Only dregs remained of the mukta.
The explorer rocked with a crosswind from the storm. Yajain walked back to her cabin aboard the docked Solnakite. She swayed slightly from the mukta, but she’d insisted she would be alright walking alone. Sonetta and Dara would have walked with her, but that didn’t matter now. She keyed open her cabin door and then sat down on the hammock. Her orders terminal beeped.
Yajain considered letting it go until she woke up. She rose anyway and checked the tiny screen, reading it aloud to be sure.
“I’m sorry I hurt your sister, Yajain. If I had more time I’d see you in person, but the mission is still there. And I have to obey it. Mosam Coe.”
She stared at the screen. Mosam spoke of the mission a little back on Kaga. His master never thought him worthy of whatever it was back then. Mosam had changed that. Yajain’s eyes searched the message, read it again and again. Then she transferred it over the wireless to her reading pad. Then she deleted the original.
“How?” she said softly. “You must be on this ship.” She set the pad on her footlocker and collapsed into the hammock. She tried to sit up and simply rolled onto her side. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Don’t be here. Don’t be here.”
She wiped her eyes.
A knock came at her door. She rolled out of the hammock and answered it. It was Sonetta.
“Dara asked me to check on you,” she said.
“Thanks.” Yajain moved to close the door.
Sonetta put one foot into the cabin.
“I don’t know what he was like,” she said. “But he’s not worth it.”
“Dara said the same thing.” Yajain propped herself against the wall with one arm. “I wish I agreed.”
Sonetta put a hand on Yajain’s shoulder.
“So what if he helped you fit in? You’re doing fine on your own now.”
Yajain shook her head, staring down at the floor.
“I don’t know, Sona. I feel like he’s close.”
“Sona?” Sonetta said. “I kinda like that.”
“I’ve got to sleep.”
Sonetta nodded and withdrew her leg, letting the door close. Yajain turned and collapsed onto her hammock. In spite of everything, sleep claimed her.
He’s here on this ship. He’s here on this ship.
Yajain tumbled out of her hammock and landed painfully on the cold floor. She got to her feet, then rubbed her back. A shrill beep and a blinking red light announced the arrival of emergency orders at the terminal. Yajain shucked the clothes she’d slept in, and then slipped on a fresh uniform. She checked her orders, one palm pressed to her pounding temple.
Doctor Aksari you are to report to Captain Gattri on the bridge at 0800 hours. Yajain closed the register and picked up her spare uniform. It was 0750 now, and it would take almost that left just enough time to travel the length of Castenlock.
Yajain washed her face in the bathroom adjacent to her cabin. Then she set out to the docking bay, and from there caught an arc mover on its way toward the bridge.
The twenty-meter-broad corridor running the length of the ship over the central core was filled with ratings and movers and troops of cablers moving alongside for most of the trip. Illuminated arrows indicated pathways to small docks where pairs of tumblers and larger Arc Projection Vessels were preparing to launch. Yajain’s stomach growled as the mover passed the mess elevator. The pilot of the mover hurried. Yajain stepped onto the bridge five minutes late.
The bridge of Castenlock was built in shape similar to the ship’s bar, but with a lower dome and transparent walls on three sides. Unlike banner ships, the bridge was actually located near the front-most extension of the hull. All around the big oblong room, core terminals staffed by uniformed officers glowed.
Firio stood at the center of the whirring, beeping, shouting room, firmly in his element. Every time he gestured a salute answered him. Every time his scarred face turned to another officer the subordinate in question’s eyes would light up with recognition. He never stopped at one person for long but kept giving orders and moving between terminals until he reached the two pilots at the helm and the navigator just behind them. There, he turned and was immediately met by another officer with a reading pad.
Yajain stood at the entrance to the bridge, a bit out of place but impressed. In triage training at the academy things usually seemed efficient but chaotic. She had worked as a low-level trauma doctor for a third of a cycle before Dara recruited her for the survey. The trauma ward always felt harried.
Yajain admired how the captain put skills learned in violence to use in peace.
He saw her and nodded.
“Doctor Aksari,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“And you, Captain Gattri.” Yajain smiled despite her throbbing headache. “You wanted to see me?”
“Indeed.” Firio motioned to a terminal with a junior officer working it. “Over here. Look at this.”
Yajain and Firio walked over to a visual terminal. Side by side they turned to a screen and the thin layer of holographic projection before it. The image in the hologram resembled a metallic bird’s egg laid on its long side, with narrow slits carved into it and radiating up, down, left, and right, every ninety degrees. At one end of the egg, a small bubble bulged in miniature resemblance to the larger construction.
Yajain leaned toward the image.
“What is it, Captain?”
“It’s a bandojen survival pod. The serial number it beamed us matches that of Clan Company Gomendeata’s manufacturing yards.”
“Gomendeata?” Yajain frowned. “What is a war drone manufacturing company doing out here?” She considered the rebellions both in Shaull and Toraxas. “Well, there certainly would be customers out here.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Firio said. “We’ve tried to hail the pod, but we aren’t getting any response.”
Yajain gazed at the hologram of the pod.
“It could be the passenger or passengers are in stasis. The pod likely is equipped for that.”
“It’s possible.” Firio nodded. “But I can’t figure out why it would be, or how it got where it is.”
“Where is it precisely?” Yajain asked.
“It’s caught in the verge between the pillars. The storm blew it in, but we couldn’t intercept.”
“How deep?”
“Almost the center. A tree at the densest portion caught it against the trunk.”
She leaned back from the screen.
“Are you planning to send in a team to retrieve it?”
“Definitely,” Firio said. “But Bahami forest is dangerous. Predators abound, and not the Ditari kind, so I need a guide who understands dangerous animals.”
“Captain, I think you mean me.”
“Perceptive.” Firio’s lip curled. “Are you up to it?”
Yajain nodded.
“Now I’m curious as to why a clan company is operating around here,” she said.
“That pod may have traveled a long way.” Firio clapped a hand on Yajain’s shoulder. “Ruane’s Blade and Solnakite are both undergoing repairs. Ebonwing will take your team in and cover you from overhead upon your return.”
“Captain, how dangerous do you think these verge animals are?” An amused smiled reached Yajain’s lips.
Firio shrugged.
“Let’s hedge our bets.”
Yajain nodded her head. She ignored the urge to tell Firio about Mosam’s message. It had to wait until they saved whoever was in the pod.
The dark-eyed cabler from Ruane’s Blade boarded the Ebonwing at Yajain’s side. He smiled as they took their seats in the drop compartment, situated on the lowest deck behind the tumbler launch bay. A tumbler wouldn’t fit through the tunnel the pod had torn in the dense foliage of the forest. Firio ordered they go without one to minimize irritation of local wildlife.
As much as Yajain disliked the jerky flight of a tumbler, she would have preferre
d to have one.
She wore a black survival suit over her uniform, better than the usual poncho for a forest of full of snagging branches. She put the hood up and fixed on the mask as Ebonwing prepared for launch from Castenlock. The ship lifted with the swish of arc pushers and the hum of power cells. The core remained silent. Yajain sat back. She could do something she actually had skills for once again. The thought eased her nerves.
Across the compartment from her, the young cabler with the dark eyes smiled at her.
“Ready to save some lives, Doctor Aksari?”
Yajain looked up at him.
“I think so. Likely there’s only one person down there.”
The cabler pulled his transparent mask down over his clean-shaved face. His smile quirked one corner of his lips ever so slightly.
“Maybe I meant our team.”
Ebonwing slipped out of Castenlock’s docking bubble. The window in their compartment overlooked the forest. Yajain gazed at green treetops and the extensive vertical growth of the plant life suspended between three pillars. The light of a yellow solna beamed from above and the light of a blue one glimmered below. Yajain took a deep breath.
For the moment Mosam’s message didn’t bother her at all.
“We’ll be fine. I grew up near a verge.”
“Which one?” asked the cabler.
Yajain frowned.
“Toltuashi. But I was there before the war. It wasn’t the same after the last battle.”
The leaves of the forest bloomed with golden light. Broken branches and twisted trunks became visible amid the foliage as Ebonwing descended. Shadows moved along branches deeper down.
The cabler with the dark eyes leaned over the center of the lock.
“Well be careful. No two verges are the same.”
“Who’s the expert now?” Yajain sat back.
“My name’s Tulem Rosh.” He grinned.
“Yajain Aksari. Where you from?”
“A little nowhere settlement called Goganlear. Just hitched a ride out.”
Further into the compartment, the rest of the team sat, all five of them cablers with a two-meter-long pod, an arc mover, inactive on the floor between them. As a group, they stood. Two of them seized hand grips on opposite ends of the arc mover. They advanced to the door.
Yajain and Tulem joined them.
The team leader clicked both his palms to activate his lifts.
“We drop in one. Lifts on people.”
The door creaked as its latches released.
Yajain took a deep breath and clicked on her arc lifts. The doors opened on either side of the compartment. Two cablers took one side. The rest of the team took the other, including Yajain.
She turned over in midair using her lifts and descended head first. The beam pistol given for the mission felt heavy at her waist.
Trees and horizontally anchored brush filled her vision. She aimed for a solid meter-thick trunk near the black hole torn through the trees by the pod. About four meters in diameter, the tunnel slanted through the verge and wouldn’t be large enough for much maneuvering. The survival pod itself wasn’t much smaller than the hole.
Could it be an empty pod and this whole mission a mistake?
Yajain shook off the worry. As long as they kept alert and no large animals surprised them they’d be fine regardless of what was in that pod.
She landed on a tree trunk a few meters from the patch of broken leaves and branches that surrounded the tear. The tree was steady, but she maintained power to her lifts.
“Keep flying,” she said over the hood communicator to the others as they landed on the clear places of branches or trees around her. “Fall in here and you could get trapped.” Or attract trouble, she thought.
The animals here might already be riled because of the storm and the crash. She crept closer to the hole.
Yajain peered over the edge. Shafts of blue light shone upward through patches in the foliage, giving the view a lurid, kaleidoscopic tone. A glimpse of many forests in a single scene. The tunnel’s curve hid any sight of the survival pod.
Yajain stepped back.
The cabler leader flew to her side, motioning two other cablers toward the pit. They flew forward, ballistic rifles at the ready. Behind them another pair followed, tugging the arc mover. The officer signaled Yajain and Tulem in alongside him. Seven humans descended into the tunnel. Yajain wondered how many creatures waited on every side.
They flew carefully, ducking branches rather than breaking them, as Yajain advised. The mover floated in the middle of the group, shining the beam of a searchlight into the depths. Seventy meters down the curve of the tunnel of wood and leaves and vines, Yajain spotted a light that blinked, answering the searchlight. Down a near vertical bend in the tunnel, a tangled mess of broken branches formed a nest supported by limbs and vines, the pod at its center.
The group floated in the elbow of the bend. The cabler officer signaled to the team and they angled to descend. Yajain’s eyes flicked to Tulem. The young man’s dark gaze aimed straight down, eyes wide and round. He accelerated first, and Yajain followed an instant later, kicking with both legs.
The rest of the team caught up with them quickly. The made the controlled fall a hundred meters, then two hundred. At nearly two hundred and fifty they reached the pod. The egg-shaped vessel stuck into the cradle of branches and vines front first. Extended prongs stuck like a dinner fork into the foliage at the bottom.
“Don’t put any additional weight on the bottom branches,” the officer said. He hovered over the end of the pod. “We don’t want to risk it dropping any further.”
Yajain settled onto a branch a few meters up and watched as other team members floated deftly over the pod. The cabler medic hit a few keys and a crack opened in the ringed metal shell. A pair of black boxes appeared as the shell opened further, morpeal stasis coffins from the look of their steely shells and control panels on their ends, both lids sealed tight.
“Hook ‘em up,” said the officer to the two cablers with the rescue pod. “We’ll open them back on the ship. Rosh, check for anything else inside that pod.” He turned to Yajain. “Doctor, lead the way back up. Watch for trouble.”
Yajain nodded. She activated her lifts and then leapt from her branch.
The cablers attached a meter long line to each coffin with magnetized plates on either end. They locked tight. They started the ascent, dragging the coffins from the survival pod. The little arc mover powered up with a squeal of effort in processing the local arc field.
Yajain glanced at the machine from twenty meters up. Two cablers and the officer joined Yajain at her position. The two cablers guiding the rescue pod were completely engaged with the machine. The mover’s squeal became a whine.
Yajain scowled.
“We’re going to piss something off with that,” she said. “Verge predators can be very sensitive.”
The coffins lifted clear. Tulem darted into the survival pod. The whine continued unabated. The officer flew down to the rescue mover and pulled out a control pad.
“Too much, weight,” he said. “We’d better make this quick.”
Yajain glanced at him. He worked for a moment, then waved another two cablers down to help lift.
A rustle came from the foliage to her right. Yajain continued to climb higher but turned, looking for leapers, fierce animals when confronted. Technically, different species’ varied greatly. Some grew larger than humans.
Tulem emerged from the pod with a newfound satchel hanging over his shoulder. He accelerated up to the point where the rescue unit continued laboring to lift the stasis coffins.
The foliage around him erupted with movement. Leapers.
Leapers swarmed from the foliage, striped and hairy. Four lanky limbs ended in claws and a long body led down to four powerful legs. Yajain spoke a warning into her hood comms, but none of the group could have missed the swarm of aggressive shapes.
“Don’t shoot any that don’t attack.”
Yajain descended to the rescue unit’s level, drawing her pistol. The weapon might not even be able to stop leapers this size.
Maybe two dozen leapers swarmed up the levels. A few other cablers took shots, but the creatures were bold. The sound and sight of energy weapons usually terrified animals.
Ditari hunted these parts. Father’s people did not value terror in their prey.
The arc mover continued to rise slowly, towing the stasis coffins higher. Tulem caught up with the machine just ahead of some leapers.
“Damn it.” The officer aimed his rifle. “We may need back up.”
Streaks of blue hot coil fluid saturated a leaper as it scurried along a branch at the level of the rescue unit. The animal fell, but another took its place immediately. The second beast leapt.
Gritting her teeth, Yajain wounded one of its hind legs with her laser. The leaper landed on the mover, causing the whole thing to swing sideways. The leaper’s wounded leg gave way and it fell into the center of the pit.
Less shooting would be more effective, but people and animals weren’t so different under threat.
Yajain kicked herself higher, curving out of reach of a jumping beast. She reached the elbow of the tunnel above, then the overhanging roof. Yajain’s heart pounded with exertion from pushing herself so fast. The cablers climbed some fifty meters below with the mover between them. Tulem and the officer covered the other four who were using their own lift motion to help the rescue mover fly faster.
A handful of leapers bounded here and there but most withdrew into the innermost layer of foliage to shelter from killing shots of superheated particles. Yajain switched on her hunter’s ears and listened for them. None seemed to be moving nearby, but there was something else. A low growl crooned through the trees, soft, distant, but real.
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