The Mandala Maneuver

by Christine Pope

  Lirzhan pulled out a breakfast bar from the rations she had taken and handed it to her. “I don’t really see how these are different from the protein bars,” he said, opening one for himself and sniffing at it dubiously.

  “They are. They’re made with fruit and grains — you’ll be fine.”

  He took a cautious bite, and then smiled. “Yes, this is much better.”

  “Told you.”

  If someone had told her she’d ever be this at ease with him, especially after sharing a kiss that redefined what a kiss should feel like, she’d have told that hypothetical person they were crazy. And let’s not forget the shoot-’em-up with the mercs and dragging the bodies out of the station one by one and leaving them for the Mandala equivalent of wolves or vultures or whatever.

  But now….

  She sneaked a quick peek at Lirzhan and watched for a few seconds as he munched quietly away on his breakfast bar, his gaze seeming to study the landscape as it passed by roughly forty meters beneath them. The cool morning breeze caught the loose strands of long black hair around his face and whipped them to and fro, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  What exactly they were heading toward, she didn’t know for sure. Maybe the mercs had only been dropped off here rather than flying their own ship. But she and Lirzhan had brought the beacon with them, so they could always use it wherever they ended up, rather than back at the science station. And the skimmer had provided them with some much-needed mobility.

  No need to worry about fuel, as the cell on board would last through more than a thousand trips such as this. Right now it just felt good to be up in the wind and the sun, watching the blue-green forests pass by below them, broken here and there by the shimmer of a stream, and once by an enormous calm lake surrounded by rocky shores.

  Lirzhan was right; it was beautiful here.

  The instrument panel pinged, signaling that they were closing in on their destination. Below them, the ground had grown rocky again, the trees thinning out as they climbed into yet another unknown range.

  “I’m going to bring us down a little bit at a time, in case the men who came after us left anyone behind,” she told Lirzhan, and he nodded, then said,

  “Luckily, at first they shouldn’t notice anything wrong…until we get close enough for them to actually see who’s in the skimmer.”

  “Well, aside from the fact that they were probably expecting their missing friends to have checked in by now. But that can’t be helped.”

  She dropped lower so they were barely skimming the ground, not quite a meter and a half in the air. The rocky terrain slipped past. Getting closer now…

  …and she let out a surprised yelp and banked hard left to avoid coming up on an enormous edifice, all steel girders and flat metal plate, covering at least an acre. Past it she could see heavy earth-moving equipment, but no people.

  Without thinking she turned them around, speeding back the way they had come. Beside her, Lirzhan sat up very straight, asking, “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, practically biting out the words to keep her voice from shaking. “It looked like some sort of mining operation.”

  “Mining operation?” he repeated, casting one last look over his shoulder, even though they’d dipped below the ridge line and the facility was effectively hidden. “I thought you said this planet had been designated as ‘containing no exploitable resources.’”

  “That’s what the write-up said!” she snapped, the jangle of adrenaline along her nerve endings making the words come out far more abruptly than she’d intended. “Look, is anyone following us?”

  He unfastened the safety harness he wore and stood up, black hair whipping like crazed snakes around his head. After turning around and surveying the horizon in all directions, he said, “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Well, that’s something.” Probably they hadn’t gotten close enough for anyone on the ground to get a good look at who was really piloting the skimmer. The vehicle itself wouldn’t raise any eyebrows, since it had clearly come from the base itself. “We’re coming back up on some trees — I’m going to land us there so we can figure out what to do next.”

  Slowing down, she brought the vehicle lower until it glided between the first few outlying trees. They settled with a soft thump on a patch of pale olive-colored grass, and Alexa relaxed her death grip on the controls.

  Lirzhan remained standing. He gazed down at her for a few seconds, then extended a hand. She took it and followed him out of the skimmer. How he knew she needed to stand on firm ground to gather her thoughts, she had no idea, but she was grateful for his perceptivity.

  “So…” he said at last.

  “So,” she said heavily, and reached up to push some loose hair off her forehead. She really had done a crap job with that braid this morning. “I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m pretty sure it’s nothing good.”

  “Surely it’s only an illegal mining operation,” Lirzhan replied. “Of course these things should not be encouraged because of the damage they do to the environment, but….”

  “I don’t think that’s all it is.” Alexa couldn’t even say why exactly, but something about this really didn’t smell right. “That facility looked far too big for anything unregulated. There are outfits that drop small refining stations on out-of-the-way worlds, hoping to get a bunch of whatever ore’s hot on the market before someone notices what they’re doing and they have to pull up stakes and move on. But this wasn’t one of those. It’s big enough you could probably see it from orbit. Not exactly the sort of thing you can hide easily, so it can’t be something set up by a small fly-by-night operation.”

  “So what do you think is going on?” He was frowning now, as if he were starting to put two and two together as well.

  “I have no idea. But small-time ore thieves aren’t going to waste their time sending a team of mercs to take out two crash-landed diplomats. Hell, they might try to rescue us in case there was a reward or something, because those types are always looking for a quick unit, but using mercenaries to kill us?” She shook her head. “No way. Especially since our original crash site has to be a few hundred kilometers from here. We would never have stumbled across this place by accident. The chances of discovery were almost nil.”

  Lirzhan’s expression had grown progressively grimmer during this speech. “Perhaps this is connected somehow to the destruction of our ship in the first place.”

  Frowning, she crossed her arms and asked, “How so? That is, I’m guessing that once we crashed here, whoever’s running that facility decided we were a threat and sent a team to take care of the problem, as it were. But I’m not sure how to connect the actual attack on our ship to that.”

  His mouth thinned. “I cannot say for certain. It is just…a feeling.”

  A feeling. Then again, he did seem to have an almost preternatural awareness about their environment that continued to confound her. She decided to go for broke. The worst he could do was ask her to mind her own business. “Lirzhan, are you psychic?”

  A short laugh, although it had little humor in it. “No. That is, not precisely. My people are empathic…we sense emotions, intentions. It is the reason we wear the robes. They are woven with a fiber derived from a certain plant on our home world, one that helps to block the empathic vibrations. Otherwise, it would be difficult to function normally with those outside our closest circles of family and friends. Our empathic faculties are the reason for sayara.” He blinked, as if bringing himself back to the matter at hand. “At any rate, it is not as if I read the thoughts of the men we killed back at the science station, or picked up anything from our brief fly-by at that facility. It is just…my intuition tells me they must be related somehow.”

  She wouldn’t presume to argue with him. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for being able to fully comprehend the ramifications of being empathic in the way that he had just described. Even so, his revelation merely reinforced in her the belief that the
y needed to find out more, needed to discover exactly what was going on at that facility…and who precisely knew about it.

  “All right,” she said. “Then I know what I have to do.”

  “And what is that?”

  His expression told her he’d already begun to guess what she had in mind, but she went ahead and told him anyway.

  “I need to get inside and see what they’re really doing in there.”

  Lirzhan didn’t know why he should be so surprised. Her boldness continued to startle him. “You can’t be serious.”

  “And why not?” She stared up at him, hands planted on her hips.

  Because I have only just found you, and I cannot lose you.

  Such arguments would probably not find much of a reception with her, though, and so he only said, “You are a very capable woman, Alexa, but you are not a spy. You have not been trained for such a task.”

  “Have you?” she retorted, the challenge clear in her voice.

  “No,” he said seriously. “As you, I have been trained in diplomacy, in working with those not of my race, in languages and statecraft. I am not suggesting that I go in your place — I am suggesting that neither of us do such a foolhardy thing.”

  Her mouth tightened a little at the word “foolhardy,” but she replied mildly enough, “I don’t think it’s that foolhardy. After all, look at me.” She gestured toward the baggy borrowed coveralls she was wearing. “I can take off the belt, and untuck the pants from my boots, and if that facility is anything like most other mining outfits, I’ll look more or less like a worker at the facility. No one should pay any attention to me.”

  Lirzhan wasn’t so sure about that, because even in her current less-than-flattering attire and with her hair admittedly a mess, her beauty shone forth, bright and obvious as the sun in the sky. She did not look like a miner…or at least not one that he’d ever heard of. He opened his mouth to say as much, but she forestalled him by reaching down and getting some dirt on her fingertips, then smudging it on her chin and the tip of her nose.

  “See? Completely incognito.”

  At first he could not recall what that particular word meant, and he frowned a little as he dug into the lesser-used portions of his Galactic Standard vocabulary. “Ah,” he said, and despite everything, he couldn’t help smiling at her pleasure in that minor subterfuge. “I am not sure if that is as good a disguise as you think it is.”

  “It will be fine.” To his shock and infinite joy, she went up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cheek. Warmth seemed to radiate outward from the place where her mouth rested, and then she sank back down on the soles of her feet and sent him a beseeching look. “Besides, you’re not going to deprive me of my chance to finally play Nancy Drew, are you?”

  The reference was completely unfamiliar to him. “What is a Nancy Drew?”

  Alexa shot him a rueful yet somehow amused glance. “I suppose it would be too much to expect you to recognize that obscure twentieth-century reference. Anyway, Nancy Drew is a character in a series of books written hundreds of years ago. I came across them while scouring the public domain archives for books to read. Anyway, she’s an adolescent girl who goes around and solves mysteries.”

  “And her parents have no problem with this?”

  “In the books her mother is dead, and her father doesn’t seem to have a lot of input.” Impatiently, Alexa undid her belt and tossed it back into the skimmer, then pulled the legs of her coveralls out of her expensive-looking boots and pushed them down to her ankles. After completing this procedure, she smoothed her hands over the heavy fabric to get out some of the worst of the wrinkles caused by her belt.

  He must have looked rather sour during this whole process, because she glanced back up at him and shook her head.

  “It’s really not that bad, Lirzhan. I doubt anyone’s going to look twice at me. But to make you feel better, we can fly back and come in from the other side, do some reconnoitering, before you drop me off.”

  “And if it looks too dangerous, you will give up this plan?”

  Surprisingly, she nodded at once. “Of course. I don’t have a death wish. But we’re going to have to do something, because otherwise I don’t know how we’re going to get off Mandala.”

  “There is still the beacon — ”

  “That we don’t know how to reprogram.”

  “We haven’t tried,” he pointed out. While he certainly was not a programmer, he thought it infinitely more practical to find a quiet place to work on the beacon rather than attempting to infiltrate what was clearly a secret installation.

  “Okay, that’s true enough. Let’s just play it by ear and see what happens, all right?”

  Puzzled, he reached up to touch his ear. Galactic Standard idiom could be tricky, and although he was very fluent, some of its nuances still eluded him.

  She actually laughed at that. “It’s an expression. It just means that we’ll go ahead and adjust our reactions based on what we observe. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he replied. Perhaps he should allow himself to be cautiously optimistic. After all, he had gotten her to agree to wait and do an actual reconnaissance of the facility before running in there completely unprepared. While he understood her desire to discover what was going on in those mysterious buildings, and who was running the facility, caution would serve them better in the long run.

  They both climbed back into the skimmer, and Alexa once again took her position in the pilot’s seat. This time she kept the craft disguised amongst the trees, following the edge of the forest as the terrain sloped gradually upward. After a few minutes the greenery began to thin out, but she remained hidden within it as long as possible before moving them out into open ground and dropping low. Obviously she hoped that by hovering only a yard or so above the ground, they would be more difficult to spot.

  Coming in at this angle, it was easier to see the general layout of the facility. At their first approach they had crested the hill and come upon the back of what appeared to be a large refining facility of some sort. Directly in front of it was a wide road blasted into the hillside, a road that narrowed as it entered a gaping black hole in the side of the mountain. Although he and Alexa were probably still a kilometer away, it was easy enough to spot the large automated haulers coming out of the mountain and heading for the refining facility. On the other side of the road were a series of low, ugly buildings, probably barracks of some sort, and beyond that a landing pad, on which was parked a blocky personnel carrier, with a sleek-looking spacecraft appearing small and fragile next to it.

  “I’ll be damned,” Alexa said.

  “What is it?”

  “The smaller ship. That’s a Sirocco-class personal transport.”

  “Gaian, I presume.”

  “Yes, it’s Gaian. And pricey. And rare. Not something I would have expected to see on an ‘undeveloped’ planet like Mandala.”

  She was frowning, and Lirzhan could feel the uncertainty and puzzlement practically radiating off her in waves. “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. But I’m not getting a good feeling about it.”

  A slight turn of her hand on the wheel, and she had them heading away, sloping downward as they flew to the south. Relief swept over him. Perhaps she had given up on her reckless plan to go snooping around the facility.

  “Where are we going now?” he inquired, his tone neutral. He didn’t want to reveal how happy he was that they were heading away from the mining plant and not toward it.

  “Back into the woods for the moment.” She shifted in her seat, and sent him a very sly smile. “Oh, you needn’t look so pleased. I’m not giving up. But that place is so exposed it’s obvious I can’t just slip in. Also, I figured it couldn’t hurt to try monitoring some of their comm traffic, see if we can piece together what’s going on there.” A tap of her forefinger against the unit built into the dashboard of the skimmer, and she continued, “I suppose I should’ve thought of it sooner, bu
t I really thought we were just dealing with three mercs and possibly one left back at their ship, not a whole clandestine operation.”

  “I agree that it would be wise to learn more of what they’re doing before you go in there.” Even to him his voice sounded stiff.

  “Your concern is appreciated, Lirzhan, but believe me, I know how to take care of myself.”

  That much is certain, he thought. Oh, she was certainly not experienced in the wilderness, that much he could tell, but she’d been cool enough when managing that one mercenary back at the science station — and she hadn’t shown any real regret over shooting the man in the head, either, once she got past the initial shock of the moment. Not that she’d had much choice, but still….

  The trees began to slip past again, and she slowed down as the woods grew thicker. A few minutes later they came to a small clearing, and she eased the skimmer to a stop, then settled the vehicle on the thick grass. From far above some avian creature cackled at them, clearly displeased at having its residence disturbed by the alien contraption.

  Alexa shot a brief glance upward, then returned her attention to the skimmer’s comm unit. “All right, let’s see what you people are up to….”

  Really, she was kicking herself for not tuning into that comm in the first place. But done was done, and they seemed safe enough here for now. Lirzhan watched her expectantly but remained silent.

  She hadn’t operated one of these comm units for a while, not since her college boyfriend had taken her out joyriding in the smaller, less sophisticated version of a skimmer that he’d owned. But the principle should be the same: There were numerous bands available, depending on the strength of the signals from the towers in the area. Etiquette generally required that you find your own channel, one that no one else was using but was still powerful enough to reach the other skimmers in the area if you needed to open a comm channel with them. She hadn’t noticed any towers near the mining facility, but then again, she hadn’t been looking, either.