“What do we need to do here to secure the camp?”
The surveyor shrugged, both shoulders, this time, a freer, more relaxed gesture. “You didn’t pick up any orcs on the way in, and they tend to avoid the clearings anyway. I’d want to put out barrier lights, though, just to discourage creepers.”
Heikki nodded her agreement, and Nkosi said, “I will help you, if you like.”
Alexieva looked momentarily startled, and then as though she were seeing the pilot for the first time. “Thanks,” she said, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. “The lights are at the back.”
Nkosi followed her toward the jumper’s tail, walking blithely through the image in the tank, frozen now in an off-balance picture of the clearing, and they both vanished into the shadows outside the main lights. Heikki leaned back to her console to seal the day’s recordings, and a moment later the tank vanished as Djuro finished closing down the console.
“That’s that,” he said, unnecessarily, and Heikki nodded. “I assume we’re sleeping in the ship?”
“Absolutely,” Heikki said, and saw Sebasten-Januarias grin.
“Pop the hatch, please,” Alexieva called, and came back into the light, moving stiff shouldered under the weight of the barrier light units. Nkosi followed, four more units wedged into his enormous hands. Djuro worked the release, and the belly hatch sagged outward; at his nod, Sebasten-Januarias hurried to push it fully open. The ramp extended automatically, and the two headed down it into the clearing.
The air blowing in through the open hatch was very warm, and smelled sharp and green. Heikki breathed deep, teased by a vague memory, the suspicion that she had smelled that scent before, in some unpleasant context, but the thought faded before she could track it down. She shook herself, and crossed to the hatch, leaning out into the warm evening air.
The sun was down now, and the sky was fading rapidly toward night. The wind hissed through the blackwood needles with a noise like a dozen women whispering together in a distant room. The thin grass had been blown into tangles by their landing, and lay in knotted whorls; beyond the area affected by the rotors down-wash, it lay in sleek waves, shaped by the prevailing winds. There were flowers, too, slender dark orange blossoms that grew four or five together from a cuplike circle of leaves. One lay almost at her feet, snapped by the ramp. Death-trumpets, she thought, and that was the smell, too, that had tugged at her memory. Death-trumpets, the lovely insect-eater, perfect example of form and function: she could still remember a company biologist, a friend of her parents’, extolling the plant’s virtues over dinner. The idea had frightened her, though she had understood that the death-trumpets could not consume a human being; Galler had seen a weakness, and grown pots of them on his windowsill, until overfeeding—there were too many insects in Lowlands— had killed them. She could still remember the mix of pleasure and disgust with which she’d watched their leaves turn yellow, their strong verdant odor giving way to the sicky stench of decaying, half digested strawflies.
She pushed the thought away, angry at its irrelevance, and made herself walk down the ramp and into the clearing. She made a quick circuit of the jumper, forcing herself to concentrate on checking the external systems while the light lasted, then turned back toward the hatch. Nkosi and Alexieva were there before her, the surveyor squatting over a junction box while Nkosi looked over her shoulder.
“Watch your eyes,” Alexieva called, and Heikki looked obediently toward the jumper, one hand raised to shield her sight. Light flared behind her, forming a solid-seeming wall around the jumper. Heikki winced despite her protecting hand. Alexieva grimaced, and hastily adjusted the controls. The worst of the brilliance faded, refocussed outward; now the jumper was ringed with light no more dazzling than a fire, a light that cast multiple shadows across the tangled grass.
“Pretty impressive,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was standing in the hatch, a portable stove in his hands.
“I think the rations are self-heating,” Alexieva said.
Sebasten-Januarias shrugged and came on down the ramp. At the bottom, he looked around for a moment before finding an almost bare spot of ground, then kicked at the bits of vegetation until he’d cleared a space for the stove. Setting it down, he said, “So? It’s nice to have a fire.”
“That is certainly true,” Nkosi agreed, and moved to help him collect bits of debris for fuel. Alexieva eyed them expressionlessly, Heikki saw with some amusement, then went to join them, catching up a handful of dry grass as she passed. Then Djuro appeared in the hatch, balancing a stack of steaming ration trays. They ate in an oddly companionable silence, sitting cross-legged on the ground or on the edge of the ramp, while Sebasten-Januarias’ fire crackled and spat in the open stove. It was full dark now, but the barrier units provided more than enough light. Looking up, Heikki saw that they drowned all but the brightest stars.
She stooped and picked up her emptied tray, suddenly aware of her own exhaustion. “I think I’ll turn in,” she said, to no one in particular, and saw Djuro nod in answer.
“Me, too.”
“I think I will stay out for a while,” Nkosi said. Alexieva looked up silently, and looked away.
“Seal the hatch and put on the monitors when you come in,” Heikki said, and started up the ramp into the main bay.
Sebasten-Januarias was there before them, already curled into a light-weight sleeping bag on one of the benches, his face turned to the jumper wall. Heikki grinned—it was funny how often the youngest members of her teams were the first to surrender to sleep— and threaded her way past the shut down consoles to the narrow storage rack at the back of the bay. She reached for her bag, twisting it deftly out of the clamps, and glanced along the bay wall. The best of the bunks was toward the nose, partially shielded by Djuro’s console. Boss’s privilege, she thought, and unrolled the bag onto the narrow pad. Djuro turned his back politely as she stripped off her four-panel shift, leaving herself in the loosely concealing undershirt. She tugged off her boots, rolling them up carefully so that nothing would crawl inside overnight—hardly necessary, inside the jumper, but a precaution so habitual that she would not sleep if she omitted it—and slid into the sleeping bag. The thermopack purred softly at her feet, adjusting itself to her body temperature and her sleeping preferences. She fell asleep listening to its gentle hum.
The hiss of the ramp jacks and the blast of sunlight from the newly opened hatch woke her the next morning. She swore, blinking balefully into the brightness, and heard Djuro echo her curse from the bunk behind hers.
“So sorry,” Nkosi said, with patent insincerity. Heikki struggled upright in time to see him vanish into the light. She muttered another malediction, and reached for her shift, wriggling it ungracefully over her head. She ran her hands hastily through her hair, pushing it into a semblance of order, and slid out of the bag.
“Rise and shine,” she said, not without malice, and prodded the nearest still-occupied bunk. Sebasten-Januarias emerged, looking rumpled, scrubbing at his eyes like a schoolboy.
“Breakfast,” Alexieva announced, too cheerfully, and held out a stack of trays. Heikki accepted hers in decent silence—the premade coffee, for once, smelled almost drinkable—and retreated to her bunk. By the time she had eaten half of it, Nkosi had returned, carrying the first of the barrier lights. Alexieva fetched the rest, and then collected the ration trays and fed them into the compactor.
“What is the plan today, Heikki?” Nkosi asked, perching on the edge of the map console. Alexieva gave him a look, but did not order him away.
Heikki crossed to her own console and switched it on, calling up the metal reading she had gotten at the end of the previous day. “We got one sharp echo yesterday, just before we set down. First thing, I want to check that out; if it’s nothing, then we’ll proceed with the original search plan.”
“What kind of reading?” Sebasten-Januarias asked. Three cups of coffee, downed in quick succession, had restored his good humor remarkably.
“I can’t really tell,” Heikki answered, and beckoned him over to see for himself. The young man squinted at the reddish spikes, and shook his head.
“Doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“Don’t feel bad,” Djuro said. “It doesn’t say much. Just that there’s something metal out there.” He looked at Heikki. “Want to give odds?”
It was an old game between them. Heikki paused, considering, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she began, and then, seeing disappointment on the little man’s face, made herself think. “Two to one against? It’d be too damn easy, Sten.”
“Two to one against,” Djuro echoed. “Bear witness, all of you.”
Nkosi laughed. “And what are the stakes, this time?”
Heikki shrugged. Djuro said, “Dinner?”
“No, how can that be two for one?” Nkosi objected.
“Heikki pays food and drink,” Djuro said.
“Done,” Heikki said. They shook hands, the Iadarans watching stonefaced. Heikki felt strangely foolish, especially under Alexieva’s faintly disapproving stare, and was glad when Nkosi drew the surveyor aside, saying, “Please, Alex, show me the approximate course.”
It took little time to stow the remaining sleeping bags and prepare the jumper for flight. Nkosi lifted ship, this time, easing the juniper into the air on the whining rotors. He circled the clearing once, cautiously, before switching to the main plant, then swung the jumper onto a course that would bring them into scanning range of the metallic contact in little over an hour. Heikki, for all that she had given pessimistic odds, found herself holding her breath as they came up on the contact site, hoping in spite of herself.
Red spikes lanced across her board, shooting off the scale, and she hastily adjusted the scanner to a lower sensitivity. In the same instant, Djuro said, “Contact— Jesus. I think you owe me dinner, Heikki.”
“Let’s wait and see,” Heikki said, more calmly than she felt. She switched screens, watching the numbers shift across her board: the contact resolved itself into a large, relatively solid mass, and several larger but far less massive objects. I think you may be right, she thought, but a caution as ingrained as superstition kept her from voicing the thought aloud.
“There!” Alexieva said, pointing into the tank, and at the same time both Sebasten-Januarias and Nkosi said, “Balloon fabric!”
The tank flashed like lightning as sunlight was reflected off the shreds of the latac’s envelope into the cameras. Djuro adjusted his equipment, muttering to himself.
“Hold this position,” Heikki said, sliding out from behind her console, and swung herself up to the pilot’s bubble.
“Go to rotors?” Sebasten-Januarias asked, as she arrived, and Nkosi hesitated.
“Heikki, what do you think?”
“You’re the pilot,” Heikki answered, and Nkosi looked again at his controls.
“Go ahead, make the changeover,” he said, after a moment. Heikki waited until they had completed the maneuver and the jumper was steady, hovering over the first tattered strip of thinmetal envelope, before asking the crucial question. Already, she could see— they could all see—the break in the forest up ahead that must mark the gondola’s resting place. She nodded to it, saying, “See if you can set us down there, Jock.”
“I will do my best,” Nkosi said. The jumper swung slowly toward the new clearing, turning to use the wind to help hold the craft steady in the air, and now they could all see the second and third scraps of envelope snagged in the treetops, the edges browned and ragged as though touched by fire.
“Christ,” Sebasten-Januarias said, his face very pale. “That looks….” He let his words trail off as though he could not bring himself to voice his suspicions.
Alexieva said it for him, hard-voiced. “That’s blaster fire did that.”
“Heikki,” Djuro said, cutting through the younger pilot’s confused protest, “I’m picking up lifesign, a lot of blips—I think it may be orcs.”
“Let me see,” Alexieva said, and there was a silence. Heikki imagined her peering over Djuro’s shoulder, judging the numbers and the vague shapes on the little screen. “I think it is orcs, Heikki. About two kilometers off, and milling around. Something’s upset them, that’s for sure.”
Heikki made a face, but did not answer at once, looking instead at Nkosi. “Can you land here?”
The pilot’s answer was reassuringly prompt. “And take off again, too.”
“Alexieva, will sonics keep off the orcs?” It was a long shot, Heikki knew: the old sonics had never been enough, but there was a chance that the newer models might do some good.
“It’s possible,” Alexieva said, after a moment, and Heikki could almost hear the shrug in her voice. “It’s worth a try.”
“Drop a pattern,” Heikki said, “and once they’re down—” She touched Nkosi’s shoulder lightly. “—bring us in.”
Nkosi circled the clearing twice before they dropped the sonics, giving them all time to study the wreck. The gondola lay at the far end of what had been a natural break in the forest, its rounded nose half buried in the ground at the foot of a well-grown blackwood. The tree was canted at a forty-five degree angle, half of its root system jutting into the air; two other trees, barely more than saplings, lay snapped in the gondola’s wake. The ground in the clearing itself was churned and muddy, disturbed, Heikki thought suddenly, by more than the crash.
“I guess they were trying to land and overshot,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was still very pale, but his voice was under control.
“It looks that way,” Heikki agreed. “What are the orcs doing, Sten?”
“Still holding off,” Djuro answered.
Heikki made a face, studying the ground below as they swung past again. “Inform Lowlands tower that we’ve found the wreck,” she said slowly, “broadcast the map coordinates and our official claim number. Make sure it goes out on a wide band, Sten.”
“You got it,” Djuro answered, his voice neutral.
Nkosi risked a glance over his shoulder. “You are taking chances.”
“Am I?” Heikki said, stonefaced, and then relented. “Look, if this was a hijack, I want to be very sure everybody and their half-brother knows we found it, just so nobody decides to try the same trick on us on the way home.”
“Lowlands control has acknowledged our claim,” Djuro said. “I did a quick aerial scan, there’s nothing up here within range except a scheduled commercial flight.”
It was nice to work with people who anticipated her orders, Heikki thought. “You took the words right out of my mouth,” she said aloud, and took a deep breath. “Let’s drop the sonics, Alexieva, and then we’ll go down.”
The surveyor answered indistinctly, and a few moments later a light flared red on the central status board.
“The chute’s open,” Alexieva announced, almost in the same instant, sounding rather breathless, and then added, “First sonic’s away. Dropping the second. And the third.”
Heikki studied the pattern blossoming on Nkosi’s small-scale display, her imagination transforming the throbbing points of light into bright orange parachutes supporting the half-meter cubes of the sonic deflectors. She watched them down—Alexieva’s aim had been good; the cubes landed in a ragged line across the end of the clearing, falling between the wreck and the orcs—and rested a hand on Nkosi’s shoulder.
“No more movement from the orcs,” Djuro reported.
“Take her down, Jock,” Heikki said, quietly. “But don’t shut down till I tell you.”
Nkosi grinned, clearly enjoying the challenge, his big hands easy on the controls. He brought the jumper down slowly, easing it into the space between the wall of trees to the west and the debris of the wreck, so that the craft seemed almost to float toward the ground. The wheels touched at last with a barely perceptible thump, so that Heikki had to look at the contact indicators to be sure they were down.
“Nice job,” she said, and saw her admiration reflected in Sebast
en-Januarias’s eyes. “We’re here,” she went on, more loudly, and looked at Nkosi. “Jock, I want you to stay at the controls. Keep the engines running and ready to lift, just in case the sonics don’t work. Jan, Sten, Alexieva, you’ll come with me. Rig the detectors to warn us if the orcs start this way, Sten, and patch that into Jock’s console.”
“Do we go armed?” Alexieva asked flatly, and Heikki paused. She hadn’t really considered the question, had simply assumed that the wreck would be what it so obviously appeared to be, abandoned and empty—and that, she thought irritably, could’ve been a really stupid mistake.
“Yes,” she said aloud. “See to it, Sten. And break out the full-scan cameras.”
“Right,” Djuro answered.
The whine of the rotos eased a little, steadying on a note half an octave lower than its normal pitch. “I have us stabilized,” Nkosi announced. “Shall I open the forward hatch?”
“Yes,” Heikki answered, “and close it again—leave it on the latch—when we’re gone.” It wasn’t much protection for the pilot, but at least it should be good enough to keep out orcs—if it came to that. She put the thought aside, and scrambled back down the ladder to the main bay. Sebasten-Januarias followed silently, wrapping his headscarf around his face as if to hide his thoughts.
Djuro was waiting with the two full-scan cameras and the heavy gunbelts, Alexieva at his side. The surveyor was carrying a blast-rifle at portarms—not part of my equipment, Heikki thought, and glanced at Djuro. Before the little man could answer, Alexieva said, “I figured it’d be safer.”
“All right,” Heikki said. Like most salvage operators, she was not fond of heavy weaponry—too often, it caused the very trouble a glib tongue could easily avert— but in this case she had to admit that the other woman was right. She accepted her own belt, and fastened it around her waist, very aware of the warmth of the blaster against her hip. She checked the spare power packs automatically, then shrugged on the camera harness. Djuro plugged the leads into the power pack, and turned for her to do the same for him.
Mighty Good Road Page 16