it a lot easier to be around Ruuel so much. I really don't enjoy the way I feel about him a lot of the time. Too vulnerable.

  The arrival of the Diodel interrupted all my introspection, and now I'm back on the ship and everyone's sitting around waiting for it to be dawn. One of the main things all this exploration is for is to find information about the Pillars, and I guess Ruuel has decided there might be some here. This means the place is going to be searched really carefully, with especial emphasis on not accidentally standing on vital bits of evidence. Most of it will be inside the mountains, though, so I find it funny that they're waiting for dawn just so they can sift through the debris outside the doors.

  I think I'll try and get a little more sleep now that I'm no longer so keyed up.

  Seeing too much

  Mori woke me around mid-morning. "We've finally reached the stage where we're going to open the doors," she said. "Or try to – they seem to be a complicated arrangement."

  A hot shower and breakfast were first on my schedule. I was surprised to realise that all of Fourth Squad had gone back to sleep as well, but of course it made sense to not have the ship's entire Setari complement sitting around waiting for dawn, and then watching the greysuits take pictures and measurements and search the overgrown paved area for artefacts.