by Ginger Booth
Sticky chewed green leaves got all over the sheets while they slept. The tiny bottle fans weren’t very powerful. But Thrive grew marginally cooler once Ben got the bio-locks properly shaded and inserted the plastic insulators to keep their clamps from conducting heat inside. Those stopgap measures only took a couple days, and didn’t greatly interfere with their contribution to the ongoing evacuation.
Cope persuaded Sass to waste some fuel gaining altitude in a rainstorm. They hovered up there for an hour, battered by the storm with the heat fins extended, to temporarily bleed the ship’s internal temperature down to 27 degrees – or 80 Fahrenheit as the Denali reckoned.
The other metal deposit on the spaceport was once another ship, crushed beyond any hope of repair. Gorey didn’t consult with any other Selectmen. He simply let Thrive claim a third of it for salvage.
Ben and Cortez, with a team of Denali techs, spent one of the worst nights of their lives melting down steel scrap and rendering it into high- and low-grade printer stock.
They set up their furnaces in a hollow on the Denali Prime ash plain that used to hold domes, all of them destroyed. The depression hadn’t existed on the pre-eruption topographic maps. Something big must have exploded there.
By two weeks after they began the great air conditioning quest, Cope finally had his parts made. He put Cortez and Wilder in charge of tacking up the long coolant pipe-way between the ventilation forward and the compressor top-side. There was some doubt whether the lovers’ relationship would recover from the fight that erupted. Abel took over from Wilder and got it done. Air conditioning began to flow.
And Thrive gradually settled down to 26 degrees. Over the next couple days, Cope tuned the ventilation system to keep the sleeping cabins to 23 degrees, the other working areas 27 degrees, and the warmer miasma banished to the peak of the hold where no one had to work. For any better than that, he’d need a second compressor system.
Sass decreed he should quit while they were ahead. They could sleep and work, and that was good enough. The engineer had more pressing matters to attend to.
Their time on Denali was half gone. With only 3 months left to their departure window, they still didn’t have the fuel to return home. All they’d found at Denali Prime was on the Koala. They’d expended a third of that on Operation Pterry Ferry, shuttling survivors to Waterfalls and Hermitage.
33
What a rude dude, Sass thought to herself, departing from the HQ dome in the ashes of Denali Prime. She’d just escaped an interview with the Hermitage Selectman, Diego, who’d succeeded Gorey for the salvage segment of the recovery program. Gorey handed over the reins when the last of the evacuees were extracted a few days before.
Sass requested this audience to gracefully resign from the project. The ensuing conversation grew less than cordial.
“But of course you will leave the Nanomage, Koala, two pilots, two gunners, and both of your engineers,” Diego demanded.
“With respect, I will ‘leave’ no one and nothing,” Sass countered. “The Koala is a Denali ship. The Nanomage is also a Denali vessel. But you only have one crew to fly it. So it will return to Waterfalls with us. That is my understanding with the Council there.”
Diego had waved a hand in contemptuous dismissal. “I require your engineers, at a minimum.”
“They are not yours to command.”
“We shall see about that!” The guy actually turned on his heel and stomped off.
Fat lot of thanks for us saving 10,000 people! Sass guzzled a quick half liter and fastened her faceplate to step out into the noonday glare and heat. A friendly thermometer by the exit informed her it was 121 degrees. With the sunlight scattered by billions of near-white particles wafting in the air, not a shadow lurked on the spaceport plaza. She tried to stride across the blazing lot quickly, but heat slowed her steps long before she reached the merciful blast-freeze at the trapdoor hatch.
No one worked outside now. Diego scheduled this meeting purposefully as an insult while everyone slept. Why?
As distance intervened, she realized she wasn’t simply irked at the man. His treatment of her truly didn’t make sense. She brought assets and talents that made a huge difference in Denali’s recovery from this disaster. And she owed this turkey nothing. Why didn’t he care to build a constructive relationship?
She let her concerns go as she basked in the quick freeze of the trapdoor. Refreshed, she stepped out into a cargo hold finally empty of Denali volunteers, at least during siesta.
No. We’re done with that, she decided suddenly. Time to go.
She snuck into Wilder’s cabin and roused him quietly, so as not to wake Reza and others. She waited until she’d drawn him along by the galley to admit she planned an abrupt departure, now. He recruited Cortez and Zan while Sass collected Ben, which proved impossible without rousing Copeland, who in turn insisted on waking Clay and Abel. Soon if anyone was asleep in the Thrive – and Sass doubted that – they were in Kassidy’s cabin.
Ben and Cortez hastily got one of the bio-locks ready to go. Sass chose to leave the second as a generous peace offering. Meanwhile Wilder and Zan ran to take possession of Nanomage, which sped away before Sass could grapple the bio-lock and lift the Thrive.
She selected rendezvous for this first leg by that stream tunnel through the ash fall. The Denali eventually verified that no one survived in that final isolated air pocket buried deep up the volcano slope. But to her annoyance, no one ever checked the stream.
“Sass…darling…” Clay began, hanging behind her and Abel in the bridge as they landed. “Aside from thumbing your nose at this Diego, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?”
Sass shrugged unrepentant. “Earn forgiveness, perhaps? We didn’t simply abscond with a Denali ship without permission. We did X. Which is to check out this stream. An omission that continued to bother my conscience. And then, having suffered a very uncomfortable final interview with Diego, we continued on to Waterfalls.”
Clay sighed loudly. “And if they send Koala after us? Sass, please acknowledge that you will not fire on Koala. You can’t. You can only run away.”
She considered that for all of the two seconds it deserved, and blanched. “No, we won’t fire on Koala.” On second thought, she got on the comms and clarified that point to Wilder and Zan as well. On third thought, she told Nanomage to move a couple kilometers uphill, still inside the edge of the ash devastation, but far enough away that Koala couldn’t threaten them both simultaneously.
“What do you expect to find here?” Abel asked dubiously, when she finished her comms.
“Nothing,” she admitted. “But we’ll take a look.”
She pulled out her maps and checked the suspected stream void again with the sensors. It had been several weeks since they surveyed here. The hole had grown, extending another kilometer uphill, and widening at its downhill terminus at a rocky outcrop beneath the ash. She tapped the wide spot, and turned to Clay. “My gut says here. Logic says try both ends because I know nothing.”
Clay leaned into the map, then swiveled the main display to take in the lay of the land. “Zan can lay open the top, upstream of the air pocket, and poke through. Call us if they find people, but don’t pursue it. We investigate the low end.”
Abel concurred that the plan sounded reasonable as any. They set about it.
With the Thrive’s sonic guns and exhaust stream, Sass and Abel cleared ash plazas on both sides of the stream and whisked the material clear to expose the rock face. This far from the volcano, the ash was only about 2 meters deep. With all the disturbance to either side, the remaining arc over the stream bed itself collapsed into the water.
This didn’t result in a pile of ash mud against the rock face, however. The stream seemed to dive under the outcrop, bearing most of its ash load along with it.
“Stop!” Abel cried abruptly. “Up!”
Sass swung Thrive’s tail away from the cliff she’d been sweeping, and rose a few meters.
> “I saw a glint of something,” Abel explained. He panned the cameras around and zoomed in. The rock was splashed with pale ash mud, but they spotted a couple of glass bricks set at waist height.
Sass backed off and set the ship down on the same side of the stream. They’d burned off the fallen trees in this spot, likely wild forest before the eruption. Thoughtfully, she checked in with Wilder and Zan. The hunter was on his way back to Nanomage, having found nothing but a mountain stream bed. She signed off.
“I’m going in to look,” she decided. “It’s too hot for anyone else.” Past noon, the sun was broiling down on the blinding ash, the afternoon heat the worst of the day.
“Except me,” Clay replied. “I’m coming with you.”
She grinned at him. “Abel, you and Ben stay on the bridge. Anyone comes, you run away.”
“And leave you behind?” Abel scoffed.
“We’ll bring extra air,” Sass soothed.
“And if we die, pick us up and tuck us into bed to get over it,” Clay added sourly.
Sass felt her excitement drain away into sorrow. She said softly, “Suffocation won’t kill us for long, Abel.” They weren’t human, after all.
Suffocation did, however, hamper progress, so the couple hauled extra air bottles along, and plenty of water. Clay picked his way over fallen trees and boulders, offering Sass a gentlemanly assist here and there.
Clay carefully verified he was on their private channel. “Are you sure about leaving Abel and Ben in charge?”
“Of course. Why not?” Sass returned.
“They seem so…young.”
Sass shot him a sad look, and declined to comment. Fair enough, he conceded. Even Eli and Cortez, the oldest of the crew after the cyborgs, seemed young and rash to Clay. He imagined that would only get worse as their one century grew to two.
This ‘plaza’ was a far cry from the flat and tidy spaceport at city center. A few times he skidded on ‘steel glass,’ the puddled remains of trees that must have burned like torches. But he persevered. The second time he fell, he picked up a nicely shaped branch to carry along as a broom.
“Now I want one,” Sass quipped. Sweat streamed down her face beneath her faceplate, the same as his own. He selected another broom-switch for her, and continued on.
Taller, Clay kept their bearings headed toward the suspected glass bricks in the rock face. He stood precariously on a corkscrew trunk to spot for them, when someone emerged in a pressure suit, waving both arms. Clay waved his brooms in response.
“Survivor at the rock face,” he announced over the ship channel, and pointed with a burnt fan-branch.
“I see him,” Abel confirmed from the bridge. “Correction, her. I’ll try hailing on all channels from here. Abel out.”
Sass scrambled faster, closer to the stream bed where there were more rocks, but fewer branches and trunks to trip her. He warned, “Careful over there, hon. Don’t take a swim.” This was no babbling brook, but a raging torrent several meters across, with white water rapids shooting through tumbled boulders.
Or rather, pink water – this stream wore the clear deep orange of iron deposits, and its froth took on peach shades.
“Contact, channel 4,” Abel announced. “Scholar Cora, I’m connecting you to our captain, Sass Collier, and Clay Rocha, on the field approaching you.”
“Hello. Good to see you,” Cora greeted them perfunctorily. “But you cut the comms cable to our exit team. We have 4 people upstream. Please confirm they aren’t hurt!”
“Contacting Wilder to investigate,” Abel cut in. “Abel out.”
“That isn’t the Koala, and you’re not Perrin,” Cora observed. “Who are you people?”
Sass finished clambering to the top of a boulder, and paused to chat. “Scholar Cora, our ship is the Thrive, out of Mahina –”
“Oh! Welcome to Denali!” Cora interrupted. “Or actually, you’ve been here a few months already, haven’t you? What kept you so long?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why has no one come to get us out of here?” Cora demanded.
Clay cut in, “That’s a long story, ma’am. But we’re here now. Please tell us your condition. How many people? What is your medical status?”
“Including the cable-laying team, we are 36 here,” the scholar replied. “This is the new Advanced Materials Lab facility – AML. We’re in good health. Why? We’ve been cut off for half a year!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sass placated. “The entire city of Denali Prime was buried beneath a blanket of ash when the volcanoes blew.” She went on to explain how the city was presumed dead until a few weeks ago. And in any case, the valley was too hot for anyone to come investigate until the Thrive came looking for fuel.
“We have your fuel right here,” Cora replied. “Half of it, anyway.”
Clay had continued clambering while Sass did the talking. He side-stepped around a final boulder and held out a hand to shake with the scholar. She eyed the hand in puzzlement, and he withdrew it. “Sass?” he prompted. “Less talking, more walking.”
“Right.”
“So at this location, you are not in any distress?” Clay pressed while they waited. “You have food and water, not too hot?”
Cora glanced pointedly at the stream. “Clay, we’re more than capable of meeting our own needs here. Or am I to call you Rocha? Why do you have two names?”
“My personal name is Clay,” he explained, failing to warm to this woman. “My family name is Rocha. Denali don’t have the same custom of family.”
“No, we do not,” Cora confirmed with a clear note of censure. “We do, however, have close teams and associates. I’m very concerned about my cable party. We were hoping to reach the crest of the ridge to restore communications –”
Abel cut in. “Man in the stream!”
Sass, closest, immediately scrambled to a closer boulder and stuck out her broom.
“Sass, don’t!” Clay screamed.
Too late. The sodden man careening down the pink water cascade snatched at her makeshift broom for dear life. Sass didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in…Denali…of overpowering his momentum. Instead, she fell in behind him. In seconds, the raging current curled both underwater, and dove under the rock face.
Clay cut in his grav generator, for a net 0.5 g, and ran for the place where the stream disappeared underground. To the extent anyone could run over fallen trees, or bound over tumbled boulders. He practically did a cartwheel over one of them.
“Get that cable!” Cora demanded, struggling to catch up behind Clay. He didn’t bother to figure out what she meant by that.
“Koala incoming,” Abel cried over the comms. Clay knew all too well what that meant.
He loved Sass, or he thought he did. But the rego woman had the damnedest knack for getting into predicaments.
34
“Thrive, Koala,” the comms boomed out on the bridge. “Sass, stand down and prepare to be boarded. Tell Nanomage to follow. You are ordered to return to Hermitage.”
Abel worried his lip in thought in the pilot seat.
Ben reminded him, “Our orders –”
The first mate hushed him with a brush-away gesture, then forced a smile. “Karin! Good to hear from you! What brings you up this way?”
“Abel? Where’s Sass?” the other pilot demanded.
Abel first met Karin as a new evacuee, a couple weeks back, her eyes haunted. They’d given her a week to regain her strength before putting her through her chops on Koala. She wasn’t much of a pilot, but she was the best the Denali had.
“Sass is down below, talking to the survivors we just found,” Abel shared. Or she would be, at least, when they fished her out of the river. He hoped. “Your guy Diego missed a spot. Sloppy. We marked this area for investigation on the first day, Karin. The same day we marked the hole you were trapped in. And no one even came up here to check.”
A marked pause preceded her reply. Abel took the opportunity to feed this conv
ersation to Eli. The botanist understood hunters better than he did.
Karin finally resumed, “Don’t make this difficult, Abel. I’m a Hermitage citizen now. Gotta obey this dork’s orders.”
“Why?” Ben slipped in. “Hey, Karin, Ben here.” He’d tutored her on guns and the engineering pre-takeoff checklist. She was weak on both. “I don’t get your orders. We’re here to pick up survivors. What’s the dysfunction on Selectman Diego? Over.”
“Nanomage belongs to Denali –”
“Waterfalls,” Abel interrupted her. “Arguably Neptune. Takes a hell of a lot of fuel to lift from Neptune, though, and the wharf is too exposed. We’re taking care of Nano for now.”
“I won’t argue with you, Abel. Stand down, and let me fly Thrive to Hermitage.”
“Hey, no offense, Karin,” Ben cut in, “but you’re not flying my ship. Go practice on Koala somewhere else. The big kids are saving lives here.”
“Har, har,” Karin returned. “Look, I’m landing and –”
Abel lifted the Thrive and turned it to face Koala. “Karin, I’ve got people on the ground. One who needs rescue. So you’re going to leave nice and quiet.”
The following pause lasted a surprisingly long time. Koala hung back, half a klick away, hovering on station. Abel and Ben exchanged a worried glance. Eli entered the bridge behind them.
Karin’s voice sounded strangled when she got back on the line. Her chain of curses made little sense to Abel, involving sexual acts with unfamiliar parts of Denali wildlife anatomy, interspersed with names and demands at random. She halted as though expecting an answer.
Eli murmured a translation. “She wants Ben and Copeland to surrender themselves. Then she’ll leave the ships alone.”
“Why them?” Abel asked.
“They stole advanced technology from Nanomage,” Eli explained. “Allow me?” Abel opened the channel for him. “Karin, Eli Rasmussen here of the Winter Sloths of Waterfalls.” He emitted the war cry.